Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(55)
“Like we’re what?” His voice is dangerously soft as he grips my arms. “Like we’re what, Sara?”
My mouth goes dry at the look in his metallic eyes. “You know…” I swallow thickly. “In a committed relationship.”
“Are you telling me you slept with someone else?” His fingers bite into my skin as a tiny muscle starts ticking in his temple. “Let some other—”
“No!” How can he even think this? “Of course I didn’t! Besides, I’m sure your spies would’ve told you. You said they couldn’t get that close, but they wouldn’t have missed that.”
His punishing grip on my arms eases slightly. “No, they probably wouldn’t have,” he agrees after a moment’s consideration. Releasing me, he turns around to twist the knob that directs the water from the faucet to the showerhead above.
I blink water out of my eyes and watch him adjust the spray so it hits lower. Then he faces me again, blocking most of the water with his back.
“I haven’t fucked anything other than my fist since I dropped you off,” he says evenly. “In fact, since we met, I haven’t so much as brushed against another woman in a crowd. You are it for me, ptichka—all I want, now and forever. Every night for the past nine months, I’d lie in bed, dick so hard it hurt, and think of you. Only you. You’re every wet dream of mine, every fantasy and daydream. I want to fuck you all the time, no matter where we are or what we’re doing. Even when we’re oceans apart, you are the only one I want—the only one I’ll ever want.”
My throat tightens, trapping air inside my lungs. I believe him. How could I not? He’s never lied to me, never tried to hide his feelings. From the very beginning, I’ve known the depths of his obsession with me, and while it used to scare me, it’s now perversely reassuring.
For as long as we’re both alive.
Something clicks for me, like a light flipping on, cutting through the fog of shock and post-sex daze. “Peter…” My voice shakes as I reach over to capture his hand between my palms. “Did you do it for me?”
He cocks his head, gray eyes puzzled. “Do what, ptichka?”
“This favor for Esguerra so he’d take you off the wanted lists… that thing that kept you away for so long.” Squeezing his hand, I bring it up to my chest, where a peculiar tightness constricts my pounding heart. “Am I the reason? Did you do it so you could be here with me?”
He frowns, covering my clasped palms with his other hand. “Of course, ptichka. Isn’t this what you wanted? A life where I’m not a fugitive, where we could be together without you losing your family and your career?”
I stare up at him, finally comprehending the enormity of what he’s done. It is what I wanted, what I’ve been longing for in the deepest recesses of my heart. It’s my darkest, most shameful fantasy—an actual life with my tormentor—and he’s made it a reality.
He’s done the impossible, pulled God knows how many strings—and all for me.
The steam filling the bathroom is making my eyes burn, and the vise around my heart squeezes tighter.
Peter loves me.
Really, truly loves me.
It’s no longer theoretical, what he’d do for me.
It’s real. He’s done it.
“Isn’t this what you wanted, Sara?” he repeats, frown deepening, and I find myself nodding like a marionette, still unable to speak.
“Good.” He gently extricates his hand from my grip and turns sideways, so that I’m under the water spray. Picking up my shampoo, he pours it into his palm and starts massaging it into my scalp, as though that’s what one does after that kind of revelation.
As though that’s all there is to say.
And maybe that’s true. Maybe we should revisit this conversation when I don’t feel so blindsided, so overwhelmed by his sudden return and all that’s bound to go along with it. Because I still don’t know what to say to him, how to explain the way I feel.
How to tell him that though I’m overjoyed to have him here, I’m terrified in equal measures.
He washes my hair thoroughly, his strong fingers massaging my scalp and neck, and then he applies conditioner and lets it sit while he washes the rest of me, his soapy, callused hands sliding all over my body, stroking and caressing my skin with just the right amount of tenderness and roughness.
It feels amazing, like the most exquisite spa treatment, and when he finally rinses the soap off me, I pick up the body wash and do the same to him, enjoying the feel of his sleek, hair-roughened skin as I run my hands over his large, hard-muscled body.
He’s always taken care of me, pampered me like a princess, but I’ve never done it for him, I realize. Returning my tormentor’s affection has always felt like a betrayal of George and everything else that mattered, and while I couldn’t help myself in bed, I kept myself aloof at other times, accepting Peter’s ministrations but never reciprocating them.
I still feel some of that guilt, that sense of wrongness, but it’s no longer the suffocating pressure it once was. As the months passed and the shock of George’s violent death faded, I’ve been able to think about it more rationally, to analyze the events from a different perspective.
For one thing, George wasn’t truly alive when Peter put a bullet in his head. He’d been in a coma for eighteen months, and given the extent of damage to his brain, there’d been almost no chance he’d ever emerge from it. At some point, I would’ve had to make the excruciating decision to take him off life support—something I’d been avoiding thinking about, especially since I’d been convinced that George’s accident was partially my fault.