He pulled back, his chest heaving, and looked at her angrily. “Don’t start something you mean to stop.”
She met his gaze squarely. “I don’t mean to stop.”
His eyes narrowed. “I cannot give you marriage.”
She’d known. She’d never thought he could—she would’ve sworn so had she been asked a minute earlier—but his blunt words were an arrow of pain piercing her heart nonetheless. She bared her teeth in a smile. “Have I asked you to?”
“No.”
“And I never shall,” she vowed.
He still wore his white wig and she snatched it off, flinging the expensive thing aside. Underneath, his dark brown hair was shorn close to his head. She ran her hands over it, reveling in the intimacy. This was the private man beneath. This was the man without his public persona.
Suddenly she wanted all his disguises stripped away. She began working frantically at the buttons of his banyan, almost tearing the beautiful shot silk in her haste.
“Hush,” he murmured to her, catching her hands with his own. He looked at her, and although his voice was gentle his face was not kind. “Are you experienced, my Diana?”
She scowled. The very last thing she wanted was for him to send her away because of some ridiculous scruples. On the other hand, she didn’t want any more lies between them. “No.”
His expression didn’t change, save for a small, satisfied curve of his lips. “Then by your leave, we’ll take this slow, both for your sake and because I have a mind to savor you.”
If she’d wanted to protest, she wouldn’t have been able to. He spread her hands wide and bent to take her mouth again. She felt the press of his thumbs, rubbing in slow, sensuous circles on her palms even as his lips parted hers. The kiss lingered achingly, as if they’d all the time in the world. He licked across her upper lip, pulling back teasingly when she opened for him.
“Maximus,” she moaned.
“Patience,” he chided, and angled his head before pressing his mouth against hers again.
She tried to pull her hands from his, but his grip was too strong. He chuckled low in his throat and pressed into her, still holding her hands wide. She was distracted by a nip at the corner of her mouth and then she found herself falling backward.
For a split second alarm made her frame stiffen… and then she bounced on a soft, feathered mattress. Artemis looked up and saw Maximus standing over her that satisfied little smile on his lips again.
He reached down and traced the line of her throat, his touch light, nearly tickling as his fingers trailed to where her bodice cut across her breasts.
She shivered.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten when your fichu slipped from your dress,” he murmured. “Strange, for I’ve seen more immodest décolletages at every ball I’ve ever attended, yet I’ve been entirely unable to remove the thought of your breasts from my mind.” His gaze flicked up to hers, dark and enigmatic. “Your breasts and other parts of you. Perhaps it’s the very fact that you usually cover yourself so modestly in public that makes the unveiling that more anticipated. Or perhaps”—he bent and whispered in her ear—“it’s you. Merely you.”
She swallowed even as he licked around the rim of her ear, pausing to tug on her earlobe with his teeth before trailing his open, wet mouth down her neck and to the slopes of her breasts.
“I’ve never before been so obsessed with a woman,” he said, his warm lips brushing against her flesh with each word. “I wonder if you’ve ensorcelled me, Diana?”
His tongue probed between her breasts and she inhaled sharply. He’d at last let go of her hands and she moved both to his head, holding him against her as he made love to her still-clothed bosom. Surely if anyone were bespelled it was she? In moments she would be giving up any hope of marriage. Of the future she’d taken for granted before Apollo’s arrest.
She felt nothing but exultation at the prospect. To finally live. To take the reins of her own life, however hobbled. This was what she wanted.
If she were bespelled, she wanted the spell to never end.
Artemis blinked and saw that Maximus was watching her. “Second thoughts?”
“The exact opposite.” She pulled him down and this time it was she who kissed him. Fiercely, if not expertly.
“Roll over, then, my goddess of the moon,” he murmured against her lips. “Let me free you from these earthly weights.”
She moved to her belly, then, and felt the tiny tugs as he unhooked her bodice, untied her skirts, unlaced her stays. He was right: each layer of cloth removed from her body made her lighter. More free.
He gently nudged her to her back and drew her stays over her head, then he plucked the pins from her hair, putting each one carefully in his banyan pocket, until her hair fell down in a great, heavy loop.
“Artemis,” he whispered as he drew her hair to her breast, “goddess of the hunt, of the moon, and of childbirth.” His lips quirked wryly. “I’ve never understood the last, as she’s a virgin goddess.”
“You forgot wild things,” she whispered back. “She guards all the wild animals and the places they live, and I suppose childbirth is, at base, the closest a woman comes to becoming an animal, isn’t it?”
He pulled back, examining her face, and then grinned, quick and mercurial. “I adore the turnings of your mind.”
The word adore made her heart leap foolishly, but she knew that sort of declaration meant very little in the bedchamber. She would be content with what she could have, not what she really longed for.
She wound her arms about his neck. “You still wear your banyan.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, but his attention was once again on her bosom. Her chemise was old and worn, and she had no doubt at all that her breasts could be seen quite clearly through the thin material.
He slid his hand over one breast, pulling the material taut. “Did you do this?”
He rubbed a thumb over a small, neat square patched over a hole worn into the linen. The patch happened to sit right above her left nipple.