by Maisey Yates
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASTRID WAS STILL shell-shocked by the time they tumbled out of the limo and into the lobby of the apartment building that housed Mauro’s penthouse. The way that his father had treated him, the way that he had treated his father...
She didn’t know why she had expected anything else, actually. Mauro had all the trappings of a civilized man, but she had always known that underneath that exterior beat the heart of a barbarian.
She had not been disappointed in tonight’s showing. Not on that score.
And then the way that he had... Declared his possession of her when they had gotten back into the car. But then, he hadn’t spoken again. And he had not touched her.
She fidgeted, feeling restless as they stood in the lobby for a moment. Mauro seemed to take stock of his surroundings, looking for paparazzi, she wondered, and then he dragged her to the lift, the doors opening wide, as he moved them both inside. And that was when she discovered what he truly meant by being his.
He pushed her against the wall, the metal biting into her shoulder blades as he did. Then he gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and held her steady. His eyes blazing down into hers. He was like a wild animal. A feral beast that she could neither soothe nor tame. One that looked completely and utterly bent on having her at his mercy.
She resisted. Everything in her resisted, because hadn’t she been resisting such a thing for her entire life?
Until him. He was the beginning of that. The awakening of that desire. Feel a man’s strength. To allow it to carry her own, if only for a little while. And now, even more, the temptation to allow it to overwhelm her utterly and completely.
It was intoxicating. To think that perhaps she truly could be his. She had belonged to causes. To an entire country worth of people. She belonged to Bjornland, she belonged to her duty. But to find another person who could carry all of that was a distantly hazy fantasy that she hadn’t even been aware she’d ever possessed. She wanted it.
But she wasn’t sure she was brave enough.
But she could see in him the anger, force, the will to bend her. To create the space that would require that submission. A space that would hold her. A space that would sustain her.
So when he kissed her mouth, she kissed him back, with all the ferocity penned up inside of her. There was no small amount of it. It was real and raw and wild. Something she had imagined might be beyond her.
But she didn’t feel like another entity, not like another creature, no. Instead, she felt like she might be the truest, rawest form of Astrid. With no parents watching her every move, no press. No brother. No assistant. No council of angry men opposing her very existence.
As if she lived in a world created just for her, just for Mauro.
Not in the way she had felt when she had been pretending to be someone else, no. She felt like her. Like she was truly at home in her skin for the first time. Like she had become real, and now nothing on earth would ever be able to make her unreal. The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open, revealing his sleek and lovely penthouse, as light and view conscious as his office, with windows that she had been assured were made with one-way glass.
Affording him the view that he wanted, giving him the privacy he needed. As if reading her mind, he led her over to the window, and positioned her in front of him.
“Look at all that,” he said. “All those glittering lights below. I can buy every single place and person those lights represent. Everyone. Here I am on top. And I have you.”
She shivered, and he moved her hair to the side, exposing the nape of her neck. Leaning forward and pressing a firm kiss to her skin. “Yes. I have you. I want you to take that dress off.”
Heat crept into her face. “Here? In front of the windows?”
“I already told you... No one can see,” he said, his hand traveling down the line of her spine, stroking gently. He grasped the zipper tab that rested low on her back. “I want to see.”
He drew it down slowly, the fabric parting, going loose and dropping from her shoulders, down to her hips, before it slid the rest of the way down to the floor.
The underwear she had on was whisper thin, barely there, and exposed the entirety of her backside for his enjoyment. Something he made no secret of as he reached out and grabbed her, squeezed her, growling in his appreciation.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said. “A beautiful trophy. All for me.”
His words, rough and angry, should have upset her. Should have made her feel small and used. Instead, they sent a thrill through her body.
She was a great many things, but she had never been someone’s trophy. She supposed it should make her unhappy.
But she was a woman with a great deal of power.
And within the broad scope of that power, knowing that she could call bodyguards in here at any moment and have Mauro dispatched handily. That she had an entire military at her command... That she had faced down leaders, heads of state and a great many men who had not wanted her in the position she held.
Yes, given all that, she could think of very little that made her feel threatened. It allowed her to sink into this. Allowed her to embrace it.
To give herself a moment where she was nothing more than an object for his enjoyment. A gift for him.
“I like this,” he said softly, stroking her in the center of her back again. “My city laid out before me. My woman, laid out before me.”
He advanced on her, pushing her closer to the glass, until her hip bones connected with the cool, smooth surface, her stomach, her breasts. Her thighs. Her palms were rested flat against it, and she looked out, having the strangest sensation that she was flying.
“You even carry my baby inside you,” he said, his voice getting impossibly rough now. “You are mine. Mine. In every beautiful, twisted-up way you possibly could be.” He kissed her neck, her shoulder, gripping her hip, then the other as he continued to kiss her, tracing a line down to the waistband of her panties. He hooked his fingers in the waistband, tugging them down, before rising back to his feet and unhooking her bra, leaving her now completely naked, pressed against the glass. “The world is at your feet, my Queen,” he whispered. “And I want you at mine.”
