by Olivia Gates
She’d thought she was now prepared for anything he’d say, would hold it together no matter what he threw at her. But this confession made her collapse back on the couch in a nerveless heap.
His expression blipping momentarily at her reaction, he went on. “Even if you’d said no, I’d have waited until you one day wanted me enough or trusted me enough, if that was the issue, to change your mind. But before I could, the accident happened. Then you came to me.
“I’d just been told my legs were beyond salvaging. I also had a spinal injury, and they thought I’d suffer severe erectile dysfunction or even total impotence.”
Falling deeper into shock, every second brought her more proof the past two years had been built on misconceptions and ignorance. She’d known nothing of the life-uprooting blows he’d suffered, and he had chosen to suffer alone.
Oh, God, Leonid.
“I was agonized I’d never be a competitive athlete again, would at best rehabilitate enough to walk with a minimum of pain. But what devastated me most was knowing I’d never be the man you’d wanted so fiercely, and had taken such pleasure in.”
Before she could cry out that she would want him whatever happened, his next words made her see how he would have never believed it, how he’d convinced himself of the opposite.
“But I knew you were noble, and if you knew, even when it repulsed and horrified you, you wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t have you stay with me out of pity. I couldn’t saddle you with an impotent cripple. I would have been worse than useless to you, a constant source of unhappiness. I knew even if I was selfish and terrified enough that I clung to you, I’d lose you anyway, when the reality of my situation drove you away in disgust or crushed you in despair.
“I decided to drive you away, without letting you even doubt my prognosis, thought it better to do it at once, rather than in a slow and far more mutilating ordeal. But I didn’t expect you to make it that hard. You forced me to push you away as viciously as it took for you to leave me, to save yourself.
“Just as I thought I succeeded in setting you free, you told me you were pregnant. I asked if you’d keep the baby, vaguely wishing your pregnancy wouldn’t continue somehow, or that you’d maybe consider giving the baby up for adoption, so you’d sever every tie you had to me, so you could restart your life unburdened again.”
This. This was it. What she’d gone insane for, the explanation for his sudden cruelty and coldness, what she’d felt had to exist, but had to accept didn’t, to her deepening heartache. But it existed. It explained everything and rewrote history. He’d forced himself to hurt her, fearing he’d destroy her if he didn’t. He’d loved her so much, he couldn’t let her share the bleak fate he’d thought awaited him.
His gaze swept downward, as if he was looking into his darkest days. “The next months were a worse hell than even I’d imagined they would be. The least of it was the anxiety over my impending physical losses. The memory of hurting you became more suffocating as time went by. My sanity became more compromised as I lived in dread that what I’d hoped for you, that you’d move on, would come to pass, and then feeling even worse when it didn’t, when you had Eva and Zoya and confined your whole life to them.
“After many setbacks, they managed to save one of my legs, if in the condition you saw. My spinal injury healed without any neurological deficit, and they hoped I wouldn’t be impotent. Not that I could test that. All I could do was struggle to heal, physically and psychologically, and cope with my new, severe limitations. And all that time, I watched you and the twins obsessively from afar as you went through everything I should have been there for, alone.
“Then I was back on my feet, real and prosthetic, just in time for Zorya to call me to duty. And though I never dreamed of having anything with you again, I was no longer going to let anything keep me from being there for you, and from serving the family you gave me, the family I never had, and my country.
“But the moment I saw you again, I knew. My potency was more than intact, and the separation and suffering had only left me perpetually, ferociously starving for you. Yet I had to stay away. You deserve better than the disfigured wreck I am now. I...I would have rather had my remaining leg cut off than let you see me this way, and see that look of horror in your eyes. But your anguish and confusion cornered me into showing you. Now you can at least understand, if not forgive, everything I did.”
He fell silent, breathing strident, eyes reddened, face clenched as if with fighting against unbearable pain.
She stared at him, paralyzed.
The enormity of what he’d suffered and lost overwhelmed her. And through it all, he’d selflessly, if mistakenly, thought only of her needs, and not his own.
But his last words had been the worst. Along with his irrevocable losses, his self-worth had been shattered.
The tears finally came, pouring out of her very soul as if under pressure.
Grimacing as if she’d stabbed him, he groaned. “Bozhe moy, Kassandra, I can’t bear your pain, or your pity.”
“Pity? Pity?”
Finding nothing that could express her outrage at how totally he’d misconstrued her reaction, she charged him, knocking him back on the couch and climbing all over him, trembling hands groping every inch of him, real and replacement. Inert with shock, he lay beneath her as she smothered him in hugs and kisses and drowned him in tears.
“How dare you... How dare you think anything you suffered could have burdened me or put me off? How could you make that decision for me, deprive me of being there for you through your ordeal? Didn’t you realize I would have given anything to be with you at all, let alone in your darkest time? Didn’t you realize that whatever you lost only makes every inch of you even more precious to me? If I could give you a limb to restore yours, I wouldn’t think twice.”
Looking dazed by her fervor, this last bit made him shudder. “Don’t say that, Bozhe moy, Kassandra, don’t...”
