by Selena Scott
Copyright 2017 by Selena Scott - All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Get your free and exclusive copy of Royal Blood
This is a prequel to the full ‘Dragon Realm’ Series but can also be read as a standalone story. This offer is exclusive to Selena Scott’s newsletter subscribers.
Click here to get your copy
Table of Contents
Maxim’s Mate
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
Bonus Book – The Wolf Within
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Maxim’s Mate
PROLOGUE
She usually liked them dark and wiry and handsome. But she supposed this guy would do. For the night, at least.
He was a real grizzly, Ivy Greene thought, as she watched him pull out the scarred wood bar stool next to her, fixing to sit down. About 6’4” and at least 250. All of it muscle. Thick thatch of dirty blonde hair and eyes like honey.
He had a kind face, and that was really her main requirement. She’d come out to this bar to scratch an itch. She needed a warm body, not a love connection. She figured Andre the Giant would do.
Plus, if what they said about shoe size was even remotely true, she was in for a hell of a ride.
“Hey there, Andre,” she deadpanned to him as he settled back in his chair next to her.
He turned and looked at her in a moment of confusion. “I am not called Andre. I am called Maxim.”
She quirked an eyebrow at his accent. Slavic language of some kind. Russian maybe? Ukrainian?
She opened her mouth to ask, but he was already shrugging, talking again. “But I do not mind what you call me, Ariel. I respond to many names. Like ‘oh God’, ‘more’, ‘yes’, ‘just like that’, ‘Jesus-yes-don’t-stop’.”
Ivy’s mouth fell open. She couldn’t stop the husk of laughter that peeled out of her. She tipped her beer to him. “Gotta hand it to you, Andre/Maxim/Whatever. That was a good one.”
He clinked beers with her and grinned. “I aim to please, Ariel.”
For a moment, she froze. Something about his smile had reminded her of Linc’s. Which was ridiculous, of course. Linc was snoozing soundly back in Florida, waiting for her to come home in a few days. But still, the wide, unfettered grin. The eyes filled with real contentment just to be where he was. That was all Linc. It made a stab of missing him roll through her.
She shook it off, quirked a brow again.
“Ariel?” she asked him, wondering why he was calling her that.
“You are mermaid, no?” he asked her, running a quick hand down her turquoise-green ponytail lying flat on her back. Ivy’s hair, black at the roots and artfully faded to a juicy turquoise, was the subject of lots of conversation. But to her knowledge, no one had ever called her a mermaid before.
“Whatever you gotta tell yourself to pop a tent, big guy.” She took another sip of beer, her eyes wandering around the bar. She’d chosen this place for two reasons. 1. It was as good a place as any to find somebody to make her feel like a woman for a night. And 2. She’d heard that the famous investigative journalist, Pandora Katsaros, often hung out here.
And Ivy really needed to talk to her.
She’d hit a home run in that regard. Ivy had spotted Katsaros almost the minute she’d stepped into the bar. The woman had been in the back corner, cuddling up on some dude’s lap and laughing with a big group of some of the most attractive people Ivy had ever seen in her life. Actually, Ivy was pretty sure that this dude, Maxim, had been sitting over there as well.
Maybe her luck was changing for the first time in a decade. Maybe she was about to kill two birds with one stone.
“So, Jesus-Christ-On-High,” she turned back to Maxim. “You know Pandora Katsaros, huh?”
Maxim’s eyes widened in surprise for a second. “Dora? Yes. I know her well. Why?”
Ivy shrugged, going for casual. “No reason. I just recognized her, was all. I read her article that she had in the Post last week. She’s a good writer.”
Maxim’s eyes were on the side of Ivy’s face even as she quasi-casually looked around the bar. She was going for light and breezy, but he was staring at her in a very disconcerting way. All intense and like he already knew all her secrets.
Fat chance of that, she reminded herself. He’d need to be a psychic to know what she was hiding. And really, she doubted even a psychic would believe it. Shit. Ivy barely believed it and she’d seen it with her own eyes.
She gritted her teeth as she watched Pandora Katsaros and the group of people she was with rise and start toward the front of the bar. Maxim raised a hand to them and Ivy turned her head, feigning disinterest. It wouldn’t do to show her cards now.
“Hey, Max,” the pretty brunette bartender leaned across the bar toward them. “You help me move this keg I got downstairs?”
Maxim immediately stood, nodding.
“Don’t slip anything in my drink,” he told Ivy. “I’m a sure thing no matter what.”
She let out another involuntary bark of laughter, frowning at his back. Most people could barely make her crack a smile these days. Much less laugh. Linc was the only guy who made her laugh.
Ignoring the patch of cold air Maxim’s heated body had left behind, she continued scanning the bar. An old habit. One she’d developed a long time ago. Right around the time she’d developed a taste for men. She trusted herself to be able to pick the good ones to bring home. But sometimes the bad ones liked to pick her for a little trouble. This bar seemed nice enough, though. Nobody too rowdy or ominous.
