“No, you need to talk. I need a nap and these.” I lift the jar slightly.
That almost gets a smile out of him. “Zatanna.”
“No.”
His brow lifts. “No?”
“No. I am not doing this if this is another version of you deciding what happens and expecting me to fall in line.”
He is quiet for one beat too long. Then he starts walking toward me anyway.
I back up. Not because I’m scared. Because I know exactly what happens when he gets too close and I am trying, for once in my life, to have one coherent thought before my body ruins everything.
“Don’t,” I say.
He stops. Then he says, very calmly, “Tell me you don’t want me anymore.”
I blink. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s simple.”
“No,” I say at once. “It’s manipulative.”
“Probably.”
I stare at him.
He stands there like a man who has decided to be direct because all his other methods have failed him, and somehow that makes this more dangerous, not less.
“Tell me,” he repeats. “And I’ll stop.”
That is a lie.
Maybe not fully. Maybe he means it in this moment.
But stop what? Touching me? Looking at me? Existing in the shape my whole nervous system now recognizes on sight?
Still, I hear myself say it. “I don’t want you.”
The words sound wrong before they finish leaving my mouth.
He hears it, too. Aleksei takes the last few steps between us until there’s barely any space left, and I hate that my pulse jumps like my body just called me a liar in public.
“You’re terrible at this,” he murmurs.
“I am not.”
He says nothing. Just reaches out and takes the jar from my hand, setting it carefully on the console table beside us. Then his fingers skim the inside of my wrist on the way back.
That tiny touch wrecks me more efficiently than it has any right to.
I inhale sharply.Damn him.
This pregnancy has made everything worse. Stronger. More immediate. My body feels like an exposed nerve half the time. My breasts ache, my skin is sensitive, and my sex drive has apparently decided shame is for people with weaker hormones. I have had dreams about him so vivid I woke up wet and furious and too embarrassed to even think in full sentences for an hour.
Explicit dreams.
Ridiculous, filthy dreams where he put his hands everywhere and my body gave up every secret it had left.
