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He reached for her again. He had to stop this, end it. “Don’t be silly!”
She evaded him. “What happens if I don’t fit into your life? If you find out that what you feel for me is a combination of your personal despondency and the traumatic circumstances? The heightened emotions, the sharpened desires…”
“Would your feelings change if you lived away from danger? Would you love me less, need me less?”
She shook her head, bent to pick her backpack.
He caught her back in trembling arms. “Then don’t live with me! I’d planned it this way, originally. Those thirty-four days I stayed away? I went back to the States and arranged everything. I liquidated my assets and donated everything before I started wandering. But I had long-shot investments, shares in obscure projects that have become household names in the last four years. I sold my shares and put the money in the bank in your name. It’s a lot. I left instructions with my attorney to come for you after I’d left, to take you home and do everything for you. The only difference now is that I will stay in your life, in any sort of arrangement that works for you.”
“Until you tell me it’s over? Or will I tell you? When I find me some healthy American and hook up with him?”
The very idea. His damned imagination. It was beyond agony. He squeezed his eyes, his arms convulsing around her. “Don’t.”
She squirmed against him, her voice thickening, drowning in anguish and tears. “Don’t what, Dante? Don’t show you how preposterous your proposition is?”
He buried his face in her neck, shook with the enormity of it all. “Gulnar—Gulnar—I can’t let you suffer ever again. Never on my account.”
She turned her face into his, scalding him with her tears, the rawness of her voice, of her torment. “Strange way you have of doing that, by slashing me to pieces.”
“And you’re doing the same to me, insisting on remaining here!” he choked.
“Just another
way of showing you how it feels to be stymied by a totally moronic piece of roundabout, destructive logic.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes, I mean!” She struggled out of his arms, turned on him, her eyes blazing. “I was teaching you a lesson. Making my point. I can only give you up if you don’t want me. But you do, and I’ll do anything—put up with anything—to fit in your world, to keep on deserving your love. I don’t care if I will be an outcast or whatever. I’ll be with you and I’ll do whatever is needed to remain with you. And whatever it is I have to do, it will be an honor and a privilege. And a pleasure. Not deserving you, losing your love and not fitting into your life are my fears, and that’s what I intend to do about them to be with you. I’ve long conquered my fear of losing your love. What will you do about your fears? How far will you go, how much will you endure to be with me?”
She reached for him, contained him in the only home he’d ever known, ever wanted. “I’ve loved a man who’d lost both his legs to the hip joint and there was only gratitude—happiness that he’d survived, that I was granted that extra time with him. There was no shadow of anguish or sacrifice then. Yes, beautiful, gentle Evraim. I left the refugee camp, I mourned and built my walls only when he died. Him, I loved. You’re my life, and beyond. So let what we have ward off everything, fear and doubt and illness. Let me be yours, for better or for worse.”
He pulled back, looked down at her and saw conviction to conquer fate, love to change destiny in her determined, streaming eyes. He knew then. He’d be with her to his dying day. And that day wasn’t coming any time soon. He’d make sure of it.
He bent and scooped her up. He placed her on the bed, loomed over her. He spread her arms, threaded their fingers and their gazes. “You want to know how far I’ll go? What I’ll endure? I’ll go as far as ninety and I’ll endure everything I’ve endured times a thousand. And I’ll be the happiest man in creation, doing it all. If you’ll take me, let me be yours, for better or for worse.”
She suddenly grabbed him, brought him on top of her, sank her lips in his. “I’ll take you, my heart, any way at all. Now, show me some better…”
His surprised chuckle erupted at her sudden change from super-charged emotion to all-out seduction. Her clothes dissolved in his hands. Then as he joined them, took them both home, he groaned to her, “I’ll show you better—and better. Cry out when I’m doing it right…”
She cried out all night.
