by Teri Wilson
“I still have to find my birth certificate somewhere in this mess.” He winked. “I can give you six.”
* * *
SCOTT’S REACTION TO FINLEY’S phone call was predictably suggestive. “Let me get this straight. You want to have a one-night stand at my bookstore with your hot, brooding, potentially royal boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” she whispered.
Given the fact that she knew Scott would likely have an opinion about her predicament, she probably should’ve stepped outside for this discussion to avoid embarrassing herself instead of just in the next room. But since someone sinister might be lurking in the shadows, she’d stayed in the apartment with Maxim. Humiliation was definitely preferable to danger.
“Besides, aren’t relationships and one-night stands mutually exclusive concepts?” she added.
“Whatever.” Finley could practically hear Scott’s eyes rolling. “You’re taking the man to Shakespeare and Company for the sole purpose of shagging him. Admit it, love.”
“That is categorically untrue.” Mostly, anyway. “There’s a legitimate reason Maxim can’t stay in his apartment. I’d just rather not get into it.”
“And you want to be there with him for purposes of protection, obviously. I get it. You make a great bodyguard.”
“Scott, just answer the question. Can you give me the key again?”
“Bien entendu. Anything for you, darling. And no worries, there are no Tumbleweeds tonight. You’ll have the place all to yourselves.”
Maxim walked back into the room with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He held up a paper for her to see—his birth certificate. She couldn’t make herself meet his gaze for some reason.
You’ll have the place all to yourselves.
Finley swallowed. “Merci, Scott. I owe you one.”
“I’ll be here for another half hour. The key is yours.”
She thanked him again, ended the call, and aimed a smile at the document in Maxim’s hands. “You found it. Très bien.” Finley nodded and forced herself to look him in the eye. This was ridiculous. She was a grown woman. There was nothing remotely scandalous about sleeping with a Russian royal in Paris’s oldest literary institution, was there? My life has become a soap opera. “We’re all set with a place to stay. We can spend the night at Shakespeare and Company. The bookstore has an open-door policy. It’s a Parisian tradition. Scott says hello, by the way.”
Maxim’s dimples made a surprise appearance while he rolled up the birth certificate. “Somehow I doubt that’s exactly what he said.”
Finley opted not to confirm or deny. “Ready?”
Gerard bounced up from the pile of feathers he’d been rolling around in and woofed.
“Apparently we all are,” Maxim said.
Their easy banter faded into a heavy silence once they left the apartment. Maxim wrapped his arm around her waist, but he studied every dark corner like he was James Bond. It was unnerving.
By the time the fairy lights hanging from the bookshop’s rafters came into view, Finley had managed to convince herself that there wasn’t the slightest possibility of a romantic tryst.
What had she been thinking? They were hiding, not dating.
Even Scott seemed to pick up on the generally somber vibe when they arrived. He didn’t make a single inappropriate comment, which pretty much verified that Finley would be sharing her bed with Gerard. As per usual.
But after he’d gone and she and Maxim were alone, things changed.
Gerard shuffled off to his little bed in the corner and the shop grew quieter than it had ever been before. It was a weighty kind of quiet, thick with words and whispers of the past. Swollen with possibility.
The fairy lights just outside the windows cast strange shadows across Maxim’s face, making him look haunted and ethereal. Like someone from a dream or a memory, one of the countless literary souls who surely moved among Shakespeare and Company’s dusty shelves.
“Here we are.” Her pulse pounded in her ears so loud she could barely hear herself think. “Home sweet home.”
She was hyperaware that this was only the second time they’d been alone with one another—truly alone—since the last time he’d kissed her. That kiss had shaken her to her core, as had the first. But being alone with Maxim here, in the dark, knowing that so many velvet hours stretched between them until the morning light, made those first kisses seem like a prelude.
“Finley.” There was an ache to the way he said her name, just as he’d said it hours before.
Finley, I’m so sorry.
She’d told him things in this room. Things she’d never said to another living soul, not even her family. Not Jeremy. Not Scott. Just Maxim. And now that they’d come back, she felt as if her words were echoing around her, drawing her deeper and deeper to a place where there was no turning back.
I’m not okay . . . But I’m getting there. Finally. For the first time in years, I feel connected to another living person.
Something was definitely happening between them. And it wasn’t just a crush. Finley didn’t quite understand the feelings she had for Maxim, and she no longer wanted to try.
She was tired of denying herself. Holding herself at arm’s length from the rest of the world was exhausting. It took effort not to feel . . . not to want things. She couldn’t do it anymore. Not when it came to Maxim.
He came closer, so close that she could feel his breath on her face. A shiver ran up her spine. She felt hot and cold at the same time, bombarded by sensation.
Dangerously, deliciously alive.
“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. Needed it. 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 un
derstood 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.
“Maxim.” She said his name as if it were a plea. A plea to end the frenzied sensation that had begun to bear down on her center.
Is this what intimacy was supposed to be like? Because it was nothing like she remembered.
