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It’s the price you pay for loving someone that deeply.
It’s a price I swore to myself that I would never pay.
“Ruslan?” Her voice pierces through a dozen different thoughts raging around inside my head. Those beautiful aqua eyes are deep with emotion. Emotion she’s carrying for both of us now. Her loss as well as mine.
I want her.
I want her more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman in my life.
And while that terrifies me, it terrifies me less than letting her go. Because now that I’ve had a taste of Emma—her beauty, her playfulness, her compassion, her vulnerability—I know that I want to be the one to take care of her. I want to be the one to give her what she needs. I want to be her savior and her protector.
It’s a heady feeling. Strange and unfamiliar. I’ve never wanted to beresponsiblefor someone like this before.
Is this what Fyodor felt when he first met Mama?
“Hey.” Emma cups my face and pulls herself into the circle of my arms. “Come back to me.”
I focus on her face—that delicate button nose, the swell of her cheeks, those luscious lips—and I feel a sense of calm that I haven’t felt since before Leonid died. That was the last time I was blanketed in any kind of comfort, any sense of security.
And since the lines are blurring slowly, I decide to make them clear.
This is not love.
It can’t be.
“What happened to my father… I never want to lose myself that way, Emma. I can’t afford to.”
She gulps. “I understand.”
I’m not so sure she does, so I hold her a little tighter and continue. “I can’t give myself to you completely. Whatever this is between us—you will only get parts.”
I’m aware of how selfish the offer is. It’s wholly one-sided. And yet she doesn’t scowl or scoff. She runs her fingers along my jaw, her eyes trailing along after them.
“I’ll take any piece of you I can get, Ruslan.”
When she kisses me, my entire body curls around her. The water is cold but our bodies heat it right back up. She’s the one who straddles me, grinding herself right against my cock. It takes only seconds before I’m hard and desperate to bury myself inside her.
I’m not sure that’s what she wants, though. At least not until her hand curls around my length and squeezes gently. I raise her hips and pull her down on it. She whimpers, her back arching away from me so that I have a full view of her gorgeous breasts. I knead them while she rides me slowly, waves lapping at her thighs. The sex is slow today. It’s considerate and passionate, each moment punctuated by everything we’ve just shared with each other. All the little parts of ourselves we have allowed the other to see.
I kiss her breasts, her neck, her lips. I run my hands over her slick body, losing myself in her beauty, and when we come, we come together.
We’ve had sex so many different times, in so many different ways. But this time stands out. This time feels different.
Everythingfeels different.
54
EMMA
“Josh?
The apartment is eerily quiet.
“Rae? Caro?”
Amelia had a last-minute emergency come up so she couldn’t be here today for the evening shift. I’d called Ben while I was at work and begged him to take care of the kids.Sober.I stressed on that stipulation until he told me to “stop fucking nagging.”
Once he agreed, I spent the remaining two hours of my workday sweating through my green blouse.
