by Megan Hart
“Oh, like you were so up front with me? You knew about this offer and what it could mean, and you never said a word about it to me, not even when I was telling you—yeah, I was—that you could go anywhere or do anything. You said you had no choice but to stay!” he shouted. Toe-to-toe. Face-to-face. He didn’t grab her or shake her, but that’s how it felt.
She almost wanted him to, if only because it meant his hands would be on her body. If he hurt her, all the better. If he bruised her, there would be marks she could look at when she was far away, to remind her of this moment here in her front hallway, when Nikolai Stern had last touched her.
Because this was the last time he was going to touch her, and if it didn’t hurt now, it was going to hurt later, and for the rest of her life. He didn’t have to cut her for his touch to leave behind scars.
“Now I have a choice,” she spat. “And I’m going to take it!”
“But . . . why now?” Nikolai asked her, and for that, Alicia had only one simple answer.
“Because I didn’t then.”
She was the one who reached for him. To take his hand, linking their fingers. She pulled him closer, one, two, three steps, and she kept pulling him, toward the stairs and up to her bedroom, where she led him to her bed and pushed him gently down.
She let him watch her as she undid the buttons on her blouse, one at a time. This was no striptease, but it was a show, put on for him so that when time and distance had once more come between them, he would have something to remember.
Alicia eased open the fabric over her collarbones, drawing her fingertips over the hard curves beneath the softness of her skin. Lower, she traced the lacy edges of her bra, then cupped the fullness of her breasts. Under the heat of his gaze, her nipples tightened. She ran her thumbs over them, emphasizing the shape of them through the lace. Making sure he could see.
She turned as she shrugged out of the blouse and tossed it to the side. Her hair came down with a few tugs at the pins that had been securing it, and she shook her head to feel it brushing her back. She pushed the elastic waistband of her skirt over her hips and stood in her bra and panties for a moment, half-afraid to look around, to see his expression. The low, agonized sound of his voice saying her name nearly sent her to her knees. Instead, she reached behind her to unhook her bra and let it fall away.
But when she moved to hook her fingers in her panties, Nikolai said, “Wait. Let me look at you. Just for a minute.”
She stood still, not moving. Letting him drink in this last sight of her. When he made another noise, she turned to look into his eyes. She slid a hand between her legs, over the lace, stroking for the joy of watching the way his pupils dilated. Her breath caught in her throat at the pleasure she brought herself.
“Take them off,” Nikolai rasped. “Please.”
She smiled and did as he’d asked, as slowly as she’d done everything else. When at last she stood fully naked in front of him, the instinct to cover herself rose up as it always did. She refused to give in to it. If nothing else, this last time, she wanted to feel as beautiful in front of him as he’d always told her she was.
“You’re a goddess,” he told her.
She blushed then, heat rising up her throat to paint her cheeks that had nothing to do with being embarrassed. She could dispute him, but she did not, because it was so easy to believe he meant it. She crawled up over his body to kiss him, and he rolled them both so they could get him out of his clothes a lot faster and with less fanfare than she’d taken getting naked.
They made love slowly. Almost with caution. He touched her as though she were fragile, the lacework of a spiderweb hung heavy with dew and ready to shred at the slightest touch. And wasn’t she? Ready to tear? Over and over again until there was nothing left of her but broken threads.
When it was over and they’d both settled onto their backs with the blankets pulled up to cover them against the chill, Alicia thought they might sleep. She didn’t want to. It would waste the time they had left together before daylight came and she was ready, at last, to finally go. And, having him there in the morning would make all of this more awkward and painful than it was already going to be.
She tucked herself against him, her hand over his heart. “You should leave.”
“Ilya already knows about us,” Nikolai answered. “It doesn’t matter if I stay all night.”
“That’s not why.”
He didn’t reply at first, but the skipping beat of his heart pounded harder against her palm. “Why, then?”
“I’m getting up early. I need to be at the airport by four. My flight leaves at six. It’s late, and I won’t sleep if you’re here . . .”
He covered her hand with his, curling the fingers tight around hers. When he looked at her, the darkness of his pupils had nearly swallowed up all the gray green. She could see nothing of herself reflected there.
“You’re leaving . . . tomorrow?”
“Yes.” She waited for him to ask her where she was going, but he didn’t. She thought he might at least ask how long she’d be gone, but he didn’t ask her that, either.
“Were you going to tell me?”
She pressed her lips to his skin. “No.”
“That’s . . . I can’t even think of what that is. It’s bullshit, Allie.” He sat, pushing her hand away from him hard enough for it to smack against the covers before she withdrew it. “But seriously, what the hell, you were just going to . . . leave? Without saying anything?”
“I don’t want any long, drawn-out good-byes. Okay?” Irritated at the waver in her voice, Alicia sat, too, and swung her legs over her side of the bed. She found a T-shirt and tugged it on over her head. It hit her midthigh and meant she could feel covered up without finding a pair of panties, but . . . it was his.
