‘You like that, don’t you, milaya moya?’ he whispered and when she nodded eagerly, he whispered into her ear. ‘Then tell me.’
‘I...love it,’ she whispered shakily. ‘You know I do.’
Somehow he found a condom but his hands were unsteady as he slid it on, before entering her with such exquisite precision that Erin gasped.
He moved slowly at first—as if he had all the time in the world. And wasn’t that exactly what it felt like? That for once there were no constraints, or questions. That she could simply enjoy this for what it was.
She was aware that his eyes were open and she felt confident enough to hold his gaze as each thrust took her higher. Every time he moved it increased her pleasure—tightening it, notch by delicious notch. And just when it became almost unbearable her orgasm hit her in waves so powerful that it felt as if it were tearing her body apart. Her fingers tightened around him as he shuddered inside her with a ragged groan of his own.
It seemed like ages before he withdrew and Erin had to fight the urge to claw at him—wanting to bring him back inside her. She turned to look at him. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping—and she knew him well enough to realise that he’d probably like her to turn over and go to sleep, too. She remembered once overhearing him saying to his friend Ivan: The trouble with women is that they ask too many questions.
For a long time she had tried to abide by his preferred diktat, because she’d wanted to be the perfect secretary. She had questioned him only when absolutely necessary—but those days were gone. Even if the intimacy they’d just shared didn’t give her any rights—surely the fact that they had a son between them allowed her the luxury of asking questions for once. Wasn’t it time he told her stuff—instead of making out that it was presumptuous of her to dare ask?
‘Dimitri?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I want to ask you something.’
He opened his eyes. ‘Must you?’
She ignored that, positioning herself more comfortably on the pillows so that she was in the direct line of his cool gaze. ‘You know when you were going off the rails?’
‘What about it?’
‘You just never told me why. What made you do it?’
‘Does there have to be a reason, Erin?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
He was so quiet for a moment that Erin wondered whether he was just going to ignore her question, when suddenly he started talking.
‘It was a combination of factors,’ he said. ‘I was living in London—and that was the world I was inhabiting at the time.’
She rested her chin on his chest and looked up at him. ‘What kind of world was that?’
He shrugged. ‘The world of success—and excess. My company was doing better than I could have ever dreamed. Suddenly, I had more time. More money. More everything, really. Whatever I touched seemed to turn to gold. My stocks were touching the stratosphere. Women were throwing themselves at me—’
‘How unbearable that must have been.’
‘At first I can’t deny that I enjoyed it,’ he said, skating over her sarcasm. ‘But it doesn’t take long for an appetite to become jaded. For too much to become not nearly enough. Suddenly, nothing ever seemed to satisfy me. I tried gambling, and then vodka. But nothing seemed to do it. Nothing could take away...’
His voice trailed off as if he’d said too much but Erin was onto it in an instant.
‘Take away what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter,’ she said stubbornly.
His voice hardened. ‘The discoveries I had made. The ones which made oblivion seem like a good idea.’
‘What kind of discoveries?’ she persisted.
‘Erin, is this really relevant? We’ve just had some pretty amazing sex...’ he trailed his finger down over her torso until it came to rest comfortably in her belly button ‘...and now you’re ruining it by hurling all these questions at me.’
‘How can talking ruin what’s just happened?’ She pushed his finger away. ‘And it is relevant. It isn’t just prurient curiosity on my part, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s about a need to know more about my son’s heritage—so I don’t have to look at him blankly when he asks me the questions he will one day inevitably ask. Because I want to be able to tell Leo the truth from now on.’
‘I don’t think these are the kind of things you’d want to tell an innocent young boy,’ he said bitterly.
‘But I’m a grown woman,’ she said. ‘You can tell me.’