Page 65 of Royally Romanov
“I want to touch you.” His eyes swept over her, and she felt his gaze like a caress.
Finley had expected him to kiss her again. Wanted it.Neededit. But hearing him so boldly declare his intention was infinitely sexier somehow.
She nodded mutely, and he rested gentle fingertips on the swell of her bottom lip. “I want to touch you here.” His fingertips moved lower, trailed down her neck and came to rest in the hollow between her collarbones—the place where her pulse beat like wings of some wild, exotic bird.
“And I want to touch you here... and here.” Without breaking his gaze, he let his hand dip lower, moving his fingertips in a slow, tortuous trail down the length of her breastbone.
He paused to see if she would protest. Or maybe he was just giving her a chance to catch her breath. She wasn’t sure, she just knew he was taking things slowly for her benefit. Did he know that he was the first man she’d kissed in years? The first man she’d wanted?
She should tell him. She wanted him to know, but when his fingertips wandered from her heart to the hard peak of her left nipple, her throat went bone dry. She couldn’t have uttered a word if she’d tried.
His touch was lighter than a butterfly, wholly at odds with the burning intensity of his gaze. Finley could see the tension in the set of his jaw, as if he were fighting his desire every step of the way. Trying his best to hold back.
He wanted her, maybe even more than she wanted him. Finley could see it in the darkening of his eyes—those regal Romanov eyes—and somehow it made her nervousness slip away.
“Come with me,” she whispered.
Then she took his hand and led him through the shop’s crazy maze of bookshelves to the crooked stairway nestled against a stone wall. Moonlight streamed through the windows, bathing the staircase in a shimmering, silvery glow, just bright enough to see the words painted on each step. They spelled out a poem by Hafiz.
I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Literature was everywhere inside Shakespeare and Company. The walls hummed with it. Finley liked to think that if she were very quiet, she could hear the pages whispering all around her, spilling their secrets. And as she led Maxim up the narrow staircase to the red-velvet bed, she finally understood the words beneath her feet.
If anyone had been living in darkness, it was Maxim. She didn’t want him to hurt anymore. She didn’t want him to lie awake at night and wonder who he was or where he’d been. She wanted to undress him and run her fingertips over all the places where he’d been injured—every bruise, every scar. She wanted to touch her lips to his magnificent chest. She wanted to kiss him better.
She wanted him to know the astonishing light of his own being, and she wanted to be the one to show it to him.
When they reached the top of the stairs, still hand in hand, Finley peered over her shoulder and found Maxim watching her with a fire in his eyes, a fire that warmed her from the inside out. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth, and this time, she didn’t wait for him to kiss her. Finley reached up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
His mouth was searing hot, and when his tongue slid against hers, every bone in her body went gloriously liquid. Her hands were splayed against the firm wall of a chest, but she was forced to grab hold of his tie to keep from sliding to the floor. She wanted to anchor herself to this moment. No matter what happened when the DNA test came back—no matter who Maxim really was—they’d still have tonight. And Finley intended to make the most of every second until sunrise.
She pulled away and turned around, resting her hands on the upright piano that stood at the top of the winding staircase. She glanced at Maxim over her shoulder and without a word, he unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. Then he slipped his warm hands inside her panties, sliding them down her legs. She stepped out of them and turned around.
“Vous êtes divin,” he whispered.
You’re divine.
She stood naked before him, dressed in nothing but the jewels of a bygone era dangling from her wrist, and his lips made a languid, worshipful trail to all the places he’d touched downstairs.
Finley’s eyes drifted closed, and she leaned back against the piano, no longer capable of remaining upright on her shaky legs. But when Maxim’s tongue brushed softly against her nipple, her eyes shot open and she gasped.
“Easy, love,” he whispered, and goose bumps broke out all over her flesh. “This is only the beginning.”
The beginning.
She thought about the Point Zero marker and the shiny copper star at its center—the place where Maxim had been attacked. The beginning of all roads in Paris. The beginning of everything.
So much had happened in the past few days. So many discoveries, both new and old, in so little time. It couldn’t all be just coincidence, could it?
As Maxim kissed her breasts with his beautiful eyes fixed with hers, she knew it wasn’t. Fate was pulling them together, for better or worse.
Days ago, she would have dismissed such a notion. It sounded like the mystical ramblings of Rasputin, the mad monk whose influence over Tsar Nicholas II and his wife had helped bring down the monarchy. Maybe it was the bracelet. Maybe it was the way her body was responding to being worshipped for the first time in years. Maybe it was simply him.
Whatever the reason, Finley couldn’t fight it anymore. She was risking everything she had, everything she’d worked for. On some level she knew that the next time she walked into the Louvre might be her last, but she no longer cared. Not tonight. Tonight, she’d give herself up to a magic she didn’t quite understand.
“Sit down, love,” Maxim said, pushing her gently until the backs of her knees bumped into the piano bench, then he set her down gently on top of it.
Somewhere in the periphery, a book fell to the floor. The sound barely registered with Finley. Her breath was coming fast and hard, and she could hear little else over the frantic pounding of her pulse when Maxim began kissing his way down her body. Lower, and lower still, until he was on his knees, poised between her splayed legs, with his hands on her hips and his lips pressed against the soft swell of her inner thigh.