“You want to leave without any good-bye.”
This time, with her back to him, she felt exactly like she was shutting him out and not drawing him in. The best truth now was still mostly a lie, though. “Yes. The way you did to me.”
“Fine.” Nikolai didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded resigned. She heard the soft thump of his feet on the floor on the other side of the bed. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”
Ask me to stay.
Irrational. It was all he had to do, wasn’t it? Say the words out loud. Tell her that he loved her and he wanted her. All he had to do was ask her to stay, but of course, Nikolai didn’t.
He didn’t ask her to walk him to the front door, but she did. He turned before he opened it, and she hadn’t thought she would kiss him again—why drag this out? Yet her mouth found his, and she backed him up against the wall, and his hands were in her hair, and her tongue was in his mouth, and all she could do was try not to devour him where they stood.
She didn’t try very hard.
He was the one who broke the kiss, panting. Nikolai wiped the wetness of her kiss off his lips with the back of his hand. With his back against the door, there was no place for him to go, but he turned his head and held up his hands, pushing her away as effectively as if he’d shoved her.
“You wanted me to go. Let me go,” he said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Alicia could still taste him. She could still feel him against her, though inches of space now separated them. So many words left unsaid, and she was as much at fault as he was, if not more. How could she hate him for not asking her to stay when she hadn’t been able to ask him to go with her?
“Sometimes you love someone who can’t give you what you want, so what can you do but love them enough to let them go?” she said.
“Bullshit,” Nikolai answered. “If nine planets in this universe can align, why can’t we?”
For that, Alicia had no answer. This time, Nikolai was the one who bent to kiss her. The briefest brush of his lips on hers, nothing more than that.
“Close your eyes,” he told her, and she did, waiting for another kiss that never came.
She heard the click of the d
oor. Felt the rush of winter air that started her teeth chattering. Then silence.
When she opened her eyes, Nikolai was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“I should punch you right in the face,” Ilya said. “But to be honest, I’ve run out of energy.”
Niko hadn’t bothered to sneak into the house, but he hadn’t expected to find his brother sitting at the kitchen table with a full bottle and an empty glass. “Pour me one?”
“You can have mine. I tried, but it doesn’t taste good to me. Hell if I can figure out why.” Ilya filled the glass halfway with amber liquid and pushed it across the table toward Niko.
It didn’t taste good to Niko, either, so after a single, grimacing sip, he pushed it away. He looked at his brother, not sure what he expected to see. Ilya leaned back in the chair with a shrug, when he caught his brother’s look.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Ilya told him.
“You could say congratulations. That’s what I said to you,” Niko replied, knowing the response was shitty but saying it anyway.
Ilya snorted rough laughter. “Why? You guys running off to get married?”
“She’s running off. I don’t know where.”
His brother’s laughter faded, and he tilted his head, brow furrowed. “What do you mean she’s running off? Where’s she going?”
“I don’t know.”
Ilya sat up straight. “What do you mean you don’t know? What’s wrong with you? You didn’t ask?”
Niko stood, scraping the chair on the linoleum hard enough to almost knock it over. “She’s leaving tomorrow morning. She said she’d be at the airport by four. Does it really matter where she’s going? She’s still going to be gone.”
“That’s in about two hours,” Ilya said. “You should get your shit together and go after her. Fuck’s sakes, man. Don’t tell me you came back here and did all this just to let her go?”
Niko’s fists clenched, then unclenched. “She has the right to go wherever she wants. I know it’s what she wants, Ilya. She wants to leave.”
“She doesn’t want to leave you,” Ilya said. “And if you can’t see that, you’re an idiot. Now I really might punch you in your face, for being stupid.”
He might welcome the punch, if only because a fight would get rid of at least some of this anxiety. He put his hands on the kitchen counter, his back to his brother. “Shit.”
“Yeah, it’s a mess of it. You’d better figure it out.”
Niko looked over his shoulder. “She could be going anywhere. She didn’t say anything to you?”
“You always were the pretty one, not the smart one.” Ilya shook his head with a sour expression. “Because, right, Allie absolutely confided in me about her plans. Sure. Again, what the hell is wrong with you? She’s taking a trip, not moving across the world to join a commune.”
Niko frowned. “It was not a commune.”
Ilya waved a hand, clearly not caring. “Whatever. You’re afraid she’s going to do to you what you did to us, but that was you, not Allie. Go to the airport and find out where, how long she’ll be gone, when she’ll be back. But go after her, Niko. Or she will come back, but it won’t matter, because you’ll have lost her. And trust me, brother. You’ll spend a long, long time wishing you’d stepped up when you had the chance.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The drive to the airport normally took about forty minutes, with traffic, on the winding back roads from Quarrytown. At three in the morning, there wasn’t any traffic. The car she’d hired to take her made the trip in twenty-five minutes, and the driver didn’t speak, so that was a bonus. Alicia wouldn’t have been able to hold much of a conversation.
