warning, she tugged his hand. She hadn’t even intended to do that. Surprise made him jerk forward the step that separated them, ending up pressed against her from breast to calf. Her hand released his, went to his head, sifting through the silky locks, bringing it down to hers, pressing her longing against his forehead with lips that shook on a litany of pleas.
His groan sounded as if it tore through all his vitals to rasp on his lips. “I can’t, Anastasia. I can’t.”
Holding back tears, she let him go gradually, only so she wouldn’t sag to the ground. “As you wish, Ivan. Like you said I have a right not to tell you anything I didn’t want to, it goes the same way for you.”
Turning on her heel, she walked back into the warm room, felt him following her, closing the balcony door behind him. She heard his breathing leveling out and she knew what would come next. He’d take her back in his arms, start to arouse her, worship her, give her everything he thought she needed, but the one thing she truly did. Himself.
And she couldn’t take it anymore.
She was healed, was her old self again. Or maybe even a new self. One that couldn’t drift in this realm of coddling and contradictory behavior and withheld explanations anymore. One that needed answers. Direction. Solid ground, whatever it was, to stand on.
The moment his hands landed on her shoulders, she whirled away. “I’m sorry I pushed, Ivan. But I don’t need you to put me to bed. I can handle that on my own. I can handle giving myself pleasure, too. I’ve been doing it for years without you, after all. You also seem fine being without me, in the past and now.”
His huffed laugh was vicious, bitter, as if he’d never heard anything so ironic.
But it no longer mattered what he felt, that he’d never wanted anyone but her. Not if he didn’t act on it. And it was time to make him choose a path.
“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.
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