The Kingmaker (All the King's Men Duet #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,38

ribs until he reaches my breast to squeeze and plump the nipple even while he keeps eating. The tandem of his hands and mouth sends me spiraling, flying again.

“Maxim.” I grip the sheets at my side, desperate for an anchor. “Now. Please.”

He finally stands at the foot of the bed between my knees and pulls the ribbed sweater over his head.

Every inch of him is finely constructed. The copper-coin nipples. The masonry of his chest and abs, like bricks laid with mortared muscle. When he drops his pants and briefs, the sinewy slashes at his lean hips point south, directing me to where he is fully erect, long and topped with a crown, his balls hanging low. I’ve seen men before, but I realize my inspection until now was a clinical thing, marked by indifference or even simple appreciation. My first sight of Maxim naked is anything but. His body, so beautiful and strong, sets off an impossible, primordial chant inside of me.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Like the drums from my dance into womanhood, the beat possesses my blood and gallops through my veins as I approach another rite of passage. The drumbeat, my heartbeat—one.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

I want to ignore the insistent rhythm demanding I claim him, but it’s impossible. He’s stroking himself, biting his lip, his eyes roving over my body as I scoot back farther on the bed, propped against his pillows.

“Now.” It’s not a virgin voice—there’s no uncertainty of the unknown. It’s a command, a mandate for my pleasure. “Right fucking now, Doc.”

“You’re ready?” He crawls onto the bed, slips his hands between my legs and drops his forehead to mine with a groan. “You are.”

“I’m ready.”

“We should go slow, Nix.” He reaches into the dresser and puts on a condom, scanning my face, concern filtered into the desire. It only makes me want him more.

“I don’t care if it hurts,” I tell him, my voice husky and pleasure-strained. “I want it. I want you.”

His nod is terse. His lips, set. His hands are so gentle, but firm and demanding when he presses my legs wider. He props himself on his elbows, looking down at me for a moment and scattering kisses across my cheeks and then my lips. He licks into me, a tender, open-mouthed exploration that twists our tongues and heartbeats. Slowly, he eases between my legs and inside, thick and rigid and hot. An invasion by inches. A surrender by sighs. I give one pained gasp, and then he’s in so deep, for a moment I can’t breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, sounding tortured. “Nix, baby, are you okay?”

“Yes.” I swallow a moan, struggling to adjust, lifting my hips.

“Fuck.” He breathes shakily into my hair. “You feel incredible.”

I move my hips again, an experiment, a line I cast into the water.

He bites.

He moves, at first a slow push and pull, and then more driving. Pounding. A freight train between my legs. Grunting and heaving and panting. It hurts so much and it feels so perfect. I must be bleeding and I couldn’t care less. With each twist of his body deeper into mine, he’s carving himself inside me, slice after blissful slice.

“You still okay?” he asks, his eyes glazed and his body mercilessly, beautifully, wonderfully taking mine.

“Stop talking,” I reply. He hits a spot that couldn’t have been there all this time dormant inside me. That spot waiting for the just-right caress of him buried inside me to erupt. The feel so good obliterates the pain. “Just fuck me.”

The sound he makes is unintelligible. We are wound together so tight, a tangled tempo of limbs and hands and lips and sweat and tears.

Tears trickle from the corners of my eyes when he roars and shakes over me. I clamp my legs, my arms around him, holding him so close even the rhythm of his heart belongs to me. The sweat slicking his chest is mine.

Through a rain of adoring kisses he leaves on my face, my shoulders, and my breasts, I try to remember he is not mine. He told me it would be more—that it would feel like this. Like more than sex, and it does. It already does. If I plan to make it out of this week whole, I have to cling to the only promise Maxim made.

That when it’s time to walk away, he will.

15

Maxim

Tea.

I wondered how she takes her coffee, but she doesn’t. Lennix likes tea.

And her eggs? Scrambled hard.

And how she looks in the morning-after light? Thick, still-damp hair