by Olivia Gates
And it wasn’t working. She only felt worse as every minute dragged by, Alex’s absence solidifying into a gaping crater in her heart, a closed fist in her right side and a missing vital ingredient in her every breath.
Alex hadn’t just been her older brother, he’d been her best friend, mentor, partner and confidant. Every single thing in her life was inextricably entwined with him. He’d been more to her than he’d been to their parents, to his wife and children. All of them had parts of them, interests and activities, that hadn’t included him. She hadn’t. He’d even been her squash and gym partner. And she didn’t know how to plug the holes now that he’d been ripped from her. The feeling of being torn in half constantly gushed in, leaving her sinking.
But it was only in the last couple of days that others began noticing her condition. Though their anguish kept deepening, Cathy and her parents were slowly recovering their ability to think, at least enough to see beyond their own turmoil.
Though they didn’t know the depth of her injuries—and never would—they now thought she was the one who had the most healing to do, and they said they would see to it. Just now they’d insisted she go home and rest. Making them promise to call her if anyone needed anything, she’d finally succumbed.
On her way home, she pulled into a shopping mall parking lot. She had no idea how long she sat staring ahead, trying to empty her mind, to not focus on Alex or her endless memories with him since the day she’d been born.
But not thinking about Alex only let her mind think of the other man who dominated her every waking and sleeping moment. Ivan.
It was like watching a movie of her life’s transformative moments. For he’d been there in each and every one of them. Their cause or their conclusion.
Every moment replayed in her mind and impacted her senses. When he’d first walked up to her, looking like a supreme being right out of a fantasy. When he’d pulled her into that first kiss, an overwhelming seduction. When he’d loomed above her, invading her body with pleasure, branding her as his, a storm of passion in human form. When he’d snatched her from death’s cold pull, like a lethal archangel. When he’d given her the only reason powerful enough to cling to life, imbuing her with his endless strength, like a guardian angel.
The images played in a loop, but always snagged on a specific one. His face filling with colliding emotions as he’d said goodbye. Watching it over and over as she sat there, she took it apart, looked at it from every angle, until she finally realized something.
How hard it had been for him to say it.
Jerking out of her stupor, she fumbled out her phone, her heart starting to thunder as she searched out the direct number he’d saved on it. She hit Dial as she restarted the car. He answered after only one ring.
“Anastasia?”
To everyone she was Ana. Only he called her by her full name. Every time he said it, he filled the simple utterance with so much, it filled volumes in her being. She’d once thought she’d heard how much he wanted her, and everything else he’d felt in the way he said it. She’d since come to believe she’d been only hearing what she’d wanted to hear.
But there was no mistaking how he’d said her name now. It was the very sound of agitation and solicitude combined. He was worried she needed something, and that it was big enough only he could deal with it, important enough to make her call him.
Before she could reassure him, his urgency silenced her. “I just hit Dial and the phone rang instead.”
Did she get that right? “You were calling me?”
“I went to Alex’s house and your mother told me you went home, but I arrived here and didn’t find you. I was calling you when your call connected first. What happened? Where are you?”
He’d been looking for her? Was at her home now? Why?
“Anastasia.”
His bark was pure anxiety now, clearly imagining another disaster had befallen her.
She rushed to allay his concern. “Nothing happened. I—I just stopped somewhere on the way.” He didn’t need to know that she had only sit there staring at a memory reel starring him. But she needed to know one thing. “Why were you looking for me?”
There was a long beat of silence on the other end, before his deep voice poured into her brain again, and his words snuffed out any light that remained in her world.
“I wanted to see you again before I went back to Russia.”
* * *
Anastasia didn’t even remember the drive back home.
Her brain registered nothing until she saw him sitting in his car outside her family home, like a predator lying in wait. He got out as soon as she neared, looking like a god descended to earth with the setting sun behind him. Even from a distance she felt the tension radiating from him. It swamped her as she drove past him into the garage, as he opened her door and helped her out.
Her throat tightening, her heart hammering, she invited him into the house. Every nerve fired with his nearness, with the intensity blasting from him.
Needing air, she led him all the way out back to her favorite part of her mother’s garden—the gazebo. It was where she’d sat alone countless times with her laptop or a book, where her mind had always ended up dwelling on the man she’d loved and lost. She turned to him now.
He towered over her, his eyes that hypnotic green she’d always drowned in, his expression singeing her blood with its heat. And she just couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t let him say goodbye. Not yet.
Not before she said what she’d called him to say.
“Anastasia—”
“I could have died, Ivan.” Her quavering words cut off what he’d begun to say. “But I didn’t. Because you saved me. Now I need one more thing from you.”
He took a step closer, tight, barely leashed power in the move. Power she felt could move mountains, as he’d done for her and Alex. “Anything, Anastasia. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to show me that I didn’t just survive, Ivan. I need you to prove to me that I’m still alive.”
His eyes flared with such a blaze of emotions, she almost needed to shield her eyes. “Anastasia...”
