Twin Heirs to His Throne(24)

His eyes glittered, but not with the tears she rained over his face. With what she’d thought she’d never see. His tears.

“Don’t decide anything now, take time to think, wait...”

Her trembling lips silenced his working ones. “You’ve been making me wait since I first laid eyes on you. Before you let us be together, while we were together, since you pushed me away and since you came back. And I can’t wait anymore. I won’t, ever again. I will never waste another moment waiting or worrying or doing anything but loving you and being with you.”

And his tears flowed. His body shook beneath hers as she cried out, moved beyond endurance, sobs rocking her.

Straining over him, as if she wanted to slip beneath his skin, to hide him under hers, she moaned into his gasping lips, “Stop thinking, stop assuming what’s best for me. You are what’s best for me. You are everything I ever wanted for myself. Will you give me everything I want? Will you give me yourself?”

His tears flowing faster, his body beneath hers easing toward impending surrender, he said, “But I’m not the man you once loved anymore...”

She pulled back, let him see himself in her eyes, willing everything she felt for him to restore his faith in himself. “You’re not. You’re better. Far better. Your ordeals have tempered you into the purest, strongest, best form of yourself. I loved the man you were, but when forced to, I could live without him. I can’t live without the man you are now.”

“It was the inferno of yearning for you.” She gazed in confusion down at him and he elaborated. “What tempered me.”

“Then, say yes, Leonid. Marry me, be with me, love me and never leave me alone again.”

Tears froze in his eyes as his gaze deepened, as if trying to probe her soul, filling with so much vulnerability, disbelief and hesitation she felt she’d burst with it all.

Slowly, conviction seeped in, followed by dawning elation. Then it was as if he was letting her see into his soul for the first time, and all she saw there was...love.

God, so much love. Adoration.

“Kassandra, moya lyubov, my love, if you’ll have me, if you’ll let me love you for the rest of my life...yes. Yes to anything and everything you want or will ever want.”

Flinging herself at him with all her strength, she bombarded him with tear-drenched kisses, reiterating her supplication. “You. You’re all I ever wanted or will ever want.”

“And you are everything,” he pledged as he surrendered to her fervor, his voice as deep as the sea, and as turbulent with fathoms-deep emotion, mirroring what his eyes detailed. “From the moment I first saw you, I was always yours. Even when I believed you’d never be mine again, I remained yours. I would have remained yours forever.”

Suddenly everything inside her exploded into a devastating blaze of lust. After this beyond-belief declaration, she felt she’d crumble if he didn’t merge them in every way, right now, hard and long and completely.

Shuddering with need, she scrambled off him, tugging him up with her. He followed her silently as she stumbled to bed, stood watching her as she flung herself onto it, searing her with his hunger.

“Love me, Leonid.” Her voice was a husky tremolo that fractured with the desperation of her passion. “Now that I know you love me, show me.”

Groaning, he came down over her, filled her arms, his hands trembling all over her, as if afraid she wasn’t real. Her hands shook in turn over his stubble-covered jawline, up the chiseled planes of his divine face until they dipped into his raven-hued hair. Pulling him closer, her desperate lips clamped over his, her tongue restlessly searching their seam. A pained rumble escaped him as his tongue lashed out to snare hers, duel with it. His rumbles deepened, filling her, shaking her apart; his hands owned her every inch, setting it ablaze. Reaching her buttocks, he squeezed hard, as if trying to bring himself under control.

Needing him to unleash everything inside him, devastate her with it, her thighs fell apart for him, begging his invasion. “Since you took me again, needing you has become agony. Please, do everything to me again.”

Groaning, he nodded, snatching her clothes off her burning body. But as she undid his pants, tried to push them down, his teeth clenched, like his hands over hers.

“Don’t. I don’t want you to see me like that.”

She freed her hands from his convulsive grip, grabbed his face, needing him to believe her once and for all. “I already saw you, and it did horrify me, but only to realize the extent of your injury, what you lost, what you’re suffering. But for me, the scars and prosthesis are now part of you, and I love and crave all of you. I’ll forever feel thankful whenever I look at them and see a reminder that I still have you, that fate didn’t take you from me and granted me the miracle of being able to love you and share our daughters and everything I am with you.”

