by Olivia Gates
“I can accept that you can’t trust me with your secrets—”
“It has nothing to do with trust, Anastasia.” His objection was vehement. “I would trust you with my life and far more.”
“Whatever your reasons, I can live with knowing only what you choose to reveal to me. You were right, about what I would have done had you given me a choice in the past. I would have wanted to be with you, no matter the price. Even now, without knowing what is so unspeakable about you or about the reasons you left me that you can’t divulge, I still want you, Ivan. I crave you.”
At his urgent step, she raised a hand to stop him from coming closer, afraid she’d settle for whatever he gave her if he touched her again. “But I can no longer accept this status quo you’ve imposed on us. I can no longer exist in this limbo.” She paused, to brace herself for what she was about to say, to surmount the fear that when she did, it might end everything. Then she said it. “So it’s up to you, like everything has ever been. But this time I get to give you a choice, Ivan. Either take me, or let me go.”
* * *
Ivan’s heart felt it might race itself to a standstill.
Anastasia wanted him. She’d been craving him from that first night. But tonight, with everything coming to a head, they’d come to an impasse. And her hunger was killing him.
All he wanted anymore was to snatch her up into his arms and plunder her like she’d been begging him to for the past ten weeks of torture.
But he hadn’t taken her because he’d brought her here for her, not for him. Because he didn’t want to make it any harder for her to walk away once she was fully healed, if that was what she felt was better for her. He knew he’d only drown her with him, like he had in the past. He’d been assuring that she had a way back, a way out.
Now she was giving him a choice.
Either take me or let me go.
He should let her go. She was healed. As much as she could be without the passage of time. There would always be echoes, throughout her life, moments when she choked up, when she was thrown back in time and into the middle of the ordeal. But her PTSD had been controlled, and she was as stable and strong as he’d hoped to get her. He should let her go so she could continue the part of getting better that only returning to her normal life, away from him and the rarefied environment he’d created for her, could achieve.
He must let her go. Even if her eyes pleaded with him not to. He had to draw on his reserves of strength, what he’d expended to keep away from her all these years, what had miraculously kept him from plundering her every time she breathed near him in the past weeks.
But he had no more strength. It had been long depleted. He’d been running on fumes, on prayers, on the sheer tendrils of sanity he had left. That was all he had to prevent him from dragging her deeper in with him, into his fathomless abyss of a soul, into the inescapable grasp of his passion.
But she wanted him to.
She had no idea what she was inviting.
But she didn’t seem to care.
If he took her now, and then she changed her mind, could he let her go? Could he walk away again?
Did he even know how anymore?
As the debate raged in his tortured mind, her eyes squeezed tight, her whole face crumpling on despondence as she turned away, heading to the en suite bathroom.
He watched her walking away, one slow step after the other, as if she feared she’d shatter if she moved too fast.
He, too, was afraid to move, lest he let out the maelstrom raging inside him. Then he heard the shower running.
The images bombarded him. Of her stepping under the pummeling water, eyes closed and lips open, her silky, golden hair streaming down her back to her perfect buttocks, her healed, lush body gleaming, the water kissing it everywhere...
He wanted to stampede in there, feast on her, wrench pleasure from her depths, make her weep with satisfaction again.
But he knew she’d never succumb to his pleasuring again. She’d let the hunger gnaw her hollow before she did. For she didn’t need release, she needed his possession, his dominance. She needed to lose herself in his passion, and sate herself with his invasion.
He felt the last tethers of his control snapping. They lashed about inside him, catapulting him after her.
She wanted him. She got him.
God help them both.
Seven
Ivan walked into the bathroom and his heart almost burst.
Anastasia was in the large shower stall, her back to him, leaning her forehead on the marble wall, as if the steaming jet beating down on her was almost too much for her to withstand. Without seeing her face, he knew she was weeping.
She hadn’t wept in weeks now. She’d even started to talk about Alex without her eyes filling, without choking on the misery and finality of his loss. And he’d managed to take her back to that terrible place of vulnerability, where she felt so anguished and helpless. But he hadn’t been able to tell her what he felt would only burden her more. Knowing his past would have been just one more scar for her to sustain.
But that wasn’t the only reason. He had to be honest with himself. He feared she’d be horrified, repulsed, if she found out the truth about him.
His slow approach toward her suddenly stopped at a slam of realization. That this could have been the real reason he hadn’t confronted her before he’d left her in the past. Maybe he’d dreaded if she’d known, she would feel relieved to be rid of such a monster, would have tried her best to forget him, to replace him.
Dog-in-the-manger, as she’d said.
He was more messed up than he had realized.
But even knowing so, there was nothing he could do about it now. Even if he overcame his own aversion to exposing the ugliness and madness in his past, telling her now would only disturb her more. And this he wouldn’t do.
But if he couldn’t satisfy her need to know, he could offer her what neither of them had been truly alive without. The all-consuming intimacy that they’d never be able to find with any other. At least he could give that to her for now. While she still wanted him. The man she thought he was.
