Chapter 7
Anne watched the flickering light on the ceiling, as someone with a candle or lamp walked past her room. The curtains were not fully pulled together, and the light danced across the white paint as thoughts danced across her mind.
Well, not exactly thoughts. Images of herself and Maxim, dancing across the ballroom at St. James Court, flashed across her mind. His hand on her arm. Her hand in his. His fingers brushing her cheeks before he kissed her…
Anne swallowed and turned over. When was the last time she had felt this way? She could barely remember – it had been years ago.
And it had not been like this. That had been a childish crush, an obsession which she had not really understood nor interrogated.
These feelings were those of a woman.
Maxim smiled in her memory and Anne shivered. Just the thought of him made her feel more alive than ever had done. He made her feel powerful, more certain of herself. More certain than she had ever felt.
“We have got to stop being caught…kissing.”
“Of course – but first…”
The pressure to continuously apologise for her thoughts and actions disappeared whenever she was with him. Was it his smile, his charm, or just his gentle acceptance of her?
She smiled in the darkness. It certainly was not his Czardom, a palace and crown. Whatever it was, she was drawn into him and could not, would not fight the desire to be with him.
A clock chimed somewhere. It was one o’clock in the morning.
Anne sighed, pulling her feet over the side of the bed and striking a tinder box, the flame almost blinding her. She lit the solitary candle by her bed, picking up a book. She turned more than five pages before throwing it down. Not a single word had sunk in.
Marriage was an estate she had entirely given up, long before she had met Maxim – but his presence here, this engagement of convenience that they had contrived…
was it the final chance she would ever have to be a wife?
Or at least, to experience a little of that intimacy and closeness that a wife would feel?
Dark and wild thoughts rolled around her imagination and she licked her lips. Genteel ladies do not have such thoughts, she knew that. But she was not ignorant of the way a gentleman and a lady…enjoyed each other.
The conflict warred inside her for another ten minutes, and then she stood up resolutely. The fur coat Maxim had brought her was lying on a chair by the door. Pulling it around her shoulders, it took her only another few minutes before she was standing outside Maxim’s bed chamber.
Anne took a deep breath. There was still time to return to her own room. But would she be able to live with the regret?
Maxim was in a chair by the fire, a thoughtful expression on his face, but as he turned to look at Anne as she closed the door he smiled lazily.
“You appear to have been expecting me,” Anne said in a whisper. Why was her voice so weak, at the very moment when she needed to speak?
“I was not,” he said quietly.
Anne swallowed. She was not entirely sure what she had expected, but it was not this. “I…I wanted to see you.”
“Of course,” Maxim said, his eyes focused on her. “And I have been thinking of you all evening, too.”
Warmth flooded through Anne’s veins. Here was a gentleman who understood her, far better than anyone else she had ever met.
“We are very well suited,” she said aloud, taking a step into the room. “It is almost as though you can read my thoughts. What a shame you are teasing the court about your Czardom, and it would be reckless of me to marry you.”
Maxim laughed. “Come, sit by the fire.”
This was it, she thought. The last opportunity to disappear. But she did not want to. This was the opportunity she had hoped for; the chance to ask for what she really wanted.
“You know, this marriage of convenience that I and your father have contrived,” Maxim spoke softly as Anne curled up in a chair opposite him. “It is starting to appear far more interesting than I thought.”
Anne could feel her heart thundering in her chest, but said lightly, “It is almost as though we are each other’s Christmas presents.”
He chuckled. “Remember, you can leave me under the tree on Christmas Day if you do not want me.”
She could not help but laugh at that, especially as she could not think of anything less likely to happen. Why, he was far more likely to leave her…
“Now, why do you think I am going to leave you?” Maxim’s dark eyes were shrewd. “You have given me no reason to want to leave you – and every reason to want to stay with you.”
Anne licked her lips unconsciously at the very thought of him, and he groaned.
“Damnit, Annika. You come to my bed chamber at a ridiculous time in the morning, looking as you do…anyone would think you were after something.”
Her heart now beating so heavily she could almost hear it in her ears, Anne swallowed. This was it: the moment when she had to say something, or she would regret it for the rest of her life.