“I’ll say it because it’s true. Because I love you. You are the only man I loved or would ever love.”
He looked even more flabbergasted. “How can you love me after what I put you through, no matter the reasons?”
She grabbed his face, forced him to look at her, as if to drive her conviction into his mind. “I now know I must have always felt what’s in your heart, never believed what you said in mine. It was what agonized me most, that what I felt and what I thought I knew were such opposites. Your reasons would have been more than enough to forgive you if you’d done much worse that just pushed me away, and thinking it was for my own good.”
His breathing, which usually never quickened due to his supreme fitness, came in rapid, ragged wheezes beneath her burning chest. “Kassandra, you don’t know what you’re saying, you’re shocked by what you saw and heard, feeling sorry for me...”
“Oh, my beloved Leo, I do feel sorry, but not only for you, for me, for us. I am crushed with regret, because I wasn’t there for you through it all, because you deprived me of you, throwing us both in hell apart. I feel as if my heart is splintering because you deprived yourself of me and my love and support, of our daughters, missed out on having them bless your life and heal your heart during your darkest time, as they would have even before they were born. But I’m not letting you deprive us of each other anymore. Marry me, Leonid, my love, my only love, for real and forever.”
His eyes had been reddening more with her every word. But with her last words, his face contorted and air rushed into his chest, as if he’d been drowning and was drawing a lifesaving breath after breaking the surface.
His eyes glittered, but not with the tears she rained over his face. With what she’d thought she’d never see. His tears.
“Don’t decide anything now, take time to think, wait...”
Her trembling lips silenced his working ones. “You’ve been making me wait since I fi
rst laid eyes on you. Before you let us be together, while we were together, since you pushed me away and since you came back. And I can’t wait anymore. I won’t, ever again. I will never waste another moment waiting or worrying or doing anything but loving you and being with you.”
And his tears flowed. His body shook beneath hers as she cried out, moved beyond endurance, sobs rocking her.
Straining over him, as if she wanted to slip beneath his skin, to hide him under hers, she moaned into his gasping lips, “Stop thinking, stop assuming what’s best for me. You are what’s best for me. You are everything I ever wanted for myself. Will you give me everything I want? Will you give me yourself?”
His tears flowing faster, his body beneath hers easing toward impending surrender, he said, “But I’m not the man you once loved anymore...”
She pulled back, let him see himself in her eyes, willing everything she felt for him to restore his faith in himself. “You’re not. You’re better. Far better. Your ordeals have tempered you into the purest, strongest, best form of yourself. I loved the man you were, but when forced to, I could live without him. I can’t live without the man you are now.”
“It was the inferno of yearning for you.” She gazed in confusion down at him and he elaborated. “What tempered me.”
“Then, say yes, Leonid. Marry me, be with me, love me and never leave me alone again.”
Tears froze in his eyes as his gaze deepened, as if trying to probe her soul, filling with so much vulnerability, disbelief and hesitation she felt she’d burst with it all.
Slowly, conviction seeped in, followed by dawning elation. Then it was as if he was letting her see into his soul for the first time, and all she saw there was...love.
God, so much love. Adoration.
“Kassandra, moya lyubov, my love, if you’ll have me, if you’ll let me love you for the rest of my life...yes. Yes to anything and everything you want or will ever want.”
Flinging herself at him with all her strength, she bombarded him with tear-drenched kisses, reiterating her supplication. “You. You’re all I ever wanted or will ever want.”
“And you are everything,” he pledged as he surrendered to her fervor, his voice as deep as the sea, and as turbulent with fathoms-deep emotion, mirroring what his eyes detailed. “From the moment I first saw you, I was always yours. Even when I believed you’d never be mine again, I remained yours. I would have remained yours forever.”
Suddenly everything inside her exploded into a devastating blaze of lust. After this beyond-belief declaration, she felt she’d crumble if he didn’t merge them in every way, right now, hard and long and completely.
Shuddering with need, she scrambled off him, tugging him up with her. He followed her silently as she stumbled to bed, stood watching her as she flung herself onto it, searing her with his hunger.
“Love me, Leonid.” Her voice was a husky tremolo that fractured with the desperation of her passion. “Now that I know you love me, show me.”
Groaning, he came down over her, filled her arms, his hands trembling all over her, as if afraid she wasn’t real. Her hands shook in turn over his stubble-covered jawline, up the chiseled planes of his divine face until they dipped into his raven-hued hair. Pulling him closer, her desperate lips clamped over his, her tongue restlessly searching their seam. A pained rumble escaped him as his tongue lashed out to snare hers, duel with it. His rumbles deepened, filling her, shaking her apart; his hands owned her every inch, setting it ablaze. Reaching her buttocks, he squeezed hard, as if trying to bring himself under control.
Needing him to unleash everything inside him, devastate her with it, her thighs fell apart for him, begging his invasion. “Since you took me again, needing you has become agony. Please, do everything to me again.”