His steps resumed as he started to unbutton his shirt. By the time he opened the shower, he was still clothed but he couldn’t wait any longer to have his hands on her.
It all happened at once. He got drenched, she gasped at feeling his entry and he was wrapped around her, taking her from her slump against the wall back against his thundering body, into the shelter of his no longer containable passion.
She twisted around to face him with a cry, her eyes streaming with both water and tears, glittering with one unspoken question.
He answered it. “I can’t let you go.”
He tried to obliterate the distance she’d put between them but her trembling hands flattened against his soaked shirt, pain filling her eyes. “I can’t have this be the only reason.”
A self-deriding and loathing huff escaped him. “The one thing that stopped me from taking you was trying to do what was best for you. For me, holding back has been a hell second only to the years without you, to when I lost Alex and thought I’d lost you, too.”
He thought, hoped, his confession would appease her, at least explain his behavior. But what she did next had him so stunned his heart forgot to beat.
Anastasia slapped him with all her strength.
That wasn’t saying much, compared to the blows he’d sustained in his life. But from her, it brought him to his knees, figuratively, as he realized just how much he’d hurt her.
She glowered up at him through the jet of water, her enraged eyes the most beautiful and overpowering he’d ever seen them.
“That’s for all these years of hell.” Then both hands slammed on his chest, wet, sharp lashes of fury. “And that’s a reminder to stop making un
ilateral decisions on my behalf.” Next she pummeled him, as if she wanted to storm his being, to break down his barriers. “And that’s for driving me mad with your contradictions, with all the things you think you’re protecting me from.” Then her hands were knotted in his hair, bringing his face down to hers for an openmouthed, desperate kiss, her voice a hot tremolo breaching him to his very core. “And that’s for saving me, for being the only one I’ll ever crave. The absolute best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.”
Before he could try to even think of how to deal with her lightning-fast mood changes, she pushed him away again, hands clawing at his shirt as if it was her worst enemy, tearing at the sodden material, ripping off the buttons he hadn’t undone.
“And that’s for coming in here still clothed,” she panted as she attacked him, lips and teeth suckling and biting at every inch of flesh she’d exposed. “For making me wait again.”
Everything that had ever held him back, every shred of control, every dread, every heartache, snapped, unleashing the longing and hunger that had been accumulating inside him.
Grabbing her hands, he pinned them above her head against the wet wall, while his other hand skimmed her lush curves greedily. But Anastasia wouldn’t be held back anymore, squirmed to escape his hold, to continue exposing him to her hunger. He lasted only moments before he stopped her fumbling efforts and shredded the remainder of his clothes,
Shoving them away, he kneeled before her, looked up at her, this woman who embodied everything that mattered. As she sobbed his name over and over, he rubbed his lips, his whole face against her scar, the evidence that she’d survived, that he’d been given a second chance, one he’d almost wasted.
“Anastasia.” He reiterated her name like a prayer, soul and body rioting with savage poignancy as he rose and lifted her off her feet.
As she crushed her swollen, hard-tipped breasts against his chest, rubbed her firm belly against his steel erection, he wrenched back at her lips. “No more waiting, moya dusha, never again.”
He boosted her efforts to clamp her legs around his buttocks, fusing their lips as he flexed his hips until his erection nudged her entrance. He went blind with arousal as her hot, molten core scorched him, her face scrunching with extreme lust as she opened to him fully.
But as he began to ease himself inside her, she bit down hard on his lip. “I can’t bear slow or gentle. Give me all you have, all your strength and greed. Devastate me. Finish me.”
“Anastasia, moye serdtse...”
And she was his heart. He could have more easily withheld his next heartbeat than deny her what she needed. Holding her gaze, he thrust inside her, hard and fierce, invading her with the power they’d both been going mad for, stretching her beyond her limits. Her scream of agonized exultation tore through him as she consumed every inch of him in her clenching hunger.
At last, he thought, groaned, over and over. At last.
Incoherent with the pleasure, with the possession, but still needing more, he filled his savage mouth and hands with her flesh, needing to plunder all that she was, leave no fiber of her being unclaimed. Her body yielded to his invasion while he watched greedily as wonder, pleasure and relief splashed across her magnificent face, squeezed out of her in splintered cries.
He’d filled her depths with that first ferocious plunge. He dropped his forehead to hers, overwhelmed, transfigured.
“At last, moya dusha...”
Her graceful back was a deep arch, letting him do it all to her. “Yes, Ivan, yes... I missed you, went insane missing you. Give me everything now. Ivan, please, now...”
Obeying her, he withdrew all the way out of her, roaring at the loss before ramming back into her tightness, that sheath of absolute ecstasy and oblivion that he’d craved until he’d become a shell of a man.
She was everything. The perfect fit, the end of his exile. Every glide inside her, the reality of their merging, the unimaginable pleasure of it, sent him straight out of his mind.