This time he said her name as if it hurt, the inflection filled with seething hesitation. And she knew he wouldn’t make a move. Either because he couldn’t credit what she’d asked him for, or because he was taking it upon himself to protect her from any recklessness in her weakened, needy state.
But she couldn’t take no for an answer. This was the one thing she needed. The last thing she’d have of him.
He’d nurtured her back to physical health, but she now needed a salve for her emotions, a reviving dose of passion from the only man she’d ever been intimate with.
Her move ate up the distance between them as a trembling hand rose to his face. The moment she cupped his rugged jaw and felt his strength fill her palm, overflow into her being it was like the years apart evaporated. Nothing remained inside her but longing, and it had taken only this contact to break the dam and have it all come pouring out.
“I need this, Ivan,” she whispered. “I need you.”
His flesh buzzed beneath her hand, electrifying her. “How could you? I left you—”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or why you did it. The past is gone. Alex is gone.” She stifled a sob that threatened to tear through her. “But I’m still here. And it’s terrible, Ivan. Terrible to be alone, to know I’ll always be alone because I’ll never be able to share what happened, what changed me forever, with another person for the rest of my life.”
“Bozhe moi, Anastasia.”
He’d only ever spoken Russian when he’d lost his hold on his rigid control in the throes of passion and pleasure. But now different emotions compromised his control, eliciting his tormented “My God.”
Her hand trembled ar
ound his neck, her fingers plunging into his luxurious mane. “But I share it with you, Ivan. It’s only because you know everything, that you’ve lived it with me that I’m able to go on. And I want to share more with you, what might bring me back to life. The past is gone—”
“The past may be gone, but there’s tomorrow—”
A finger on his lips stopped his protest, her tear-soaked voice breaking. “There’s only now. And you said you’d do anything. That’s the only thing I need. The one thing I’ll ever ask of you.”
His chest expanded, as if bracing under an insupportable burden. Not only wasn’t he unfeeling, as she’d once thought, she now realized he probably felt too much, had to close himself off, to protect himself, and maybe the whole world from the power of his emotions. She’d seen him when a measure of these emotions—the violent, vengeful ones—had been let loose. He’d been lethal. She no longer doubted that he’d wreaked far more destruction in his life, that what she’d witnessed had only been the tip of the iceberg. And now she was chipping away at the barrier that restrained his devastating potential, and it was about to crack.
Not that it worried her. She wanted him to demolish her with all the ferocity of his fervor. He’d only ever hurt her when he’d deprived her of it.
“You need this, too, Ivan. You lost him, too.” His flinch was proof that Alex’s loss did hurt him. Her hand twisted in his hair in answering agony. “I need to share his loss with you, the one who knows, the one strong enough to live with it. And I’m the only one you can share it with, the one who understands, who’s been part of it all.”
The torment that blazed on his face solidified her belief.
He mourned Alex, almost as deeply as she did.
“Anastasia, you don’t know what it takes for me to be like this.” Like this? In control? Holding back? “You don’t know what you’re risking.”
“I have nothing more to risk, Ivan.”
His head tilted back against her hand, a growl rumbling deep in his chest, as if there was a trapped, starving beast there. He was resisting because he feared he’d hurt her.
She had to make him believe he wouldn’t, had to make him stop holding back. Her other hand slipped around his neck, coaxing his face down to hers. “The only injury I could have sustained was letting you go without being with you one more time.”
She lowered her arms to hug all she could of him, a breath she’d been holding for seven long years flowing out of her in tortured relief. Until he stiffened in her embrace as if she’d electrocuted him.
Oh, God. This could mean she’d gotten it all wrong. That he didn’t need comfort, at least not from her. That when he’d said he’d give her anything she needed, he hadn’t thought it would be him—the one thing he hadn’t offered.
Before she could withdraw in mortification, his formidable body surrendered to her hold. He still didn’t embrace her, but he gave her license to hug him. So she did. Hug him and hug him. His sighs were the very sound of agonized enjoyment. They reverberated deep in her marrow as he rested his forehead on hers, swaying with her to the erratic cadence of their heartbeats.
Then suddenly he was pushing away. Before letdown burned her to ashes, she was swept up in his arms. Where she’d despaired of ever being again.
Forgetting to breathe as he strode inside the house, she savored the weightlessness, the powerlessness, the soaring he always made her feel when he carried her like this.
His effortless steps paused halfway up the stairs to the upper floor and he looked down at her, his eyes probing hers. “This is what you want?”
Instead of answering him, she nestled her head more securely against his chest. “My bedroom is the last door in the corridor.”
That rumble of voracity that had always melted her revved beneath her ear. He hurried through the upper floor that was all her living space, crossing inside her bedroom in seconds. The moment he closed the door, he let her slide down on his hard body and pressed her against it, letting her feel how the tremors shaking her body echoed in his.