Groaning, he nodded, snatching her clothes off her burning body. But as she undid his pants, tried to push them down, his teeth clenched, like his hands over hers.
“Don’t. I don’t want you to see me like that.”
She freed her hands from his convulsive grip, grabbed his face, needing him to believe her once and for all. “I already saw you, and it did horrify me, but only to realize the extent of your injury, what you lost, what you’re suffering. But for me, the scars and prosthesis are now part of you, and I love and crave all of you. I’ll forever feel thankful whenever I look at them and see a reminder that I still have you, that fate didn’t take you from me and granted me the miracle of being able to love you and share our daughters and everything I am with you.”
Groaning as if in searing pain, he buried kisses in her palms mixed with tears and a litany of her name and lyublyu tebya. It was the first time he’d said it. I love you.
She drowned him with her reciprocation.
Getting rid of her last shred of clothes, he freed himself and brought her to his daunting hardness. Shaking with the need to impale herself on it, she threw herself over his chest, pushing his jacket off, teeth undoing his shirt, needing his flesh on hers. But he stopped her again.
“Let me pleasure you like that. I did on the jet, didn’t I?”
He meant without exposing himself, at all. He didn’t want her to see any part of him, probably was concealing other scars.
He was teetering on the edge of control between her thighs, everything about him promising her the explosive pleasure he’d given her before. She only had to say yes and his hot, throbbing girth and length would slam inside her, in that rough, frenzied tempo that had made her orgasm around him repeatedly on the jet before he’d made her come one last time as he’d climaxed deep inside her.
But... “I want you to love me this time. With all of you. I want to make love to all of you.”
He held her gaze for one last second before capitulating.
Laying her back on the bed, he rose on his knees, started to take off his clothes. She whimpered as each button, each shrug revealed more to her starving eyes.
She’d been wrong. He hadn’t just been upgraded; he’d metamorphosed. This was what the next step of evolution had to look like. And there were more scars, crisscrossing his chest, running down his arms and abdomen, interrupting the dark, silky patterns adorning his magnificence. And to her, they looked like arcane patterns, bestowed by destiny, marking him as chosen for glory and uniqueness, and were as beautiful and arousing as everything else about him.
Surging up, she traced the scars with worshiping hands and lips, making him shudder harder with every touch and nip. Delighted to discover they were even more sensitive than the rest of him, would amplify his pleasure, she got bolder.
“Kassandra, you’re driving me past insanity.”
“Just like you do to me. Stop tormenting me and let me see all of you. Now, Leonid.”
Naked from the waist up, eyes averted, he stood up and exposed the rest, his movements so reluctant it squeezed her heart with anguish. He hated doing this, was sick with self-consciousness, still unable to believe she wouldn’t cringe at his physical damage and deficit. It would have been easier to let him hide from her. But she couldn’t. It would only become a barrier.
She was done letting anything come between them.
She lay back, spread herself, gaze devouring him. “Look at me, my love. See how much more arousing I find you now. Every inch of you is stamped with maturity and power, more than ever. The marks of your suffering tell me incredible stories of endurance and persistence. They’re like brands of triumph and they only make you more unique to me. Give me everything you are, my darling Leonid.”
Exhaling raggedly, he nodded, growled something ferocious at the sight of her spread in surrender before him. Coming down on the bed, he prowled over her like a ravenous tiger, fully exposed, dauntingly engorged. His hands sought her secrets, her triggers. He took her mouth in a rough kiss before he withdrew, his eyes flaring and subsiding like blue inferno
s.
“Every single inch of you, every word you say, every breath and look—you are an aphrodisiac I could dilute and dispense to the world and cure all sexual dysfunction. Had I suffered from any, you would have cured me.”
Unable to hold back anymore, she writhed beneath him, twisted over him. Realizing what she wanted, he reversed their positions, spread himself for her, letting her have his mind-blowing potency where she craved it, in her watering mouth. He let her do everything she wanted to him, explore him with darting tongue and trembling hands, growling his enjoyment of her homage.
“Own me, moya dorogaya, take what’s always been yours.”
Unable to bear the joy of knowing it had been the same for him, that it had to be her and only her, she took it all, roaming his leg, his prosthesis, his potency, all of him.
She wanted to ask him to take his prosthesis off, let her touch what remained of his leg without barriers. But he’d already crossed too many lines to accommodate her need. That had to wait until he had no lingering doubts of how she’d react, or discomforts in exposing the rest of his vulnerabilities to her.
She was lapping his arousal, more rushes of molten agony flooding her core as she wondered how she would accommodate that much demand, when his hands on her shoulders stopped her. She cried out in frustration, only to find herself on her back again. She held out her arms, hurrying him, hands flailing over whatever she could reach of him. Chuckling his gratification at her urgency, he drowned her in a luxurious, tongue-mating embrace, before he suddenly started extricating himself from her clinging limbs. She whimpered, tried to drag him back, but he restrained her hands.
“Patience. This time, I’m doing this right.”
She tried to drag him back with her legs. “You did it right the first time and every time. Just do it again.”