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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.
Seven
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.
