It is only an affair…or so they believe in this Billionaires and Babies tale from USA TODAY bestselling author Olivia Gates

From their first explosive night, Caliope Sarantos and Maksim Volkov agreed to no commitment, only pure pleasure. Then her pregnancy changed everything.

Though the Russian tycoon made the baby his heir, he disappeared from Caliope’s life. Now, he’s back, offering everything he didn’t in the past. But the shining promise of a happy ending is eclipsed by the shadow of his tragic past…and his dark future. Will Caliope’s heart break again? Or will Maksim risk everything to claim this woman and child as his own?

“No, maksim. I refuse your new deal.”

“It’s a proposal, Caliope.”

She took a step back, then another, making him feel she was receding forever out of reach. “Whatever you want to call it, my answer is still no. And it’s a final no. You had no right to think you can seek redemption at my expense.”

“The redemption I’m seeking is for you. I’m offering you everything I can, what you just admitted you need.”

“I only said you left at a time when I most needed you, not that I need you still.”

Every word fell on him like a lash, their pain accumulating until he was numb. But after leaving her, how could he have hoped for anything different?

* * *

Claiming His Own is part of the No.1 bestselling miniseries from Mills & Boon® Desire™— Billionaires and Babies: Powerful men… wrapped around their babies’ little fingers

Dear Reader,

I have loved each and every book I’ve written, given each line everything that I had and have become truly attached to every couple whose passionate story I’ve told.

But every now and then there comes a book where everything comes together as if by magic, from the premise to the characters, the conflict to the black moment, to the hard-won resolution.

Claiming His Own was such a book. Every single word came to me with such certainty, such intensity, that once I’d put down the words, I didn’t have to stop to second-guess or even to polish what I’d written. It truly felt as if I was just a bystander watching Maksim’s and Caliope’s heart-wrenching love story unfold, listening to their innermost turmoil and experiencing their heartfelt desires and fears, and capturing every detail just as it came into existence.

I so hope you enjoy their story as much as I did, live with them every second of their fervent love and passion, and be as deeply touched as I was by their ordeals and triumphs.

I love to hear from readers, so please contact me at oliviagates@gmail.com. Connect with me on Facebook,

at www.facebook.com/oliviagatesauthor, and on Twitter, @OliviaGates.

To find out about my latest releases, to read excerpts and sign up for giveaways, please visit www.oliviagates.com.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading.

Olivia Gates

Claiming His Own

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untan- gling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heartwrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To my brother. Thanks for being you. Everyone who’s

ever known you will understand just what I mean.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Prologue

Eighteen months ago

Caliope Sarantos stared at the strip in her hand.

It was the third one so far. The two pink lines had appeared in each, glaring and undeniable.

She was pregnant.

Even though she’d been meticulous about birth control, she just...was.

A dozen conflicting emotions frothed over again, colliding inside her chest. Whatever she did about this, it would turn her world upside down, would probably shatter the perfection she’d forged with Maksim. If she didn’t know what to feel about this, what would he...

Suddenly her heart fired so hard, she almost keeled over.

He was here.

As always, she felt Maksim before she heard him. Her whole being surged with worry this time rather than welcome. Once she told him, nothing would remain the same.

He walked into the bedroom where he’d first taught her what passion was, where he continued to show her there was no limit to the intimacies and pleasures they could share.

His wolf’s eyes sizzled with passion as he strode toward her, throwing away his tie and attacking his shirt as if it burned him. He was starving for her, as usual. But what she’d tell him was bound to extinguish his urgency. An unplanned pregnancy was the last thing he expected.

This might end everything between them.

This could be her last time with him.

She couldn’t tell him. Not before she had him.

Desperate desire erupted, consuming her sanity as she met his urgency with her own, pulling him down to the bed on top of her, trembling with the enormity of having him in her arms. His lips fused to hers, his rumble of voracity and enjoyment pouring into her, spiking her arousal. Before she wrapped herself around him, he yanked her up, bent her over one arm, had her breasts jutting in an erotic offering. Pouring litanies of craving all over her, he kneaded her breasts, pulling her nipples into the moist heat of his mouth, sucking with such perfect force that each pull had her screams of pleasure rising. Then he glided a hand over her abdomen until he squeezed her trim mound.

Just as she screamed again, he slid two fingers between the slickness of her folds, growling again as her arousal perfumed the air.

With only a few strokes, he had her senses overloading and release scorching through her body in waves, from his fondling fingers outwards. He completed her climax with rough encouragements before he slid down her body, coming between her shaking legs, spreading them over his shoulders, exploiting her every inch with hands, lips and teeth until she was thrashing again.

“Please, enough,” she moaned. “I need you....”

He subdued her with a hand flat on her abdomen, his face set in imperious lines. “Let me have my fill of your pleasure. Open for me, Caliope.”

His command had her legs falling apart, surrendering everything to him. He latched on to her core, drank her flowing essence and arousal until she felt her body would unravel with the need for release. As if he knew the exact moment when she couldn’t take any more, he tongued her, and she cried herself hoarse on a chain reaction of convulsions.