Her eyes fell on the cell phone that Maxim had left behind next to his beer. Score. Two birds? Meet stone.
She casually picked up the phone, scrolling through it as if it were her own. Maxim knew people here and she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she was snooping. She scrolled through his contacts and was immediately disappointed to see that, though he had an insane amount of women’s numbers, he didn’t have any Pandoras. Oh! He’d called her ‘Dora’.
Conscious of the time passing, she quickly scrolled up to the Ds and swallowed down her war whoop. There it was. Dora Katsaros’s personal phone number. Ivy shared the contact information with her own phone number, then immediately deleted the text sent from Maxim’s phone.
Slipping his phone back where he’d left it, Ivy took a deep breath. She hated sneaking around like this. But it was for Linc, she reminded herself. All of it was for Linc.
She swallowed down the vague feelings of betrayal she felt at being here in this bar, attempting to
pick up some dude.
No matter how hot he was. Which, as she watched Maxim come back upstairs, hefting a keg over his shoulder like it was a box of Kleenexes, she decided that he was. He set the keg down where the bartender asked him to and he looked up at Ivy. His honey-brown eyes sent a little thrill through her bloodstream. Yeah. This hoss was gonna do just fine.
Four hours later, Ivy crept out of Maxim the Giant’s bedroom. He slept, one arm crooked behind his head and naked as a jaybird. If he hadn’t taken care of her needs damn near five times over the last few hours, she might have been tempted to crawl back into bed with him.
But no need to be greedy. She’d gotten what she’d come for. She’d come to Spokane for two things. To get information and to get laid. She’d gotten one and now she had to get the other. Her hand closed around her phone with Dora Katsaros’s newly-saved contact information. For the first time in months she felt dread recede from her shoulders. Maybe there was hope.
She stepped quietly into her shoes and disappeared out the front door into the dawn. She ruthlessly ignored the nagging tickle in her belly that told her to go back inside and leave her number for Maxim. Or get his.
Nah. There was no room in her life for that. The real love of her life was sleeping soundly back in Florida. Nothing was going to stop her from getting back to him.
CHAPTER ONE
Six Months Later
Maxim Malashovik drained spaghetti through a colander and expertly flipped it into a fresh pot. He was afraid that it was gonna be another mushy pasta night at the firehouse. He refused to let it annoy him. He wasn't the kind of guy who let stuff like that get under his skin.
But it did annoy him a little. He was normally a good cook and the other firefighters usually looked forward to the nights he was on kitchen duty. But lately he'd been a little distracted.
And that was the real source of his irritation, he admitted as he tossed the pasta in the sauce he'd made earlier. He was distracted because he was thinking of his mermaid again.
It was frustrating to be caught in an endless daydream of that one night with her. But he couldn't get her out of his head. He'd known she was something special even before she’d dropped him like a bad habit. But now, six months later and still losing time over her mouth, well, he was convinced she was the most special.
She might just be the woman for him and he'd lost track of her, sleeping like a dope. Why the hell had he fallen asleep? He kicked himself for the thousandth time. Well, he had to admit as he sliced bread and dumped some dressing on the salad. She'd really worn him out.
Her perfect, round ass swung from side to side as she trailed her fingers over the books on his shelf. Those fingers lightly tripped along the wall as she explored down the hall of his apartment, straight into his bedroom.
“Bingo,” she said, turning back to stare at him, through him. Her eyes were almost coal-black and he felt himself drawn toward them as if they were gravity itself.
He followed her down the hall and leaned on the door jamb of his room, scrubbing at his five-o’clock shadow as he watched her in the dim blue lighting. They hadn't turned any lights on. He thought, for a moment, that if he did, she might disappear like a dream.
He couldn't have designed a woman more attractive to him. Her features were round and soft. Dark, huge, almond eyes and a slightly big nose gave her face a sweetness that tugged at him. But her mouth. Wowza. That was the real money maker. She had a bottom lip twice as big as it should have been, plump and juicy and pressed against the sweetheart curve of her top lip.
It made Maxim wanna trace it with his thumb, tug her lips out of the way and see how her tongue tasted.
A car drove past and painted the room in transient light for a moment. The shadows traced over her.
“You look like mermaid in aquarium,” he told her, his accent thickening with his arousal. “All this blue light.”
“I think mermaids are usually a little more athletic,” she said, gesturing to her thick curves, her breasts that pressed against her white V-neck. Hinting at a tantalizing shadow between them that made Maxim want to lose his tongue in there.
He pushed off the door jamb in a deceptively casual move. He took a step toward her, but noted the way she slightly stiffened. So instead he stepped around her. He came to sit on the bed and kicked off his shoes.
"You are nervous," he observed. "So you make joke about your beautiful body."
