She couldn’t hold back from touching him any longer. She stepped right into his personal space and he wrapped his arms around her like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
“Yes, Demyan. Yes.” His ruthlessness wasn’t always a bad thing, but she brought out the best in him, too.
Now, if she could just get him to realize what that meant.
“You turn me on like no other woman ever has.” He spoke as if that fact confused him. “I don’t like being without you. Not even for a couple of days. It makes it hard to focus.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I feel the same way.”
“I miss you,” he stressed. “Every hour we are apart. Even when I am working.”
No matter how this thing between them had started, it had caught Demyan in the whirlwind of emotion right along with her. Which was the conclusion she’d finally come to after a lot of pain-filled soul-searching and examination of every memory from the moment they’d met.
“It hurt finding out about the will and your reason for marrying me from your sperm donor.”
Pain twisted Demyan’s features. “I am sorry.” He reached up to wipe along the tear streaks on one cheek. “You cried.”
“At first, all I could think was that you’d tricked me into loving you when you felt nothing for me at all. That you probably planned on getting rid of me as soon as the ink was dry on the marriage certificate.”
“No!” He kissed her, the connection between their mouths infused with a desperation stronger than anything she’d ever felt from him.
It was a magnified version of the feelings that emanated off him at night when making love since their arrival in Volyarus.
She did nothing to stop the kiss for a long time, needing this connection as badly as he so clearly did.
But eventually, she broke her mouth away. “Were you going to tell me?”
“Maybe someday. I do not know. I did not want to.”
“You were afraid.”
“I am never afraid.”
“Not usually, but the idea of losing me scared you.”
“Have I lost you?” His arms tightened around her even as he asked the question.
“No.”
“No?” he asked, his voice breaking so the word sounded as if it had two syllables.
“Definitely not. Yet.”
His big body went absolutely rigid. “Yet?”
“It all depends on your answer to a question.”
He stared down at her.
“You never break your promises, right?” She let her body mold completely to his, trying to give him strength.
That’s what people who loved each other did—they lent their strength when it was needed.
“Right.”
“Tell me you love me.”
The tension emanating off him increased exponentially.
“Your mom told me what she made you promise her.”
Demyan’s expression was haunted.
“You promised not to say you love me unless you really mean it,” Chanel reminded him. “You can say it now, Demyan. I will treasure your love forever, too.”
“But...”
“You love me.”
“I do?”
“That stuff you were saying earlier, about missing me, being afraid to lose me, even the way you changed the prenuptial agreement, it all means one thing.”
“It does?” Comprehension and acceptance dawned over his features, making him smile with heartbreaking happiness. “It does. I love you, Chanel, more than my life as a prince. More than anything.”
More tears filled her eyes, but these didn’t burn or hurt her heart. “I love you, too.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean...we don’t have to live with the whole royalty thing. I know it’s not the life you want. I can abdicate my role.”
It wasn’t an empty promise and it would not come without significant cost to this amazing man. Especially after finally acknowledging his true role as son of Oxana and Fedir, but Demyan was entirely sincere in his offer.
“No. I love you, Demyan. Ruthless prince. Corporate king and shark. All of you.”
“I love you for all that you are, too, Chanel, and that includes the woman who has never aspired to be a socialite.”
“I’m not going to be one now, either.”
“My uncle...father is not going to know what to do with you.”
“He’ll probably call me princess just to annoy me.”
Demyan laughed, the sound freer and filled with more joy than she’d ever heard from him. “You may well be right.”
“So long as you call me love.”
“Koxána moja,” he said, calling her his love in Ukrainian. “Always and forever. You are the very heart that beats inside my chest.”