Were we about to start this all over again? Was I learning nothing? In all these interludes with Sevastyan, I hadn't been Natalie. I'd been Natalya. And that brainless hussy didn't seem to know better.
I stepped back from him, turned to search for my clothes. "I need to get dressed. We need to."
"Don't do this," he murmured from behind me.
"Another command?" Snatching up a robe for myself, I tossed him a towel.
He must've sensed I was about to freak out, because he covered himself, wrapping it around those narrow hips. "You regret this?" His voice was filled with disbelief. "You can't. I won't let you." As if he hadn't shocked me enough today, he scooped me up in his arms.
"What are you doing?"
He sat on the bench, cradling me, cupping the back of my head in a protective embrace.
Only fair, since he'd shattered me today.
In the cloak of the steam, I nearly broke down. "How can you change me so much?" I whispered against his ear. "How?" At one point I'd thought I would lose my mind.
"I haven't. I've just shown you a different facet of yourself."
Clasping him tight, using him like a lifeline, I buried my face in the spot where his neck met his shoulder. "Why are you showing me these things?"
He said nothing.
I pulled back to meet his eyes, found it impossible not to kiss his face. My lips touched upon the askew bridge of his nose, his chin, then smoothed over the lean perfection of his cheeks. He squeezed me tighter against him, seeming to relish this attention, this affection from me.
Between kisses, I asked, "What do you want from me?"
Silence.
"Did you mean what you said about obsession?"
He turned his head away.
"Ugh!" I disentangled myself from him and scrambled to my feet, searching for my undergarments. "You infuriate me!" I found my panties near the fire, half dry from the heat. Dragged them on.
Bra. Where the hell was my--got it. I turned from him, shucked off my robe, then strapped on my bra.
"Damn it, Natalie, I don't know what to say to you to ease the way you feel."
"Of course you don't." I whirled around on him. "Because we're all but strangers! I don't know you!" With difficulty, I pulled my damp pants up my legs.
"What do you want to know?"
I had so many questions. How to decide on a first? "Those tattoos on your knees--they mean you'll kneel before no one, don't they?" According to my research. "Which would indicate that you're a vor yourself."
"That doesn't matter. I follow Kovalev."
Sevastyan was as much of a criminal aristocrat as my father. Yet another detail I'd had no idea about. "That's all you're going to say about it?" When I spotted my blouse, I pounced on it.
"I don't find it easy to talk about myself."
My fingers paused on my buttons. "Well, it wasn't easy for me to let you tie me up! But I trusted you in this."
"Would you take that back? Undo this afternoon, if you could?" He collected his own clothes, beginning to dress.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't understand it, or you." I shoved my wet hair back, knotting it at my nape. "You ignored me for weeks, then put on the full-court press today. Why now?"
"Paxan thought, and I agreed, that everything would be overwhelming for you here."
I'd never felt pressure like I had here. Never.
"When I confessed to him that I'd crossed a line with you, he asked me to give you room to breathe for a couple of weeks. He said you were young, and that I needed to let you find your feet. So I gave him my word that I would allow you space."
"For a couple of weeks." It all became clear. The countdown I'd sensed.
Today was my fourteenth day at Berezka. The clock had zeroed out.
"I was ordered not to speak to you in Nebraska; here I was forbidden to seek you out for that time."
I'd never thought about him having to wait to meet me over that month he'd spied on me. He'd already admitted that he'd fantasized about me sexually as he'd stalked me. How frustrating to watch and never be able to touch.
No, no, no, you're furious with him, remember?
"I think Paxan expected you to want Filip. Perhaps I did as well."
No wonder Sevastyan had been so angry when he'd thought Filip had been about to kiss me. "So what happens now?"
"Now?" He donned his pants. "Now I'm done allowing you space."
Was he joking? As I studied his face, I heard something outside. A truck? "Sevastyan, is someone here?"
He sat down to pull on his boots. "While I saw to the horses, I called the groom, told him to retrieve us in no less than two hours."
"Two hours? He'll know what we've been doing! We're going to walk out there and a steam cloud will billow out, and he'll know. Or he'll think he knows, and he'll tell everyone! It won't matter that we didn't sleep together. Everyone will believe we did."
"True."
My eyes went wide. "You did this on purpose. To force my hand. We didn't have sex, but we might as well have."
"You're this upset by the prospect of being with me?"
"I told you that I don't like making big decisions under pressure."
"Then we're fortunate that the decision's been made for you." While I gaped, he said, "I made a play for what I want." His expression so much as said, Your ass is mine, and we both know it. "I made no secret of what I'd do to possess you. If this is the only way, then so be it."
I stiffened. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of me. He was so cold, so different from how he'd been earlier. Because he's won. Or he thinks he has. "What happens when the thrill of the chase wears off? And why me? Of all the beautiful women you've dated? I mean, you're in your thirties and never thought to settle down before."
Instead of answering me, he said, "This is a done thing, Natalie. Everything will work out if you trust me."
The groom's voice sounded outside.
Sevastyan tugged his wet shirt on, then reached for his coat. "I will tell your father that we are together. When he speaks to you, you'll tell him the same."
Simple. Clean. Permanent.
To live in a new country, in a new world, with a man I hardly knew. In a new life I wasn't convinced was better than my old one.
"Trust you and everything will work out? That's just another way of saying you know what's best for me. Or worse, that you know better than me."
"In this, I do. You don't have the experience to know that what just happened here--and in the closet, and on the plane--is the rarest exception, not the rule."
I was bristling. "Again, you're saying you know better than me."
"You're a smart girl. You're going to replay everything we've done, and you're going to reach the same conclusion I have." He moved in close, leaning down to kiss my jawline and lower.
"And wh-what conclusion is that?" When had he discovered how sensitive my neck was? With one spot in particular . . .
He pressed his lips directly to my pulse point, making my knees weak. "Eto ne izbezhno dlya nas." You and I are inevitable.
Focus, Natalie! How could I still desire him when his high-handedness was unbearable? "An asteroid hitting the earth is inevitable! Or an active volcano erupting. Bad things are inevitable."
Drawing back, he gazed down at me. "No, powerful things are," he said as he captured my hand--to drag me out into the real world.
At Berezka's front entrance, Sevastyan walked me to the doors. I was suddenly aware of all the activity around us. Was it just me, or had the groundskeepers paused their raking to watch Sevastyan and me interact?
A couple of brigadiers emerged from the house. They stopped short and stared at my bedraggled appearance--before the warning in Sevastyan's eyes made them slink away.
Turning back to me, Sevastyan said, "I'm going to speak to Paxan after dinner."
I was still half-dazed. "I haven't accepted this. You."
"Trust me, pet." He curled his forefinger under my chin, then leaned dow
n to give me a kiss that anyone could see.
Which was his admitted plan. I thought it'd be a brief good-bye kiss, a toll I would grudgingly accept to get into the house as quickly as possible.
Instead, Sevastyan seemed bent on starting that fire in me once more. He took my mouth fiercely, giving me hot, seeking flicks of his tongue. It was a down-and-dirty kiss, with one objective: slay my resistance.
Which it did.