He whirled her around so that she was facing him, the glass cold on her back. There was something about it that felt dangerous. This razor-thin pane between herself and the air outside. Between falling endlessly and safety. She began to work his clothes next. Wordlessly. In absolute obedience to his command. She undid his tie. Pushed his jacket from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She undid his shirt, her knees bending slightly with each button she pushed through the hole.
And then she did end up on her knees before him.
Ready to give him what she had last night. And more. Everything he wanted. All of her. She undid his belt, his pants slowly, taking his length in her hand and testing him, curling her fingers around all that heavy weight. He wrapped his own hand around himself, and pressed against her lips. She complied, opening to him. Taking him inside.
He bucked his hips forward slightly, gently, and she relaxed, allowing him to set the pace. Trusting him. Giving herself over to him.
He was big and strong, and he could hurt her if he chose to. But she didn’t put up any defenses. She didn’t do anything to protect herself.
She had seen what he was earlier, and still, she knelt before him, offering him her throat, though she had seen him grab a man by his earlier.
His movements became less measured, more intense, and she let her head fall back against the glass as he found his pleasure, accepted his release as a strange, warm sense of satisfaction rolled through her.
She had been of service to him.
The idea made her giggle. And she didn’t giggle. Particularly not after things like that.
She was buzzing, fuzzy. She looked at his body a
nd saw that for now he was satisfied, but she found herself being pulled to her feet, lifted up into his arms. He clamped one arm around her waist, and urged her legs up around his hips, as he walked her back toward the bedroom. It wasn’t any less private than the other room, large windows dominating the walls in there, as well. But there was the bed. Large and spare, with a low black headboard and a stark black bedspread.
“You will look beautiful against my sheets,” he said, his voice low and harsh. “I wish to look at you.” She moved over to the edge of the bed, uncertain as to how to proceed. “On your knees, facing the headboard.”
She hurried to obey, getting into the center of the mattress and arching her back slightly, allowing him the full view of her body. He reached forward, pressing his fingers between her legs and teasing her where she knew she was slick with need for him.
“Turn around,” he ordered.
She obeyed, still on all fours, but facing him now. She could see that he was hard again, ready for her already.
“Lie down on your back,” he said. “And part your thighs for me.”
Again, she did as he bid, lying back against the velvet bed cover and opening herself to him. Keeping nothing back.
She was trembling, her entire body shaking with the force of the strangeness of all of this. Of what it meant to give this kind of control.
“There,” he said. “I like that. Just as I suspected. This was meant to be. You were meant to be mine.”
“I am yours,” she said. It felt like the right thing to say. And judging by the glint in his eye, it had been.
“You know,” he said. “I told myself after that first time I met my father that I would never, ever allow myself to want without having. Ever again.” He reached out, pressing his hand against her stomach, smoothing it gently over the slightly rounded bump there. “And so, I will spend my life having you, then. Because the alternative is to want endlessly, and I refuse it. I will not.”
“Let me satisfy you,” she said.
He growled, joining her on the bed, positioning himself between her legs and sliding inside her easily.
She gasped, arching upward, joining him in an intense, shaky rhythm that she thought might just break her apart. Might destroy them both. But she couldn’t see another alternative. She needed him. Needed this.
She wrapped her legs around him and let him give all his weight to her.
And that was when she realized. The way that it worked. The push and the pull. The way he held her, kept her safe, and the way that she became the resting place for him.
Domination. Submission. Give. Take.
“Mine,” he growled, as he stiffened above her, his body pulsing inside her. “Mine.”
That last, possessive declaration drove her over the edge, her release going off like a shower of sparks inside her.
And when it was through, she was shaking. Spent.
Weaker.
Stronger.
When it was through, she was his.
There would be no force on earth that could ever undo it.
* * *
“I hope you don’t mind,” Astrid said the next morning, sitting in the center of his bed with the regal bearing of an empress. The blankets were bunched up around her, her breasts exposed, her red hair tumbled down over her shoulders. She was clutching a coffee mug and managed to make it all look effortless and elegant.
She was such a compelling acquisition.
There was nothing, and no one, that had ever been part of his life who was quite so lovely or rare.
“You hope I don’t mind what?” He was standing across the room from her, still completely naked, and he took satisfaction from the clear fact that she was enjoying the sight of him.
“I had a doctor’s appointment settled in Bjornland. And, as we are here, I figured it would be easier to just have the doctor bring her equipment to us.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t know when you would be through with your business here. I could have flown back, but Dr. Yang is going to meet us here instead. She’s the best obstetrician in Europe, and we were going to have to fly her to be on loan anyway. Instead, she’ll be bringing her equipment to us.”
“My penthouse is going to be transformed into a clinic?”
