When she said no more, he invited her down on the carpeted floor. They sat with their backs to the couch, with the girls climbing on and off them, bringing them toys and asking them to name them in their respective languages. Then she and Leonid quizzed them. To all their excitement, the girls remembered almost everything and said the words as accurately as possible in the three languages.
The games continued for hours. Then the girls suddenly lay down across his and her side-by-side bodies, making a bridge between them with theirs, and promptly fell asleep.
They remained sitting like this, sharing the connection their daughters had spontaneously created between them in serene silence for what could have been another hour, alternating caressing the girls’ silky heads.
Suddenly, his black-velvet voice spread over her like a caress. “Oni ideal’ny.”
She nodded, heart swelling with sudden, overwhelming gratitude. For them. And for him. “Yes. They are perfect.” At length, she added, “Let’s put them to bed.”
Without objection, even when she could see he wanted to savor them for far longer, he gathered one girl after the other and rose with them in his arms.
On the way to their bedroom, she had to voice her wonder. “You’ll have to show me how you keep them stuck to you like this when they’re asleep. Either you’re a literal babe magnet, or you three share some Voronov Vacuum quality.”
A surprised huff of mirth escaped him before he suppressed it. Then he seemed to remember nothing could disturb them, and let it all out.
As they went back to the lounge, he was still chuckling as he put on a different kind of music, still Zoryan, but perfect for setting a soothing mood.
Sitting down on the couch, he suddenly guffawed again. “Voronov Vacuum. I should patent this.”
She grinned her pleasure at his appreciation of her quip. “You should. That brand name is just meant to be.”
He sighed, still smiling. “I wanted to ask you to let them sleep like that between us, as if laying claim to both of us. You know I lost my parents when I was not much older than they are, was raised by indulgent relatives. What you don’t know is that I struggled to cultivate the discipline my parents would have instilled in me, had they lived. So I know how important it is to have structure in one’s life, and I truly admire your ability to provide and maintain it. I will happily follow your lead and reinforce your methods.” He signed even more exaggeratedly. “Even if the new papa in me wants to mindlessly indulge them to thorough and decadent rottenness.”
She chuckled at his mock-mournful complaint. “You have a lifetime to indulge them, and discipline them, and the rest of the roller coaster of unimaginable ups and downs of parenthood to look forward to. Pace yourself. I’m trying to.”
His eyes glittered with such poignancy, as if it was the first time he dared to let himself look forward that far. “I do have a lifetime, don’t I? I am their father forever.”
Throat sealing with emotion, she nodded. “If you want to be.”
His azure eyes flared with such elation and entreaty.
Then he only said a hoarse “Please.”
The word rolled through her every cell like thunder. And everything inside her snapped.
Then she was pressing all she could of herself into what she could of him, lips blindly seeking every part of him she’d starved for, all her suppressed longing bursting out in a reiteration so ragged it was a prayer.
“Yes, Leonid, yes, please...please...”
Seven
Among the cacophony of her thundering heart and strident breathing, Kassandra heard a piece of music ending and a more evocative one starting. And she was pleading. Pleading. Pleading. For what, she didn’t know.
But she did know. She was pleading for him. For them. For an explanation. A reconnection. A resurrection.
Just touching him again felt like coming back to life. If only he’d touch her back.
But he had frozen from the moment she’d obliterated the distance between them, had done what she’d been suffocating for since that moment she’d seen his crumpled car in the news. To touch him, feel him, reassure herself he was here and whole, that she hadn’t lost him.
But she had lost him. He’d imposed his loss on her. But she now realized that through all the pain, there had remained the consolation that he still existed, that she hadn’t lost him that way. In the depths of her soul, hidden from her pain and pride, there had always been the hope that maybe, one day, this meant she could have him back.
Now nothing mattered to her anymore but the fact that he was the only man she’d ever want, that he was her girls’ father and he loved them. That he’d come back for them had shown her a glimpse of the perfection they could have.
Now all she wanted was for him to end her exile.
