The Professional (43 page)

S
evastyan freed me.

He hadn’t nuzzled my neck as he used to, hadn’t shown me his usual affection. He’d merely pulled out of me, leaving me limp on the bed, then started on buckles and straps.

Once he’d removed everything, my arms and jaw were sore. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say.

Without a word, he scooped me up and into the bathroom, turning on the shower. In the tangle of my mind, one thought stood out.
Nothing has changed
.

I was still stuck in this hopeless relationship, devoid of trust and sharing. Except that now, he seemed even more distanced.

There is nothing left of me.
What had he meant by that? Did he mean that he’d come his brains out and was empty?

Or that this was all I’d ever get from him? Beyond sex, there was nothing?

I plumbed my emotions and recognized that I was feeling . . . despair.

He carried me into the shower, easing me to my feet to stand
with him under the spray of hot water. He poured bath oil into his palms, washing me with his bare hands. “Let me tend to you,” he murmured as he laved my body with such familiarity, as if we’d been together for years.

As a husband would a wife. Like two people who trusted each other.

His detachment dwindled—he couldn’t seem to hold on to it—and soon soothing Russian endearments spilled from his lips. With zero hesitation, he saw to every inch of my body, inside and out, even my bottom.

I would be sore tomorrow, but he hadn’t hurt me. At least, not
physically
. My eyes pricked with tears.

Once he’d finished with me, he turned to soaping his own body, giving himself a cursory rubdown.

Tears kept forming. I didn’t cry often; God knew I was an ugly crier. I squeezed my eyes shut, resenting every drop that escaped, cursing the tremble in my bottom lip.

“Natalie?” His tone aghast, he demanded, “What is this?” He grasped my cheeks, lifting my face. “Why are you crying?”

I opened my eyes but said nothing.
Let him see how it feels.

“I’ve . . . hurt you?” He looked furious with himself, releasing me to ball his fists. “It was too much.”

Tears continued to spill.

“Ah, God,
milaya
.” He dragged me against his chest, coiling his arm around my nape. Locking me against him, he launched his other fist against the marble. Again and again.

Trapped like this, I could do nothing but wait. Nothing but
feel
 . . .

His muscles moving against me. His chest shuddering with breaths.

I sensed his need to punish, to deliver pain. And for the first time, I realized that the invisible enemy he wanted to strike . . . was himself.

I whispered, “Stop, Sevastyan.”

To my amazement, he did. “I would rather die than hurt you like this.”

I believed him. “I’m not h-hurt.” Tears continued to spill, belying my words. “You didn’t hurt my body.”

“Then I scared you. I’ve made you cry. Tell me how to fix this, and I’ll do it. Anything except letting you go. That I can never do.”

“No, you won’t fix this. You had chances to, but nothing has changed.” I pushed away from him. “Just leave me alone.”

Of course he wouldn’t. He took my wrist, drawing me out of the shower. Reaching for a towel, he began drying off my shoulders and arms, my belly. He knelt, rubbing my legs as if I was the most precious thing in the world. With a kiss against my hip, he said, “It’s been decades since I’ve felt shame like this.”

Shame is more painful than blows.
That only made me cry harder.

He rested his forehead against my belly. “You are gutting me, love. You want to leave—you have reason to—but I can’t let you go any more than I can quit breathing.”

Now what was I going to do?
Nothing has changed
.

I twisted from him, then grabbed my robe, donning it on my way out of the bathroom. I was heading for my closet when he took my hands and gently urged me toward the bed. As he drew back the cover for me, my shoulders slumped with exhaustion.

Maybe I should take a breather for a minute or two. I didn’t remember eating today, and all the emotions I’d experienced over the last several hours had drained me.

What he’d done to me had drained me.

Yet when I acquiesced and climbed into the bed, I felt like a failure, crying even harder.

He drew his pants back on—to be less threatening to me?—then paced at the foot of the bed. “I don’t know what to do with this.” Back and forth, he paced. “I have no idea what to do, Natalie. I need you to help me figure this out.”

He moved to sit next to me, but my watery glare stopped him. He backed up to sit on the end of the bed. “Talk to me.”

“That’s all we ever do. I talk to you. I’m laid bare. You go unscathed, sharing nothing of yourself. Do you know how messed up it is that I didn’t know you have a living family?”

“I should have told you. I see that now.”

“Too little, too late. You expect us to be in this relationship, but we’re not—”

“Yes, we
are
.”

“Then you don’t know the meaning of the word. If we’d started as a normal couple—regular girl meets regular guy—maybe things could have been different. We would have gotten to know each other, revealing details of our lives on an equal playing field. But it wasn’t like that. You knew everything about me, and I knew nothing about you. Nothing except lies. Our dynamic was ruined from day one.”

His breaths shallowed. “You’re talking like this is done, over beyond salvaging.”

I sobbed, “Because—it—is!”

He swiped his palm over his haggard face. I’d never seen him so shaken. Not even when Paxán died in front of us. “I . . . don’t accept that.”

“I thought that if I gave you my trust, you’d return it. But you won’t. You never will.”

“What if I did? Could I fix this?”

“No. Because if this is what I have to go through to get a crumb of information out of you, I’ll pass. It’s too exhausting! Besides, you warned me of this. You told me point-blank that I expected too much from you. You told me earlier today that trust might never come for us, and that you couldn’t give me things I needed. I’m such an idiot. I know better than this. I know that when a man tells you he’s no good for you, then you listen to him.”

Stupid, Nat, falling in love with an emotionally unavailable man.

