Royal Pain (16 page)

Bronte opened one eye as her hand roved across the empty space and rumpled sheets next to her. Clearly she had imagined her fairy tale departure from the ball last night and Max was still a neatly compartmentalized Chicago memory.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

Max’s English lilt sent delicious shivers down her spine as she snuggled deeper into her voluminous white bedding and smiled behind the sheet, pulled up over her nose, bandit-style.

“Hello, handsome. What’ve you got?”

“Triple-shot latte for you and the
Post
,
Times
, and
Wall
Street
Journal
for us.”

“Mmmmm. Coffee in bed. You are something else. How did you wake up so early?”

“I am invigorated.”

“Really? I’m exhausted.” Bronte reached over to her bedside table and placed her coffee down, closed her eyes, and started to curl deeper down into the bed. “Mmmm. What is better than this? Waking up to a hot man and a hot coffee and then dozing back to sleep for the rest of the morning. I’ve just decided I am going to give myself the day off. I scored a big account yesterday, by the way. I think I need to celebrate.”

Max whipped off his now-rumpled tuxedo pants and white dress shirt—an outfit he had somehow transformed from early-walk-of-shame to slightly-scruffy Clive Owen—then crawled back into bed with Bronte, bringing her in close for warmth and just to feel the curve of her body against his. She started to breathe evenly, drifting back into the first stages of sleep with an angelic little smile on her lips and that soft humming exhalation that was so her.

He felt the stirring of desire return, then relaxed into the rhythm of her breathing, forcing himself to enjoy the very nearness of her, the reality of her creamy flesh in his arms, the gentle rise and fall of her shoulder. The pure joy and gratitude that he had her back, and this time he swore it was for good.

They had spent the entire night in a physical and emotional ebb and flow—the first rushed moments of their arrival, tearing at one another’s clothes, barely making it to the bed, then Bronte laughing and sending Max into the bathroom to get the condoms out of the medicine cabinet.

When he opened the mirrored door, he saw the still-shrink-wrapped box and smiled to himself. Then, as he was closing the door, he noticed a three-by-five-inch snapshot taped to the inside of the cabinet door and stopped short. It was the two of them in front of the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. He was still staring at it when Bronte made her way in to use the bathroom, giggling and trailing her touch along Max’s naked back as she walked by. She caught his look.

“What?” she half-laughed, half-spoke.

“Nice photo, Miss Stone-Cold Bitch.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, what can I say? Maybe I have a soft, warm center where you are concerned.”

She tried to scoot past him, but he turned and caught her in a warm embrace, kissing her with a possession, a gratitude that she couldn’t even fathom. She pulled away with a happy gasp and chided, “Get back to bed and let me use the bathroom.”

The rest of the night had been a mix of dramatic crests and peaks, punctuated by hours of intimate conversation about everything from Max’s childhood to Bronte’s anger toward her father to how Max wanted ten children (or at least wanted to spend the rest of his life trying) and on and on until the early summer dawn began to creep through the window of Bronte’s bedroom.

Bronte fell back to sleep after the early-morning coffee delivery, then woke a few hours later, disoriented but utterly rested. She stretched out her arms and legs to their full extension, making herself into an attenuated
X
in the middle of the bed. She lifted her head slightly to see Max in her living room, talking quietly into his cell phone, standing stark-naked in front of the large window overlooking Gramercy Park.

He ran his free hand absently through his thick, dark hair and turned slowly; the mere fact of her quiet awakening had registered in him somehow. He smiled just for her as he continued the business conversation he was having, with his brother, Devon, apparently.

“I know I said I’d be flying back today, Dev, but I bumped into Bronte and I think I am going to stay in New York for a little while longer… yeah, it’s all good…”

What
constitutes
“a little while”?
Bronte wondered to herself.

