He caught himself and lunged back up at her. “You want to fight, do you?”
“You know I can best you, Max. Then you’ll have to listen to me, instead of running away from it—as you always do. ”
“Try it. ” His smile returned, hard and unfriendly. His eyes glinted with challenge.
She kicked out suddenly, and he blocked her thrust with an angle of his powerful thigh, then responded with a shove that knocked her back two steps. Furious that he’d taken her by surprise, she twisted around and grabbed his arm, slipping it over her as she neatly flipped him to the thick mat on the ground. He yanked her leg, pulling her off balance so that she was forced into a somersault that loosened her knot of hair.
Then he was up, breathing easily, as though he’d just stood from a chair, dark hair loose, brushing his shoulders and falling in his eyes. He crouched, ready for her, and she matched his stance as they circled in the room. It wouldn’t be a battle of pure strength, but one of timing and the unexpected. In that, they were evenly matched.
“I didn’t want anything to happen to you, you blasted fool,” she said, lunging.
He sidestepped and kicked around from behind to trip her. She caught herself and staggered backward, pulling him with her. Max tumbled and rolled neatly to his feet, turning once again to face her. “You bloody castrated me, Victoria. You did me no favors. ”
“Lilith wants you. ”
“And she wants you, damn you. Even more than she wants me. ”
“No—”
“But I didn’t drug you. And lock you up. For two days. ” He blocked her blow with his arm, using the momentum to twist her around.
Victoria spun back to face him. “No, you simply paid Sebastian to kidnap me last fall. ”
The fact that Max had asked Sebastian to abduct Victoria to keep her from questioning his seeming loyalty to the Tutela, and thus ruining his plans to get close to Nedas and his demonic obelisk, had continued to be a bone of contention between them. That had also been the first time she and Sebastian became lovers, in a carriage, of course—a fact about which Max never hesitated to remind her.
She balled up her hands into fists that, small though they might appear, held inhuman strength. “To keep me safe,” she said, punctuating her words with spars that slapped violently against his raised palms as he blocked her, “as you claimed. ” She whirled around suddenly with a solid kick toward his abdomen, which connected with his side as he lunged out of the way. “How dare you claim injury when you did nothing less to me. ”
Max laughed coldly, ducking her blows and responding with one of his own that spun the air by her ear. “You talk as though it was some great tragedy,” he said, backing up into a crouch again, “that you ended up in a carriage with him. The way I heard it,” he said, taking a swipe at her, “it was no hardship for you after all. ”
She kicked out, clipping the edge of his jaw. She heard his teeth snap shut and she tossed him a tight grin. “At least I didn’t act the coward and pay someone else to do my dirty work. ” She leaped at him; he blocked her lunge and caught her by the arm. Ducking under her, he flipped her over as she’d done to him moments before.
She flew through the air and landed on her back, the breath knocked out of her for the moment before she sprang to her feet, brushing a long strand of hair from her face. He was already halfway to the door.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, throwing herself toward him. Her leap knocked him to the floor, and they tumbled there in a tangle of limbs. She landed on top of him, but he gave a great twist and she flipped onto her back with a loud smack, pulling him with her. “Coward!”
“I’m getting the hell away from you,” he said, rearing over her. His head blocked the lamp and left him half-shadowed. “Because if I don’t, God help me, I’ll be doing this. ” And his face swooped down toward her, fingers once again digging into the soft spots on her shoulders.
It was a furious, ferocious kiss; a desperate smashing and grinding of mouths pressing against teeth, a slip-sliding of lips, the deep, long swipe of tongue . . . and then more and more, so that she became completely breathless . . . but unwilling to stop to breathe. Victoria’s fingers grasped the sides of his face as if to keep him there, even to pull him closer, feeling the throb of veins in his temples, and the slight dampness of his warm skin, the rough stubble under her palms.
His hair was as silky and heavy as it looked, and she curled her fingers up onto his skull, the tendrils wrapping around her hands as she arched beneath him, feeling the pull of her hair trapped beneath his hands, pressing her belly up into his, curling one of her ankles around his hips to pull him down closer. Their legs shifted and moved, trousers crumpled, rough hair scraped against warm flesh, toes and heels thumped against each other and the mat as they rolled and continued their battle in the most elemental way of man and woman.
Victoria tore at his tunic, pulling it up, slipping her hands under the linen to feel the slabs of muscle on his back. Warm, they shifted and rippled beneath her fingers as he lifted onto his elbows and dipped to move his face along her jaw and to the hot, sensitive part of her neck. She turned her face away, eyes closed, as he kissed, devouring her skin with his firm mouth, sending exploding sensations through her as she tried to keep from moaning like a cat in heat.
Then suddenly, he stilled, as if caught. Poised over her, his face against the side of her neck, buried in her curls, his breath moist on her skin. She felt the brush of his lashes, the sift of his hair over her cheek, the thump of his heart reverberating in his body, so close to hers . . . but his lips had lifted. His rough breathing mingled with hers in the silence.
She tightened her hands on his body beneath the linen shirt, folding her lips together, ready to speak his name.
“Don’t,” he said sharply, his mouth moving against her neck. “Don’t . . . say . . . anything. ”
Tension radiated; she felt it trembling beneath her fingers on the smooth skin over his ribs, in the deep, long breath he took, expanding under her touch.
She felt it when he gathered up, ready to pull away, and she tightened her fingers on him.
And then, after another long moment, as though released, excused, sanctioned . . . something . . . he moved again with a little shudder, a release of stilled breath. He brushed her hair away, and kissed her neck, gently now, languidly, with the same skillful lips that had done so three months ago. The tension eased beneath her fingers and, when he moved again, it was to find her mouth once more with his.
Her lips were swollen and pounding from the previous onslaught, but he took his time here. It wasn’t tender, the way he kissed her now, nor desperate and angry, as before,but . . . long and slow and thorough, slick and deep, drawing so much from her that she moaned quietly behind it all.
There was no mistaking his desire for her; as their bodies arched and moved, the loose fabric left little unsaid between them. She pulled at his shirt, and he lifted away long enough for her to yank it over his head. B