He had been so adamant that they could not. So adamant that it was bad, and now, he was kissing her with an immediacy that made a complete mockery of everything he’d said before.
“Why?” she whispered, in the brief moment when their lips parted, so that they could both draw breath.
“Maybe because I am a monster,” he said. “And maybe you are too. My darkness sees yours. And I cannot resist it.”
Her heart pounded faster, harder. Because that at least seemed true.
All the rest of this, all the rest was a farce. Playing a game so that the people of her country would accept her. Playing a game so that she would look strong while she felt like she was breaking apart. Allowing him to assume some kind of control when she didn’t want him to have any. But she also wanted him. And there was an honesty to that.
She had no expectations of what things between men and women were like. Though the way that the women who worked for her spoke of it, she did not know if it was commonly such a dark and terrifying thing. A monster all of its own.
But she wasn’t like them.
She wasn’t like anyone.
She’d known that for years. Lying in her dungeon room, she’d known it. There weren’t a lot of other girls who had spent their formative years like she had. It had made her feel terribly lonely to realize that. Made her feel very alone.
Except, looking at him, she realized that he wasn’t like anyone either.
This man who was capable of being so charming. Who was so beautiful, but at the same time so very deadly.
Who was brilliant and charming, and also dark and terrifying.
Who could give pleasure with his hands, and take life with them too.
He was like no one. And neither was she.
And in that singularity, they met.
In their darkness, there was a bond.
And so they didn’t speak again. She simply kissed him. Learning the movements. Learning the way that his tongue felt best sliding against hers. Learning to glory in the strength of his hold.
Learning to love the way she was delicate, the way he was strong. She had never in her wildest dreams thought that she would like that.
In fact, when she had first begun to fantasize about finding a lover, she had imagined that she might like one she felt most easily in control of, but from the beginning she had been enticed by Maximus’s strength. By the danger in him.
What she really wondered was if she would ever truly be aroused if she did not feel she was overcome.
Because there was some strange and wicked strength to be found in this. In the fact that she seemed strong even while he had her arms trapped.
Because she could see that he had been pushed to the edge. That he was pushed to his limits. That in many ways, she had control over him.
It was a magical thing. Mystical and quite beyond her understanding. So she didn’t try to understand.
She simply kissed him. Simply reveled in the deep desire that coursed through her body as his tongue played games with hers.
As her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest.
She struggled, her breasts rubbing against the hard wall of muscle that had her trapped there. And a pulse throbbed between her legs.
Oh, how she wanted him.
She was mindless with it.
And this felt right. In this sea of confusion, amid all the things she didn’t know, she knew this.
That she was a woman, and he was a man. And this was everything that was good about those facts. This desire, this need and the sparks that it created between them, with everything wonderful about what it meant.