“Yes… mm-hmm… of course I will definitely be back in time for the final negotiations… yes… yes… just send any new contracts or demands straight to my private email and I’ll be fully prepared…”

His smile widened as he continued to look at Bronte, and he walked slowly toward the bedroom. “Oh, sorry… is that better? Can you hear me now?” he asked as he turned back toward the front window and continued his conversation for a few more minutes. He finished the call, put the phone down on the coffee table, and made his way back into the bed.

“What time is it anyway?” She had no idea: Bronte had no clocks in her bedroom, relying instead on her cell phone as an alarm, and clearly
that
had never made it out of the evening bag that had been carelessly tossed on the kitchen counter when they fell into the apartment last night. She thought she had heard its muffled ring several times through the haze of sleep, but had happily ignored it.

“It’s almost noon, you heathen. I finally got up around ten o’clock to make some calls before the offices in London closed altogether. Your phone has been ringing incessantly, by the way.”

He had gently turned her onto her stomach and was drawing abstractly on her smooth back: down her spine, over her beautiful round ass, lightly between her legs, then trailing up her back, along her shoulders, then back down again, as if he were taking a stroll in the park. Her face was turned away from his, and she forced herself to bite her lower lip to prevent herself from moaning.

He was lying on his right side, his head resting in the palm of his right hand, while a single finger, sometimes two, from his left hand continued to make an aimless path around her rapidly heating body. It reminded her of the way he sometimes ran his finger up and down the stem of his wineglass, as he had often done in Chicago when they would eat dinner and have a normal conversation about their day. Innocently possessive.

But now she was the stem of his wineglass and there was nothing innocent about it. She was melting under his touch and he was talking about cell phones and offices and words that were no longer registering in her mind at all. She must have let out an involuntary groan when he stopped his ramble and straddled her from behind, half-kneeling around her upper thighs in a playful way. He leaned down to see her face and asked what she was thinking about, the strength of his desire obvious against her. She groaned again, deeper.
More
Max
, she thought.

“Oh, Max, how can you possibly touch me like that and not know what I’m thinking about? I can’t think of anything. I’m a puddle.”

“Touch you like what?” he asked with more than a hint of mischief in his voice. He leaned away from her again. “Like this?” he teased as he slowly trailed a single finger between her legs. She was pinned to the bed in the most elemental and satisfying way. If he weren’t sitting the way he was, her legs may have quivered or rippled in response, but as it was, the weight of him only intensified the center of her desire. There was no radiating pulse, only the hot deep center… and he was there.

“Or like this, you mean?” he asked, his finger slowly entering.

Bronte exhaled through her teeth, almost irritably, but with the most intense pleasure.

One
finger
, she thought dismally.
He
could
do
this
to
me
with
one
lazy
finger?

Her eyes rolled back and her lids fluttered as his finger withdrew and entered again. “Or that?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Bronte tried feebly.

“Was that a yes?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Bronte tried again.

“I think I need a more concrete response, Bron.”

Her fingers were now clenched desperately into fists around the folds of the pillows and sheets within grabbing distance. “Please…” she whispered.

His finger was leaving her again, he was teasing her, rubbing his erection against her in a maddening way, taunting her, making her beg, and she didn’t even care. She wanted to beg for it. And as that thought crossed her mind, she felt the moisture between her legs intensify. She wanted him so badly, her body wanted him so badly.

“Say it, Bron.” He was lying along the length of her back now, his voice so close to her ear, it was almost as if it was coming from the inside of her head.

“I’ll say anything, Max.”

“Say you’ll marry me, Bron.”

“Put it in, Max.”

“You have such a way with words, darling.”

“
Please
, put it in.”

He was moving cruelly, gently, sliding up and down, closer and closer. She was so ready for him. Nothing mattered. She was his already; whether she pretended she could avoid it or not, the reality trumped her feeble psyche.

