by Olivia Gates
Anastasia sighed, stretched in bed, every cell buzzing with bliss as she watched Ivan through the open door of his gigantic bedroom, theirs now. He was coming into view then disappearing as he walked to and fro in the attached living room, his deep voice barely audible so as not to disturb her as he no doubt settled a business matter with a subordinate.
She’d never felt like this before, not even with him. Their rapport had been growing with every touch, every glance and word, as if the ordeals they’d endured together had somehow given each a direct link to the other’s very essence. Now they were learning to perfect each channel of communication between them, every spark of sensation. The most incredible thing was his becoming that vocal in expressing his feelings, in communicating his thoughts and memories.
Not that he’d ever crossed some lines. He hadn’t put a name to those feelings, or ever went back in time further than when he’d been establishing Black Castle Enterprises with his partners, whom she’d discovered were more than brothers to him. It had been okay with her, as she’d thought it was only a matter of time before he let her in all the way.
But that had proved the only blot in the perfection. That she by now believed he never would.
Suddenly, the bone-deep contentment of waking up in his bed evaporated. Getting up, she put on the turquoise silk robe he’d bought her, another thing that echoed her eyes, which he loved to see.
Walking to the balcony, she opened the blackout curtains, let the cool late November daylight in, looking over the sprawling, snow-covered grounds, trying to shake off the dip in her mood.
She was being too silly, too greedy, needing to reach as deep inside him as he had inside her. But she had to live with the fact that there was far more to him than there was to her. Or anyone else for that matter. What had made him this incomparable man that he was had to have been experiences and tests that she couldn’t even imagine. No doubt things he wanted to forget, might even regret. If he couldn’t let her in that far, probably thinking she couldn’t handle it, it shouldn’t bother her. That it did was her own problem, not his. A problem she should deal with, once and for all.
“Did I wake you up?”
She whirled around at Ivan’s vocal caress. She’d been engaged in such a struggle with her wayward thoughts that she hadn’t heard his approach. He was behind her, then around her, encompassing her in his cherishing power.
She met his heated smile with her own. “I just woke up because you were no longer beside me.”
“Now I am, and it’s the only place I ever want to be.” His breath flayed her lips, hot, virile, filling her lungs and being. “No one should wake up this beautiful. No one should be this beautiful, period.”
Starting to tremble with that urgency for him that never abated, she ground herself against his hardness. “Look who’s talking.”
He pressed her back against the French window, driving one pant-clad powerful thigh between her quivering legs where her robe opened to expose them. “Tell me, Anastasia.”
He always urged her to tell him everything she was thinking, everything she wanted. It was as if he needed access to her very soul, to her every whim and need so he could satisfy them. Which he did. Apart from that one huge part of himself he never let her near, he was giving her everything there was to give. While she held nothing back from him.
Now she gave him what he asked for, full capitulation. “I find everything about you painfully, distressingly, beautiful.” To accentuate her admission, she slipped her arms from around his neck, pushed his open shirt farther apart and covered the perfection of his chest in compulsive kisses. “Every inch of you, every move and word and touch, every callus and scar... It all delights me, drives me out of my mind, even more the more I’m exposed to you, the more I have of you.”
His gratification—especially when she mentioned calluses and scars, which must be trophies of that blacked-out time in his past—was so ferocious it burned her. Though it had always disturbed her to formulate theories how he’d acquired them, tracing them with her fingertips and lips, feeling them raking against her skin, had always sent her clear out of her mind with lust. She found them as arousing and beautiful, awe-inspiring as every other part of him.
He ran his fingertips down her arms, slowly, tantalizingly, until they reached her hands, and he untangled them from his shirt. Then giving her such a wicked glance, he turned away from her. She watched him sit down on the couch facing the balcony, amazed all over again how the fever of anticipation and urgency only increased with every sexual encounter. Her heart shook her as he sprawled back, spreading his great body for her to drool over.
Then he beckoned. “Show me, moya dusha.”
She called on all her self-control not to run to him but rather play the game of slow seduction he seemed to want. She undulated toward him, conscious of the robe slipping off one shoulder, exposing a generous swell of one engorged breast, and the effect that had on him. Black pupils ate up the emerald of his eyes, the rock hardness tenting his pants expanded, and the smoldering smile became purely predatory. Prolonging the moment and reveling in her ability to arouse him always and completely, she took her time to reach him.
But once her knees bumped his, she lost the fight. She collapsed over him under the weight of the seven years of unremitting craving she’d only started expending. Slowing her descent with shaking hands against his unyielding shoulders, she straddled his hips, her robe riding up her thighs. His eyes burned into hers with smug satisfaction until her lips crashed down on his.
He opened his mouth to her urgency, let her show him how much she needed everything he had. And she did. Her hands roamed his Herculean chest, his granite abdomen, until they reached his massive manhood, as she lowered herself to press her drenched core against it.
“I want you, Ivan. You just breathe, I just breathe, and I want you. All of you.” She reached for his belt buckle, eager to unsheathe the formidable length of him.
