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“Well, I have had X-rated dreams of a tall, handsome stranger with long, black hair. I’m starting to believe they were memories of us.”
His gaze locked with hers. “I pray to all that is good in the universe that you never remember anything else about that time.” Especially how she’d suffered. “Only us. Only our love.”
He swept his hands across her cheeks, loving the velvet feel of her skin, then he bent his head and she met his lips halfway. His tongue ravaged the sweetness of her mouth with urgent passion.
She pulled away. “Zurvan, what are you hiding from me? Tell me. What happened to Yana?”
He sighed, knowing he had no right to keep it from her. It was her past, after all. But he would give her no details.
“I told you Atia sent you… Yana to a faraway land. The people there found her so beautiful and exotic they enslaved her. She served many masters.”
“Male masters?”
“Yes.”
The stricken look in her eyes told him she understood the implications. At the thought of those men touching her, sullying her with their sexual acts, acid anger must burn through her veins.
“So I became a love slave, too,” she murmured.
“I’m sure Atia loved the irony. She tortured me with a deceptive act of kindness by giving me a crystal ball that would show me Yana whenever I looked into it.”
He had longed to see her sweet face and gazed into the sphere often, but so many times he would see a man using her body for pleasure, and Yana cry out, not in pleasure, but in despair.
He dragged her against his chest, holding her tightly in his arms.
“Every time I saw a man with you, I died inside. I could do nothing to save you. Finally, I smashed the crystal, unable to endure it any longer.”
He drew back and stared into her eyes, seeking her forgiveness.
“At that moment, I truly felt I had abandoned you. Please forgive me.”
“Zurvan.” She stroked his cheek, her eyes large and luminous. “You couldn’t help it. There was nothing you could do. Don’t torture yourself with guilt.”
He kissed her and held her against him, the aching pain dissipating a little at her words. His sweet, understanding Celeste.
“There is one more thing. Atia made you believe I betrayed you.”
“How could I… could Yana ever believe that?”
“Atia told you I had been amused by my affair with a mortal, but that I had tired of you. She also told you I was the one who exiled you.” He held her tightly. “You died believing I had betrayed and abandoned you.”
She snuggled against him. “Somehow I don’t think I would ever have believed that. But if I did, I know better now.”
“Of course you believed it. Don’t you see? That’s why you have been so afraid of love in this lifetime.”
“No. I didn’t believe in love because of my parents. They never seemed capable of loving, or being loved. And my father, he left when I was six years old—"
“Celeste, everything that happens in a mortal’s life is because it reflects what they believe. You believed that love meant pain and abandonment, so you chose to be born to a family where that is true. And that’s my fault. I am the cause of your pain. I may not have been able to stop Atia, but if I had left you alone, if I had never interfered in your life, you might have had a chance at happiness.”
She looked straight at him. “No, Zurvan. You are my soul mate. Neither of us ever had a choice. We are meant to be together.”
“But for how long? Don’t you realize that we have only two more days together? Then we will be parted again. For eternity.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, Zurvan. I believe I have a solution.”
Zurvan stared at her, astonished. “A solution? How is that possible?”
She rested her fingertips on his cheek, her tender touch and the glittering, golden sparks in her lapis blue eyes reminding him of a special moonlit night centuries ago when she, as Yana, first declared her love for him. He’d known at that moment that no matter what happened, he would love her always.
