His Pregnant Christmas Bride (The Billionaires of Blackcastle 6)

Their gazes collided, a thousand volts of longing and relief arcing across the distance between them.

Then there was none, both hurtling to obliterate it.

She flew into his arms. The home that was hers alone, the man who was her haven, her succor.

Her everything.

Ivan kissed her, devoured her, gulping air through her lips as if he’d been suffocating without her, as she had without him in that short time they’d been apart. As if he, too, had felt his world coming to an end at the thought of losing her.

With tears flowing down her cheeks, she tore from his crushing embrace, needing to tell him everything she would do for him, for them. She grabbed his hand, dragged him behind her toward his car. Midway, she rethought her plan and doubled back toward the house, and up to her quarters, with Ivan rushing after her with his face an adorable mix of perplexity and compliance.

Closing the door of her bedroom, she tackled him down on her bed and stormed him with kisses, tears and smiles.

Then she realized something. Though he was surrendering to her, kissing her back with the same fervor, with the same shaky need for reconnection, that stiffness had reentered his body. Though he’d been unable to stay away, he was still loath to be there.

Putting this matter to rest once and for all was the one thing that could make her stop kissing him now. Pulling back, she was struck by the magnificent sight he made sprawled there, dwarfing the bed, the whole room, his raven hair strewn around his majestic head.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he spoke first, his voice hushed like a fervent prayer. But it was what he said that made her jackknife up, gape down on him.

“Anastasia, moye serdtse, ya nye magu zhit’ byes tyeba. I can’t live without you, my heart. I won’t. Marry me.”

His words and their meaning registered at once this time. And so did their total shock. He...he...

Ivan was proposing.

And she only knew one thing. She had to find her voice, to blurt out an acceptance.

But something held her back. His agitation. It went beyond worrying about her response. It hit pause on her surging jubilation.

She pulled him up. “There’s something wrong here, Ivan. You don’t seem happy about asking me this.”

“I am, or I will be when you say yes.”

Knowing there was more to this than he was letting on, she persisted, eyes roaming his face, feverishly attempting to see inside him. “If there’s any element of honor or duty or anything else involved here—”

“All my honor and duty and everything else I am are all about you.” She started to protest and his lips silenced hers, before he pulled back to pledge, “You’re everything to me, Anastasia, everything. I love you. I have always and will always love yo

u. Only ever you.”

“Oh, God, Ivan, I love you, too. You’re everything to me, too. You have always been and will always be. But—”

“No buts, moya lyubov, my love.”

“Yes, Ivan, but. These things you never told me are still like a rock on your chest, a constant crushing pain. I feel them and they hurt me, too. They’re not in your past, but very much in your present and I love you too much to let you carry them into your future. I want you with every fiber of my being and I was coming to tell you I’d do anything to be with you. But I won’t let you spare me, I won’t let you hide your pain and suffering from me anymore.”

* * *

Ivan knew this was it. She wouldn’t be satisfied with any more evasions. She couldn’t bear any more uncertainty, wouldn’t let him carry the burden alone any longer.

Feeling he’d be tearing out thorns that had been long embedded deep in his flesh, where scar tissue had formed layers that now had to be ripped open to extract them, he stalled.

“Say yes first, Anastasia. Say you’ll marry me.”

“This isn’t about me now, Ivan. This is about you. Let me in all the way, my love, let me heal you like you healed me.”

At his butchered groan, she contained him in such tenderness, such magnanimity that he’d never known existed, or that he’d ever be blessed enough to experience.

Kissing his brow, the voice he now lived to hear shook with all of her love and allegiance. “Be with me completely, Ivan. Be mine like I’m yours, past, present and future.”