his fingers and she could feel a shudder pass through him as surely as if it had passed through her own body. After this, after tonight, they would be tied to one another. Forever. Years from now, when her condition grew worse and she could no longer dance or even walk, she would remember this night. She would remember that she had once been cherished and adored. And when she closed her eyes and came back to this bed in her dreams, the face she would see in those stolen moments would be Artem’s.
He might forget her someday. He probably would. There would be other women in his life, other mistresses. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe that making love to her would change anything for him.
But it would change everything for her. It already had. He already had.
“Oh, kitten...” He hissed, and his fists tightened their grip on her hair.
She looked at up him. She wanted to etch this moment in memory. To somehow make it permanent.
He pulled her back up to her knees on the bed and rested his forehead against hers. “I need to be inside you,” he whispered.
A knot lodged in her throat. Unable to speak, barely able to breathe, she nodded. Yes, yes please.
Then he was on top of her, covering her with the heat of his perfectly hard, perfectly male body. He stroked her face and kissed her closed eyelids as his arousal nudged at her center.
Ophelia had expected passion. She’d expected frenzy. And Artem had given her those things in spades. But this unexpected tenderness was more than she could bear. Then he groaned as he pushed inside, and she realized exactly how unprepared she’d been for the dangers of making love to Artem Drake.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
Remember.
Remember.
Remember.
Then with a mighty thrust, he pushed the rest of the way inside and Ophelia knew there would be no forgetting.
How could she ever forget the way the muscular planes of his beautiful body felt beneath her fingertips, or the glimmer of pleasured pain in his dark eyes, or the catch in her throat when at last he entered her? And the fullness, the exquisite fullness. She felt complete. Whole. Healed.
She knew it didn’t make sense, and yet somehow it did. With Artem moving inside her, everything made sense. Because in that moment of sweet euphoria, nothing else mattered. Not her past, not her future, not even her disease. Nothing and no one else existed. Just she and Artem.
Which was the sort of thing someone in love would think.
But she wasn’t in love with him. She couldn’t be in love. With anyone. Least of all Artem Drake.
This was lust. This was desire. It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. Could it?
No. Please no. No, no, no.
“Yes,” Artem groaned, gazing down at her with an intensity that made her heart feel like it was ripping in half. Two pieces. Before and after.
“Yes,” she whispered in return, and she felt herself nodding as she undulated beneath him, even as she told herself it wasn’t true.
You don’t love him. You can’t.
She could feel Artem’s heartbeat crashing against hers. She was free-falling again, lost in sensation and liquid pleasure. Her breath grew quicker and quicker still. She looked into his eyes, yearning, searching, and found they held the answers to all the questions she’d ever had. Somewhere behind him, snow whirled in dreamlike motion as he reached between their joined bodies to stroke her.
“Die with me, Ophelia,” he whispered.
La petite mort.
Die with me.
With those final words, she perished once again and fell alongside Artem Drake into beautiful oblivion.
Artem slept like the dead.
Hours later, he woke to find Ophelia’s shapely legs entwined with his and the pink ballet shoes still on her feet. Moonlight streamed through the windows, casting her porcelain skin in a luminescent glow. He felt as though he had a South Sea pearl resting in his arms.
What in the world had happened? He’d done the one thing he’d vowed he wouldn’t do.
He wound a lock of Ophelia’s hair around his fingers and watched the snow cast dancing shadows over her bare body. God, she was beautiful. Artem had seen a lot of beauty in his life—dazzling diamonds, precious gemstones from every corner of the earth. But nothing he’d ever experienced compared to holding Ophelia in his arms. She was infinitely more beautiful than the diamonds that still decorated her swan-like neck. Thinking about it made his chest ache in a way that would have probably worried him if he allowed himself to think about it too much.
There would be time for thinking later. Later, when he had to sit across a desk from her at Drake Diamonds and not reach for her. Later, when all eyes were on the two of them and he’d have to pretend he hadn’t been inside her. Later, when he walked into his office and saw the portrait of his father.
He wasn’t Geoffrey Drake. Artem may have crossed a line, but that didn’t make him his father. He refused to let himself believe such a thing. Especially not now, with Ophelia’s golden mane spilled over his pillow and her heart beating softly against his.
He let his gaze travel the length of her body, taking its fill. Arousal pulsed through him. Fast and hard. What had gotten into him? She’d reduced him to a randy teenager. Insatiable.
He should let her rest awhile. And should remove the pointe shoes from her feet so she could walk come morning.
He slipped out of bed, trying not to wake her, and gingerly took one of her feet in his hands. He untied the ribbon from around her ankle, and the pink satin slipped like water through his fingers. As gently as he could, he slid the shoe off her foot. She let out a soft sigh, but within seconds her beautiful breasts once again rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of sleep.
Artem cradled the pointe shoe in his hands for a moment, marveling at how something so lovely and delicate in appearance could support a woman standing on the tips of her toes. He closed his eyes and remembered Ophelia moving and turning across his living room. Poetry in motion.
He opened his eyes, set her shoe down on the bedside table and went to work removing the other one. It slipped off as quietly and easily as the first.
As he turned to place it beside its mate he caught a glimpse of something inside. Script that looked oddly like handwriting. He took a closer look, folding back the edges of pink satin to expose the shoe’s inner arch.
Sure enough, someone had written something there.
Giselle, June 1. Ophelia Baronova’s final performance.
Artem grew very still.
Ophelia Baronova?
Ophelia.
