CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’M NOT RUNNING now, am I?” Clair challenged behind him, barreling through the door on his heels.
Aleksy halted, teeth clenching as he searched for patience. Did she not realize his control was hanging by a thread? Without turning back to her, he guessed harshly, “Because you don’t know where to go? Call Lazlo. He’ll arrange a car and hotel.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Aleksy Dmitriev!”
Funny, he was terrified of her. Setting down the bottle and glass with deliberation, he turned and said, “You should be.”
“Why? Are you going to hurt me? Kill me?”
He jerked his face to the side, blind to all but splashes of color in his field of vision while he dealt with the sense of being rent open. No, he could never harm her, but he couldn’t have her poking heedlessly into his old wounds either.
“Back off, Clair.”
“You’re not a monster, Aleksy,” she said more gently. “You’re generous and compassionate and honorable.”
“What are you trying to do? Make it okay in your head that you ever let me touch you? I took a virgin for a mistress. I bought you clothes and gave you money for your charity because I wanted to have sex with you.”
Her breath caught as if she’d taken a stiletto to the lung. “That’s not true,” she gasped. “It wasn’t just sex. Was it?”
He mentally stripped her fleece vest, insulating V-neck and loose jeans, imagining her naked skin catching the glow off the fire, her nipples pulled into dark, shiny points by his mouth, her thighs relaxing open under his hand. “Very good sex,” he ground out, dying because he’d never have her like that again.
“Then why are you trying to take a bottle to bed instead of me?” she goaded, angry hurt pouring a wild flush into her cheeks. She had the gall to charge close enough to stand toe to toe with him, breath chocolate-sweet and as innocent-smelling as the rest of her. “You could be sugarcoating your past and trying to seduce me right now. You know you don’t have to try very hard, so why don’t you?”
His skin tightened and her upper arms were in his flexing hands before he could stop himself. Her slender muscles always shot a warning through him. Take care. The protective instinct couldn’t be overridden even when he was feeling so threatened he wanted to shake the daylights out of her.
“Don’t think I won’t give it a shot,” he growled. “I’m not in a frame of mind to stop either.”
She only dared him with a tiny hitch of her chin.
He searched for vestiges of fear in her expression but wound up homing in on her lips. A tiny shudder quaked through her as temptation crackled in the air.
The weight of his head weakened his neck. “Stop me,” he ordered dimly, speaking against the damp, ripe plum of her mouth.
He almost had her. She almost said it. He felt her begin to shape the word, sensed her tongue tucking behind her teeth. If she’d said no, for any reason, he would have made himself stop.
Her eyes fluttered closed and she pressed her open mouth to his.
She smelled of snow and chocolate and vodka, sweet and hot. And he was hurting. His deepest shame was never meant to be on display like this. He felt flayed to pieces by today’s revelations. By her reaction. But when he drew her into him, the pain subsided. The tattered edges of his soul came together and began to mend.
She moaned softly, igniting him. With one step, he had her back against the wall, her neck and the curve of her hip filling his hands, her delicate softness cushioning all his hard angles. Her fingers wove into his hair, pulling him into a kiss he couldn’t have ended if the house had fallen down around them. Her tongue stroked his, her throat straining as she reached for the same oblivion he was in. With a growl, he fumbled the fly of her jeans, pushing them down, lifting her as she kicked free and bracing her against the wall so she could lace her legs around him. He needed to be inside her. Needed her.
As he tried to free himself, her fists clenched in his hair, pulling his scalp tight as she dragged him back from the kiss enough to gasp, “Condom?”
It wasn’t no, but it made him hesitate. He distantly put together that he was about to risk a pregnancy. He couldn’t put a baby in her. Him, with his tainted soul.
The deepest agony filled him as he carefully pushed her legs off him and supported her until she stood. Confusion broke through her flush of arousal. “What’s wrong?”
“Leave me alone, Clair.” He walked outside where the gathering darkness, frozen and harsh, matched what was inside him.
* * *
His rejection devastated her, but, Clair realized, she’d hurt him first.
The knowledge stunned her, hovering like a dark cloud as she took a long bath and tried to sleep. She’d always been the one hurt, always taking it to heart when she was overlooked or misjudged or found wanting. To her knowledge she’d never delivered anything but mild disappointment when she declined a date. The fact that she’d penetrated Aleksy’s hard shell was as shocking to her as how deeply she’d stabbed him behind it.