Groaning as if in searing pain, he buried kisses in her palms mixed with tears and a litany of her name and lyublyu tebya. It was the first time he’d said it. I love you.

She drowned him with her reciprocation.

Getting rid of her last shred of clothes, he freed himself and brought her to his daunting hardness. Shaking with the need to impale herself on it, she threw herself over his chest, pushing his jacket off, teeth undoing his shirt, needing his flesh on hers. But he stopped her again.

“Let me pleasure you like that. I did on the jet, didn’t I?”

He meant without exposing himself, at all. He didn’t want her to see any part of him, probably was concealing other scars.

He was teetering on the edge of control between her thighs, everything about him promising her the explosive pleasure he’d given her before. She only had to say yes and his hot, throbbing girth and length would slam inside her, in that rough, frenzied tempo that had made her orgasm around him repeatedly on the jet before he’d made her come one last time as he’d climaxed deep inside her.

But... “I want you to love me this time. With all of you. I want to make love to all of you.”

He held her gaze for one last second before capitulating.

Laying her back on the bed, he rose on his knees, started to take off his clothes. She whimpered as each button, each shrug revealed more to her starving eyes.

She’d been wrong. He hadn’t just been upgraded; he’d metamorphosed. This was what the next step of evolution had to look like. And there were more scars, crisscrossing his chest, running down his arms and abdomen, interrupting the dark, silky patterns adorning his magnificence. And to her, they looked like arcane patterns, bestowed by destiny, marking him as chosen for glory and uniqueness, and were as beautiful and arousing as everything else about him.

Surging up, she traced the scars with worshiping hands and lips, making him shudder harder with every touch and nip. Delighted to discover they were even more sensitive than the rest of him, would amplify his pleasure, she got bolder.

“Kassandra, you’re driving me past insanity.”

“Just like you do to me. Stop tormenting me and let me see all of you. Now, Leonid.”

Naked from the waist up, eyes averted, he stood up and exposed the rest, his movements so reluctant it squeezed her heart with anguish. He hated doing this, was sick with self-consciousness, still unable to believe she wouldn’t cringe at his physical damage and deficit. It would have been easier to let him hide from her. But she couldn’t. It would only become a barrier.

She was done letting anything come between them.

She lay back, spread herself, gaze devouring him. “Look at me, my love. See how much more arousing I find you now. Every inch of you is stamped with maturity and power, more than ever. The marks of your suffering tell me incredible stories of endurance and persistence. They’re like brands of triumph and they only make you more unique to me. Give me everything you are, my darling Leonid.”

Exhaling raggedly, he nodded, growled something ferocious at the sight of her spread in surrender before him. Coming down on the bed, he prowled over her like a ravenous tiger, fully exposed, dauntingly engorged. His hands sought her secrets, her triggers. He took her mouth in a rough kiss before he withdrew, his eyes flaring and subsiding like blue infernos.

“Every single inch of you, every word you say, every breath and look—you are an aphrodisiac I could dilute and dispense to the world and cure all sexual dysfunction. Had I suffered from any, you would have cured me.”

Unable to hold back anymore, she writhed beneath him, twisted over him. Realizing what she wanted, he reversed their positions, spread himself for her, letting her have his mind-blowing potency where she craved it, in her watering mouth. He let her do everything she wanted to him, explore him with darting tongue and trembling hands, growling his enjoyment of her homage.

“Own me, moya dorogaya, take what’s always been yours.”

Unable to bear the joy of knowing it had been the same for him, that it had to be her and only her, she took it all, roaming his leg, his prosthesis, his potency, all of him.

She wanted to ask him to take his prosthesis off, let her touch what remained of his leg without barriers. But he’d already crossed too many lines to accommodate her need. That had to wait until he had no lingering doubts of how she’d react, or discomforts in exposing the rest of his vulnerabilities to her.