Claiming His Own. Olivia Gates

glowing—your belly was rounding more by the day, and you were stroking it lovingly as you approached me. What I felt at that moment, it was so ferocious, I was scared out of my wits. I’d put bullies twice your size in traction...or worse. I couldn’t risk having my passions swerve into a different direction.”

      Needles pricked behind her eyes, threatening to dissolve down her cheeks at any moment. “You hid it well.”

      His eyes widened in dismay. “I didn’t have to hide anything. I never felt anything anywhere near aggressive around you. But the mere possibility of losing control of my passion carried a price that was impossible to contemplate.”

      He never said emotion. Did he use passion interchangeably, or was everything he felt rooted in the physical?

      “You have to believe me. You don’t have to look back and feel sick thinking you’d been in danger and oblivious of it.”

      She shook her head, needing to arrest his alarm. “I meant you hid that increasing passion. I never sensed that you felt a different level from what you had always showed me.”

      His nod was heavy. “That I hid. And the more I tried not to show you what I felt, the more it...roiled inside me. And if I felt like this when you were still carrying my child, I couldn’t risk testing how I’d feel after you had him.”

      He must have been living a nightmare, worrying he’d relive what had happened with his father, reenact it.

      A vice clamped her throat. “Abusers don’t fear for their victims’ well-being, Maksim. They blame them for provoking them, make themselves out to be the wronged ones, the ones pushed beyond their endurance. They certainly don’t live in dread of what they might do. You’re nothing like your father.”