Maxim (Carolina Reapers 10)

20

EVIE

I was dreaming.

I had to be dreaming.

There was no way Maxim was really here, in my gallery—when he should be playing in game six in the Stanley Cup finals—asking me to be his forever. Telling me he loved me. Like, really truly loved me in all the ways I’d hoped for so long.

“Evangeline,” Maxim said, his eyes imploring. “Please,” he begged. “Say something. Anything.”

“You can’t be here,” I breathed the words, shaking my head.

Maxim glanced at the door to the gallery, then around to the vacant space. “Why not?”

“Because you’re supposed to be playing your game!” I said again, my mind and heart warring with what was happening.

“I told you, you’re what matters.” He stepped into my space, filling the empty pieces of my soul with that single movement. “What’s it going to be, Evie? Because I’ll survive it if you don’t want me, if you don’t love me anymore and tell me to go away, but if you do want me, if you do love me and don’t tell me, if you keep pushing me away to try to protect yourself, then I absolutely won’t survive that.” He blew out a breath, reaching up a hand to cup my cheek.

I leaned into his touch, my body awakening at the innocent gesture.

“Maxim,” I said, all at once needing to say a million things and losing the right words. The apology I’d played in my head over a dozen times, the one I’d planned to deliver to him after the season so I didn’t run the risk of distracting him. “I’m so damn sorry.”

He furrowed his brow, his eyes wary like he thought I might be about to break his heart.

“I wasn’t thinking straight, that night in the hotel. After the stupid article. The article hurt, sure, but it was everything after that really…” I shook my head. “I should’ve realized that you’d told me you loved me in a hundred different ways.” I bit my lip, glancing at the picture of him lacing up his skates before returning my eyes to his. “The way you looked at me. The way you made me laugh. The way you indulged my endless chatter about books or this gallery. The way you supported me and always found a way to make me feel beautiful.” I swallowed around the knot in my throat. “I’m so fucking sorry, Maxim. I should’ve realized. I should’ve known better. And after what happened, I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve someone as amazing as you.”

He sighed, visibly swallowing. “Does that mean you’re going to push me away for my own good? Or does that mean you still love me and want to make it work?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Yes to what?” he asked.

“Yes to all of what you said. I love you. I always have. I want you. I always do. If you’ll still have me. If you can forgive me.”

“Jesus,” he sighed. Thank, fuck,” he growled, slanting his mouth over mine in a searing kiss that stole my breath and lit up my soul.

He yanked me against him with his other hand, our bodies clashing together with a need that had been starving for weeks.

“Maxim,” I breathed his name between his punishing kiss, clawing at his shirt.

He jerked his mouth away, stepping back only far enough to rip off his shirt, kissing me the second he’d tossed it on the ground. I immediately trailed my hands over his chest and lower, relishing the feel of his smooth skin and corded muscle beneath my fingertips.

“You’re turn,” he said, lifting the hem of my shirt over my head.

I didn’t hesitate to rid myself of my pants, and Maxim instantly followed. We didn’t stop for a second, not to think about where we were—our yet-to-be-opened gallery—or to agonize over the past. There was nothing but us and the unflinching need to be consumed by each other.

Maxim kissed me with a hungered frenzy that tingled along every inch of my skin. He walked us backward, moving around the gallery until he stopped us in the corner where I’d piled a dozen drop cloths some paintings had been stored in earlier. He gently pushed my back against the brick wall, the cool stone making me hiss as it touched my heated flesh.

“Don’t move,” Maxim demanded before planting kisses along my breasts, my stomach, my hips.

He dropped to his knees before me, and a warm shiver licked up the center of me at the sight of him there, looking up at me with those molten blue eyes with nothing but love and desire churning there. Maxim smirked, then groaned as he slid my panties down my legs, and I stepped out of them, his mouth instantly on me before I could right myself.

“Maxim!” My hands flew to his hair as he buried his face between my thighs, licking me straight through my heat, eating at me relentlessly.