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“Poor them.”
Max’s smile was predatory and just a little bit devastating. “You think so.”
She knew so. Walking away from him had been one of the most difficult things Romi had ever done, but no way was she giving him a chance to own her heart only to break it.
As he was guaranteed to do.
“I enjoyed dating you.” A huge understatement, it still came out easily because it was also the truth.
“As I enjoyed our time together.”
“Good?” Embarrassed the word had come out more a question than statement, Romi felt a blush crawl up her neck.
“Not good. You turned me down.”
“We wanted different things.” And apparently she hadn’t thought to offer him part of a company to get what she wanted.
Visions of doing just that caused a bubble of hysterical laughter to nearly burst out.
It was all she could do to hold the humor in.
She couldn’t hold back a few mocking words however. “Too bad my dad wasn’t selling my hand in marriage, huh?”
Max tugged her close, his head tipping down. “I was thinking that exact thing.”
“You jerk.” She was laughing as she said the words, not meaning them, just responding in kind to his sarcasm.
But it meant her lips were parted when his mouth landed against hers.
Heat suffused her as her traitorous body melted into his without forethought or even permission from the thinking part of her brain. Forced suddenly into blatant recognition of a year’s long starvation of her senses, she returned his kiss with a hunger she’d done her best to pretend did not exist.
Voracious now, she had no hope of holding back the tide of feeling crashing over her.
It was the cost of ignoring emotions rather than facing them.
She wanted this man with every fiber of her being, no matter how much her brain told her it was a bad idea.
A spectacularly, out-of-this-world, really bad idea.
Her lips did not agree as they moved against his, her tongue eager as it met his, her body pliant to his touch.
She skimmed her hands up his hard chest, mapping the shape of muscles honed by workouts that would make a triathlete pause. Singeing her fingertips with electric warmth, the heat of his body translated through the smooth fabric of his dress shirt.
She brushed over tiny, hardened nubs and she reveled in the proof of her effect on him.
With a feral groan, Max flexed his lower body toward hers and she had even more potent proof in the press of his clearly excited, intimidatingly large shaft against her. It couldn’t be comfortable for him to be trapped in his clothes in that condition, but he didn’t complain or pull away.
Unheeded, his expensive, handmade tuxedo jacket fell from her shoulders as she wrapped her hands around his neck and pressed into him, chest to thigh. Was it possible to feel sparks in every single nerve ending of where her body met his?
She didn’t know if it was some kind of domino effect, but that’s what it felt like to her.
As her body exploded with delight in that simple but very intimate touch, the kiss went nuclear.
Their mouths ate at each other, his hands moved over her back, down along her sides, over her bottom…everywhere. Hers locked behind his head as she undulated against him—giving friction, receiving the stimulation she needed. It was insane. The way she responded to his nearness, the unending and increasing desire for more and more and more.
Sensations she’d dreamt about almost nightly and pretended to forget in the morning, but hadn’t experienced in a year, roared through her in a conflagration as unstoppable as the brush fires that raged in the south every summer.
It burned the walls of her defenses to cinders. All she could do was hold on and hope not to be consumed completely.
It was Max that broke the kiss, Max that took a step back, Max that held her away from him when she would have followed.
Feeling too much desire to be embarrassed, Romi demanded, “Why?”
He wanted her. She’d felt it. If she looked down, she’d see it, even in the dim shadows of the balcony.
“The next time we have sex, it will be in a bed and I won’t stop until you’ve climaxed with me inside you.” His breath panted in irregular intervals, but his deep voice was infused with absolute certainty.
She barely bit back the when that wanted to pop out of her mouth.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Not a good idea.
But she wanted it. So bad. She shook with the need to continue what they started, for just the experience of being held in his arms again.
“That can’t happen.” She wished her voice had even a modicum of certainty in it.
Some little bit of the self-preservation that lay in ashes around her.
“That’s a lie and you don’t do those.”
She opened her mouth to deny his words, but darned if he wasn’t right. “Please, don’t do this to me, Max.”
“What don’t you want me to do, Romi, my sweet virgin?” Why did those words sound so hot in his voice? “Turn you on? You weren’t complaining a second ago.”
She couldn’t deny it. Wasn’t sure she wanted to, even if she could. “Neither were you.”
But he’d stopped and she hadn’t even thought to try. Darn him.
“No, and I never will.”
Why did he have to say things like that? Things that could make her hope when hope and this man did not go together. “We still want different things.”