Her hands and lips roaming his solid vitality, singed by his heat, tapping into his life, she begged for his response.
Please. Please. Please.
Then he moved...away.
Her lips stilled on his chest, mortification welling inside her like lava. He was rejecting her again.
But...maybe not. With the debris of the past between them, he wouldn’t presume to take what she was offering when he didn’t know what it was, or how it would affect their sensitive situation and fragile new harmony.
But this wasn’t the past. This was now. It could be their tomorrows. She had to risk new injury for the slightest possibility this new man he’d become had changed toward her, too, and might now want her as she wanted him. He had wanted her once, before he’d stopped. Maybe this time he wouldn’t stop.
Pulling back to look up at him through eyes filling with tears, she found his face clenched as hard as the muscles that had turned to rock beneath her fingers, buzzed like live wires. He was shocked. And aroused as hell.
His hunger buffeted her, left her in no doubt. It wasn’t lack of desire that made him pull back, but uncertainty.
Attempting to erase any doubts he had, she pressed against him, sobbed into his hot neck against his bounding pulse, “Take me, Leonid, just take me, please...”
“Kassandra...” His rumble of her name reverberated inside her as he heaved up, tugging her with him. In the past, he would have scooped her up, but she knew he couldn’t now.
Her legs still almost gave out as he rushed her through compartments, past the dining area to another closed door. Behind it was a bedroom as big as the lounge, dominated by a king-size bed covered in gold-and-black satin. His bedroom.
Before she could use what was left of her coordination to stumble to the bed, he closed the door and pressed her against it, taking her face in both hands. In the pervasive golden light, his face was supernatural in beauty, reflecting the hurricane building up inside him. His blue-fire gaze was explicit with one question: Did she know what she’d be getting into when he let it break over her?
Feeling she’d crumble into ashes if it didn’t, she cried out, “Leonid, I want it all with you...”
With a groan that sounded as if something had ripped inside him, his head swooped down and blocked out existence.
Then he was swallowing her moans of his name, giving her his breath, reanimating her as he growled hers inside her.
“Kassandra...”
It was like opening a floodgate. To the past. To that first kiss that had been exactly like that. A conquering; a claiming. Her breath fractured inside her chest as she drowned in his feel and scent and taste. As she had that first time, and for a whole year afterward. She’d only drowned in desolation, alone, after he’d cast her out.
But she was drowning again now. In kisses that tantalized her with only glimpses of the ferocity she needed from him. His hands added to her torment, gliding all over her, never pausing long enough to appease, until she writhed against him, whimpering for what she’d never and could never stop wanting. Everything with and from him.
But he wasn’t giving her everything, as if still testing her, not sure how total her surrender was.
She dug her fingers into his shoulders. “Leonid...please, give me everything you’ve got.”
His head rose for one suspended moment, long enough for her to see his shackles snapping, then at last, he clamped his lips down on hers, hard, hot branding. His tongue thrust deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason.
She took it all, too lost to pleasure him in turn. His absence had left a void that had been growing larger every day until she’d feared it would hollow her out, leaving only a shell. Now he was here again, filling the emptiness.
Pressure built in her eyes, chest and core. Her hands convulsed on his arms until he relented, pushed her blouse up and over her head, pulled her bra strap down, setting her swollen breasts free.
She keened with relief, with the spike in arousal. He had her exposed, vulnerable. Desperate with arousal. Shaking hands pressed her breasts together to mitigate their aching as everything inside her surged, gushed, needing anything he would do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his body all over hers, his manhood filling her core, thrusting her to oblivion...reclaiming her from the void.
Tears flooded down her cheeks. “Don’t go slow, Leonid... I can’t wait, I can’t...”
Leonid had to be dreaming.
It had to be one of those tormenting figments that had hunted him mercilessly every moment since he’d watched her stumble out of his hospital room. Kassandra couldn’t be pressing into him, all that glorious passion and flesh, sobbing for him to take her. He couldn’t be scenting her arousal, feeling it vibrating in his loins, hearing it thundering in his cells.