“Nice clothes, fancy place,” I say. “Are you rich, Doc?”
Something skitters across his face before he tucks it neatly away.
“Not much has changed in my wardrobe the last few years,” he offers wryly. “And this place looks fancier than it costs. I don’t have a ton of cash, but my family does, yeah.”
Why am I surprised? I knew he had an expensive education. It just never occurred to me that there was as much distance between our backgrounds as there apparently is.
“My father disowned me.” His voice and eyes grow sober, and I want to hug him. “I know that sounds like an old-fashioned word, but fathers cutting their sons out of wills apparently never goes out of style. I’m not just cut off from what he would leave when he dies, but from who he is his while he’s alive. Cut off from him.”
I take a few steps closer, reach up to push back the hair that has fallen into his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I don’t need his money,” Maxim says sharply. “I had a little of my own. I get by.”
It’s glaringly obvious to me that his father’s money is the least of what Maxim misses. I suspect he misses the man himself, though he may not want to admit it.
“If this is what you call getting by,” I say teasingly and with an admiring look around the foyer and up the stairs, “I’d hate to see balling.”
We both laugh and some of the tension tightening his shoulders dissipates.
“It’s just a rental for the month between finishing my doctorate and leaving for Antarctica next week.”
The reminder drains my laughter. I’m leaving soon, too.
“We should make this week count,” I say.
“We should.” He steps close, linking our fingers at our sides and bending to take my lips in a leisurely kiss, languid and at odds with the energy humming around him. One could be fooled into thinking he was domesticated. Am I the only one who sees the wild wolf?
“My room’s upstairs,” he says, walking us backward toward the steps.
I nod and follow him up, holding his hand loosely. In his bedroom, the ceilings soar high, and the hardwood floors gleam beneath my bare feet when I slip off my shoes. Gilded threads run through the wallpaper and the bed is huge and covered with fine linen.
“This room is beautiful, Maxim.”
“I can’t take much credit for it. Rental came fully furnished. Are we going to talk interior decoration all night, or are we ready to pluck this flower you keep telling me about?”
I chuckle, as I know he meant me to. He’s being charming, deliberately relaxing me. It only makes me want him more. I want his hands and mouth on me, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. So I show him.
Not releasing his gaze, I tug at the thin row of buttons descending the green silk blouse tucked into my slacks. His nostrils flare in an otherwise unmoved face. I shrug one shoulder, liberating the sleeve to fall down my arm. I reach for the delicate front clasp holding the cups of my bra together, but he stops me. I glance from the long, tanned fingers against my skin up to his face.
“I thought virgins were supposed to be all scared and trembly.” His laugh is rough, but his hands are tender and his eyes scorch me everywhere.
“Not this one. There’s power in choosing your own path, and I’ve waited until I found someone I was sure I wanted to be with my first time. This is what I want, Doc. I’ve never felt more in control.”
What looks like doubt marks the handsome face. “You’ve been honest with me, Nix. So open, and everything you’ve shared makes me respect you even more.” He brushes a thumb over my mouth. “Makes me want you even more. You’re exactly who I thought you were.”
A chuckle rasps between our lips when he kisses me.
“Even better than I thought you were, actually. I don’t take any of it for granted, so I need to say something, and I hope it doesn’t ruin this.”
“Okay.”
“I can’t afford attachments. Next week, I’m off to Antarctica. Then to South America. I have no plans of settling down or committing and—”
“I get it.” I steel my heart and suffocate anything soft and vulnerable. I keep my voice steady. “You’re saying this is just sex.”
He melds our glances together, brings my knuckle up to his lips, and shakes his head. “No, it’ll be more than that. I already know with you, it will feel like more.” That same bright ambition, hot as passion, or maybe merely a trick of the light, flashes through his eyes. “That’s what will make it so hard to walk away at the end of the week, but what I’m saying is that I will. I’ll walk away and I won’t look back.”
He passes his big hand in the air, sketching an imaginary line between our bodies. “I can’t do this right now.”