Finley had never experienced desire like this before—desire so intense it felt like she might crumple under its weight. As Maxim’s mouth moved closer and closer to the apex between her legs, she thought she might hyperventilate. She buried her hands in his hair, seeking, tugging, wanting him to stop, almost afraid of what might happen if he didn’t.
But when he slid his hands to cup her bottom and licked his way inside her, she could do nothing but close her eyes and succumb to the pleasure coursing through her body.
She’d needed to be touched like this for so long, and yet she’d been so blissfully unaware of how very badly she’d needed it. Maxim seemed to sense it, though. He knew just when to pause so he could draw out her pleasure. His lips pulled away, no farther than a whisper. Then he blew gently, and the soft puff of air against her wetness made her tremble.
She cried out, and then Maxim’s mouth was back, along with his fingers, and Finley could no longer keep the chaos at bay. She shuddered against him, climaxing hard. Then she went liquid. Boneless. She probably would have slid right off the piano bench into a puddle on the floor if Maxim hadn’t gathered her limp form into his arms and carried her to the red-velvet alcove.
The velvet felt exquisite against her bare skin and Maxim was standing over her now, caressing every inch of her with his gaze as he removed his shirt.
Finley rose up on her knees to unbuckle his belt, but her hands were still trembling from the afterglow. Maxim gathered them in his and brushed his lips against her knuckles. Then he swept her hair from her eyes and kissed her, slowly, deeply, while she let her hands explore the solid planes of his chest, each dip and groove of his abdominal muscles.
She couldn’t see his bruises in the dark. She knew they were there, right beneath her fingertips, but they were invisible in the violet night—just as the scars of Finley’s past had been invisible for so long.
But Finley had memorized his chiseled body. She could see the masculine grace of his physique in her mind’s eye. So she dipped her head to kiss the places where he’d been hurt, one by one. She could feel his heartbeat against her tongue. It hammered in time with hers, and it thrilled her to think that she might be able to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her . . . that she could be wanted like that. Desired.
Maxim’s hands moved to his belt, and he finished the task she’d started. Finley’s breath caught in her throat as she took him into her hands. He was hard. So hard. And heavy, and in that moment of discovery, as she saw all of him for the very first time, she wanted him inside her so much that it hurt.
“Please,” she whispered against his mouth when he bent to kiss her again. “Maxim, please.”
He groaned and pushed her back gently on the bed. Suddenly he was on top of her. His body pressed against hers, and for a moment it was too much—too much heat flowing through her veins, too much electric pleasure skittering over her skin. Too much truth.
She let her eyes drift shut, because keeping them open would be like looking at the horizon while falling off a cliff. The tallest, most beautiful cliff imaginable.
Maxim’s erection was poised right at her entrance, warm and wanting. But he grew suddenly still, and in the seconds before he entered her, he pressed a tender kiss to both her closed eyelids.
“Open for me, lovely.”
The timbre of his voice left her no choice. She did as he asked, opening her eyes, her body, her heart. And when he pushed inside, she believed.
Really believed. She’d told him as much before, but had never been quite sure. There was always the slightest flicker of doubt, tiny enough to ignore but still very much there.
Not anymore.
She didn’t need a DNA test to know who this man was. The final pieces of the puzzle fell into pl
ace. There was nothing between them now. She could feel him pulsing deep inside her while he groaned his pleasure.
She believed Maxim was who he said he was. She believed in him. And even though on some level it seemed as if everything—the past, the present, even the future—was conspiring to ruin whatever was flourishing between her and Maxim, she believed in them.
* * *
SOMETHING HAPPENED WHEN MAXIM pressed inside Finley. He felt it somewhere deep inside his soul, as surely as he felt her wet heat clench around him. It hit him hard, knocked the wind out of him until he had to pause above her and catch his breath.
Finley looked up at him, her eyes shining bright. She was so perfect, so lovely. Like a dream. The best damned dream he’d ever had.
But this wasn’t a dream. It was real. As real as the books that surrounded them on all sides, as real as the stars shining over Paris, as real as the bells of Notre Dame chiming in the distance. As real as they were, all those things seemed very far right now. It was like they were part of another life. A life as distant as the Romanov Empire.
Here . . . now . . . there was only Finley. Just the soft swell of her breasts, the tantalizing peak of her nipples, as pink as rosebuds, and her delicious little shudder as he moved inside her.
He reached for her hands, pinning them over her head, and her eyes fluttered open in honeyed surprise. He wanted to take her to the very edge, to a place she’d never been before. A place no man would ever take her again. A place of wild abandon.
Maxim gazed down at her—at the thick waves of her gold curls splayed on the pillow, at her bottom lip as it slipped between her teeth and at her slender wrists captured in his grasp. The sight of the bracelet should’ve been a reminder of why he never should have touched her. A reminder of how badly he could hurt her without even trying.
Afterward, once the sun had come up and everything changed, he’d think back to seeing it there. He’d remember the bell-like sound it made as they moved together as one, the way its jewels glittered against Finley’s alabaster skin in the darkness. The primal thrill he’d felt at knowing he could give her something so precious. Something no one else could. Something no one would ever cherish as much as Finley would.