LITMIR.BIZ

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they’d come here, ending with her sated yet more frustrated than ever, and with this conversation aborted. Or resist the compulsion of his lure and her lust, and insist on getting answers. Once and for all.

      She rose to her elbows, making him unfold to his full height. She almost swooned back again at the sight of him looming over her, oh so visibly aroused and crackling with hunger.

      It was experience saying it would go nowhere that made her sit up. He kneeled in front of her, opening her legs and pressing between them. She knew that position by heart by now. According to him he’d become addicted to her taste. And at the first sign of weakening, he’d have her naked and in the throes of one orgasm after another. Like most nights he’d tire her out with too much pleasure. And then she’d wake up to find herself alone.

      Not tonight. She pushed back against him when he tried to prostrate her in front of him. “Can you? Stop? I was just thinking that it has developed into some sort of obsession.”

      “No, it hasn’t.” He leaned back, so tall that even on his knees his eyes were level with hers, combed the luxurious ebony silk that had fallen over his forehead back in a self-deprecating move. “Developed, I mean. It has always been one.”

      “Why? Why did you do it? Why did you watch us all these years?”

      Solemnity came into his eyes again, making them even more compelling. “Because I needed to make sure you were okay.”

      “And when you realized I wasn’t, as evidenced by the fact that I couldn’t move on, why didn’t you do something about it? Wasn’t that the whole point of watching me?”

      His lips twisted on what looked like self-contempt. “I should have done something about it.”

      She fought the urge to catch those lips that had owned her every inch and pleasured her beyond coherence. “But you didn’t. Want to tell me what stopped you?”

      He lowered his eyes, escaping her beseeching ones. “Whatever it was, I should have found another way to be with you. It’s yet another thing I will never forgive myself for.”

      Knowing she’d get no answer from him on this point, she tried another tack. “You only came back when our lives were at stake, so it’s clear you wouldn’t have come for anything less. So why didn’t you move on?”

      With each question he looked as if he would have preferred if she tore off his nails instead. But there was something else with this one. It was as if he’d never actually put the reason into words, even to himself.

      Then he finally raised his eyes, and what she saw there almost knocked her flat on her back. “Because as long as you didn’t find someone else, I considered that you were still with me.”

      A tremor started in her deepest recesses, one of searing, incredulous hope. “So if I’d moved on, you would have, too?”

      “I very much doubt I would have. I had no way of finding out before I was with you, but I’ve since discovered that I’m monogamous.”

      He was monogamous. There’d be only one woman for him. Her.

      This was too huge. Too...everything.

      Unable to hold back anymore, she surged forward, hugged all she could of him in trembling arms. “You must be part wolf as I always suspected.”

      He kissed the top of her head, then dragged his lips against her hair, down her forehead, her cheeks. “It’s very likely.” He pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, and she saw the feral danger simmering in them. “But if you had moved on, I would have come back just to take that other man apart.”

      Delight swirled inside her at his possessiveness. “Now that’s not wolf-like. That’s pure dog-in-the-manger.”

      “I know. That sounds really messed up.” His eyes sobered, making her almost cry out in dismay. She’d meant it teasingly. But it was clear he was ready with self-recriminations. Taking her arms off him in utmost care, he stood up. “It is messed up. I am.”

      Every nerve firing in alarm at the turn this conversation had suddenly taken, she scrambled up. “Is this what you really believe?”

      He squeezed his nape in a punishing grip. “It’s a fact.”

      She swept a hand across his chest, almost afraid he’d push it away. He didn’t. Instead, he leaned into her touch as if he couldn’t help himself, letting out a tortured groan.

      Breath hitching with emotion, she unlocked his viselike hold on his neck and caressed it. “And does this fact have something to do with why you left, why you stayed away?”

      “It does.” An expression she’d never seen before, a tortured, defeated one, came into his eyes. “I thought you were better off not being anywhere near me.”

      She reached up and pressed a kiss on his stiffened lips, needing to absorb his distress. “And it didn’t occur to you to let me have a say in what I thought was better for me?”

      He growled in self-disgust and stepped away from her. “Just look what you did after I left you. You should have hated me, should have gotten over me. You didn’t. We both know if I’d given you a choice, you would have wanted to be with me even if it destroyed you.”

      “You almost did anyway when you not only left me, but left me so suddenly and without an explanation.”

      His teeth made a grinding sound that made her wince, his eyes blazing like a cornered wolf’s. “I wanted it to hurt, so you’d forget me. When I realized I hurt you too much for you to ever venture into another relationship, I took solace in the fact that you were at least safe and successful. And I told myself that you might still find someone.”

      Taking the opportunity to infuse a measure of lightness into the mood, she teased, “The someone you would have come back to take apart.”

      His eyes squeezed shut. “I already admitted I’m messed up.”

      She reached up to cup his face. “Well, I’m messed up, too, now, in case this is what’s still stopping you.”

      “You’re nothing like me, moya dusha.” His hands covered hers over his face, his eyes full of so much emotions, it was dizzying. “You have no idea what I am.”

      “I got a pretty good idea since you came back.” The shake of his head told her what she’d always suspected, that whatever she’d extrapolated, no matter how extravagant, wasn’t even close. She caught his face again, pleading with everything inside her. “Then don’t keep me in the dark any longer, Ivan. Don’t push me away anymore. Tell me.”

      His eyes flared with such fierceness it made her gasp. Then he shook his head again, turned on his heel and headed for the balcony. And though it was already freezing out there, he threw the shutters open, as if he was escaping a fire.

      Grabbing a thermal shawl off the back of the brocade couch by the balcony, Anastasia wrapped it around her shoulders and stepped out after him.

      It was a crisp, clear night, the moon a waxing gibbous. The air was still, making the cold bearable. She watched him as he fisted his hands on the marble balustrade and tipped his head back as if he was gasping for breath.

      He looked like a knight of old, silvered by the moon, carved from the night, invincible, incomparable, yet weary from battle. As if to accentuate his reaction to her approach, the wind gusted suddenly. His body stiffened more as she neared him, as if it was cast in bronze, the only animate things about him his satin mane rioting around his leonine head and his clothes rustling around his imposing frame.

      “Ivan, please.”

      He turned as the wind died down and the moonlight deposited glimmers in the emerald of his eyes. Stepping closer, mesmerized by his magnificence, she reached for one of the hands that had saved her, took it to her lips.

      His growled protest and attempt to withdraw his hand made her cling to it, cover it in kisses. “Besides everything you’ve done

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