brain registered nothing until she saw him sitting in his car outside her family home, like a predator lying in wait. He got out as soon as she neared, looking like a god descended to earth with the setting sun behind him. Even from a distance she felt the tension radiating from him. It swamped her as she drove past him into the garage, as he opened her door and helped her out.
Her throat tightening, her heart hammering, she invited him into the house. Every nerve fired with his nearness, with the intensity blasting from him.
Needing air, she led him all the way out back to her favorite part of her mother’s garden—the gazebo. It was where she’d sat alone countless times with her laptop or a book, where her mind had always ended up dwelling on the man she’d loved and lost. She turned to him now.
He towered over her, his eyes that hypnotic green she’d always drowned in, his expression singeing her blood with its heat. And she just couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t let him say goodbye. Not yet.
Not before she said what she’d called him to say.
“Anastasia—”
“I could have died, Ivan.” Her quavering words cut off what he’d begun to say. “But I didn’t. Because you saved me. Now I need one more thing from you.”
He took a step closer, tight, barely leashed power in the move. Power she felt could move mountains, as he’d done for her and Alex. “Anything, Anastasia. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to show me that I didn’t just survive, Ivan. I need you to prove to me that I’m still alive.”
His eyes flared with such a blaze of emotions, she almost needed to shield her eyes. “Anastasia...”
This time he said her name as if it hurt, the inflection filled with seething hesitation. And she knew he wouldn’t make a move. Either because he couldn’t credit what she’d asked him for, or because he was taking it upon himself to protect her from any recklessness in her weakened, needy state.
But she couldn’t take no for an answer. This was the one thing she needed. The last thing she’d have of him.
He’d nurtured her back to physical health, but she now needed a salve for her emotions, a reviving dose of passion from the only man she’d ever been intimate with.
Her move ate up the distance between them as a trembling hand rose to his face. The moment she cupped his rugged jaw and felt his strength fill her palm, overflow into her being it was like the years apart evaporated. Nothing remained inside her but longing, and it had taken only this contact to break the dam and have it all come pouring out.
“I need this, Ivan,” she whispered. “I need you.”
His flesh buzzed beneath her hand, electrifying her. “How could you? I left you—”
“It doesn’t matter what you did or why you did it. The past is gone. Alex is gone.” She stifled a sob that threatened to tear through her. “But I’m still here. And it’s terrible, Ivan. Terrible to be alone, to know I’ll always be alone because I’ll never be able to share what happened, what changed me forever, with another person for the rest of my life.”
“Bozhe moi, Anastasia.”
He’d only ever spoken Russian when he’d lost his hold on his rigid control in the throes of passion and pleasure. But now different emotions compromised his control, eliciting his tormented “My God.”
Her hand trembled around his neck, her fingers plunging into his luxurious mane. “But I share it with you, Ivan. It’s only because you know everything, that you’ve lived it with me that I’m able to go on. And I want to share more with you, what might bring me back to life. The past is gone—”
“The past may be gone, but there’s tomorrow—”
A finger on his lips stopped his protest, her tear-soaked voice breaking. “There’s only now. And you said you’d do anything. That’s the only thing I need. The one thing I’ll ever ask of you.”
His chest expanded, as if bracing under an insupportable burden. Not only wasn’t he unfeeling, as she’d once thought, she now realized he probably felt too much, had to close himself off, to protect himself, and maybe the whole world from the power of his emotions. She’d seen him when a measure of these emotions—the violent, vengeful ones—had been let loose. He’d been lethal. She no longer doubted that he’d wreaked far more destruction in his life, that what she’d witnessed had only been the tip of the iceberg. And now she was chipping away at the barrier that restrained his devastating potential, and it was about to crack.
Not that it worried her. She wanted him to demolish her with all the ferocity of his fervor. He’d only ever hurt her when he’d deprived her of it.
“You need this, too, Ivan. You lost him, too.” His flinch was proof that Alex’s loss did hurt him. Her hand twisted in his hair in answering agony. “I need to share his loss with you, the one who knows, the one strong enough to live with it. And I’m the only one you can share it with, the one who understands, who’s been part of it all.”
The torment that blazed on his face solidified her belief.
He mourned Alex, almost as deeply as she did.
“Anastasia, you don’t know what it takes for me to be like this.” Like this? In control? Holding back? “You don’t know what you’re risking.”
“I have nothing more to risk, Ivan.”
His head tilted back against her hand, a growl rumbling deep in his chest, as if there was a trapped, starving beast there. He was resisting because he feared he’d hurt her.
She had to make him believe he wouldn’t, had to make him stop holding back. Her other hand slipped around his neck, coaxing his face down to hers. “The only injury I could have sustained was letting you go without being with you one more time.”
She lowered her arms to hug all she could of him, a breath she’d been holding for seven long years flowing out of her in tortured relief. Until he stiffened in her embrace as if she’d electrocuted him.
Oh, God. This could mean she’d gotten it all wrong. That he didn’t need comfort, at least not from her. That when he’d said he’d give her anything she needed, he hadn’t thought it would be him—the one thing he hadn’t offered.
Before she could withdraw in mortification, his formidable body surrendered to her hold. He still didn’t embrace her, but he gave her license to hug him. So she did. Hug him and hug him. His sighs were the very sound of agonized enjoyment. They reverberated deep in her marrow as he rested his forehead on hers, swaying with her to the erratic cadence of their heartbeats.
Then suddenly he was pushing away. Before letdown burned her to ashes, she was swept up in his arms. Where she’d despaired of ever being again.
Forgetting to breathe as he strode inside the house, she savored the weightlessness, the powerlessness, the soaring he always made her feel when he carried her like this.
His effortless steps paused halfway up the stairs to the upper floor and he looked down at her, his eyes probing hers. “This is what you want?”
Instead
