Christine Rimmer - Married By Christmas - His Pregnant Christmas Bride / Carter Bravo's Christmas Bride

* * *

Ivan’s heart felt it might race itself to a standstill.

Anastasia wanted him. She’d been craving him from that first night. But tonight, with everything coming to a head, they’d come to an impasse. And her hunger was killing him.

All he wanted anymore was to snatch her up into his arms and plunder her like she’d been begging him to for the past ten weeks of torture.

But he hadn’t taken her because he’d brought her here for her, not for him. Because he didn’t want to make it any harder for her to walk away once she was fully healed, if that was what she felt was better for her. He knew he’d only drown her with him, like he had in the past. He’d been assuring that she had a way back, a way out.

Now she was giving him a choice.

Either take me or let me go.

He should let her go. She was healed. As much as she could be without the passage of time. There would always be echoes, throughout her life, moments when she choked up, when she was thrown back in time and into the middle of the ordeal. But her PTSD had been controlled, and she was as stable and strong as he’d hoped to get her. He should let her go so she could continue the part of getting better that only returning to her normal life, away from him and the rarefied environment he’d created for her, could achieve.

He must let her go. Even if her eyes pleaded with him not to. He had to draw on his reserves of strength, what he’d expended to keep away from her all these years, what had miraculously kept him from plundering her every time she breathed near him in the past weeks.

But he had no more strength. It had been long depleted. He’d been running on fumes, on prayers, on the sheer tendrils of sanity he had left. That was all he had to prevent him from dragging her deeper in with him, into his fathomless abyss of a soul, into the inescapable grasp of his passion.

But she wanted him to.

She had no idea what she was inviting.

But she didn’t seem to care.

If he took her now, and then she changed her mind, could he let her go? Could he walk away again?

Did he even know how anymore?

As the debate raged in his tortured mind, her eyes squeezed tight, her whole face crumpling on despondence as she turned away, heading to the en suite bathroom.

He watched her walking away, one slow step after the other, as if she feared she’d shatter if she moved too fast.

He, too, was afraid to move, lest he let out the maelstrom raging inside him. Then he heard the shower running.

The images bombarded him. Of her stepping under the pummeling water, eyes closed and lips open, her silky, golden hair streaming down her back to her perfect buttocks, her healed, lush body gleaming, the water kissing it everywhere...

He wanted to stampede in there, feast on her, wrench pleasure from her depths, make her weep with satisfaction again.

But he knew she’d never succumb to his pleasuring again. She’d let the hunger gnaw her hollow before she did. For she didn’t need release, she needed his possession, his dominance. She needed to lose herself in his passion, and sate herself with his invasion.

He felt the last tethers of his control snapping. They lashed about inside him, catapulting him after her.

She wanted him. She got him.

God help them both.

Seven

Ivan walked into the bathroom and his heart almost burst.

Anastasia was in the large shower stall, her back to him, leaning her forehead on the marble wall, as if the steaming jet beating down on her was almost too much for her to withstand. Without seeing her face, he knew she was weeping.

She hadn’t wept in weeks now. She’d even started to talk about Alex without her eyes filling, without choking on the misery and finality of his loss. And he’d managed to take her back to that terrible place of vulnerability, where she felt so anguished and helpless. But he hadn’t been able to tell her what he felt would only burden her more. Knowing his past would have been just one more scar for her to sustain.

But that wasn’t the only reason. He had to be honest with himself. He feared she’d be horrified, repulsed, if she found out the truth about him.

His slow approach toward her suddenly stopped at a slam of realization. That this could have been the real reason he hadn’t confronted her before he’d left her in the past. Maybe he’d dreaded if she’d known, she would feel relieved to be rid of such a monster, would have tried her best to forget him, to replace him.

Dog-in-the-manger, as she’d said.

He was more messed up than he had realized.

But even knowing so, there was nothing he could do about it now. Even if he overcame his own aversion to exposing the ugliness and madness in his past, telling her now would only disturb her more. And this he wouldn’t do.

But if he couldn’t satisfy her need to know, he could offer her what neither of them had been truly alive without. The all-consuming intimacy that they’d never be able to find with any other. At least he could give that to her for now. While she still wanted him. The man she thought he was.

His steps resumed as he started to unbutton his shirt. By the time he opened the shower, he was still clothed but he couldn’t wait any longer to have his hands on her.

It all happened at once. He got drenched, she gasped at feeling his entry and he was wrapped around her, taking her from her slump against the wall back against his thundering body, into the shelter of his no longer containable passion.

She twisted around to face him with a cry, her eyes streaming with both water and tears, glittering with one unspoken question.

He answered it. “I can’t let you go.”

He tried to obliterate the distance she’d put between them but her trembling hands flattened against his soaked shirt, pain filling her eyes. “I can’t have this be the only reason.”

A self-deriding and loathing huff escaped him. “The one thing that stopped me from taking you was trying to do what was best for you. For me, holding back has been a hell second only to the years without you, to when I lost Alex and thought I’d lost you, too.”

He thought, hoped, his confession would appease her, at least explain his behavior. But what she did next had him so stunned his heart forgot to beat.

Anastasia slapped him with all her strength.

That wasn’t saying much, compared to the blows he’d sustained in his life. But from her, it brought him to his knees, figuratively, as he realized just how much he’d hurt her.

She glowered up at him through the jet of water, her enraged eyes the most beautiful and overpowering he’d ever seen them.

“That’s for all these years of hell.” Then both hands slammed on his chest, wet, sharp lashes of fury. “And that’s a reminder to stop making unilateral decisions on my behalf.” Next she pummeled him, as if she wanted to storm his being, to break down his barriers. “And that’s for driving me mad with your contradictions, with all the things you think you’re protecting me from.” Then her hands were knotted in his hair, bringing his face down to hers for an openmouthed, desperate kiss, her voice a hot tremolo breaching him to his very core. “And that’s for saving me, for being the only one I’ll ever crave. The absolute best and worst thing that has ever happened to me.”

Before he could try to even think of how to deal with her lightning-fast mood changes, she pushed him away again, hands clawing at his shirt as if it was her worst enemy, tearing at the sodden material, ripping off the buttons he hadn’t undone.

“And that’s for coming in here still clothed,” she panted as she attacked him, lips and teeth suckling and biting at every inch of flesh she’d exposed. “For making me wait again.”