“Actually…” she started, but her words seemed to disappear. How could she explain what she wanted, her desire for him, her desire to be touched by him in every way, without revealing herself to be a scandalous woman?
But once again, Maxim seemed to understand her. “If…if you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting, Annika, you must know that there are serious consequences to…making love…before we are wed.”
Anne’s skin tingled all over just at his words. “We could be careful.”
He examined her closely, and then seemed to decide he could speak.
“Well, yes, I have preservatives. But that is not entirely what I meant. You would lose your innocence, Annika, something you cannot take back. I would not want to ruin you for any other gentleman, if you decided not to have me on Christmas Day.”
Her cheeks had darkened at the word innocence, but spoke honestly when she said, “I am unlikely to marry anyone else, Maxim. I only came to St. James Court this Season to appease my father. One last Season, and then he would stop forcing me into society. I just wanted to spend my life quietly in Romney, with Meredith.”
“And your father?”
“Yes, of course,” she said quickly. “But…but that does not change what we could do tonight. Could experience, together.”
Try as she might, Anne could not hold his searching gaze.
After a few minutes, Maxim sighed and a charming smile fell across his face. “Well, you strike a difficult bargain – or at least, you would, if I did not want you so badly.”
He rose so swiftly and pulled her upright so fast that Anne gasped aloud – but the gasp did not continue. His lips captured hers and utterly possessed her, his arms reaching around and pulling her tightly into his embrace.
Anne lost herself in the feelings. She had never felt anything like this – Maxim’s strength, his passion, his devotion could all be felt in the way his tongue teased pleasure from hers.
“Oh,” she moaned, unable to help herself. The sound seemed to stir something in him, his self-control disappearing.
“Annika, I want you,” he growled, pulling away to stare into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
Did she trust him? She would have followed him to the moon and back.
Unable to put her feelings for him into words, Anne nodded.
With another growl that sounded almost animal, Maxim lifted her up and carried her over to the bed, throwing her onto it. Anne felt the softness of the linen beneath her and looked up into the face of the gentleman that she would give anything to. She wanted him. She loved him.
“I have wanted to do this from the moment I first met you,” Maxim whispered, his eyes not leaving hers as his hands pulled at the buttons on his shirt. “I promise you, we will make love afterwards – but first…”
His voice trailed away as he unbuttoned his breeches and pulled them off.
Anne gasped. What was she doing? Lying here, on Maxim’s bed, in the middle of St. James’ Court – and she did not need any further explanation of what was standing before her.
Maxim smiled. Was there a hint of nervousness there?
“You can tell me to stop at any time,” he said quietly, reaching for something in a chest at the foot of the bed, utterly naked, and then pulling on a preservative over his manhood. “You know that, Annika? At any point, and I will stop.”
Anne nodded. She did not trust her voice. She was about to experience something incredible, and hopefully a little pleasure.
But she could never have predicted what came next. Maxim kicked aside the chest, and grabbing her ankles, pulled her towards him. Anne gasped as her skirts, caught on the bed linens, were pulled up to her knees – but they did not stop there.
Maxim’s dark eyes did not leave hers as his strong hands pushed her skirts further up, his fingertips grazing the inside of her thighs. Anne moaned, she could not help herself, and once again her vocal pleasure pushed him over the edge.
Pulling her undergarments off, Maxim seemed to hesitate. He was looking at her as though she was a delicate flower.
“I am ready,” she breathed. “Trust me.”
He swallowed. “You are an innocent, I do not want to hurt you.”
Anne tried not to smile. “You won’t. Damnit, Maxim, make love to me.”
Something flickered over his face, pushed her legs apart roughly and in a swift moment, plunged his manhood inside her.
Anne screamed with the intensity of the ecstasy and he froze.
“I have hurt you?”
Anne looked up with desire hazed eyes. “More. Harder.”
He did not need further invitation. Reaching out, he pinned her hands by her head and took possession of her lips with his own as he plunged himself into her, slowly at first, building the pressure inside her.
Anne writhed, the sensual ecstasy rising in her, that heat in her stomach moving lower, her whole body on fire for him.
“I want to see you come,” Maxim whispered, tearing his lips from hers and gazing deeply into her eyes. “First I ride you, then I will make love to you. Lose yourself in the pleasure, Annika…”