“Andrei—”
“Why should we light ourselves on fire only to burn? Don’t you see, this is going to kill us both.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’re right. I was being frustrating before. Because I was trying to dance around the issue. I was trying to say it without saying it. Hot and cold, acting like your sister, acting like a jealous lover, acting like a spiteful ex. When the truth is I just want you, Andrei. With everything that I have, everything I am, I want you.”
“You don’t know what you want,” he said. “You’re far too innocent to know what you’re asking for.”
“You,” she said. “Inside me. I want you to show me what passion is. I want you to show me what desire is. I want you to be the one to take my virginity. I don’t want to give it to him. Shouldn’t I give it to you? The man that I cared about for most of my life, the man who has protected me for all this time. It belongs to you.”
But she could never belong to him, and that was the great and terrible truth. She could never be his, not truly.
But did it matter? Did it matter if she could be his for a moment. For a night. Would he take that and give her a lifetime of suffering?
He felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, balancing on the sharp edge of a sword. One wrong move and he would cut himself in half, but he was going to be cut in half anyway. She was going to marry another man. She was going to belong to someone else forever. That man would always have his hands on her. Would always have her body beneath his, because what man wouldn’t?
So tonight, tonight she could belong to him. She could belong to him first.
Her kiss had been sweeter than anything he could’ve possibly imagined, and he wanted more. He wanted all of her.
He could have her.
And ever and always, all the days of her life, of her marriage, her skin would be branded with his hands. Always, she would have the memory of his cock surging inside her. Just thinking of that made his blood run hot. Molten like lava, his need for her as deadly and destructive as any natural disaster.
Nothing would make it better. Nothing. So he could suffer all of his life not knowing what it was to touch her, to taste her, to have her, or he could claim this. Just this once.
It was like drowning. Like dying. Like not knowing if he would ever reach the surface or if he was swimming to his death.
It was like his greatest fear, and his salvation rolled into one.
He growled, wrapped his arm around her neck, pushed his fingers through her hair and pulled her in for a rough kiss. He cupped her chin, holding her face tightly in his hand as he held her mouth open for him, tasting her long and deep, making her stand frozen like that as he gorged himself on her.
She was a revelation. A great and glorious beauty he couldn’t get enough of.
He was so hungry for her he couldn’t bear it.
His heart was hammering so hard he thought it might go completely through the front of his chest, leaving nothing but a bloody hole behind, and that would be a fitting tribute. For Emerald, he would give up his heart, his soul, his body.
He had already done so.
“We can’t,” she whispered. “Not out here. Not where someone could see.”
He would do that too. Go down below, risk the entire ocean closing in upon them. As long as he was inside her it didn’t matter. If they were his last moments on earth, then he would die happy.
He took her hand and led her down the stairs.
Let her lead him the short way to her cabin, her windows vast and open, facing the sea.
What a fitting way for this to end.
The ocean stretched before them. His greatest enemy. How perfect that it would be witness to this. He had gone down with a ship once before.
And now here he would again.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, looked at her. “Strip for me,” he said.
This would be her first time, and he would make sure that she was well acquainted with pleasure. He would make sure that this was the best sex she could ever possibly have in her life. No other man would ever be able to please her the way that he did because he had years of fantasies inside him. Years of thinking about her, and her alone. The curves of her body, the way that her face would look when it reached the peak of pleasure, the sounds that she would make. No one would have all that desire inside them for her, and no one would ever be able to make her feel the things that he did. He knew that for sure.
But as for this moment, the one where she unveiled that body to him, he would sit, and he would take that pleasure for his own.
