Order (A Romantic Suspense Royal Billionaire Novel)

by Blair Babylon

  Maxence sucked in a breath. “Dree, you’re going into hypothermia.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Necessity

  Maxence

  Maxence paused because he knew that he absolutely should not do this, and yet Dree’s teeth were chattering so hard that they sounded like castanets.

  He lowered his voice. “We could zip the sleeping bags together, and I could warm you up.”

  Dree didn’t answer for a few of Maxence’s stuttering heartbeats. He’d gone too far. She thought he was offering something he wasn’t, even though it was something he so deeply desired.

  She said, “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. You took vows or something.”

  “I’m not suggesting we have sex. I wouldn’t,” he lied. “I won’t take advantage of you.” That was true. “You’re freezing. I don’t want you to get sick. Just for practical matters, if you get severe hypothermia, I’m not sure what we would do. We only have motorcycles to get you into town, but riding a motorcycle is not good for someone with hypothermia.”

  Dree didn’t answer for a few minutes, and Maxence considered that she might be wrestling with her conscience.

  He was undoubtedly wrestling with his.

  Finally, she said, “I’m really cold. I would appreciate it if we could zip the sleeping bags together for a while.”

  “Don’t unzip your sleeping bag yet. Let me think about how to do this.” His mind mulled over various combinations of ways to unzip and re-zip the mummy bags together. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Let me get mine completely unzipped and myself ready, and then we’re going to unzip yours and re-zip them together as fast as possible. Wait just a minute. And, we’re going to need some light to fit the zippers together. We should point the flashlight toward the back of the tent. Otherwise, our silhouettes will cast right on the sides of the tent, and it will be obvious what we are doing. I’m not ashamed, but we don’t need those guys to talk about it.”

  Dree turned on her flashlight to a medium setting and aimed it toward the back of the tent, where the boxes of vaccines and other temperature-sensitive medical supplies were stored.

  Max opened the zipper that wound around his sleeping bag and wrestled his bag into position next to hers. He stripped off his riding leathers and clothes down to his tee-shirt and underwear. The frigid air in the tent poured over his skin, instantly chilling him. “Okay.”

  “I’m wearing my ski suit,” she said, still chattering.

  “You should’ve taken that off.”

  “I’m so cold.”

  “You’ll warm up faster if we’re”—he felt like he was choking because his throat closed—“skin to skin.”

  She looked up at him with her fathomless blue eyes and didn’t say anything.

  He cleared his throat. “Or at least without three inches of insulation between us. Can you take it off inside there and push it out the opening for your face?”

  She lifted one eyebrow even though her jaw was vibrating, which was impressive. She wormed around inside her mummy bag, but in the end, he had to unzip it about halfway for her to move her arms and legs enough to strip off the ski suit and push it out. She said, “Jeez, the sleeping bag is cold inside.”

  He laid down in his unzipped bag and flipped the top over himself. “Okay, wiggle around in your sleeping bag until the zipper is over on this side so we can get the two of them zipped together as quickly. as we can.”

  Dree writhed in her sleeping bag, turning the bag sideways. The side of her head was visible through the face-hole at the top, and her blond hair flipped around as she undulated. “Okay. I think I got it.”

  The zipper scraped as she unzipped it, and Maxence stared at the top of the zipper, refusing to peep at what she must be wearing or not wearing inside the sleeping bag.

  As soon as the end of the zipper came apart. Maxence grabbed the edges of her sleeping bag and fitted them against his, zipping the two sides of the bags together as fast as he could. Part of this was in self-preservation because the air flowing through the seams of the tent was sucking the heat out of him, but he also wanted Dree to get warm as soon as possible.

  Part of his hurry was, indeed, practical concerns about hypothermia.

  Part of his frantic pace was because he was starving to feel her soft form against his skin.

  The zippers connected at the top, leaving only an oblong hole that had been their two face-openings. He reached through the hole into the chilly air and clicked the switch on the flashlight, leaving them in the bare, dimmest of light, just a glowing pinprick in the lamp. He aimed it at the back where the boxes were because the last thing he needed was his stupid silhouette splayed on the walls of the tent.

  Maxence was wearing a cotton tee-shirt and form-fitting boxers, leaving his arms and legs bare.

  Soft cotton touched his skin as Dree cuddled up to his chest, and her skin was as cold as porcelain against his and rattling with chill.

  Maxence grabbed her and pressed her against his body, trying desperately to warm her up as quickly as possible.

  Dree tucked her head under his chin and pulled her arms and legs in, and Maxence felt every inch of her soft pliable body twined around the hardness of his.

  Dree said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get this cold. I just didn’t know how to stay any warmer.”

  “Have you been this cold since we left the town?”

  “I warmed up a little bit by the fire, but I was kind of joking to myself that I didn’t need to chew my supper because my teeth were chattering so much.”

  “You need to tell somebody when you get this cold.”

  “I was sitting as close to the campfire as I could without catching myself on fire. You put me in the warmest spot, and I was too cold to argue.”

  Maxence wrapped his arms more tightly around her with one arm around the back of her shoulders and the other around her waist. The softness of her breasts was pushing against his chest, and he rubbed her back with his hand down to her slender waist. “We have to find a way to keep you warmer than this.”

