The Christmas Love-Child

“Grace,” Maksim murmured between kisses. “It’s time to go.”

“Go? Already?” she faltered.

“It’s past midnight.”

“Oh.” And like Cinderella, that meant her time was up. The dream was over. She swallowed. “All right. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow, anyway.”

“Then you’ll be tired.” He held her close, so close she could hear the beat of his heart. “I’m taking you to my hotel.”

Hotel? A hard shiver racked her body.

“Come with me now,” he whispered. “I can wait no longer. I want you in my bed.”

She sucked in her breath, staring up into his eyes, caught by his dark, commanding gaze. She’d somehow wandered into a fairy-tale world, a place beyond her comprehension. She’d been drawn from the real world to become a princess in diamonds and teal silk, enslaved by a fantasy prince who compelled her to follow her deepest desires.

He was so handsome, she thought in a daze. Brutally masculine, like a sixteenth-century barbarian warlord. A dark czar from a mist-shrouded medieval age.

“Can you walk,” he asked in a low voice, “or should I carry you?”

Walk? Her knees felt weak, whether from champagne or desire she wasn’t sure. She glanced down at feet, at the cheaply made silver pumps, scuffed up at the toes, that she’d bought for fifteen dollars at a discount warehouse in Los Angeles. The shoes threatened to break the spell.

He led her from the dance floor. As he said their farewells to Dariya and her friends, Grace could barely speak as she looked up at Maksim.

He intended to take her to his hotel.

Could she resist?

Did she still even want to?

Maksim put her coat over her shoulders, pulling her close to button it up. She felt every brush of his fingertips like an earthquake through her body. He led her back to the elevator. Suddenly they were alone, and she trembled.

“Do you swear,” she whispered, “seducing me isn’t some backhanded way to hurt Alan?”

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.

“I swear it to you.”

“On your honor?”

He looked away and his jaw clenched. Then he turned to face her.

“Yes,” he said tersely.

When she remembered to breathe, she nodded, believing him. He was a prince. He wouldn’t look her straight in the eye and lie.

“So why me?” she said. “Why be so nice—”

“Call me nice again and you’ll regret it.” His dark eyes gleamed as he pulled her from the elevator and out onto the street. “I am selfish. I take what I want. Any man would desire you, Grace. In his arms. In his bed. Any man would want you.”

“Alan didn’t.” As soon as the bitter words escaped her, she wished desperately she’d kept them to herself.

“Barrington is a fool.” He stopped on the sidewalk. His mouth curved into a sensual smile. “He lost his chance. Now you will be mine. Only mine.”

He slowly stroked up the inside of her bare arm beneath her coat, causing her to give an involuntary shudder of longing.

“Grace,” he whispered. “Let me show you how truly selfish I can be.”

CHAPTER SIX

DECEIT was part of the art of war.

The truth could be a flexible thing in Maksim’s opinion. Stretching it correctly was partly how he’d built a vast empire out of nothing. As a teenager, he’d gotten investors by pretending to already have them. He’d deceived competitors, making them believe deals were finished when they weren’t. He’d bought commodities cheap and sold them high because he knew information that others didn’t. Information he’d ruthlessly kept to himself.

It was not Maksim’s responsibility to do the due diligence of others and reveal any truth against his own best interests. He looked out for himself. He assumed others did the same. Only a fool would blindly trust the word of another.

But that was business. Lying in his personal life—that was something new.

And swearing on his honor…

His neck broke out in a sweat to think of it. He’d never looked into a woman’s face and lied against his honor. It made him feel…cheap.

I had no choice, he told himself fiercely. She gave me no choice. And this wasn’t personal. It was business.

Wasn’t it?

If he’d told Grace the truth, it would have ended everything. And he was getting so close. He could feel her weakening by the moment.

Seducing her away from Barrington was the best thing that could happen to her, he told himself. The man was obviously using her own feelings against her, working her like a slave without pay.

