Page 98 of Lethal Obsession

I walk around the piano until I’m standing right in front of her. Raising her from the stool, I gently lift her onto the piano. Then I lift her arms up and hold them with one hand over her head.

“Here.” My finger traces the faint, barely visible silver line my knife made in the hollow beneath one arm. “And here.” I find the matching scar and trace it, my eyes never leaving hers. “These were the first time I cut you.”

I’m unable to soften the roughness in my voice. “I remember making them like it was yesterday. I know every place my knife marked your body. I remember the fear in your eyes when you first saw the blade, and the terror in Masha’s, even though we told her it was all just a game.”

I lower her arms and place my hands on her thighs. Gently, holding her eyes, I part her knees.

She shivers, a tremor I feel in every nerve.

“But there are other things I remember, too.”

Ofelia goes very still, her eyes locked on mine.

“Like the day I made these marks with my knife.” My thumbs trace the silver lines in the crease of each thigh. “The ones right here. I remember that day because it was the first time—the only time—that I nearly lost myself in that cell. Not because of what Vilnus was forcing me to do; I’d learned, long ago, to dull myself to that.

“I nearly lost myself because of you, Ofelia. Because when I looked down at you that day, I couldn’t take myself out of that room. I couldn’t disassociate myself from your body underneath my own.” I grimace with disgust. “Not because I got some kind of sick thrill from what he was forcing me to do to you,” I say roughly. “Not that, Ofelia. It was never that. What I mean is—”

But that’s just the problem. I don’t know how to say what I mean in any way that makes sense. Not even to myself.

“I know.”

I don’t know how I expected her to react, but this—her quiet, steady voice—isn’t it.

“You know?” I frown, staring at her. “What do you mean, you know? I tortured you, Ofelia. Sliced your flesh with my knife and fucking exposed you to a roomful of watching men. I did that to you. Me. And now I’m trying to tell you that some fucked-up part of me actually wanted you—”

I shake my head, rubbing a hand over my face. “You can’t know,” I say dully. “And I don’t know that I can ever forgive myself for it.”

I steel myself to meet her eyes again. “But I had to tell you.” I force myself to get the words out. “Because after what you just played, I understand how it’s been. What you must have thought all these years. But it wasn’t that I didn’t want you, Ofelia.”

I take a deep breath.

“It was that I wanted you too fucking much.”

Her hand touches my face, her long fingers caressing the crisscrossed scars marking it.

“Do you think I didn’t know that?” Her lips curl in the secret smile that I never quite know how to read. “That’s why I was so lonely, Alexei.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. “It wasn’t just me who was tortured in that room. I knew what it did to you, having to use your blade on me. It killed me that you wouldn’t talk to me about it. Or to anyone else. Because I knew you didn’t. And I knew why you didn’t.”

She brings her other hand up, cupping my face, forcing me to look at her.

“Do you think I didn’t feel it too, that day? That I didn’t see it in your face, the moment it changed between us?”

Her head goes back and she draws a deep, shuddering breath. “Do you know how many times I’ve replayed those moments in my mind, wondering if I really saw what I did, or of it was just some kind of childish fantasy? Or that I’ve thought there must be something fucking wrong with me, for getting turned on by what you were doing to me?”

I can barely breathe, acutely aware of her every word and touch.

“Only it wasn’t just sexual, Alexei.” Her voice shakes. “It was something else. Something I didn’t even know how to make sense of—”

I take her mouth, ending the words before she can finish them.

“It was this,” I murmur against her mouth. “That’s what you felt. It was never a lie, Ofelia.”

“And just because that was the way we met,” she says fiercely, “doesn’t make this wrong. Tell me you understand that, Alexei.”

But instead of answering, I kiss her, deep and hard, until we’re both gasping and words no longer matter.

Because deep inside, I know that no words can ever truly remove the scars that bind us both to the past.

“Boss.”