“Yes, Max, I will marry you. But
please
—”

He had reached his hands around her hips to tilt her up to him, and on her final
please
, he thrust into her, both of them gasping with pleasure and satisfaction, as if they were consummating their love for the first time, as if they hadn’t been rolling and panting and screwing like minks the entire night. He brought his hand under her body and touched her, again almost carelessly, because
of
course
he knew her body like he knew how to tie his shoes, or how he liked his coffee… he just knew.

She came with such force, his hands gripping her: strong, possessive, inexorable. She was past speaking as he pulled out and firmly turned her over to face him, her hands flung wide, a fabulous vacant grin on her face as she slowly returned from the particulate world of her release. She sensed his hesitation before moving back inside her.

His arms were firm now, his hands gripping her hands.

“Look at me, Bronte. You’re still on the pill, right?” His voice was almost fierce in its command, the deep resonance startling Bronte out of her dream state.

“Yes…”

“Do you mind if I don’t use a condom? Just this once, as a little… prenuptial celebration…” He was poised above her, his arms straining, neck muscles taut.

“Yes. It’s all good,” she whispered, reaching her hands out of his grasp, to wrap them around his neck, to pull him closer. She had a momentary flash of worry—all that skin-on-skin business sounded dangerously close to baby making—but then reminded herself it was only a gesture really. She was protected.

She kissed him with all the love and depth and meaning that coursed between them as he entered her, joined her, so slowly, with such sweet torture.

“You’re coming with me, Bron…”

“Oh, Max, I’m spent… I can’t…”

Then he started to move so deeply, so methodically. She had been so throttled by her last orgasm, she would have thought it was impossible to go there again… until the heat began to pool, the urgency rising. He was looking at her with such beautiful intensity, bringing her with him, the pleasure increasing again. He was gazing at her, loving her. He brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her, his tongue trailing like a feather across her lower lip, then dipping in, then trailing across her upper lip. She felt the pull, the need for him building inside her, until something raw and deep exploded through her.

Her moan of pleasure was lost in his kiss as she arched up to meet him for one final joining, then his face pulled away and he gasped, eyes lightly closed, growling in pure male satisfaction. He turned his head slowly to one side, his beautiful profile a silhouette above her, as she trailed one finger down the taut cords of his neck, flexed in his moment of sheer ecstasy.

She watched him intently, placing the palms of her hands lightly on his chest, pressing her thumbs against his hard nipples, as he thrust a few more powerful strokes in time with his final aftershocks. His body subsided, his comforting weight slowly coming down along the length of her grateful body. He nuzzled into her hair and she could feel his smile against the sensitive skin of her neck. She had a moment of clarity, without any of the panic she would have imagined, when she felt the unfamiliar sensation of her own moisture as well as his begin to ease out of her.

All this no-condom business was quite fine in theory—although Bronte was certainly too neurotic to make a habit out of it in practice—but just this once she was glad. It felt like the physical consummation of their words. It meant something beyond the biology. At that moment, Bronte really believed that they were actually a part of one another on some elemental level.

They both lay there. Quiet. Regrouping.

“Now that was a proposal,” she finally declared.

His laugh was deep and low, rumbling through her neck. “I thought you’d go for something a bit more, well, straightforward, eh? No embarrassing billboards in Times Square or hot air balloons or anything.” After another companionable silence, he lifted his head and looked at her with the alertness of a child. “I have an idea!”

“What?”

“Well, shall we do it today?”

“As far as I can recollect, we’ve already done it several times today.”

“Very funny, Bron. I mean, shall we get married today?”

“Wouldn’t want to rush into it or anything would we, Max?”

“Why, yes, I would. You’re more skittish than a yearling at Tattersalls and I don’t want you getting out of this bed only to forget—or talk yourself out of—the reality of what just happened. I asked. You accepted. End of story.”

“I don’t think Tattersalls still sells yearlings!” she laughed. “And what do you mean by ‘end of story’?”

“They do still sell yearlings and you know perfectly well what I mean. No messing about.”

“Won’t your family expect a royal wedding of some sort? Horse and carriage and all that?”