And it wasn’t as if she were an innocent. No, her kisses were too perfect for that. She’d kissed Maksim slowly, sensually, holding herself back with such restraint. As if she’d been born to enflame a man’s senses and make him crazed out of his mind with longing until he would do or say anything to possess her.

Even lie against his honor.

He took Grace’s hand in his own. “I gave my driver the night off,” he said. “I thought we’d walk.”

“All right,” she whispered, never taking her eyes from him.

Snow whitened the sidewalk, covering patches of slippery ice beneath. He held her arm tightly as they walked past the pubgoers enjoying last call, making sure she didn’t slip and wasn’t accosted by some drunken lad seeking a beauty for his bed.

Grace was all his.

Maksim could see their breath joined in swirling white puffs of air, illuminated by the moon in the winter night. He looked at her as they walked down the snowy street toward the southern edge of Trafalgar Square.

She looked so beautiful, he thought, lit up like an angel in front of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Her light blond hair tumbled down her shoulders, looking like spun silver and gold in the frosted moonlight. The diamond tiara sparkled in her hair, making her a spun-sugar princess. No. There was a layer of grief, of steel, beneath the sweetness. She was no helpless pink princess. No. She was a Valkyrie, from a Gothic northern land.

Her shoulders were set squarely, her hands pushed into the pockets of her long black coat that whipped behind her like a regal cape; and yet there was a softer side to her as she leaned up against him, her tender pink lips pressed together, as if she were trying to hold herself back. As if she were trying not to think.

“Thank you for bringing me to your sister’s party,” she said softly. “I’d forgotten what it was like to be around friends.”

He felt another pang of an unpleasant emotion perilously close to guilt. It had been ruthless of him to take her to the party. But he’d wanted to see Dariya on her birthday. And, he admitted quietly to himself, he’d known it would lower Grace’s defenses to meet his family. She would think she could trust him. Another lie.

The only thing that wasn’t a lie: he wanted her.

“Are you, Maksim?”

He focused on her. “Am I what?”

She looked up at him as he led her by Charing Cross station. “Are you my friend?”

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. He felt her shiver beneath the brush of his lips against her skin. “No,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not your friend, Grace.”

They passed down a slender street full of restaurants and pubs, crowds of young people and a few Chelsea football fans in blue-and-white scarves celebrating loudly over a pint. He took her hand and led her down to the embankment by the river. As they walked, they passed a dark garden.

“I don’t want your friendship,” he said. “I want you in my bed.”

The intimacy of his words, as they passed the quiet darkness of the park drenched in crystalline moonlight, was perfect. She looked up at him, her mouth a round O. A mouth made for kissing. A mouth he wanted to feel under his.

Right now.

But as he stopped, leaning down to kiss her, she suddenly turned away, her pale cheeks the color of roses in the moonlight.

“Did you learn to flirt like that in Russia?” she whispered. She gave a sharp, awkward laugh and started walking again. “You have some skills.”

So his beauty wished to wait? He would be patient. “I grew up here.”

Her eyes went wide. “London?”

“And other places.” He shrugged. “We moved around. My father couldn’t keep a job. We were poor. Then he died.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “My father died five years ago, too. Cancer.” She swallowed, looked away. “My mother has yet to recover. She almost never leaves the house. That’s why…” She looked away.

“Why what?”

She turned back, blinking hard.

“I’m sorry I misjudged you,” she said. “Thinking you’d never known what it was like to struggle or suffer just because you’re a prince.”

“Yes, a prince,” he said acidly. “Distantly in line to a throne that, if you haven’t noticed, stopped ruling Russia nearly a hundred years ago.”

“But still…”

“Prince of nothing and nowhere,” he said harshly. “Money is all that matters. Only money.”

“Oh, Maksim.” Tears filled her eyes as Grace shook her head. “Money isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s the way you love people. The way you take care of them.”

“And you take care of them with money.”