Page 69 of Royally Romanov
He wanted to weep. But his hands were cupping her breasts now, and he was pinching and rolling her perfect rose-petal nipples while she moved over him, crying out in the darkness.
He wasn’t ready for whatever was coming. He railed against it, even as his body barreled toward release. These past few days had been a journey of discovery. Just when he thought he could see a palace on the horizon, the mist of illusion was falling away and he knew now there was nothing but ruin at the end of the road. But he refused to let the journey end, because the truth of the present was just as real as the truth of his past.
This was more than sex. He could deny it all he wanted, but he was beginning to have feelings for Finley.
“That’s it, darling,” he whispered, reaching to touch her where their bodies were joined.
Her head dropped back, and for a moment, he was spellbound by the elegance of her slender neck and the utter grace of her orgasm. His mind went blissfully blank. No more voices. No more memories.
Only pleasure.
Only this.
In the moment before his climax, he closed his eyes, willing it to last, fighting for a way to postpone the inevitable. But there was no stopping their breathless conclusion.
He came hard, spilling himself into her, holding her tight.
Hating himself just a little bit more.
“WAKE UP, LOVE. IT’Smorning.” Maxim swept the fringe from Finley’s eyes and trailed his fingertips down the side of her face, cupping her cheek.
He’d been awake and dressed for hours, rehearsing what he might say to her when the sun came up. The gala was tomorrow night. Father Kozlov had already called to let Maxim know his DNA test had been arranged for nine in the morning at Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu.After the endless days of living in a haze, wondering where he’d come from and who he was, everything was suddenly moving ahead at warp speed. Too damn fast.
“Mmmm.” She stretched her arms over her head in a movement of languid, feline grace while her eyes fluttered open. She took in his buttoned shirt, fastened belt, and the Windsor knot in his tie, and her smile faded. “You’re dressed.”
She gathered a blanket around her body, covering herself. Maxim balled his hands into fists to prevent himself from pulling it away.
He wanted to look at her.
He wanted a lot of things he knew he had no business wanting now.
His jaw clenched. “Father Kozlov called.”
“Has he scheduled the DNA test?” She sat up straighter and grinned from ear to ear.
Maxim looked away, pretending to study the time on the clock hanging above the piano. “It’s in less than an hour.”
He’d seriously considered skipping the test altogether. After the things he’d remembered, he suspected it would be negative.
You knew this was the plan all along...
He’d clearly been posing as someone he wasn’t. Was everything in the notebook a fake? Had he been building a case to make it look like he was a Romanov, when in fact he was just a Laurent? A nobody?
His memories had failed to come together with any kind of clarity, even after wrestling with them most of the night. Maxim couldn’t catch a glimpse of the whole story, and when the bells of Notre Dame rang in the dawn, he finally wished he could. If he could no longer forget that he’d been involved in some sort of mysterious plan, he wanted to remember all of it. How could he fix things if he hadn’t known precisely what he’d done?
Finley reached for him, running her fingertips along his brow, touching him with the familiar ease of a lover. “You look worried, and you shouldn’t. We know who you are.”
“Do we?” Did it even matter anymore? He was a fraud of some sort, no matter what his family tree looked like.
“We do.” The bracelet on her arm jingled. Maxim stared at the tiny ruby egg charm, red as wine against Finley’s fair wrist. “Ido.”
Maxim took a sharp inhale.
He had no explanation for the bracelet. Or the photograph of his grandmother that the Louvre had identified as Anastasia. Those things were real. They’d been part of his life since he was a boy. He knew that for a fact.
Even if the finest museum in France was wrong, and the girl in the picture wasn’t Anastasia, Father Kozlov was still convinced Maxim was a Romanov.
Maxim wished he could go back to last week—back to the days when no one believed him. There had been no one to disappoint then. Just him.
