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To be touched.
“You know what they say…”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she said.
In a smooth movement worthy of a jungle cat—no lumbering bear—Max joined her on the bed. “You just might get it.”
He pressed against her shoulder so she fell back, adjusted her legs so there was room for him between them and blanketed her with his body, every maneuver confident and determined.
They both stilled so only their breathing caused the slightest movement. He felt so right over her, his body big and strong, fitting perfectly against hers.
Max’s head dipped until their foreheads touched, their breaths mingling in excited pants. “I want to consume you.”
“Yes, please.” This is what she wanted, had wanted for a lot longer than she’d admitted to herself.
His kiss was beyond consuming; it was voracious and domineering and filled with unbearable need. Not only was she helpless to deny that need, but Romi could also not help matching it. Desire whooshed through in a wildfire that nothing but full and total consummation and satisfaction would have any hope of putting out.
Her hands roamed restlessly over him, mapping him with touch everywhere she could reach, the heat of his body translating back to hers. Every caress only fed her need to touch him more so that her hunger increased into a conflagration of unsatisfied longing.
He held her head in place as their mouths continued to meet in a passion so strong, it obliterated everything else.
The world around them ceased to exist as lips and tongues tangoed to a sensual tune old as time and fresh as an infant’s first smile.
At some point, he took hold of her hands and drew them upward until they rested over her head. Her initial inclination to fight the restriction drowned under the onslaught of desire that washed through her in response to him taking control.
Holding her wrists together with one hand, Max began to touch her in ways she remembered and others she did not.
There was no limit to the intimacy of his caresses, no spot on her body too private, and so many unexpected erogenous zones that elicited astonishing increases in her ardor. He explored her body, provoking reaction with every brush of his fingertips, bringing every single nerve ending online until her body was screaming with the demand for more.
“Maxwell,” she gasped, not sure exactly what she was asking for, but knowing she needed more.
He lifted away from her and that was not what she wanted. She tried to reach for him, but he still had her wrists pinned.
She made a sound of frustration she’d never heard from herself before. “What are you doing?” Oh, gosh…she was whining.
Romi did not whine. Never had.
He didn’t seem annoyed, though. His expression was too intent for any other emotion than desire. “I want to give you pleasure beyond your wildest imagining.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re already there.”
“I want more. Don’t you, dorogaya?”
“You know I do.” He was the one who had moved away.
“Then you must trust me.”
She opened her mouth and found herself bewilderingly bereft of answer. He didn’t seem to notice as he released her hands and stepped back from the bed.
He turned away and opened a drawer in a dark wood cabinet. When he turned back, he had a pile of cerulean blue silk in his hand.
“What is that for?” she asked in a voice roughened by passion.
He shook out the fabric and she saw that it was two long scarves, the silk so fine it rippled on the air with the slightest movement.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I BOUGHT THESE months ago,” Max replied in a musing tone. “I should have known then.”
“Known what?” Romi asked.
“That you were not going to get out of my head.”
“Okay.” Assimilating the fact that the silk was the exact shade of her eyes when she was happy, Romi chewed on her bottom lip. “Um, what are they for?”
“Your pleasure.”
“You want to tie me up.” She shouldn’t have been startled.
He had given her tremendous pleasure before by accepting control and using it to her benefit. She wasn’t shocked. Not really.
She also wasn’t sure how she felt about the scarves.
He must have read the ambivalence in her face because he said persuasively, “Just your hands.”
“Not this time.” She wasn’t sure why, but she knew those scarves represented something between them that wasn’t there yet.
He reeled back, as if her words had shocked him, maybe even hurt him. “You enjoyed me being in control very much a year ago.”
“Yes.” There was no denying it.
Romi wouldn’t even try to deny that she got a special sexual thrill out of the attention he gave her, the way she became his entire focus when that happened. But she wasn’t ready for the scarves, either.
She really wasn’t sure why. One time, when they’d been dating, he’d used his tie to bind her hands behind her back while he touched her. She’d loved it.
He’d brought her to a mind-shattering climax, quickly followed by another.
And still, she wasn’t going for the scarves right now.
He sat beside her, running the silk over her body, bringing forth shivers of sensation she made no attempt to stifle. “A year ago, you would not have hesitated.”
“I know.”
“So?” he prompted, clearly expecting her to change her mind.
It was that confidence that coalesced at least a partial understanding of her hesitancy for that type of game right now.
“Maybe I trusted you more before you offered my father’s sobriety only to turn around and threaten it, or before you threatened to take advantage of my best friend’s desire to protect me from her dad.” Romi wasn’t accusing, or trying to pick a fight, just stating the facts.
And maybe the fact he was trying to blackmail her into his version of marriage bothered her more than she’d realized. She didn’t accept that he was a monster, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt her with his single-minded view of the world and insistence of havin
g his own way.
In fact, she was pretty sure he could.
The silk pooled on her stomach in a pile of fabric so light she barely felt it.
Frowning, he ran his hands down her body in a move that seemed wholly unconscious, hurt he probably didn’t even realize was there shadowing his gray gaze. “The one has nothing to do with the other.”
That hurt gave her hope, but didn’t sway her certainty that she had hold firm on this. “You are too intelligent and understanding of human nature to believe that.”
“Dorogaya, your pleasure is my top priority.”
“You’ve never used that word before,” she said because she’d rather focus on that than his claim. A claim she believed, but was not the point. “What does it mean?”
“Sweetheart.”
“So, more intimate than milaya?” She hoped she’d pronounced that right.
“Yes. Why? Does it matter?”
“You know it does.”
His use of this new Russian endearment was no coincidence, but was it by design or necessity to satisfy the poet in his soul?
He nodded, acknowledging that it did matter. “You do not wish me to use the scarves?”
“No.”
“I have never used them with another woman.”
She liked hearing that more than she would ever admit. “That isn’t why I don’t want to use them right now.”
“You do not trust me.”
“I’m not sure.”
“You are punishing me.”
“I don’t think so.” But she wouldn’t give an unequivocal denial because she wasn’t sure if she wasn’t. At least a little.
He studied her measuringly for several long seconds before scooping up the silk, his fingers brushing over her abdomen with a clearly deliberate movement. “We will leave the restraints in the drawer for now.”
“Okay.”
“You know you only ever have to say no if you want me to stop doing anything.”
“I believe you.” They’d never needed a safe word.
Romi had once asked him if he ever played that way and he’d told her sex was not a game to him.
