he never would.
The fugue of drugging pleasure, of drowning reprieve, slowly lifted. Instead of a resurrection, the feel of him around her became suffocation, until she was struggling for breath.
He let her go at once, stumbled back across her threshold. “Izvinityeh... Forgive me.... I didn’t mean to...”
His apology choked as he ran both hands through hair that had grown down to the base of his neck. One of the changes that hadn’t registered at first that now cascaded into her awareness like dominos, each one knocking a memorized nuance of him, replacing it with his reality now.
He looked...haggard, a shadow of the formidably vital man he’d once been. And, if possible, she found him even more breathtaking for it. That harsh edge of...depletion made her want to crush against him until she assimilated him into her being....
God... Was she turning into her mother for real? Is this the pattern she’d establish now? He’d leave without a word, stay away through her most trying times then come back, and without a word of explanation, say he’d missed her and one soul-stealing kiss later, she’d breathlessly offer him said soul if only he’d take it?
No way. He’d submerged her mind because he’d taken her by surprise, just when he’d been dominating her thoughts. But this lapse wouldn’t be repeated.
Maksim was part of her past. And that was where she’d keep him.
Yet even with this resolution, she could only stare up at him as he brooded at her from his prodigious height, what was amplified now by his weight loss.
“Won’t you invite me in?”
His rough whisper lashed through her, made her breath leave her in a hiss. “No. And before you leave, I want to know how you made it up here in the first place. Did you con a tenant to let you in, or did you intimidate my concierge?”
He winced. No doubt at the shrill edge in her voice. “I won’t say these things are beyond me if I wanted something bad enough. And I certainly would have resorted to whatever would have gotten me up here. But in this case, I didn’t have to con or coerce anyone to get my way. I entered with your pass code.”
How did he know that?
She’d once thought it remarkable a man of his stature walked around without bodyguards and let her into his inner sanctum without any safeguards. She’d thought he’d trusted her that much.
But what if she’d been wrong about that, too? Had he just seemed trusting because his security measures were of such a caliber they’d been invisible to her senses?
It made sense his security machine dissected anyone with whom he came in contact, especially women with whom he became sexually intimate. Come to think of it, they probably collected evidence on his conquests to be used if they stepped out of line. He probably had a dossier on her every private detail down to the brand of deodorant she used. What if he...
“I once came here with you.”
His subdued statement aborted her feverish projections.
She stared up at him, unable to fathom the correlation.
“You inputted your pass code at the entrance.”
If anything, that explanation left her more stunned. “You mean you watched me as I entered it, and not only figured out the twelve-digit code, but memorized it? Till now?”
He nodded, impatient to leave this behind. “I remember everything about you. Everything, Caliope.”
With this emphasis, his gaze dropped to her lips, as if he was holding back from ravishing them with a resolve that was fast dwindling.
Her lips throbbed in response, her insides twitched...
He took a tight step, still not crossing the threshold. Which really surprised her. The Maksim she knew would have just overridden her, secure that he’d melt any resistance. Not that he’d ever met with that, or even the slightest hint of reluctance, from her. But that had been in another life.
“Invite me in, Caliope. I need to talk to you.”
“And I don’t want to talk to you,” she shot back, struggling not to let that...vulnerability in his demand affect her. “You’re a year too late. The time for talking was before you decided to leave without a word. I got over any need or willingness to talk to you nine months ago.”
His nod was difficult. “When Leonid was born.”
So he knew Leo’s name, though he used the Russian version of Leonidas. He probably also knew Leo’s weight and how many baby teeth he had. All part of that security dossier he must have on her.
“Your deduction is redundant. As is your presence here.”
His hands bunched and released, as if they itched. “I won’t say I deserve that you hear me out. But for months you did want to hear my explanation of my sudden departure. You wanted to so badly, you left me dozens of messages and as many emails.”
So he had ignored her, let her go mad worrying, as she’d surmised. “Since you remember everything, you must remember why I kept calling and emailing.”
“You wanted to know if I was okay.”
“And since I can see that you are...” She paused, looked him up and down in his long, dark coat. “Though maybe I can’t call what you are now okay. You look like a starving vampire who is trying to hypnotize his victim into letting him in so he can suck her dry. Or for a more mundane metaphor, you look as if you’ve developed a cocaine habit.”
She knew she was being cruel. But she couldn’t help it. He’d sprung back into her life after bitterness had swept away despondence and anger had cracked its floodgates. Feeling herself about to throw all her anguish to the wind and just drag him in after one kiss had brought the dam of resentment crashing down.
“I’ve been...ill.”
The reluctant way he said that, the way his eyes lowered and those thick, thick lashes touched his even more razor-sharp cheekbones made her heart overturn again in her chest.
What if he’d been ill all this time...?
No. She wasn’t doing what her mother had done with her father—making excuses for him until he destroyed her.
He raised his gaze to her. “Aren’t you even curious to know why I left? Why I’m back?”
Curious? Speculating on why he’d left had permanently eroded her sanity. Her brain was now expanding inside her head with the pressure of needing to know why he was back.
Out loud she said, “No, I’m not. I made a deal with you from day one, demanding only two things from you. Honesty and respect. But you weren’t honest about having had enough of me, and you would have shown someone you’d picked off the street more respect.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him but didn’t make any attempt to interrupt her.
It only brought back more of memories of her anguish, injected more harshness into her words. “You evaded me as you would a stalker, when you knew that if you’d
