Chapter 99: Chapter Forty-Four

Alice

I didn’t realize I was shaking until Andrei pulled, what else, but a black fur blanket over my body and kissed me on the side of the mouth. “Stay.”

Like I could even move after that.

My heart was in my throat.

My body was sore.

He’d called me Dorogaya since he first knew me, since he even used my number instead of my name. What did that mean?

I heard water turn on in the bathroom, and then he was back, completely naked still, looking every inch the perfect fallen angel with his rock-hard body, still hard… I averted my eyes.

Mine.

He was mine.

He very gently pulled the fur back and ran a soft hot cloth up my thighs. I moaned in pleasure as he pressed it between them then swiped down the other side.

“Careful,” he whispered. “You’re not ready, but I feel like I could stay between your legs all night… don’t encourage me…”

I felt myself melt a bit at his adoring gaze, his eyes focused only on me, his hands on me, his concern for me.

I wanted to cry and laugh all at the same time.

I reached for his hand and grabbed it tight. “What were you saying? In Russian… during…” I licked my lips and didn’t finish my sentence.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he said seriously, his eyebrows knitting together like he was both concentrating and amused at my expense. “Which part?”

I glowered.

Earning a laugh before he got up, tossed the cloth somewhere, and joined me back in bed. Even the way the bed dipped under his weight had me sighing and wanting, wanting more of him, to touch him.

I turned on my side and rested my head on his chest, threw my right leg over his body trapping him like a maniac, and pressed my palm against his chest. “I’m so glad it was you and only you.”

He seemed to hold his breath and then exhale it in a shudder. “Me too.”

“Andrei?”

“Yeah?” He wrapped my hair around his fingertips and lifted it to his lips like he wanted a part of it too, like it wasn’t just my body but every part of me that he needed.

“I love you.”

He went completely still.

I didn’t need to hear him say it back.

And I knew in that moment, I would do anything, anything to one day be able to say that Andrei Petrov gave me not just his body, but his heart too. His soul.

“I can’t—” He started and stopped. “Alice, you have all of me, and I care for you more than anything in this godforsaken world. You mean more to me than—”

“Stop.” I pressed a kiss to his chin. “I didn’t expect you to say it back. I just wanted you to know how I feel, how I will always feel about you.”

I saw it then, the shift in his gaze like he was hiding something, like things weren’t as okay as he’d told me they were.

“Andrei?”

I will never forget the minute—the second—he went from being vulnerable to the man I’d met before, the one with the masks and the faces.

And all I kept thinking was don’t. Don’t give in. Stay with me, Dear God, please stay with me.

But this was Andrei.

He didn’t.

He left.

It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen, watching Andrei Petrov look at me with an empty smile and whisper, “Let me make you food and we can talk about this later.”

I had given him everything I had.

And he was dismissing me.

Dismissing us.

The mattress moved, just enough for me to pay attention as I glanced down at our feet and noticed his tapping against an invisible surface.

And all I could think about was one word.

Lie.