Unable to wait another heartbeat, her hands convulsed in his hair, her lips gasping for his. The moment she reached them, she took them in a wrenching kiss, every moist glide and thrust of her tongue confessing how much she’d longed for him. It reminded her how much she’d lost, how much she’d lose again.
But she had him now, and she would hoard all she could of him.
She’d barely started when he tore his lips away. Crying out, she surged up, desperate for his breath so she could breathe, for his heartbeat so her heart wouldn’t stop, needing his taste to fill her up for the desolate future without him.
But he’d only broken the kiss to melt more down her neck, her breasts. His growls of pleasure and need were elemental, set off jolts of hunger in her core.
He wanted her now. She knew he did. With all his indomitable, magnificent being. For now. And she wanted to have every spark of his desire, needed it. Had to have it. If even for one hour.
Too weak still to climb him and wrap herself around him, she could only stand on tiptoe and arch back, offering all of her. Her legs buckled when his erection pressed into her core through their clothes. Moaning, she ground against him, pressing his head harder into her aching breasts. He opened his mouth over her sweatshirt-smothered flesh, nipping one of her nipples.
A cry tore from her as she bucked with pleasure, losing all coherence. “Ivan, please, just take me.”
With another growl, he picked her up again and carried her where she’d never thought she’d have him—her bed.
His gaze raked every inch of her, igniting her skin wherever it lingered, then he came down over her, his arms a prison of muscle around her. She breathed in the scent of his maleness and protectiveness, fiery and clean and musky. Her mouth watered then her stomach rumbled.
“You’re hungry.” He pulled back, gaze sharp, tone accusing. He’d constantly worried she didn’t have enough food, kept urging her to eat more.
He started to get up and she clutched his hand, the hand that had snatched her from death’s jaws, that had taught her what pleasure really was. “Not for food, Ivan.”
“Anastasia...” he groaned as he sank back into her arms.
She singed her lips with his heat as she ran them over his cheekbones, his jaw, his neck, loving the feel of the few days’ worth of beard he now wore.
At its soft abrasion, she moaned into his skin. “All I want is to feast on you.”
And she did, trembling with the enormity of having him in her arms again. Her hands roamed the breadth of his back, reveled in the leashed power of his arms, her lips and tongue delighted in skimming every inch she could reach, every touch and taste everything she’d craved for years. Years.
But he broke away from her again, to blaze a possessive trail down her body. He had her writhing in pleasure as he seemed to melt her clothes off. It was only when she found herself naked beneath him in what felt like seconds that self-consciousness assaulted her.
Dr. Balducci had done a masterful job on the scar that traversed her abdomen. It reminded her she’d been taken apart and put back together inside, but she’d gotten used to seeing it, mostly dismissed it. But having Ivan’s hands and eyes on it, she felt as if it was the ugliest thing ever, and that it covered her from head to toe.
On a mental level, she knew Ivan would sympathize. But on the sensual one, the male in him, what she knew from ecstatic experience was ferociously carnal and exacting, had to be put off by it.
But as she tried to reach for her comforter to cover herself, Ivan, still fully clothed, captured her wrists. He pinned them beside her head, his knees imprisoning her thighs.
“Don’t hide from me, moya dusha.”
At hearing him call her my soul, one of the extravagant endearments he’d used to lavish on her, she sobbed, “I don’t want you to
see me like this.”
Letting go of one of her wrists, his hand went to her chin, making her meet his gaze. “This scar?” His other hand shook as it traced it. “It pains me to see it, as a reminder I could have lost you. But it’s also precious because it’s proof you survived. And it’s beautiful, like every other part of you.”
Unable to bear him taking pity on her, she turned her head away as tears of inadequacy slid down her face onto the sheets.
One hand pressed her head persistently, making her look back at him, as his other one took her hand and slid it down his body until it reached the potency tenting his dress pants. Feeling him, so hot and hard and huge, made her whimper.
“That is how beautiful I find it, and you,” he whispered.
Arousal overcoming distress, she twisted restlessly beneath him, moaning, “I don’t even have words for how beautiful I find you. Please, Ivan, don’t take it slow. Show me how much you want me, make me grateful I’m still alive.”
His gaze filled with storms, but it was absolute care that filled his hands as he settled her back and slid down her body. Realizing what he intended, she was overcome by memories and, weirdly enough, embarrassment.
When she tried to keep her legs closed, he raised his head, his chiseled face flushed, his eyes coaxing. “Open yourself to me, Anastasia. Let me feast. Let me heal you.”
“I’m healed,” she cried out. “Please...”
“Your injuries, yes, but you’re far from strong enough to withstand me.”
The words withstand me unleashed a flood of memories, every sensation of every time he’d ridden her to screaming satisfaction. Though she was dying for him to do so now, to hold nothing back, she knew she wasn’t ready for that.
“You can be gentle.” She knew he could be, as he had been, heartbreakingly so, that first time he’d taken her. And every time, after their first explosive arousal had been assuaged, when he’d savored her in thorough, tender leisure.
