“Well, I wasn’t a teenager. I was in graduate school. When I found out you were only seventeen, I felt like a lecher.”
“I could tell. And Mr. Paul made sure you knew. He was my elementary school teacher, by the way, and I’m pretty sure he mentioned my daddy on purpose.”
“And my balls shriveled in statutory terror.” We both laugh and start walking again.
“I can’t believe we found each other again like this after four years,” I say.
“I knew as soon as I saw you in that brown bar last night that I wanted us to end up right here.” He stops in front of one of the narrow canal houses along the Amstel. It’s red, tall, imposing, and even to my untrained eye, not cheap.
“Um, you live here?”
“Yeah, this one’s mine.” He bounds up the short flight of stairs and turns to find me still at the bottom, staring at the row of canal houses his is neatly tucked into. “You coming?”
“Sure.”
I take the steps more slowly. I really don’t know very much about the man I’m about to share my body with. We step inside a spacious foyer, flanked by a beautifully decorated dining room and an equally gorgeous sitting room. He watches me taking all this luxury in, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants, which I now notice are very well-tailored. His shoes look . . . expensive. He looks expensive. How did I miss that he looks not only devastatingly handsome, but expensive? In that way that is so subtle and unattainable you can’t quite pinpoint how you know the clothes on his back could pay your rent for a month.
“Nice clothes, fancy place,” I say. “Are you rich, Doc?”
Something skitters across his face before he tucks it neatly away.
“Not much has changed in my wardrobe the last few years,” he offers wryly. “And this place looks fancier than it costs. I don’t have a ton of cash, but my family does, yeah.”
Why am I surprised? I knew he had an expensive education. It just never occurred to me that there was as much distance between our backgrounds as there apparently is.
“My father disowned me.” His voice and eyes grow sober, and I want to hug him. “I know that sounds like an old-fashioned word, but fathers cutting their sons out of wills apparently never goes out of style. I’m not just cut off from what he would leave when he dies, but from who he is his while he’s alive. Cut off from him.”
I take a few steps closer, reach up to push back the hair that has fallen into his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I don’t need his money,” Maxim says sharply. “I had a little of my own. I get by.”
It’s glaringly obvious to me that his father’s money is the least of what Maxim misses. I suspect he misses the man himself, though he may not want to admit it.
“If this is what you call getting by,” I say teasingly and with an admiring look around the foyer and up the stairs, “I’d hate to see balling.”
We both laugh and some of the tension tightening his shoulders dissipates.
“It’s just a rental for the month between finishing my doctorate and leaving for Antarctica next week.”
The reminder drains my laughter. I’m leaving soon, too.
“We should make this week count,” I say.
“We should.” He steps close, linking our fingers at our sides and bending to take my lips in a leisurely kiss, languid and at odds with the energy humming around him. One could be fooled into thinking he was domesticated. Am I the only one who sees the wild wolf?
“My room’s upstairs,” he says, walking us backward toward the steps.
I nod and follow him up, holding his hand loosely. In his bedroom, the ceilings soar high, and the hardwood floors gleam beneath my bare feet when I slip off my shoes. Gilded threads run through the wallpaper and the bed is huge and covered with fine linen.
“This room is beautiful, Maxim.”
“I can’t take much credit for it. Rental came fully furnished. Are we going to talk interior decoration all night, or are we ready to pluck this flower you keep telling me about?”
I chuckle, as I know he meant me to. He’s being charming, deliberately relaxing me. It only makes me want him more. I want his hands and mouth on me, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. So I show him.
Not releasing his gaze, I tug at the thin row of buttons descending the green silk blouse tucked into my slacks. His nostrils flare in an otherwise unmoved face. I shrug one shoulder, liberating the sleeve to fall down my arm. I reach for the delicate front clasp holding the cups of my bra together, but he stops me. I glance from the long, tanned fingers against my skin up to his face.
“I thought virgins were supposed to be all scared and trembly.” His laugh is rough, but his hands are tender and his eyes scorch me everywhere.