Her whimpers were delirious as her slick flesh clamped around his length with a force he was only too familiar with. He had craved it to the point of insanity throughout the years, and far beyond in the past weeks.
But she was tightening even more around him, contracting in forceful waves, her cries sharpening, getting more desperate, and he knew. She was already orgasming. She wanted him that fiercely, was that aroused, it had taken only a couple of thrusts to drive her over the edge. He pushed her hard over it and into an explosive climax, wrung her voluptuous body of every last drop of sensation and satisfaction.
He built the momentum of his thrusts all through her orgasm, until he was jackhammering inside her, until her whole body stiffened around him again, inside and out, absorbing all the ecstasy he rode her to. Her breath came in tortured keens as she hovered once more right at the edge of devastation. Then she exploded again in his arms. Her flesh rippled around him as bursts of completion convulsed through her, wrung him from the deepest point where he buried himself inside her, her screams stifling.
He withstood her storm as she expended every shudder and tear. Then he finished her as she’d always craved him to, impaling her beyond her limits, lodging himself at the gates of her womb and letting his own pleasure scorch through his length, filling her.
Her convulsions spiked at the first splash of his seed, sending him spiraling out of control along with her in the throes of a release that was the most powerful he’d ever experienced, even with her.
Plummeting into a realm where nothing existed beyond being merged with her, he rocked them together as they rode the aftershocks. All he knew was that he was still pouring himself into her, feeling her enveloping him inside and out.
Anastasia. His again.
It had been everything, beyond description. Yet not enough. Nothing had ever been enough with her. He’d always wanted more, always would.
Unable to stand any longer, he sank down to the marble floor, barely aware of the water still raining down on them. Only she had ever made him powerless. Since he’d first seen her, she’d been his undoing. Now he wrapped himself around her, the woman who’d been made to take him whole, to fit within his arms and being.
He realized she’d gone limp in his arms only when she lurched, a gasp seeming to restart her breathing. Her eyes, slumberous and replete and adoring, snared him, ate him up whole, sending fire raging through him again. She was a goddess of temptation and benevolence and fulfillment, one he’d always felt unworthy of. It never ceased to humble him that she, miraculously, wanted no one but him. Gratitude and greed surged inside him, making him crush her against him as he drove all the way inside her again.
Her eyes squeezed shut as she gasped, her core contracting around his fully engorged erection, making him thrust deeper into her, wrenching moans from both of them. Her eyes snapped open, scorched him with the amalgam of pleasure and pain that intensified her one-of-a-kind beauty. She brought his face down to hers, merging their lips, too.
His mind was a total blank as his tongue mated with hers in a languid duel. Though he’d been kissing her almost nonstop through the past weeks, this was different. This was total, complete. Tasting her while holding back, he’d felt like Tantalus, unable to ever quench his thirst until he’d felt he’d shrivel up and expire. Drinking from her lips now that they were sharing their bodies in profound intimacy again was a revival. Even her name described what she was. A resurrection. His resurrection.
Soon the leisurely pleasure caught fire, and she was writhing in his arms as he pounded himself up inside her until they exploded simultaneously into an even fiercer, more prolonged orgasm.
An eternity later, he relinquished her mouth to gaze down at her. Her head fell back, her face drugged with satisfaction.
Then those lips he’d kissed swollen and deep red moved, and that beloved voice poured out in a hear
tbreakingly tender melody. “I want you again, Ivan. And again. I want to make up for all the time you wouldn’t let me have you.”
At her words he hardened again immediately. It was as if their previous two times served only to whet his appetite. As it always had. Whenever he’d taken her in a fury of haste, the explosive satisfaction had only left him wanting more, the kind of pleasure that only slow lovemaking would bring. And that had been when he’d been ignorant of one paramount fact. That no other woman would do.
Now that he knew every cell in his body was her personal property, no matter if she would have him or not, his desire frightened him with its magnitude.
But she did want him the same way. She wanted him with everything in her. For now. And for as long as he could have her total desire, he would give her his everything.
Adjusting her in his lap, over his erection, he began to move inside her again. He luxuriated in possessing her, in exploring her body and plumbing the depths of her responses as he loved her. He gave her two more screaming, heaving orgasms before he took his own roaring release.
After he’d rinsed and dried them both, he scooped her up and headed toward his bedroom this time, where he intended to keep her for as long as she would stay.
It was only when he was walking the huge corridor leading to his suite that she stirred in his arms, her question slurring. “Where are you taking me?”
He bent to kiss those swollen lips that could barely articulate words. “To my bed. Where I’ll take you properly.”
* * *
It sometimes seemed impossible.
Well, it always did, actually. That Ivan could give her even more pleasure every time he made love to her. But he did.
Ever since that day six weeks ago when he’d given in and given her himself totally, every time he took her, it was even better, more carnal, yet more profound. He’d been very eloquent and copious with expressing his passion. Far more poetic than this science nerd could ever be. He told her every time he touched her, it was like he tapped into another realm, where neither of them had limits, where the potential for pleasure and unity was infinite.