She crossed her arms in front of her chest and cocked her head to one side, leveling him with a steady stare that he imagined had worked wonders for her before. He expected her to bluff her way out of it. Use the same bravado she'd been relying on since they met in the bar. She surprised him.
"So what if I am nervous? You're humongous and I came home with you, strange man. I'm east of Jesus nowhere, standing in your bedroom while you stare at me like I’m something to eat. It would be weird if I weren't nervous."
He grinned at her honesty. And her logic. Yeah. It would have been a little weird if she wasn't nervous at all.
"Okay," he replied. "So reassure yourself. My home is yours. Look around."
She cocked her head further, her hands dropping to her sides. She looked at him with such a clear ‘is this dude serious?’ look on her face that he had to grin.
"Really," he gestured with his hands. "I insist."
One eyebrow raised, she started to look around his room. Wandering over to his dresser, she looked at the framed pictures on top of it. One of his parents from about five years ago, his father nuzzling her neck and his mother laughing so hard she had tears down her face. And one of him and his three brothers, Emin, Anton, and Danil. They were at Emin's wedding from this past winter, all of them in suits, grinning and arms thrown over each other's shoulders.
His mermaid made a little sound in the back of her throat but didn't comment on the pictures. Instead she opened one of the drawers, pawed through it. She held one of his pairs of underwear up on one finger, raised her eyebrow at him, let it drop.
She slammed the drawer shut and wandered into his adjoining bathroom. He heard her open his medicine cabinet.
"No cap on the toothpaste?" she called out in disgust.
He laughed and leaned back on the bed, stretching himself out while she made herself more comfortable in his home.
She sauntered back out and leaned against the doorway of the bathroom, eyeing him. He thought of an owl, with those big, unblinking eyes.
She took a few steps toward him and his heart leaped in his throat but she deviated and walked toward his nightstand instead.
He inwardly winced, but he knew that keeping her from looking there would be more incriminating than what she would find.
"Nice," she said, holding up the pair of handcuffs he kept there. And then she lifted the many flavored condoms. The lube. And finally the clothespins. "Very nice."
She turned back to him, her hands tucked into the front pockets of her snug, ripped jeans. "I hope you don't mind if we keep it a little more traditional tonight."
"We can have missionary and recite bible verses if it means I am touching you," he replied, his head cradled back onto his hands as he watched her.
She sucked in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes, and he felt his chest tighten. She was loosening up.
"So I'm not nervous around your house anymore," she decided, looking around. "But I'm still a little nervous about you."
"Even though you've already seen my underwear?" he asked, nodding toward the drawer she'd just dug through.
Another slight smile.
"Okay," he thought for a second. He knew his size was intimidating. Especially for a woman who was barely breaking five feet. How could he make himself more approachable?
"Touch me here." He pointed to the bottom of his ribs on one side.
She furrowed her eyebrows but stepped forward, did as he asked. He gritted his teeth at the feel of her warm hand on his body.
"Now go like this." He wiggled his fingers to show her what
to do.
She grinned, full on this time, and followed directions. Instantly he was laughing and yelping and wiggling away from her. She couldn't help but laugh as well as she put both of her knees up on the bed and loomed over him, digging her fingers into his side.
"Wow," she gasped through her laughter as he rolled defensively out of her grasp. "That's more effective than mace, should I need it."
He laughed, too, reached over for her ankle and gently dragged her across the bed, still chuckling. She bit that plump lip and placed one of her small, warm hands on his neck.
"Your heart is beating so fast," she said, and he could feel his own pulse under her palm.
"You are very, very beautiful," he replied. Before she could say anything else, he reached up, indulging himself, and traced his thumb along that tease of a lip. "What is it about beautiful things that make you want to touch?"
Her mouth opened slightly, and he felt her teeth close over the pad of his thumb, her tongue immediately tracing after.
"Let's find out," she murmured, tightening her hands in his hair and dragging his face down to hers.
"Malashovik!"
Maxim snapped back into reality, swallowed his scowl and turned to his friend and fellow firefighter, Russ McGowan. He wanted to snap, grunt, go for a run, bury his head under a pillow. But it wasn't Russ's fault that Maxim had gotten sucked into the black hole of his daydreams about his mermaid again.
"You trying to get a little alone time with that pasta?" Russ asked, eyebrows raised at all the food that Maxim should have been bringing out to the hungry firefighters.
Maxim smiled a little. "Oh, sorry. My mind was somewhere else."
"I noticed," Russ replied, picking up the bread and the salad bowl. "Seems to me that your mind has been somewhere else pretty much since you stopped getting regular tail."
Maxim shrugged philosophically. He didn't mind if his friend thought he was in a dry spell. It was better than his friend knowing that he was in a self-imposed dry spell. Sleeping with random women had lost some appeal for him since his mermaid. He’d been to the mountaintop.