“Yes,” she said. “There is nothing untoward about it. People give birth at home. I might as well have my examinations done in a similarly comfortable environment. And, we won’t have to contend with paparazzi.”
“When do you expect her arrival? As I’m not the one meant to be in the hospital gown, perhaps I should get dressed.” He bent down and retrieved his pair of dark slacks from the floor, where they had left them last night.
“Yes, perhaps you might want to do that.”
“Though, we may have some time...”
It was only an hour later when the doctor showed up, and thankfully, Mauro had been able to put his legendary focus to the task and leave Astrid doubly satisfied by the time the doctor arrived. She had a warm bedside manner, and an efficiency to her movements that would have come across as brusque with most people, but with Dr. Yang it came across as a kindness. As if the time of the patient was being considered and respected.
He could see why Astrid had gone to the trouble of bringing her all this way.
“How have you been feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Well,” Astrid said. “Surprisingly well. Only a bit of fatigue, and occasional nausea in the mornings, but nothing extreme.”
If Astrid had been feeling nauseous this morning, she had hidden it well, and said nothing. The same with her fatigue. She was such a strong, self-contained woman, and he suddenly found himself overcome by the desire to bear some of that burden. To make it so she did not hide such things from him.
It was an ache that hit him square in the chest. A walnut-sized pain that rested there like a knot.
He didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“Date of your last period?” the doctor asked.
Astrid rattled off the date effortlessly.
“Date of last intercourse?”
Astrid’s face turned dark red. “That would be today’s date.”
The doctor didn’t react to this, but Astrid was the color of a royal tomato, and Mauro took some amusement in that. It was a sweet thing, the way something like that could make her blush. It spoke of her inexperience, and of the fact that what was between them was somewhat singular.
Maybe even a bit miraculous.
That word, miraculous, was reinforced when the doctor had Astrid lie back on the bed and expose her stomach, squeezing some warmed gel onto it, where it was slightly distended. Then she placed the wand onto her skin and moved around, watery noise filling the room. The watery sound turned into a wish and whisper, steady and fast.
“And that’s the heartbeat,” she said. “Very strong. Sounds good.” She moved the wand around. “It is a little bit early, but since you are sixteen weeks, we might be able to see the baby’s gender. If you’re interested.”
“I am,” Astrid said, her expression taking on a dreamy quality.
“I don’t mind either way,” he said. “As long as the child is healthy. It doesn’t matter to me what gender.” Dr. Yang and Astrid exchanged a glance, but he could not decode what it meant.
“Let me see,” she said.
Suddenly, everything came into focus. The baby’s head. An arm. A foot, which kicked as the doctor brought the wand down around the baby’s body.
“It doesn’t wish to be disturbed,” Mauro said, that pit in his chest expanding, growing. As if a tree was growing from that walnut now. Becoming something large and hard and completely unmanageable.
“The baby doesn’t mind,” Dr. Yang said. “It’s good that the baby is responsive. That’s what we like to see.”
He didn’t know if he wante
d to see it at all. It was suddenly so very real. This human inside Astrid. A child.
His child.
“We are in luck,” she said. “There we go. We have a perfect view. You’re having a son.”
The mix of emotion on Astrid’s face was strange. “I’m glad in some ways,” she said. “His road will be easier. It’s easier to be king.”
“I would have liked to rub their faces in the fact that I was having a girl though.”
She laughed. “That’s a terrible reason to wish for one or the other.”
He could understand what she was saying, and even the significance in her world. Producing a male heir was traditionally a valued thing. And Astrid herself was a defiance of that. But he couldn’t think of that. Not now. All he could think of was that he was having a son.
A son.
A little boy, like the one his own father had taunted and sent away. A boy who would possibly look like him. Possibly look like his old man.
Redemption.
In a thousand strange and wonderful ways, this was redemption. He craved it. And with that craving came something deep and unpleasant. Something he told himself he would not feel. Not again. This deep unending need for something he couldn’t even define. This child made him hurt. And the woman in front of him, with her eyes shining so bright, she made him ache.
He felt as if his whole life had been turned inside out.
And he had been driven, driven to claim her, driven to claim the baby. He had been motivated by something he couldn’t even put words to, but here in this small space, with that little life flickering on the screen in front of him, with that deep truth attached to him.
A boy.
A son.
That drive met with something different. Something dangerous. Something that had the power to wound and destroy. Something that he had told himself he wanted no part of for all that time.
It made no sense. He had her. Right here. He had the baby right here. So why did it hurt like this? Why? He could not fathom it.
“Congratulations,” Dr. Yang said. She put her hand on Mauro’s shoulder, and somehow in her expression he saw a wealth of things. Perhaps even sympathy, and he couldn’t understand why she would feel sorry for him. Except that perhaps his own confusion was visible on his face. He despised that too. He was not a man given to confusion. He was not a man given to indecisiveness. Astrid had done something to him. She had... Damaged him in some way. And he hated it. He hated it.
