Page 39 of Royally Romanov
But those things no longer mattered. Kissing her had made him realize just how fragile and ethereal his memories were. Like something from a dream. But holding her... tasting her... that had been real.
More real than any kiss he’d ever experienced. He knew that for a fact. Nothing could make him forget a kiss like that, not even amnesia.
His gaze dropped purposefully to her mouth. So pretty. So deliciously pink. “What if I want it to be your business?”
His words hung between them, tempting and bold.
Finley stared at him, wide-eyed. “But it can’t.Wecan’t. I just told you I’m not here for...” She paused. Swallowed. “Forthat.”
“Sex?” Maxim lifted a brow, and watched her face flush scarlet again. He would’ve bet every cherished treasure in her precious museum that she was lying. “Ah, but you didn’t say anything about kissing.”
She shook her head, but even as she did so, her body arched toward him. Ever so slightly. Just enough to make Maxim even more aware of the erection straining his fly. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“On the contrary, I think it’s an excellent one.” It took every ounce of restraint he could muster not to pull her into his arms and claim that pretty pink mouth again. But as much as he wanted her, he needed her to want him in return. He needed to feel the hunger in her touch the way he’d experienced it last night when she’d explored his chest with such bashful awakening.
That touch had meant something.
Something profound.
For her, as well as for him. He’d known it last night, and he knew it now as she walked slowly toward him.
Then everything moved with breathtaking speed as some invisible force took over. A force neither of them could resist.
Gravity, he thought as his mouth came down on hers. Because preventing himself from kissing her again was like trying to disobey every natural law of the universe.
Then he stopped thinking. Stopped trying to sort out what was happening and its relationship to everything that had gone before. The wheels that had been spinning on constant repeat in his head since the moment in the hospital when he’d first set eyes on that godforsaken notebook slowed to an exquisite stop. His mind went splendidly, blissfully blank, and sensation took over.
Sight, sound, taste.
Whatever had happened in his past meant nothing compared to the heat in Finley’s gaze, like emeralds aflame. Nothing mattered but the tremulous little hitch in her breath in the second before their lips touched, then the sweet bliss of her mouth as his tongue slipped inside.
So much warmth. So wet and wonderful that it was a shock Maxim didn’t fall to his knees. He was sinking... sinking beneath the weight of the past, the present, and the future. Time he remembered, time he didn’t. All of it somehow came together when he touched Finley, when his hands moved through her glorious gold waves of hair and she sighed into his mouth.
He loved the sounds she made—the breathy whimpers, the needy little cries. She was always so controlled, so carefully contained. It was a beautiful thing to see all that guarded discipline melt away, to feel the press of her soft breasts against his chest as her resistance fell at her feet.
“Finley,” he groaned, and his hands dropped from her hair to her shoulders to the delicate curve of her waist.
They were moving much too fast. Somewhere in the back of his messed-up head, he knew he should stop. Finley didn’t even know who he was. Neither did he. But he didn’t care anymore. At the moment, he couldn’t imagine he ever would. Everything important and right and good was wrapped up in her kiss.
Inher.
So it was equal parts blessing and curse when she pulled away, dazed. Breathless. And if Maxim wasn’t mistaken, only mildly horrified.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” she said.
He inhaled a ragged breath. He was so aroused he could barely see straight, much less have a rational discussion about what was happening between them. “It shouldn’t?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Definitely not.”
Despite her protests, she made no effort to remove herself from his embrace.
Until Maxim grazed her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
Compared to the heat of their kiss, it was an innocent gesture. Tender, yet intimate enough to push her firmly and decisively away.
She stepped out of his arms, and her gaze flitted around the apartment. “This is crazy. I shouldn’t even be here.”
He searched for the right words that would change her mind and make her stay, but he came up empty. Because she was right. There was no denying that their whole situation was crazy, albeit consuming as hell.