My laugh comes like forced air through a vent, quick and hard and cool. “I’m not expecting a proposal. You think because I haven’t had sex before I’ll be an emotional wreck next week when we go our separate ways?”
“No, I’m not that arrogant.” His lips twist in a show of self-mockery. “Okay, I am actually pretty arrogant, but no. I just want you to know this will mean something to me, but I can’t allow it to be—”
“Neither can I.” I reach up and sink my fingers into the thick hair at his neck. “I get a week with someone I’m crazy attracted to, respect very much, and will remember fondly as the first man I ever fucked.”
I keep my voice deliberately even and neutral, and strip away all the emotion. I stomp on all the possibilities that feel like unopened buds ready to sprout. I show him only my desire and willingness to have him as he comes.
“And that’s enough?” He scans my face, searching for a lie, the truth, weakness—I don’t know what. “A week, our time together, going our separate ways at the end—it’s enough?”
I honestly don’t know. What do I say? That after only a taste, I already crave him? That I have no idea how my body, my heart will respond to the kind of connection even just conversation and a few kisses have evoked? I don’t know what I will feel at the end of the week, but I know I want this, so I tell him exactly what he needs to hear.
“It’s enough.”
He doesn’t move, so I do, tipping up to press my mouth to his. At first he just watches me kiss him, eyelids lowered, lips closed, like he’s still not sure we should. I lick into the seam of his mouth, and he groans my name, his eyes closing. That sound vibrates through my lips and to my core—to the seat of my need and want and curiosity. I want to understand this physical mystery I’ve eschewed all my life, and I want it with him. If the price is ultimately heartbreak, my eyes are wide open.
I cover his hand with mine and coax it up to my breast, press myself deeper into his palm. He squeezes and slides a thumb under the bra to tease my nipple. My breath stutters and my eyes close. He runs his hand up my shoulder and under the silk bra strap, persuading it down my arm. Under his touch, the bra’s clasp snaps free, baring me to him. I’m proud of my body, not because it’s a certain size or because I’m fit, but because it’s what I have to offer him. I chose this man, chose this time. In a world where so many of us don’t get to choose, I cherish that. It’s my right, but that doesn’t mean I take it for granted. Not when I’ve seen so many stripped of that choice. Not when I’ve seen so many who regretted their first time.
I can already tell that won’t be the case. Not with Maxim.
He bends and takes one nipple into the heat of his mouth. I gasp and shove my fingers into his hair that has half a mind to wave and half a mind to curl. One of his hands cups my butt and with the other, he kneads my breast. He slips open the button and zipper of my pants, coaxing them down and over my legs until I stand only in the panties to match the bra Kimba and Vivienne insisted I wear “just in case.” With his thumbs hooked under the silk bands at my hips, he slides those down until I’m completely naked.
“Damn, you’re beautiful, Nix.” He breathes the husky praise against my neck, inciting a trail of goosebumps along my arms. He sinks to his knees,
scattering gentle kisses on my stomach, the underside of my breast, my hip, the tops of my thighs. Finally, he kisses lower, between my legs. His spreads me with gentle fingers and swipes once with his tongue.
“Jesus,” I moan.
He glances up through impossibly, enviably long lashes, his mouth a roguish slash of a smile. With the gentlest of nudges from him, my legs give way, surrendering to gravity and the sensations licking over my body, and I fall back. The bed beneath me is cool and downy. His palms are the perfect kind of rough on the sensitive skin of my inner thighs as he spreads my legs and bends his head again, running his nose along the crevice of my pussy.
“I want this so bad,” he rasps, his breath a caress. He lifts my legs onto his shoulders, the breadth of him widening me, exposing me. I expected to feel embarrassed or self-conscious, but I don’t. Some wild, wanton thing longs to grab him by the hair and force his head down into the wet, throbbing place where his mouth hovers. Anticipation is the match to a line of gasoline, and I’m already on fire. He doesn’t move.
“Dammit, Doc,” I whisper hoarsely. “Do it.”
