She spun away from him, her toes dropped to the floor, and she curled over her phone with both hands as if it were something precious. Within seconds her voice hummed into the thing. “Sorry, Bob, I was asleep.” Laughter, then, “No, that’s fine. But only because it’s you.” Then came a series of quiet mmm-hmms.
Ryder closed his eyes and, for the first time since he found a thirteen-year-old Sam in the midst of her first panic attack frozen to the point of near catatonia, he prayed.
When he realised what he was praying for, his eyes snapped open. And his blood ran cold.
Nadia slowly hung up the phone and held it in her lap, her naked back curved towards him, her dark waves spilling over the unearthly pale skin, her scent of her all over his sheets, all over his skin.
And he knew.
Strike that. He’d known from the moment she’d walked towards him so dark and lush and tempting that any part she played in his life would be transitory, titanic, fatal.
“When?” he asked.
She turned so one leg was hooked onto the bed, and glanced quickly over her shoulder before turning back to the phone, and in that glance he saw that any excitement that might have been there was now lost beneath the quicksilver mess of emotion shimmering across her face. “Next weekend. No, this one. Bob’s emailing flight details right now.”
Ryder somehow nodded, even while he was blistering on the inside from the effort not to hold her, touch her, lose himself in her every last moment they had together. But mostly from the effort not to make good on his prayer and do whatever it took to make her stay.
Because it was going to be brutal. Hell, if she hadn’t come to him that night, by five minutes to ten he’d have been ripping her door off its hinges. Like some seductive vapour she’d invaded his thoughts, his needs, his life. At times when they were apart he could have sworn he could feel her energy flowing through him as if she’d seeped into his very marrow.
And considering her history, he had no doubt he could chisel that fissure of hesitation into full-blown uncertainty. A kiss just below her ear, a thumb run softly along her jaw, a stroke of her inner thigh and he could make her his. But for how long? Until another opportunity like this came along? Until things naturally simmered down? Until disillusion leached in, restlessness took hold, and he realised he’d had enough?
He knew how badly she wanted the job, how much of her own self-worth was wrapped in whether or not she had it in her to succeed on her own, how much healthier it would be if she got as far away as possible from the insidious destructive influence of her mother, and yet he’d yearned for her to fail. Just so he could keep her close.
If he’d ever harboured any small hope that he might one day be able to love a woman in a more honest way than his own father ever had, that doubt had just been pulverised.
He was a selfish bastard. Which was his problem, not hers. His hit to take.
As he saw it he had one chance at redemption. He had to let her go. And he had to do so in a way that meant she’d never look back.
“You appear a little shell-shocked, Miss Nadia.”
In profile her forehead scrunched into a frown. “Probably because I am.”
“I thought you’d be bouncing off the walls. Literally.” He said it with a smile that felt as if it had been cut into his face.
Then she turned to him, her eyes wide, her lips pursed, her expression...lost. “What if I’m not ready? What if I’m kidding myself? What if it’s not what I really want? What if I’ve been too busy running towards what I think I should want to see that what I really want is something else—something right under my nose?”
Dammit. Nadia. Sweetheart.
Ryder lifted off the pillow and slid a hand up her spine before it curled around the back of her neck. Her soft skin and sleepy warmth carved a hollow in his chest. “You forget, I’ve seen you spinning circles in the sky. Of all the people I’ve met in my life, you are the one who’s had the most manifest purpose. That show is what you were born to do.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“Ryder,” she said, pulling away. Her eyes glistened, swarming with emotion he understood more than he let himself dwell on. What had happened between them might be real, it might feel rich and thick and true, but he couldn’t promise it would last. And he wouldn’t risk hurting her simply for the chance to find out.
“I know,” he said, holding her gaze until she breathed out, and belief poured back into her dark, soulful eyes.
And then she leant into him. Snuggling into his touch. Trusting and soft and small. Adorable, he thought. And between breathing out and breathing in again, Ryder felt something inside him split right in half, the pain of it cracking through him like a gunshot.