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“That almost sounds like you are admitting to having a heart.”
“Nyet,” he denied in uncompromising Russian. “But a soul? Yes, that I have. Somehow, Ramona Grayson, you have found the way to touch it.”
Even if he thought that would end one day, that their marriage wasn’t about being soul mates, that admission right there was a better reason to take a chance on this man than all the blackmail in the world.
The kiss that followed was another promise in itself. A vow between the two of them that could not be pretended or ignored away. No matter what tomorrow brought, this moment would change Romi fundamentally and not just because she was taking her first lover.
The kiss didn’t just hint, but it vowed the kind of passion a person could go her entire life without experiencing.
He lifted his lips from hers, but kept his body close, his gaze intent and determined in the way she remembered. “Tell me.”
She remembered that demand, too, but somehow she knew that right now it meant more than playing a sensual game.
Max had made his promises. Now he would have hers.
“Yours.”
“Only mine.”
“Only yours.”
He didn’t ask for more, didn’t demand she guarantee to be a good or even present mother. It was all covered in that single declaration, minimal words laden with complicated and far-reaching commitments. And she could not make herself regret that truth.
Whatever tomorrow might bring.
They undressed one another like old lovers, though they’d never been fully naked together before. When they’d dated, their times of intimacy had been explosive and unplanned.
Which wasn’t to say they hadn’t been intense, amazing and ultimately absolutely unforgettable.
But they’d never come to his penthouse to make love. She’d known where he lived, had even been in his building to wait for him, but never in his home, and definitely not his bedroom.
It felt so natural, though, to push his shirt off his shoulders, to tug his dangling belt from the loops on his trousers, that she did it all without any real thought.
And when he drew her tunic mini off, she didn’t try to cover her small breasts, which were encased in a white silk bra designed to lift them into prominence. Not because she’d worn it for the very purpose of enticing him, either, but because she felt no need to hide. No desire for false barriers between them.
Max’s eyes flared with heat as he traced the path of the lace covering the upper swells with one masculine finger. “Very pretty. I don’t remember your lingerie being this sexy.”
“I knew what I wanted.” She didn’t even blush when she said it.
She’d had plans for this afternoon and that shouldn’t come as a shock to the unparalleled tsar of plan making.
The air around them vibrated with sensual hunger as her words seemed to impact him in a wholly favorable way.
“I like it.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on the tip of her nipple, the heat from his breath drawing it into a tight bead. “Very much.”
“Thank you.”
“But it too must come off.” Suiting action to words, he unclasped her bra and drew the silk away from her body.
She shivered in reaction to the feel of air on her nipples and his fingertips on her skin.
“You are so responsive,” he said with masculine satisfaction.
“To you.”
“As it should be.” He cupped her breasts, his big hands holding her gently but with unmistakable possession. “Here? Have others touched you like this?”
“What?” Why was he asking her that?
“You said I am not like other men. I asked you how you knew,” he reminded her, like he could read her confusion on her face.
Probably, he could.
“I…not like this. Under my shirt. Not my bra.” The words shivered out of her as he squeezed carefully, kneading her breasts and pulling more pleasure from her.
“I am different from other men, but milaya, I think your response to me is unique as well, yes?”
“Oh, yes,” she breathed softly.
“I will erase the touch of any other man, no matter how intimate.”
How did she tell him he didn’t need to erase what had never been there? She wasn’t a total novice, or at least had always told herself the kissing and clothed petting meant she wasn’t one. But Romi had been fooling herself.
This was sexual foreplay that would change her.
The other touches had left no lasting impact.
She tried to tell him that, but the words came out disjointed as Max removed her leggings and panties in one deft movement before tossing them aside.
“Shh…I understand. You are mine. I am yours. It is good.” He pressed his finger to her lips, but then followed it almost immediately with his lips.
The kiss wasn’t long, but it was thorough and she was squirming with passion’s renewal when he pulled back.
His smile was full primeval predator. “It goes both ways, never doubt it.”
“You’re erasing the memory of other women in your bed?”
“No.”
She couldn’t stifle the sound of hurt.
He pressed her naked body to his still partially clothed one. “You cannot erase what has never been.”
The words were an eerie match to her own thoughts only seconds before and an atavistic shiver trembled through her, but he could not mean them. “You’ve been with lots of other women.”
“Never in this bed. Never with the knowledge that they owned my future.”
No matter how fleeting that ownership might be, Romi couldn’t help appreciating the sentiment. “Good.”
He nodded, but he wasn’t done. “Never has a woman responded to me like you do. Never has my own control been so tested, in the bedroom or out of it.”
He’d said things like that before, but she’d never taken it to mean much. Now she realized it really was important to him. It helped explain why he’d overcome his own relationship boundaries to offer marriage, even marriage with a time-relative, easy-out clause.
“I like testing your control.”
His laughter was deep and sexy. “No doubt.”
Max stepped off the bed to remove the rest of his clothes and she didn’t insist she get to do it. One thing she’d learned a year ago was she got extremely excited by his take-charge attitude in the bedroom. It had bothered her a year ago and maybe that was part of the reason she hadn’t been willing to compromise her own ideas about relationships even though she’d wanted to so badly.
He didn’t return to the bed immediately once he’d stripped, but stood in proud nudity and allowed her to look her fill. Like he knew she was craving just the sight of him.
Considering how well he’d known her every desire a year ago, she guessed he probably did.
Women were supposed to be less visual than men. Romi wasn’t sure who had decided that. All she knew was that the sight of Max was as tantalizing as a touch for her.
She loved his height, the definition of his muscles, the contrast of his fair Russian skin to his dark hair, the way he held himself with such confidence. And she adored the way his chest was covered in short, dark, silky curls. The hair narrowed to a V and then followed a tapered trail that led to the patch surrounding his engorged sex. Flushed with blood, it stood out from his body in truly impressive proportions.
“You are devouring me with your eyes, milaya.”
Was she? “You’re a beautiful man.” No other word fit as perfectly the work of art that Maxwell Black was naked.
From the dark hair that tempted her fingers to run through it, to the features she saw in her dreams and fantasies both, to a body covered in muscle from shoulders, to eight-pack rippling down his stomac
h, to thighs and calves that would make a professional athlete proud, he was complete and utter masculine perfection.
Perfection who claimed she touched something in his soul.
How soon before the feelings inside her coalesced into love so indomitable it would never end?
She didn’t know, but she refused to allow her fear of that kind of inescapable emotion stop her from reveling in every incredible sensation this moment had to offer.
“You lay there like a goddess and call me beautiful?” There was that dark, sexy laugh again.
“Hardly a goddess.”
“You inflame my senses.” There was not an ounce of sarcasm or cheesy innuendo in his tone.
Romi rolled to her side facing him and propped her head on her hand. “That’s pretty poetic for a business tycoon.”
She bent her knee and let it rest on the bed, her upper thigh crossing her lower one, giving her best “sexy goddess” imitation, which was very close to one of her favorite yoga poses.
His gray eyes sparked with approval. “I thought we agreed I am a Corporate Tsar.”
“And tsars are poetic in bed?” she wondered aloud.
“This one is, apparently.”
Privately, she agreed, pretty sure that under all those tycoon smarts and ruthlessness, lived the soul of a poet.
She brushed her hand up her own thigh and over her hip. “Are you coming back to bed?”
“Are you so sure you want to poke the bear?” he asked in a very bearlike rumble.
“If it gets you closer to me? Oh, yes.” She liked looking, but now she wanted to touch.