With a growl, he does. He licks into my secrets and eats away my inhibitions, his mouth and tongue and teeth consuming me like it’s his first time and I’m his last supper.
“God, you’re perfect down here,” he says roughly. “You’ve done this before? Someone’s gone down on you before?”
I can barely breathe, can barely form words through the haze and havoc he’s wreaking on my body. “Yeah.”
His fingers tighten around my thighs, and he pushes his face deeper into me. “I hate everyone who’s ever tasted you.”
The possessive words slide into the hungry places lurking under my defenses. I want to tell him not to say things that contradict our agreement, but his fingers inside me steal all thought. He sets a rhythm of advance and retreat, his middle finger thick and satisfying when he’s in, and denying me when he’s out. He adds another finger, stretching me. My muscles clench. My head thrashes on the bed. I claw his hair while his thumb works the sensitive bud where all my concentration and thoughts have convened. I can’t think beyond his hands and mouth. Guys have touched me there, have kissed me there, but it never felt like this. He’s tearing me up and tossing me in the air like confetti until finally I’m fluttering, floating, falling, little bits of myself swept into a storm.
“Oh, my God,” I mumble through numb lips. I’ve had a few orgasms before, mostly at my own hand, but this one made my lips go numb. My entire body is limp and boneless.
“Good?” he asks.
“Um, yeah,” I say on a startled, laughing breath. “You could say that.”
He licks greedily at the wetness kissing my thighs. “I want to make you come again just to have more of this. I’ll never forget this, Nix. I’ll smell you, taste you, in my dreams.”
Head bent, he worships at the very center, where little aftershocks still roll through me. His mouth is avid, sucking, growling, making the wild wolf noises, all pretense of civility left behind. My hips roll into him in a deep, back-cracking wave. My body is an empty chamber, and my own cries of pleasure echo, hollow and desperate.
“I need you inside me, Maxim. I’m ready.”
“I’m not,” he mumbles against my pussy, still loving and laving it. His hand wanders over my belly and ribs until he reaches my breast to squeeze and plump the nipple even while he keeps eating. The tandem of his hands and mouth sends me spiraling, flying again.
“Maxim.” I grip the sheets at my side, desperate for an anchor. “Now. Please.”
He finally stands at the foot of the bed between my knees and pulls the ribbed sweater over his head.
Every inch of him is finely constructed. The copper-coin nipples. The masonry of his chest and abs, like bricks laid with mortared muscle. When he drops his pants and briefs, the sinewy slashes at his lean hips point south, directing me to where he is fully erect, long and topped with a crown, his balls hanging low. I’ve seen men before, but I realize my inspection until now was a clinical thing, marked by indifference or even simple appreciation. My first sight of Maxim naked is anything but. His body, so beautiful and strong, sets off an impossible, primordial chant inside of me.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Like the drums from my dance into womanhood, the beat possesses my blood and gallops through my veins as I approach another rite of passage. The drumbeat, my heartbeat—one.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
I want to ignore the insistent rhythm demanding I claim him, but it’s impossible. He’s stroking himself, biting his lip, his eyes roving over my body as I scoot back farther on the bed, propped against his pillows.
“Now.” It’s not a virgin voice—there’s no uncertainty of the unknown. It’s a command, a mandate for my pleasure. “Right fucking now, Doc.”
“You’re ready?” He crawls onto the bed, slips his hands between my legs and drops his forehead to mine with a groan. “You are.”
“I’m ready.”
“We should go slow, Nix.” He reaches into the dresser and puts on a condom, scanning my face, concern filtered into the desire. It only makes me want him more.
“I don’t care if it hurts,” I tell him, my voice husky and pleasure-strained. “I want it. I want you.”
His nod is terse. His lips, set. His hands are so gentle, but firm and demanding when he presses my legs wider. He props himself on his elbows, looking down at me for a moment and scattering kisses across my cheeks and then my lips. He licks into me, a tender, open-mouthed exploration that twists our tongues and heartbeats. Slowly, he eases between my legs and inside, thick and rigid and hot. An invasion by inches. A surrender by sighs. I give one pained gasp, and then he’s in so deep, for a moment I can’t breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, sounding tortured. “Nix, baby, are you okay?”
