Page 67 of Royally Romanov

He’d been unable tell the nurses his name or where he lived. He hadn’t remembered a thing about himself, but she’d been there. Finley. She’d been somewhere in the fog in his head, and he’d known if she was real—if she wasn’t some redemptive fantasy he’d conjured when he’d been knocking on death’s door, if he could justfindher—everything would one day make sense.

Now the heat was building, searing through him with rapturous force. Maxim closed his eyes, trying to fight his release. He wanted to make her come apart again while he was inside her. He’d watched her shatter on the piano bench. He’d felt her tremble against his mouth, and he’d delighted in her fall. He’d wanted it for her more than he wanted it for himself.

He knew how alone she’d felt after what had happened to her. Even before she’d told him, he’d seen it in her guarded expression and in the extra bit of space she made sure to surround herself with at all times. If Maxim could have had just one wish come true, he’d have chosen for her to never feel that way again. When he’d made her come with his mouth and with his hands, all that loneliness had fallen away. It was a beautiful thing to see.

He wanted to see it happen again. He wanted to feel it again—the violent heat as she fell—around his cock this time. But he wasn’t sure he could last. He was breaking again, but this time in all the best ways.

Something was definitely happening. Something more than sex, more than the breathtaking intimacy of making love.

In the moment Maxim broke, in the moment he lost all control and spilled himself inside Finley, he also somehow found himself.

Words and pictures rose to the surface.

He began to remember.