“Are you so sure? If I hadn’t stopped, you would have let me take you here and now.”
He was talking about sex when she was referring to a relationship. And he knew it. “Do you get some sick thrill out of rubbing in my own weakness to me?”
“It’s not a weakness, milaya.”
“So you say.” Her words lacked conviction, but he knew what using his Russian endearments on her did to Romi.
It wasn’t just the fact he called her lovely, but his possessive claim on her and how he only used this word on her. She’d asked him, annoyed when she thought he was just calling her the same thing he did every other woman he slept with.
He’d admitted he never used the Russian endearments with other women.
She hadn’t asked why because he had seemed less than thrilled about the realization and she hadn’t wanted him to stop.
Now she wished she had.
“So I know,” he responded, no lack of conviction in his tone. “Your passion is amazing.”
“You stopped.” It couldn’t have been that amazing.
“Because I want something better for your first time.”
“You’re making some big assumptions there.”
“Are you going to try to deny your innocence?”
“No.” And they were back to this again because this man never let Romi run her repertoire of avoidance techniques about the important stuff. “My first time isn’t going to be with a man who puts a sell-by date on his girlfriends before the relationship even starts.”
“And yet your first time will be with me.”
“I was talking about you,” she informed him sarcastically.
“No. You were talking about a circumstance, not a man.”
She stepped away from him and hated how cold that made her feel, and not just because of the goose bumps on her arms. “Are you trying to confuse me on purpose?”
“No, milaya. Not at all. I’m just telling the truth.”
“And what truth is that?” She was going to regret asking, she just knew it.
“That you will be in my bed very soon.”
“Without a sell-by date?” she asked with a tiny kernel of hope that felt almost like a betrayal.
But could he really have spent the last year wanting her like she’d been wanting him, enough to break his own set-in-cement rules?
“Not as a boyfriend.”
“What does that mean?” Was he trying to say he didn’t want any commitment at all?
A one-night stand? For the loss of her virginity? And why was that even a little bit tempting?
He never answered her question, just picked up his suit jacket and shook it out before putting it back on. Quality cut and fabric showed almost no effect from its sojourn on the balcony floor.
Somehow she found herself back inside dancing with the man, ignoring the glares of envy sent her way and doing her best to do the same to her own body’s weakness in the face of Max’s nearness.
He set out to entertain and charm, succeeding to the point that she let him drive her home instead of calling for her father’s car and driver.
He pulled the Maserati, a different one than he’d been driving the year before, to a purring halt in front of her dad’s mansion. This one had a backseat.
“Still living with your father?” he asked, though he had to know, or why else would they be here?
“Yes.”
Max nodded. “No desire to live on your own?”
“He needs me.” It was an admission, but not one that would surprise an American tycoon with surprisingly deep Russian roots.
Romi didn’t even share with Maddie how bad things had gotten for her dad, but a year ago? She’d told Maxwell Black.
On their second date. Maybe that was why he’d put the sell-by date on their relationship after their third one.
But no, that was just the way Max ran his love life, or sex life really. The man didn’t believe in love. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate.
He believed the emotion was real enough, just refused to ever let himself feel it.
Romi wished she had the ability to turn her heart off.
But it was never going to happen.
“You are a good daughter.” His pewter eyes warmed with sincerity.
It was almost surreal. “What, no admonishment to leave him to work it out on his own?”
“What have I ever said that implied I did not take the obligations of family seriously?” Max actually sounded a little offended.
Feeling convicted for letting her own insecurities spill over onto him, Romi said, “Nothing.”
She knew he cared deeply for his mother.
Max had never been hesitant to admit he supported Natalya Black financially. They might live separately, but Romi had no doubt that if his mother needed to live with him, they would be sharing a residence right now. No questions, no lesser options.
“We share a dedication to family.”
“What we have of them,” she agreed.
Romi didn’t know why, but Max and his mother had no connection to their family back in Russia. He’d never mentioned his father, much less the man’s family, so Romi had always assumed they were either all gone or like her father’s family.
Estranged.
“I still see my mom’s family yearly.” Unlike the Graysons, who had turned their back on Harry when he’d married a woman from a decidedly middle-class background instead of old money, the Lawtons had remained in their daughter’s life and that of her husband and child.
Albeit on a more limited basis than Romi had always wanted.
“Why only once a year?” Max asked, like he was reading her mind.
She shrugged, looking away from him. “They only came to visit when my mom was alive. Since then, I’ve gone to stay with my grandparents for a couple of weeks every summer.”
