No More Sweet Surrender

He indicated the hands he still held there, open on his knees, and she swallowed convulsively. She took another deep breath. Then she reached out and placed her hands in his, one after the other, her fingers cold and stiff. He closed his fingers over hers carefully. Slowly. Giving her ample chance to pull away.

“I’d fight your demons for you, Professor,” he whispered. “But they’d put me in jail.”

She trembled, but she didn’t pull away.

“I thought my old boyfriends were bad at sex,” she whispered in a rush, not looking at him. “But it wasn’t them, was it? It was me. There’s something wrong with me. He— I’m ruined.”

“You’re perfect,” he told her very distinctly. “And you’re safe with me. I promise you.”

She shook her head, but she didn’t move her hands, and they were warming against his, her skin heating from the contact with his. She didn’t seem to notice that she was also breathing more steadily, more easily, breath by breath. That he was calming her with his touch.

“You don’t know that,” she said after a moment, looking down at the floor. “Look what happened today.”

“Look at me.” His voice was commanding then. Sure. Her head jerked up but she met his gaze. He felt her shiver slightly, and he didn’t let go. “I’m not a teenage boy or a coward. I told you. I can control myself. You can’t hurt me. And I won’t hurt you.”

He squeezed her hands slightly in his when she began to make a face, and her gaze slid back to his, reluctantly. So reluctantly, and he saw the fear there. And more than that, the hope. It moved in him, shaming him. Making him wish for things he knew he’d never have all over again. Making him wish they were different people. Making him wish they’d met a different way, played a different game.

And as she stared back at him, that terrible tension draining from her face little by little, her skin becoming less pale, looking more and more like Miranda by the moment, he told himself that it was true. That he could keep that promise, despite what he had to do.

That he would.

But then she tilted her head forward and kissed him.

CHAPTER TEN

MIRANDA didn’t let herself think. There’d been enough of that.

She simply kissed him again and again, angling her mouth over his the way he’d taught her, and it was sweet and right and then, once more, that fire.

That wild, unquenchable fire that, she understood now, had always been leading her here. To him. The only man who made her burn. Who made her want to burn. Who she believed would keep her safe no matter what happened when she was nothing more than ash. Who might even fight off her nightmares, if she let him.

Hadn’t he just proved it?

He pulled back, though he didn’t move his hands, and she knew, somehow, that he was afraid of scaring her off again. It made her heart kick hard against her ribs. Then ache.

“You don’t have to kiss me,” he said, frowning slightly.

She wanted to sob. It felt like she might—or simply explode all around him, and neither one was what she wanted. So she took refuge in her favorite suit of armor.

“Of course I don’t have to.” She raised her brows at him. “That would be coercive and repellent. Much like our public displays of feigned affection.”

He watched her for a long moment. Then blinked. For a breath, Miranda thought he might force her back into the fragile space she could still feel all around them, clinging to them—that he might say something else so devastatingly perfect, so miraculously right, that she would collapse before him all over again—

“Yes,” he said, the rich rumble of his mocking voice moving through her, like a shiver, his dark eyes shrewd as they tracked over her face, then down to where she gripped his hands too tightly—and didn’t let go. “I noted how repelled you were. It was your defining characteristic in all of those tabloid pictures.”

This time, she felt that sardonic lash like the gift it was.

“Ivan.” She waited for those midnight eyes to slide to hers again. So guarded as they searched hers, as if he was waiting for her to dissolve into sobs all over again, despite her brusque tone of voice. “Be quiet.”