  Her breath brushed his throat as she sighed, relaxing against him.

  All sorts of ways to warm her up occurred to Maxence, and he knew he couldn’t take advantage of any of them.

  Dree’s hands slowly slid up his pectorals and rested on his collarbones, her arms folded against his sides.

  Because the mummy bags were not meant to be zipped together the way ordinary, rectangular sleeping bags could be, the opening at the top was irregular. Half his head was sticking out into the darkness.

  At the far end of the tent by their feet, the tent-flap door glowed orange from the still-lit campfire outside. Shadows occasionally moved across it as the other men walked around and finished up the evening chores.

  At other times in his life, Maxence would have felt a thrill at the possibility of getting caught half-naked with a woman in his tent, their limbs intertwined.

  Hell, at other times in his life, Maxence would have made sure to take advantage of the situation, although the women he liked probably would have zipped their sleeping bags together also fully intending to take advantage of it. He’d never been satisfied with mere consent from a woman. He liked sensual women who wanted him, too.

  Dree shivered against his chest, and Maxence tightened his arms around her. His hand around her back trailed lower, over the cotton of her underwear to the lace at the top of her thigh. He ran his fingertips over the ruffle and tried not to think about the very thin, stretchy layers of cotton on her body that could be moved aside for his fingers, his tongue, and his cock.

  She said, “Your skin is hot. You’re like the surface of the sun. Like, it almost hurts to touch you. You don’t have a fever, do you?”

  Maxence chuckled. “No, Nurse Andrea Catherine, I don’t have a fever. I am genuinely concerned you might have hypothermia, though.”

  “I’m f-f-f-f—”

  He laughed a little more at her, and he wrapped his hand aroun
d her head to press her cheek more firmly against his shoulder. “You’ll be f-f-fine in a minute. Now stop talking so your teeth will stop chattering.”

  He wasn’t going to be fine in a minute. He was going to have the most advanced case of blue balls ever known to science.

  As a matter of fact, his dick, which had been constrained in his unyielding motorcycle gear all day, was becoming heavy.

  Uh-oh.

  He said, “Dree, I’m apologizing ahead of time. I’m not an animal who can’t control my voluntary actions. I am not obligated to do anything about it, and neither are you.”

  “Wha-What are you talking about—oh.”

  His dick hardened further and grew to a gallant half-mast. “It’s not under my conscious control.”

  “I know that. I’m a nurse. I took anatomy and physiology.”

  Paris had been a long time ago, and he hadn’t performed any act that would cause him to need to go to confession since then. “Excellent, as long as everyone is current on the science.”

  His skin was dragging against his tight underwear. He released Dree’s back for just a second to adjust himself, and she rolled to the side to allow it a better range of movement, giggling while she did so.

  He grumbled, “Yes, laugh at it. Maybe that’ll make it go away.”

  “Has that ever worked before?”

  It rose to a diamond-hard swollen staff held firmly against his stomach by his elastic underwear. “No woman has ever laughed at it before.”

  She chuckled louder at that. “Yeah, I’ll bet. I thought about screaming and running away when I first saw it. I was kind of worried you were going to rip me into the four major pieces.”

  “Now you’re just encouraging it.”

  “‘Pride goeth before a fall,’” she quoted.

  “That’s Proverbs 16:18, and that thing doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall anytime soon.”

  “Maybe if you tried punishing that bad boy?” she said, and she sounded like she was purring.

  Why, oh why, did she sound like she was purring? “I tried slapping it around when I was a teenager, but that only seemed to encourage it.”

  She snickered, and then her cool skin—because she was beginning to warm up—moved slowly over his stomach.

  The head of his cock was sticking out of his underwear near his belly button, and the gentle glide of her skin over the top of it was a delicious friction that he enjoyed too much.

  He drew in a breath and closed his eyes. His fingers tightened into a fist in her hair.

  She whispered, “Should I stop?”

  “No.”

  He regretted how quickly he said that. He hadn’t even slowed down to consider it.

  As her body slid over his stomach and cock again, his thoughts dissipated.

  The silk of her skin filled his senses, from the silken threads of her hair in his fist and the plush satin of her body rubbing from her feet near his knees to her cheek on his shoulder.

  And her soft stomach gliding over his cock, rubbing between their bodies like he was inside her.

  He groaned, just a pulse of a sound.

  Her breath hitched near his ear.

  He pressed his forehead to hers and rolled her over, tasting her breath in his mouth. He didn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, it would be all over, and he’d plunge inside her. They both wanted it. He craved it.

  Instead, he parted her legs with his knee and pressed up.

  Her body arched in his arms, rubbing harder against him. A tiny gasp escaped her lips, lighting desire in him.

  They moved slowly in the sleeping bags, careful, tiny movements, each calculated to produce delicious friction and heat. She was panting in his arms, rubbing her body on his thigh, his skin becoming slick through her underwear.

  She arched harder in his arms, her head thrown back and her eyes squeezed shut, and a squeak escaped her lips.

