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So, I kissed Aleksey back, letting the pent-up emotion come through with each stroke of my tongue. This was where we belonged. Just the two of us, two people who couldn’t get enough of each other.
This was where the dream remained, and for a little while at least, I could live in that dream.
Aleksey kissed me thoroughly and completely, until I had to pull back to draw in a shaky breath.
“Do you believe me now?” he whispered as I struggled to gulp in air. “Tell me, Elia.”
I stared into his eyes, a thousand reasons why I should climb out of this bed floating about in my head. My heart tugged at how he waited patiently for me to answer, as if I held everything in the palm of my hand.
There was no reason for me to say the words. All he had to do was look in my eyes and know that I believed him. Now and forever.
I felt like I would do anything for him, and that terrified me more than anything I had ever faced.
What if I lost myself in him, only to learn that he’d been lying this entire time?
What if there was more to his story? More to this arrangement than he was letting on?
It was that worry nibbling at the back of my mind that made me hold my silence. I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. I was still so confused about what I had learned today. I couldn’t think anymore. I didn’twantto think anymore. All I wanted was for him to keep kissing me, to kiss me so hard that I might just forget it all.
A shadow passed over his eyes briefly before he dipped his head back to me. His hands felt warm against my skin as our lips touched. Slowly he reignited the fire inside me, the very one that he’d had absolute control over since our paths crossed. And as much as I wanted to deny it, Aleksey could get me to do whatever he wished in the sanctity of our bedroom.
That should be all that mattered between us. We shouldn’t allow others to dictate the terms of our marriage. Yet we lived in a world where dictating was the one thing that others around us did best.
And as he deepened the kiss, hands slowly moving down my body, I didn’t know if either of us could survive this.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Aleksey
I kissed Elia softly, roaming my lips over hers with an aching tenderness that I didn’t know I had in me. Her hands threaded through my hair, and I teased her lips until she opened them to give me better access, sliding my tongue inside the inviting recesses of her mouth. Kissing Elia was better than any drug.
Elia made a sound deep in her throat when my hands gripped her hips, lowering my body against hers so she could feel what she did to me. It was always like this around her, that need to own and possess her. I knew she wanted this as much as I did.
And I felt the pull in the moment. I wanted her to tell me that I was the one in control. I wanted to be the one she gasped for, the one she looked at and chose every single time.
When I told her that I could never bring myself to hate her, I was telling the truth. I tried. God knows I tried. But each time, she found a way to push through that. From the moment I nearly kissed her after those two thugs tried to have their way with her to this moment now.
Maybe Elia was always supposed to be right here, underneath me, without the interference of our families. Maybe we would always have come together like this.
She broke the kiss, panting.
“You’re wearing too many clothes.” I pressed my lips to her forehead before I rolled off her and to the other side of the bed. “Take them off.”
Elia, panting, didn’t move. “Do you think you can boss me around right now?”
I let out a low growl, staying in my spot. “If you want me to ease that wet ache between your legs, Elia, you will do as I say.”
I heard her sharp intake of breath before I felt her rise from the bed. My heart was hammering in my ears, every fiber in my being wanting to take her against the wall, anywhere to soothe my own ache deep inside.
I didn’t think I could want her any more than I did right now.
“What do I get…” Her delicate fingers toyed with the strap of her tank top. “If I take my clothes off?”
Relieved to hear the coyness in her voice, I reached down and gripped myself. “This. You get this.”
Her cheeks flushed as her eyes followed my hand and when her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip, I groaned inwardly.
“That’s an offeralmostworth considering.”