At her feverish moans he stopped her uncoordinated efforts. Sighing in ragged relief, she let him take the lead, luxuriated in his domination, what he’d so maddeningly made her work for.
His hands roved her curves, pushing the robe off her burning body, his every move loaded with the ruthlessness of a starving predator unleashed on a prey long kept out of reach. It didn’t matter that he’d spent the night feasting on her. Their fire consumed them only to rage higher.
His pupils flared and subsided, giving his eyes the illusion of flashing emerald. Then he bent to the breasts he was kneading, grazed and suckled her peaked nipples until he had her writhing, her breath fracturing, her arousal soaking his pants. After his devastating homage, he swept her around, spreading her naked on the couch. Opening her thighs wide, he took them over his shoulders as he came down on his knees between them. Before she could mutter a protest, he buried his lips in her flowing readiness. She shrieked at the feel of his tongue and teeth, opening herself fully to give him total access to her intimate flesh, what had always been his.
Then he nipped her bud, and the slam of pleasure told her that one more suckle or graze would finish her. And she didn’t want release this way, even if she knew he was addicted to giving it to her. She was addicted to him, to merging with him, feeling his potency invade her, fill her every emptiness and loss and need.
“Ivan,” she gasped. “I need you inside me.”
Growling, he heaved up, caught her plea in his savage mouth, sharing her taste on his tongue. In one fluid motion he rose, lifting her in his arms. But instead of taking her to their bed, he took only a few steps before he stopped abruptly, pressed her with her steaming back against the cool, smooth wall. Capturing her there with his massive body, he locked her feet around his buttocks, thrilling her again with his strength. Then he leaned back, freeing his erection.
As always, the potency she’d worshipped so many times, that had possessed
her during so many long, devastating rides to ecstasy, had her mouth watering, her core clenching. The intimidating weight and length of it thudded against her swollen flesh, squeezing another plea from her depths. He glided his incredible heat and hardness through her molten lips, sending a million arrows of pleasure to her womb. But he didn’t penetrate her until she cried out.
“Fill me.”
Only then did he ram inside her. Pleasure burst from every nerve ending at his carnal invasion. She was addicted to this, the first almost unbearable expansion as he stretched her beyond her limits around his length and girth. It was always a shock so acute, so exquisite, her senses flickered.
“Every single time, moye serdtse, you feel even better,” he growled. “Anastasia...if only I could devour you whole for real.” And it felt he tried to, his teeth sinking into her shoulder like a wolf tethering his mate in the throes of a feral copulation. Then he withdrew.
It felt as if he was dragging her life force out with him. Her arms tightened around his back, her hands clawed it, begging his return. He complied with a harder, deeper plunge until he forced her flesh to yield fully to him. Only when he’d breached her to her very core did he quicken his tempo. Every withdrawal was a maddening loss, every plunge excruciating ecstasy. In her heightened state she was aware of every sound and scent and sensation. Her cries that blended with her muttered name on his lips... The carnal sounds of their flesh slapping together... The musky scent of sex and abandon... The glide and burn of his hard flesh inside her. They all combined to rocket her to the point of combustion.
When she couldn’t bear it anymore, he gave her what she needed, as he always knew just when, how hard and fast. He hammered between her splayed thighs, his erection pounding inside her with the perfect cadence and force to unleash everything inside her. She shattered in his arms.
Sensations radiated from the pinpoint of insanity where he was buried deepest. Currents of release crashed through her, squeezing her intimate muscles around him, drawing out every jolt of pleasure from her every inch. She felt him everywhere, igniting her every nerve ending, invading her heart.
Knowing he’d inundated her with satisfaction, knowing she now needed his, and his total domination, he roared her name and exploded in his own climax. With one last plunge he filled her to overflowing, sharpening the throes of her release. She felt him pulse the last of his seed into her depths, completion imbuing her as she slumped over his chest...
A rumble beneath her ear jogged her back to consciousness. “Perfection, Anastasia. Every single time. And more.”
Feeling boneless, she tried to nod her spinning head in agreement as he carried her and started walking, still buried within her depths. Knowing he’d carry her to bed now, she drifted off again.
Jerking out of her sensual stupor as he laid her down, she twisted around sensuously in the cotton sheets imprinted with his scent and that of their intimacy, compensating her for his loss as he left her body to strip fully.
Coming back to her, he gave her his full weight, which she always begged him for after the storm, his heartbeat a slow thunder against her decelerating one, completing the spell.
She was drifting off when he rose off her, dragging a crisp sheet over her cooling, enervated body. She tried to rouse herself, and he spread soothing kisses over her brow.
“Sleep a while, moya dorogoya. I exhausted you and now I must refuel you.”
Knowing he’d get them breakfast, she sank back in his indulgence and the echoes of his scent and passion.
* * *
Ivan took his time preparing breakfast, to let Anastasia rest. He really shouldn’t have taken her twice in a row like that, after a night when he’d done it three times. His insatiable need for her frightened him at times. But at least it only seemed to delight her. She was always hungering for everything he could give her. And he gave her way too much at times.