When my tears quickened, Sevastyan looked like I’d slapped him. Which just made me madder. There were emotions inside of him—he wasn’t deadened—he’d just decided to keep them from me at all costs.

“If it’s my fate to chase you, then I will. I will do anything to keep you.” He put his head in his hands and rocked back and forward. “After you ran . . . imagining my existence without you . . . I realize . . .”

“What?”

He raised his head to me. “Concerns beyond you no longer matter. You’re at the center of my life”—he frowned—“no, you
are
my life.”

“Then why don’t you treat me like it? I didn’t even know your real name!” In a cutting tone, I said, “Isn’t that something a fiancée should know?”

“Aleksandr was my grandfather’s name. I cast off my first name when young. Maksim calls me Roman to goad me.”

“Why did you tell him we were engaged?”

“Already there is troubling interest in you as an heiress. You’ll be safer if it gets out that you’re marrying a man who can protect you.”

So Sevastyan was just putting up a front to keep me safe, to fulfill his promise to Paxán—

“And . . . I expected to wed you.” He admitted, “I
want
to.”

An answering want bubbled up inside me! Then I remembered all the reasons it would never work. “Earlier, you ordered me from the room like a dog—in front of your brother.”

“You’re not to be around him, Natalie. He’s dangerous.”

I wondered what it took for a man like Sevastyan to deem another
dangerous
. “Why?”

“Because I can never predict what he’ll do.”

“What would it have hurt for you to tell me what you and your brother have been doing for me?”

“The plan is risky. At any moment we could fail. If I tell you I will do something, it’s because I’m confident I can. Not so with this. Plus, the less you know, the safer it is for you.”

Plausible deniability. And to be fair, I couldn’t see him telling me, “I have an idea—probably won’t work—but I’m giving it a shot anyway.”

He added, “Besides, if I disclosed this to you, then you would have asked about Maksim, forcing me to continue my lie to you. I don’t want to lie anymore.”

“What about your becoming the
vor
? Don’t you think that’s a decision we should have made together?”

“You might have talked me out of it, though I can see no way around it.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance to come to the same conclusion? I’ve surprised you before. I’m not
il 
logical—well, except for being with you.”

Pain flared in his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want your opinion. But I know that the more I talk to you, the more you will expect me to.”

“You’re right. I would have liked for you to tell me at least the most basic things about your past!”

“Maybe I haven’t wanted to reveal these things because I know it will drive you away! The more I want you, the more I dread this. You’ve seen my dread.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Each night, I’ve been tempted to talk to you. A couple of times I came so close. Then, in the morning I would curse my stupidity, my weakness.” He turned away. “I’ve never been so weak with another. And maybe . . . maybe I blamed you for making me feel like this.”

“Like what?”

He whirled around on me. “Like I’ll die without you! And if my past drives you away, then where does that leave me? Fucking
dead  
! So why have I also been feeling the need to tell you of the past? It makes no sense!”

“That’s your excuse for your coldness?” After every blissful night, he’d awakened even more resolved to shut me out, blaming me because he’d almost folded? “Let me get this straight. You’ve been a dick to me because you wanted me more than you did before?”

He didn’t deny it.

“God! Again, you’re not giving me a chance. You’re driving me away by
not
talking to me. You know what? I—give—up. If you dreaded every time I asked about your past, you’re really going to now that I’ve stopped.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you get to keep your secrets.” Fresh tears spilled down my face. “I don’t want them anymore!”

“You want me to confide in you because you think it will fix things in me, heal me. It won’t!” Voice rising with each word, he said, “I will always have these shadows inside me!”

I yelled back, “Damn it, Sevastyan, I never wanted the shadows to disappear—I wanted them to be
our
shadows!”

His lips parted, eyes filled with bafflement.

“I wanted to
know
you; not fix you.”

He recovered enough to say, “And what if these shadows show you that you can never have what you want of me? That my past makes it impossible for me to offer you the future you crave.”

I dashed tears away with the back of my hand. “What kind of future do you think I want?”

“A life with a good man.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“But a man is defined by his past,” he said. “Which means I’m a killer. I always will be. There’s nothing I can do to erase that for you. No matter how hard I work or how much I sacrifice, it follows me and always will. How do I keep it from tainting you?”

“I already know about your occupation. I accepted it. I’ve seen you kill twice. Is there more?”

He shot to his feet, pacing again. Why would he answer that? If he equated his revelations with the end of our relationship, he wouldn’t. Not unless he accepted that it would end if he
didn’t
tell me.

“You don’t know what you’re asking of me! I never told Paxán these things, and he came to trust me. To love me. Why can it not be the same with you?” Sevastyan was angling for his own self-preservation. “Why can’t you just pretend my past is a blank void?” Under his breath, he said bitterly, “That’s what I do.”

“I can’t pretend. I have to know.”

He stabbed his fingers through his hair, yanking at the ends. “Natalie, I need you . . . I need you
not
to know me. And still stay.”

“I swear to you that will not happen.”

He dropped his hands. “Goddamn it, it must!”

I shook my head, my tears drying. “Sevastyan . . .”

He faced me and stood motionless, as if awaiting a gallows drop.

“. . . I’m already gone.” I rose to dress.

He clutched at his throat as if starving for air. “Don’t speak like that!” He lunged forward to clutch my shoulders. “Look at me. Look at me!”

His eyes appeared full black. “I will tell you that I’ve killed many sons, many fathers. I started at the age of twelve.”

I held my breath.

“The first father I killed was my own.”

S
evastyan’s admission rocked me. Not only because of what he’d said, but because of the shame emanating from him.