Page 73 of The Rebel King

“Oh, Maxim. I’m so sorry.”

He sits up, repositioning me so I’m spread over his hips, my thighs resting on my calves. I go still, feeling him swollen and hard inside me, to cup his face between my hands.

“I love you.” I kiss his eyelids, wet with tears I’ve never seen on his hard cheeks. “I love you.” I rub our noses together. “I love you.” I touch his lips with mine, licking into the hot silk of his mouth, tasting his desperation. He thrusts up hard and goes deeper, stealing my breath and burying his head in the curve of my neck and shoulder.

“Don’t leave me, Nix.” His words break,hebreaks, and his tears fall on my naked skin. “If I lost you—”

“You won’t.” I slide my fingers into his hair, kissing him until he moans and we lose ourselves to the tempest of grief and grind, passion and weeping, our bodies moving with blazing urgency. Groaning, he comes, shouting my name. He reaches between us, stroking my clit until I come, too.

We remain locked together, sweaty and satisfied, the cinders of our desire cooling between us in silence broken only by the harshness of our breaths.

Moments later, he falls back onto the mattress, taking me with him, pulling the covers over us. Turning me to my side, he presses his chest to my back, snakes his arm possessively around my waist, and falls into exhausted sleep.

CHAPTER 31

MAXIM

My phone vibrating on the bedside table jerks me awake with a start. I sit up and look around the strange room. The only thing familiar is the woman beside me. Inky strands of Lennix’s hair spill stark against the hotel’s white sheets. Her face carries a peace in sleep none of us have felt for the past week.

I grab my phone and walk into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

“Grim, what’s up?”

“I’m in the hall,” he says, his tone like a butcher’s freezer. “You didn’t answer your damn phone, King, so I had to come over.”

“Sorry. I had it on silent.”

“I bet you did,” he says, the harshness easing some. “We need to talk. Now.”

“All right.” I run a hand over my face. “I’ll be out.”

I hang up, splash my face with cold water, and walk as quietly as I can back into the bedroom. I put on my briefs and slacks, not bothering with the sweater.

When I glance at the bed, Lennix has shifted, one berry-tipped breast visible over the sheet. My dick goes hard again. I’ve heard of grief sex, but damn. This is ridiculous. I could make love to her again and probably again before the sun rises. The need to be inside her is so elemental, I can’t distinguish it from the need to breathe or blink.She’s come so close to death twice, I need to know she’s alive. That’s the only way I can articulate it.

I close the bedroom door and walk into the sitting area. When I open the door, Grim stands in the hall, chatting with Rick. They both glance from my bare chest to my hair rumpled in all directions by Nix’s fingers, and it doesn’t take much to guess what I’ve been doing the past few hours. Hell, Rick probably heard us fucking. I can’t really care. I need her and I need him standing guard, both now more than ever.

I tip my head toward the suite. “Come on in.”

He looks past me, a brow cocked. “You sure? I don’t want to interrupt.”

I give him a wry look and turn away to walk inside. The door closes behind him, and I fall onto the couch, linking my hands behind my head. “What we got?” I ask him.

“He’s alive,” Grim says, jaw clenched. “Gregory’s alive.”

I’m not surprised. Even when all signs indicated he was dead, some instinct of self-preservation warned me he wasn’t. My greatest suspicion has also been my greatest fear—that he was behind Owen’s assassination.

For a moment, guilt tourniquets my throat, and I can’t breathe. If Gregory did this, I may as well have planted that bomb—may as well have murdered Owen myself. He’d be alive if not for this vendetta against me.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“He left a message for you.”

My eyes cut across the small space separating us, the width of the coffee table. “A message? What the hell do you mean?”

Grim shakes his head and barks out a brief, humorless laugh. “He left a message at your office to call him.”

“To call…the fuck?”

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