All she’d brought was one small suitcase and a backpack, both meant as carry-ons. She had money in her pocket and more in her bank account. She had a ticket to Barcelona, and from there she intended to spend the next four weeks traveling to wherever the desire took her. Places she’d read about or seen in movies but had never imagined she would actually visit. She would take planes and trains and buses and walk along cobblestoned streets and try adventurous foods from street vendors.
She didn’t want to go.
She was afraid to go; that was the embarrassing truth.
She tipped the driver and got out of the car. All Alicia could think of was that long-ago night, staring up at the night sky and watching those planets align. She’d never imagined back then that she wouldn’t get out of this town, that she wouldn’t live the life she’d dreamed of, so why now that she had the opportunity was she so terrified to actually try?
She hefted her pack on her shoulder and turned back, ready to hail the driver, but he probably wanted to get back home and into bed before the sun rose. He’d already pulled away from the curb, his brake lights barely blinking. Her fingers tightened on the handle of her suitcase.
And there, across the drop-off lane, standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, was Nikolai.
She didn’t believe it, not at first. She had to be conjuring him out of wishful thinking . . . but no, there he was, crossing the street, looking both ways so he wouldn’t get struck by a car. He was in front of her before she knew it.
“I couldn’t let you go without saying good-bye,” he said. “Not ever again.”
Alicia put down her bag, then the backpack. “What . . . ?”
He kissed her. Or she kissed him—she couldn’t be sure who moved first. Maybe they moved at the same time, urged by mutual desire and the urge to be in each other’s arms. All she knew was that the taste of him flooded her. His arms around her warded off the early-morning chill.
“I love you,” Nikolai said. “I should’ve told you before. I should’ve said it every time you asked me and every time you didn’t.”
Stunned, blinking away tears, Alicia swallowed the ache in her throat. “I love you, too. Are you asking me to stay?”
Nikolai shook his head, looking surprised. “Huh? No. Of course not.”
“But . . .” Confused, she tried to step out of his embrace, but he held her still.
“You should go. You need to go,” he told her. “You deserve this, Alicia. Go out there. See the world. Just . . . if you decide you want to . . . come back to me.”
Come back to me.
It was better than if he’d asked her to stay. She smiled, sniffing back tears, and kissed him again. People passing stared. She didn’t care. Let them look. Let them see what it was like to be loved.
“I’m only going for four weeks,” she said. “Then I’ll be back.”
“You might decide you like traveling so much you’ll want to leave again,” Nikolai told her, his expression serious even though the corners of his mouth quirked the tiniest bit. “That’s how it works, sometimes.”
Alicia laughed, giddy with this, the two of them. “You could decide you want to come with me.”
“Stranger things have happened,” he said and kissed her again.
They stayed that way for a few seconds before she became mindful of the time and pushed away enough to look into his face. “Maybe I shouldn’t go . . . I mean . . .”
“You’re going. This is what you want, and I want it for you. You should take this trip. You’ll always be sorry if you don’t. And I’ll be right here waiting for you,” Nikolai told her.
“Right here? Right at the airport? The entire time?”
He laughed. “I’ll be at home, dealing with my mother and Ilya, but I’ll be there. I promise.”
She believed him; that was the crazy thing. All these years and all the things they’d gone through together, yet she knew with every part of her that he was telling the truth.
“I’m nervous. And scared.”
“You got this,” he told her. “I never knew a woman who could make things happen the way you can, when you want them. You’re going to have a great time. But while you’re gone, don’t forget something.”
She studied him for a second. “What’s that?”
&nb
sp; “I’m going to miss you,” Niko replied. “Every single day.”
One more kiss, and she stepped away from him, but not apart. There was a difference, and she could feel it. She would go on this adventure, and she would come home, and they’d figure out what that meant when she did—but whatever it was, they were going to discover it together, with whatever journeys lay ahead for both of them.
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF
ALL THE SECRETS WE KEEP
Editor’s Note: This is an early excerpt and may not reflect the finished book.
CHAPTER ONE
Theresa Malone had made a lot of mistakes in her life, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of making a few more. One of them was sitting across from her right now with a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him and a smirk that looked like every kind of bad idea. She’d invited Ilya Stern out tonight, so she had nobody but herself to blame. She ought to have known he’d be no different with her than he was with anyone else. Charming and difficult.
“You are bound and determined to make my life miserable, aren’t you?” She frowned. “C’mon, Ilya. Why? What good is any of this going to do? You’re delaying the inevitable.”
“It’s not at all inevitable, Theresa. And it’ll make me feel better.” He sipped from the glass with a grimace and set it down before leaning back in the chair to link his fingers behind his head. His grin was hard and didn’t soften his expression at all.
Theresa drew in a slow, calming breath. “They’re not going to offer you more money or any kind of guarantees beyond what they already have. You’re coming across as greedy.”
