With This Ring

She nodded. “Yes, Maxim. Secretly he might have wanted to kill me for all this trouble I was causing. Levan was almost given a life sentence because of me.” She smiled. “But he saw that his brother was in love with me and he helped. Repeatedly.”

“Wait, what? Maxim helped repeatedly?”

She nodded.

“Are you sure we are talking about the same person?”

She laughed. “Yup.”

I frowned. I couldn’t imagine Maxim being moved by love.

“So, Freya, I have experienced the dangers of being involved with this family and the mafia in general in the most brutal, first hand way, but I couldn’t let Levan go and neither could he, so we found a way to make it work. After our wedding, he will be leaving the conglomerate for good. We’re moving to South Africa, and he’s going to become a brewer there. It’s been his dream to make the finest craft beer ever made, but he’s always had to put it aside because of the family.

“What?” I gazed at her in disbelief. Levan was leaving the family? His father was letting him? How the hell was that even possible?

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Obviously, I’m not saying that Maxim’s going to do the same. He’s more… well… involved and important to the business, but all I’m saying is that I was very surprised when Levan told me that Maxim was willing to marry you.”

She suddenly realized how her words must have sounded, and her hand went to her mouth in apology. “That’s not what I meant to—”

“Relax, it’s okay,” I said and patted her on the shoulder in amusement.

“No, no, I have to explain what I really meant. What I was trying to say was, Maxim is very much his own man so I had a very hard time ever picturing him agreeing to marry a woman he has no interest in. Even after a short time of knowing him I can see just a request from his father for him to marry you would not have been enough to get Maxim to do anything. Yes, he works closely with his father and according to Levan will take instructions from his father where the older man has more experience, but never on anything Maxim does not personally agree with. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is underneath that distant, aloof exterior he is a great guy. He is just as fiercely loyal and intensely passionate as Levan.” She wrinkled her brown eyes. “Maybe even more. You know what they say about the silent ones. So, why not give him a chance, eh? He might not be as bad as you think.”

“What are you two cooking up?”

We both looked up then, startled by the sudden bass voice. It was Levan. Then my gaze fell on the person that stood beside him, and my heart jumped in my chest.

Every single time I laid eyes on him, I was stunned all over again by how handsome he was. How regal… how imposing. It stirred things in me that, God’s truth, made my toes curl. Especially now. He was dressed quite casually which was as rare as sights went. His crisp white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. The sleeves folded to just below his elbows, revealing strongly-veined, tattooed skin that belonged to a man from another world.

Bianca meant well, but there was just too much bad blood between us. It wasn’t just the man I was against, but his world and everything it represented.

As much as he made my blood race he was not the man for me.

Chapter Twenty

Maxim

She was here!

When my father requested all of us fly in for the dinner, I was certain she wouldn’t show up but here she was, dressed like a bride.

Her white dress fit her like a glove, curving and dipping in all the right places and the neckline was low enough to reveal the gentle swell of her milky-white breasts. Her hair had been pulled back from her face and I missed the wildness of her hair, but it did make her look even more delicate and fragile. Her skin was like fine porcelain and her eyes, effervescent as they stared at me defiantly. Her lips were plump and painted the kind of sinful red that made me almost willing to swim across a few seas just so I could suck them into my mouth. To taste her… to have her body pressed hard against mine, and those slender fingers fisting my shirt as she fought to hold on to her sanity.

Suddenly, it was hard to breathe as I felt myself harden. Not to cause embarrassment that would be too hard to come back from, I gave her a hard look and walked away.

“Maxim,” Levan called, but I continued towards the study. I needed a drink. But as I passed the lounge, I heard my father call my name. I retraced my steps and entered the lounge room to see that my father had opened his best bottle of whisky, drinking it with Freya’s father.