He now walked back into their bedroom with a tray laden with everything she loved. His lips spread, remembering her accusing him of having a nefarious plot to fatten her up. He’d admitted he would enjoy having more of her to fill his arms, to fondle and squeeze and worship.
Not that he didn’t find her perfect no matter her weight. But it was such a relief that after weeks of escalating delight in each other’s company, her appetite had returned. She was also back to exercising and had never been more, as she’d said earlier of him, painfully, distressingly beautiful.
Placing the tray down on the bedside table, he luxuriated in watching her sleep off their latest lovemaking. Her lush body was tangled in sheets the color of her hair. Her thick lashes fanned her softly flushed cheeks, her lips swollen with his passion and her wild locks strewn over his pillow.
Suddenly, a white-hot spasm stabbed his gut as images of her bathed in her own blood and Alex’s tore into his mind. Seeing her that way now, the image of health and contentment, had emotions raging through him. Every violent emotion, sublime and searing collided inside him, buckling his knees. He sank down on the mattress, a shaking hand reaching out to touch her, to assure himself all over again that this was the reality, that he had her with him, safe and whole and happy.
Her eyes fluttered open, absolute welcome and joy filling them at once. He forced himself to breathe, struggling to banish the brutal images that assailed him regularly back into the deepest dungeon of his memory.
Stretching and yawning delightedly, she sat up, looking like a goddess of voluptuousness, her breasts full and firm, her waist nipped, her thighs long and sleek, her hair gleaming gold around her strong shoulders. His body roared all over again. He tamped it down as viciously. It was enough he’d been all over her the moment he’d found her awake, not even giving her a chance to freshen up or eat. He really had to do something about his perpetual arousal, the need to possess her as many times as she could withstand every single day. He shouldn’t unleash seven years’ worth of deprivation on her. Even if she was breathlessly willing.
But she was now getting on her hands and knees, slinking toward him like a mischievous cat, rubbing against him very much like one, before turning all human female, pressing her softness into his hardness, turning his arousal to distress.
Pushing him on his back, she lay on top of him, pressing her every hot inch to his. “It’s you I want to feast on.”
He gazed up at her, needing to tell her so much, yet still unable to, the unuttered confessions a constant burning coal in his throat. “I’ll be right here after you eat. I’ll always be there for you to take your fill of me.”
Next moment, her response made him like everything had come crashing down.
Wrapping one lock of the hair he’d grown longer as per her request, her smile inexorable seduction, she asked, “Always? Even when I go back home?”
Eight
Anastasia could no longer keep the knowledge from herself.
Not that she’d really kept it hidden. It was just she hadn’t given her all-encompassing, overwhelming emotions for Ivan a name, not since he’d come back. But it had been a constant in her life, even when she’d thought he’d left her forever.
She loved him. Had always and would always love him.
But though he behaved as if he loved her as passionately, as absolutely, and was profuse with extravagant actions and endearments, he never put his emotions into those words. So neither had she. And in spite of everything he’d done, everything they’d shared, she dreaded that he’d one day suddenly end it again.
And that wasn’t another attack of anxiety or paranoia. She had reason to think what she did. It had started that morning two weeks ago, when she’d introduced the subject of going home.
He hadn’t answered her, had done it smoothly, heaving up to engulf her in kisses and coddling, feeding her breakfast before making love to her again.
He’d expertly avoided the subject since, dive
rting the conversation each time she tried to take it there.
By now she knew if she left it up to him, she’d never go home.
Though he’d been struggling not to show it, he’d been on edge, anticipating that his evasive tactics would soon run out, and they’d have a confrontation. She feared that when that happened, this rarefied state they’d been living in would come to an end. And this time, he would let her go.
Just minutes ago, she’d reached critical mass. She couldn’t go one more hour without finally having this out.
Her footsteps faltered outside his office before she came into his view. He always left the door open, as if perpetually afraid she’d need him and he wouldn’t be aware of it at once.
She inhaled one last bolstering breath and walked in.
His eyes flashed that all-out welcome at her sight. He rose at once from his massive mahogany desk with the multiple computer screens at his back. But his eager steps slowed down when he saw her face clearly. She was sure she looked as tense as she felt.
The momentary slowing turned into urgent strides that had him catching her by her shoulders in an anxious grip in seconds. “What is it, moya dorogoya? You’re not feeling okay?”
Gripping his hands she tried to stem his anxiety, what could soar at the slightest provocation. “I’m fine, really. Don’t start worrying. I just...wanted to talk to you.”
His face emptied. But in the blankness she could see one important fact. He knew what she was going to talk about. And if he could have done anything to stop her, he would have. But she’d cornered him this time, and he could do nothing to escape the subject. And he hated it.
It made her almost back down. How she hated to force this confrontation, too. But it had to come, sooner or later. And now she knew it would, she could no longer postpone it and live in this progressively debilitating suspense.
