Читать книгу Claiming His Own - Olivia Gates - Страница 12

Three

Maksim’s words fell on Cali like an avalanche of rocks.

She stood gaping at him, buried under their enormity.

His father had killed his sister. His baby sister.

He feared he suffered from the same brutal affliction.

Was that what had overcome him back there in Leo’s room? This “unreasoning” aggression toward the helpless?

Sudden terror grabbed her by the throat.

What if he lost control now? What if— What if...

As suddenly as dread had towered, it crashed, deflated.

This man standing across her living room, looking at her with eyes that bled with despondence she recognized only too well, having suffered it for far too long, wasn’t in the grips of uncontrollable violence. But of overwhelming anguish.

He feared himself and what he considered to be his legacy. That fear seemed to have ruled his whole life. He’d just finished telling her it had dictated his every action and decision in his interactions with her. The limits he’d agreed to, the severance he’d imposed on them, had been prodded by nothing else. He’d thought he was protecting her, and Leo, from his destructive potential.

And she heard herself asking, “Did you ever hurt anyone?”

“I did.”

The bitten-off admission should have resurrected her fears. It didn’t. And not because she was seeing good where there was none, as her mother had done with her father. As his own mother must have done with his father, to remain with an abusive husband.

She only couldn’t ignore her gut feeling. It had guided her all her life, had never led her astray.

The one time she’d thought she’d made a fundamental mistake had been with him. But his explanations had reinstated the validity of her inner instincts about him.

From the first moment she’d laid eyes on Maksim, she’d felt she’d be safe with him. More. Protected, defended. At any cost to him. That nobility, that stability, that perfect control she’d felt from him—even at the height of passion—had led her to trust him without reservation from that first night onward. It all contradicted what he feared about himself.

She started walking toward him and he tensed. It was clear he didn’t welcome her nearness now, after he’d confessed his shame and dread to her. What must it be like for him to doubt himself on such a basic level? What had it been like for him believing he had a time bomb ticking inside him?

She had to let him know what she’d always sensed of his steadiness and trustworthiness. That it had been why it had hit her so hard when he’d left. She hadn’t been able to reconcile what she’d felt on her most essential levels with his seemingly callous actions. Thinking she’d been so wrong about him had agonized her as much as longing for him had.

But she’d been right about him. As misguided as his reasons had been, he’d only meant to protect her and Leo.

He took a couple of steps back as she approached, his eyes imploring her not to come any closer, not just yet. “Let me say this. It’s been weighing on me since I met you. But if you come near me, I’ll forget everything.”

In answer, she stopped, sank down on the couch where he’d ravished her with pleasure so recently and patted the space next to her. He reluctantly complied.

“Those you hurt were never weaker than you are.” It was a statement, not a question.

His hooded eyes simmered. “No.”

“They were equals...” her gaze darted over the daunting breadth of his shoulders “...or superior numbers.” His nod was terse, confirming her deduction. “And you never instigated violence.”

“But I didn’t only ward off attacks or defend the attacked. I was only appeased when I damaged the attackers.”

“Were those times so frequent?”

He nodded. “My father left another legacy. A tangled mess in our home city. In the motherland, some areas are far from the jurisdiction of law, or the law leaves certain disputes to be resolved by people among themselves. The use of force is the most accepted resolution. I became an expert at it.”

“So those times you hurt others, you were not only defending yourself but others. You did what had to be done.”

“I was too violent. And I relished it.”

She persisted. “Did you lose control?”

“No. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“A lot of men are like you.... Soldiers, protectors—capable of stunning violence, of even killing, for a cause, to defend others against aggressors. But those same men are usually the gentlest men with those who depend on them for protection.”

His eyes grew more turbid. “I understood that mentally, that I had good cause. But with my family history, I feared it meant I had it in me...this potential for unprovoked violence. My passion for you was intensifying by the hour...but my fear of myself came to a head one specific night. It happened when I was waiting for you in bed and you were walking toward me in a sheer turquoise negligee.”

Her throat closed. She remembered that night. Only too well. Their last night together.

She’d woken up replete from his tender, tempestuous lovemaking to find him gone.

“I’d never seen you more beautiful. You were ripe and glowing—your belly was rounding more by the day, and you were stroking it lovingly as you approached me. What I felt at that moment, it was so ferocious, I was scared out of my wits. I’d put bullies twice your size in traction...or worse. I couldn’t risk having my passions swerve into a different direction.”

Needles pricked behind her eyes, threatening to dissolve down her cheeks at any moment. “You hid it well.”

His eyes widened in dismay. “I didn’t have to hide anything. I never felt anything anywhere near aggressive around you. But the mere possibility of losing control of my passion carried a price that was impossible to contemplate.”

He never said emotion. Did he use passion interchangeably, or was everything he felt rooted in the physical?

“You have to believe me. You don’t have to look back and feel sick thinking you’d been in danger and oblivious of it.”

She shook her head, needing to arrest his alarm. “I meant you hid that increasing passion. I never sensed that you felt a different level from what you had always showed me.”

His nod was heavy. “That I hid. And the more I tried not to show you what I felt, the more it...roiled inside me. And if I felt like this when you were still carrying my child, I couldn’t risk testing how I’d feel after you had him.”

He must have been living a nightmare, worrying he’d relive what had happened with his father, reenact it.

A vice clamped her throat. “Abusers don’t fear for their victims’ well-being, Maksim. They blame them for provoking them, make themselves out to be the wronged ones, the ones pushed beyond their endurance. They certainly don’t live in dread of what they might do. You’re nothing like your father.”