  He watched her orgasm, a delicious, enticing sight, knowing that he had controlled her body’s response to produce this.

  As she relaxed, coming down from the high, he rubbed his cock on her stomach, feeling her skin against the head of it. He bit his lip.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Let me turn around.”

  “Why—ah.”

  She’d turned her back to him and snuggled her luscious ass against his groin. With a deft pull, his shorts were under his balls, and his cock was wedged between her thighs.

  “Damn,” he whispered, pushing forward.

  She crossed her ankles, tightening the pressure, and Max bowed to rest his forehead on the back of her head.

  He pushed through so that the head of his cock popped through her thighs.

  That delicious woman licked her finger and drew circles on the head of it.

  He slid through her thighs wet with her orgasm, and the pressure built.

  Only a few more strokes, and his body was steel bands contracting around his bones. “I’m almost there.”

  “Go,” she whispered, wiggling her ass against him.

  His desire to jam his cock inside her core or her ass almost overcame him, but he jerked himself off between her silken thighs, one hand around her breast and pinching her nipple until she gasped because he liked to do it to her.

  Firecrackers ran up his spine, and the moment of nothing drew him in and consumed him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Grace

  Dree

  That night, Dree and Maxence slept in each other’s arms in the zipped-together sleeping bags, their arms and legs and fingers intertwined. Dree slept well again because she was so warm.

  The next morning, she started to get up, but Maxence pulled her back down and wrapped himself around her, nuzzling his nose in her hair. “Don’t go.”

  She whispered, “They’re going to figure us out.”

  “Just one more minute. If Alfonso stomps off in a huff today, I’ll have to go sleep in Isaak’s tent, or there will be questions. Let me have one more minute of you.”

  Maxence was sleepy and smiling a blissed-out look like a kid, his dark eyes barely slit open. Black stubble covered the angular planes of his jaw, and even his thick, black eyelashes turned up at the corners of his eyes like a smile.

  She laid down in his arms again, and he tucked her head under his chin. He hummed with happiness, and this moment was just perfect in her mind. His body expanded and contracted in her arms as he breathed and was warm all around her.

  Every breath was heaven.

  And yet, people were moving around outside the tent, near the campfire. They were surely making breakfast, and the camp would be struck soon.

  She whispered, drawing out each syllable, “We should go.”

  “No,” he whispered back, also elongating the word as he breathed.

  She giggled as quietly as she could and started to untangle herself. From the strong sunlight and their warmth, the air inside the tent wasn’t as biting cold as the night before. She changed her clothes quickly and laid out her ski suit.

  “Oh, come on,” Max said, grasping the air where she’d been. “Don’t leave me. I have something for you.”

  “Yeah, you sure gave me something last night,” she said, struggling with the little buckles and straps and Velcro on the ski suit. “We’ve got to get going this morning, buster. I’ll bet you’ve never had a girl screw you and leave you before.”

  He chuckled while staring at the top of the tent with his bare arms folded behind his head. His thick biceps and shoulder muscles bulged under the pale gold of his skin. “All of them, actually.”

  The buckle finally slipped open. “Nah. A guy who looks like you?”

  “Looks have little to do with it, I’m told.”

  She looked up. He almost sounded like he was joking, but not quite. “But, you’re exquisite. I mean, you’re the most beautiful human being I’ve ever seen up close.”

  He shifted a little in the sleeping bag, frowning a bit, maybe in embarrassment. “Let’s not discuss this. Vanity is one of t
he seven deadly sins.”

  “Well, not vanity. Pride, because it’s PEWSLAG, right?”

  “Pewslag?” he asked, frowning but silly.

  “Yeah, the initials of the seven deadly sins spell PEWSLAG: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice, and gluttony.”

  He chuckled. “I guess they do. Father Booker was right to have adopted you as an honorary religious sister.”

  “Lots of my aunts and cousins did a couple of years with one of the sisters’ institutes. I could’ve.”

  “You don’t see many women religious standing up in a bar and announcing they are going to fuck every man in the place.”

  She shrugged. “I was going to feel guilty about it.”

  “I suppose it’s all right, then.”

  She dropped one of her boots. “I can’t believe any woman ever left you. You seriously look like a movie star.” He had that otherworldly male beauty that didn’t seem to happen to ordinary people.

  He shook his head, and the black curls of his hair danced. “I’m not. I’ve never acted or modeled.”

  “You could.”

  He shook his head, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t have the temperament for it.”

  “There isn’t a temperament for acting, unless it’s just being weird and a little crazy.”

  He turned on his side, holding his head up with one spectacular arm. “There is. It’s a willingness to please, and patience for endless retakes are essential. I have been assured I’m entirely unsuited for it.”

  “You don’t seem impatient to me. Who told you that?”

  “My grandmother. Her name was Grace. She did some modeling and a bit of acting before she married my grandfather.”

  “Oh, a friend of mine’s grandmother did that. She modeled in New York City for a year before she got married. She was a secretary for a big law office there and could type over a hundred words a minute. No one in my family ever did anything interesting like that. I’m the first person to have been east of the Mississippi River in over a hundred years. Some of my cousins went to Disneyland in California, but I’ve never even done that.”