Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
The reminder of our time apart has me pumping into her harder. I fuck her like a madman, each thrust skidding Ana’s knees across the table more and more.
I eventually have to remove my fingers from her mouth to tangle them with her hair again. It is the only way I can tether her clenching cunt to my cock.
The change gives her even more inches and pushes her deeper into the throes I want to deny until she promises never to run again, but then I realize that isn’t us.
When Ana runs, I chase her.
It is the way we operate.
“I wanted to chase you. I went to Italy. I just…” My words fall short when she peers back at me in shock. Her mouth is hanging open, and her eyes are filled with more than lust. Tears are there too. “It was a fucking war zone.”
I want her to know I was protecting her, but it does the opposite. “So you picked them again?”
“No, драгоценный. It wasn’t about them.” When she tries to pull back, I yank her back onto my cock with a cruel tug on her hair. “It was about you. It was stopping you from facing what I’ve faced the past four years.” For the first time in years, I am honest. “And it was for her. I couldn’t leave her.” When nothing but bewilderment hardens her features, I explain, “I took her.” The remembrance of that day softens my cock enough for it to slip out of Ana. It is for the best. I want her facing me when I admit to what I did. “I couldn’t leave her there. She deserved to be buried. To be acknowledged.” Salty blobs gloss her cheeks when I mutter, “So I took her.”
Shock is the first expression Anastasia exposes.
It is quickly chased by anger.
Pure rage.
“You fucking ass!” She whacks into me as if all her energy wasn’t depleted while fucking. “She wasn’t yours to take!” She beats into me another three times, her whacks growing in momentum the more often they occur. “She wasn’t yours. She was mine.”
“Ours, Ana! She was ours.”
She pushes me away from her with everything she has. “You didn’t give birth to her.” She gathers up her clothing as if they’re not torn. “You weren’t even there for her birth.”
When I issue her the same excuse I always give, she looks like she’d give anything to hurt me as much as she was hurt that day four years ago. “I came as soon as I could.”
“But it was too late, Alekander. She was already dead.”
With her hurt too high to register she’s barely dressed—and mine too perverse to react—she races for the front door of the apartment.
And I let her go.
8
ANASTASIA
When the creak of the laundry door opening filters into the room, I brush away the salty blobs on my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt, then instinctively peer up at the person entering.
It isn’t Alek, but the memories his worried expression floods my head with, it may as well be.
Yev had seen me at my worst, both as I went into premature labor and after my daughter was born still.
“When Alek called, I thought I might find you here.” He gallops down the stairs that have been replaced since I tumbled down them before slotting his backside next to mine. “Why are you down here, Ana? This shit hurts me to remember, so I don’t understand why you’d put yourself through it.”
Angrily, I remove another tear tracking down my cheek before shrugging. “It smells better than the ER.”
He chuckles, but his heart isn’t in it. It is the fake laugh he uses when women throw themselves at him and he wants to let them down gently.
After a beat, he mutters, “You still haven’t told him this is where it started, have you?”
Disheartened, I drop my chin onto my chest before shaking my head. “Then I’d have to take some of the blame.”
“What happened wasn’t anyone’s fault, Ana. You slipped. It was an accident.”
“That could have been avoided if I had listened to Alek.” I drag the sleeve of the sweater Yev curls over my shuddering shoulders under my eyes. “He didn’t want me to come down here, but the sheets were dirty, and they were my favorite set, so I...” I clamp my mouth shut when my last few words come out as a sob. “Maybe he knew. Maybe that’s why he didn’t come.”
“Or maybe no one has the full story.” When I shoot him a riled expression, he mimics my shrug while smiling. “He wanted to give you the world, so I don’t understand how it could change so easily.”
He pffts me when I murmur, “He got bored.”
“Please. I could hear you from my ground floor apartment. He wasn’t bored.”
My cheeks only inflame a smidge. I’m too angry to be embarrassed. “Then why was he with her, Yev? You saw him, yet you still won’t believe what you saw.”