“Yes.” I swallow a moan, struggling to adjust, lifting my hips.
“Fuck.” He breathes shakily into my hair. “You feel incredible.”
I move my hips again, an experiment, a line I cast into the water.
He bites.
He moves, at first a slow push and pull, and then more driving. Pounding. A freight train between my legs. Grunting and heaving and panting. It hurts so much and it feels so perfect. I must be bleeding and I couldn’t care less. With each twist of his body deeper into mine, he’s carving himself inside me, slice after blissful slice.
“You still okay?” he asks, his eyes glazed and his body mercilessly, beautifully, wonderfully taking mine.
“Stop talking,” I reply. He hits a spot that couldn’t have been there all this time dormant inside me. That spot waiting for the just-right caress of him buried inside me to erupt. The feel so good obliterates the pain. “Just fuck me.”
The sound he makes is unintelligible. We are wound together so tight, a tangled tempo of limbs and hands and lips and sweat and tears.
Tears trickle from the corners of my eyes when he roars and shakes over me. I clamp my legs, my arms around him, holding him so close even the rhythm of his heart belongs to me. The sweat slicking his chest is mine.
Through a rain of adoring kisses he leaves on my face, my shoulders, and my breasts, I try to remember he is not mine. He told me it would be more—that it would feel like this. Like more than sex, and it does. It already does. If I plan to make it out of this week whole, I have to cling to the only promise Maxim made.
That when it’s time to walk away, he will.
15
Maxim
Tea.
I wondered how she takes her coffee, but she doesn’t. Lennix likes tea.
And her eggs? Scrambled hard.
And how she looks in the morning-after light? Thick, still-damp hair hangs over one shoulder, an unrelieved fall of inky black. Her skin, smooth dark gold, glows from her shower. I’ll never forget how she looks right now. I’ll never forget how she looked last night.
“You’re staring,” she says, not glanc
ing up from the newspaper someone delivers to my door every morning, I assume courtesy of the last tenant.
“No, I’m not.” I turn my attention to the toast and away from her wearing some robe she found at the back of my closet. I don’t have the heart to tell her I have no idea whose it is.
“You weren’t?” She shifts so the robe falls open, gifting me shadowy glimpses of her breasts and long, firm thighs. “My bad.”
I eat up the sight, licking my lips, searching for traces of her taste.
“I said I like my eggs scrambled hard,” she says with a sweet smile. “Not scrambled burnt.”
“Shit.” I shift the pan from the bright red eye of the stove onto a cool burner. I’m still pulling toast from the toaster and scraping at burnt eggs when she walks up behind me and circles me with her arms.
“Made ya look,” she whispers, tipping up to kiss the nape of my neck. I turn off the stove and face her, linking my fingers at the small of her back.
“You were staring, too,” I mumble into our first kiss of the day.
“Was not.” Her smile against my lips calls her a liar. “I was minding my own business, reading that newspaper.”
“Oh, did you learn Dutch overnight then?” I ask, eyeing her abandoned copy of de Volkskrant with its distinctly non-English headlines.
Laughter shakes her shoulders beneath the robe, and I slide my hands over the slick fabric clinging to her body. She’s healthy. Fit. Tight bends and lush curves. I caress one of my favorite curves, her ass, and kiss down her neck, breathing in my shampoo in her soft hair. Me on her.
We may part ways next week—no, we will part ways next week. We have to—but I’ll remember this night and any more she gives me for the rest of my life. She’s that special. My body knows it. My heart, which I don’t consult in any of my decisions, won’t be far behind if I’m not careful.
“Spend the day with me,” I say.
I don’t want to sound needy, clingy, pathetic, but it only took one night for me to know I won’t be able to get enough of this woman.
The Kingmaker Page 10