Before her rioting breath had a chance to subside, he slid up her sweat-slick body, flattening her to the bed. Her breath hitched and her dropping heat shot up again as soon as his tongue filled her, feeding her his taste mingled with that of her pleasure. It was unbelievable how he ignited her with only a touch.

He fused their lips for feverish seconds before he reared up, his eyes searching hers, his erection seeking her entrance. Finding both her eyes and her core molten, he growled his surrender and sank into her.

She cried out at the first inevitable shock of his invasion, that craved expansion of her flesh as it yielded to his daunting potency and poured more readiness to welcome him.

He groaned his own agonized pleasure as he rose to his knees between her splayed thighs, cupped her hips and thrust himself to the hilt inside her, hitting that trigger inside her that always made her go wild beneath him.

Knowing just what to do to wreak havoc on her senses, he withdrew, plunged again and again until her breath became fevered snatches and she writhed against him, demanding that he end his exquisite torment. Only then did he give her his full ferocity, in ram after jarring ram, in the exact force and cadence she was dying for.

He escalated to a jackhammering tempo inside her until she shrieked, arched in a spastic bow, crushed herself to him as pleasure detonated her, undoing her to her very cells.

Through the delirium she heard him roar, felt his great body shuddering, his seed splashing against her intimate flesh, dousing the inferno that threatened to turn her to ashes. She held on to awareness, to him, until he collapsed on top of her, filling her trembling arms, before she spiraled into an abyss of satiation, hitting bottom bonelessly, consciousness dissipating....

She came back into her body with a gasp as, still fused to her, he rose above her, his breathing as labored as hers, his eyes crackling with satisfaction, melting with indulgence, his lips flushed and swollen with the savagery of their coupling. He looked heartbreakingly virile and vital, and he was...hers.

She’d never allowed herself to think of him this way...but he was.

Since she’d met him, Maksim Volkov had been hers alone.

Though she’d long known of him, the Russian steel tycoon who was on par with her eldest brother, Aristedes, as one of the world’s richest and most powerful men, it had taken that first face-to-face glance across the room at that charity gala a year ago for a certainty to come to her fully formed. That he’d turn her life upside down. If she let him.

And she’d let him, and then some.

She still remembered with acute intensity how she’d breathlessly allowed him to kiss her within minutes of meeting, how he’d claimed her lips, thrust his tongue inside her gasping mouth, fed her the ambrosia of his taste, turned her into a mass of mindlessness. She’d never imagined she could feel anything so suffocating in intensity, so transporting in headiness. She’d never imagined she could need a man to take her over, to dominate her.

And within an hour, she’d let him sweep her to his presidential hotel suite, knowing that she’d allow him every intimacy there. It had only been on the way there in his ultimate luxury Mercedes that she’d regained enough presence of mind to tell him that she was a virgin, even when she’d been dreading that the revelation would end their magical encounter prematurely.

She’d never forgotten his reaction.

The banked fire in his eyes had flared again as he took her lips again in a kiss that was possession itself, a sealing of her surrender.

As he’d released her and before he’d set the car in motion, he’d pledged, “It’s my unparalleled privilege to be your first, Caliope. And I’m going to make it your unimaginable pleasure.”

And how he’d fulfilled his pledge. It had been so overwhelming between them, they’d both known that a one-night stand was out of the question. But because of the disastrous example of her own parents, then the disappointing track records of almost everyone she knew, she believed commitment was just a setup for anything from mind-numbing mediocrity to soul-destroying disappointment. She’d never felt the least temptation to risk either.

But wanting more of Maksim had gone beyond temptation into compulsion. The very intensity of her need had made it imperative she make sure their liaison didn’t take a turn in the wrong direction.

To ensure that, she’d demanded rules, upfront and unswerving, to govern whatever time they had together. They’d be together whenever their schedules allowed. For as long as they shared the same level of passion and pleasure, felt the same eagerness for each other. But once the fire was gone, they’d say goodbye amicably and move on.

He had agreed to her terms but had added his own nonnegotiable one. Exclusivity.

Stunned that he’d propose or want that, with his reputation as a notorious playboy, it had only made her plunge harder, deeper, until she’d lost herself in what raged between them. But all the time she’d wondered how long it could possibly last. Not even in her wildest dreams had she hoped it would burn that brightly for long, let alone indefinitely.

But it was now a year later and it kept growing more powerful between them, blazing ever hotter.

And she couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t.

But she had to tell him...

“I’m pregnant.”

Her heart hammered painfully as even she was taken aback at her own raggedly blurted out declaration. Then more as silence exploded in its wake.

It was as if he’d turned to stone. Nothing remained animate in him except his eyes. And the expression that crashed into them was enough.

Any unformed hope she might have held—that the pregnancy might lead to something more for them—died an abrupt and agonizing death.

Suddenly, she felt she’d suffocate under his weight. Sensing her distress, he lurched off her. She groaned with the pain of separation as he left her body for what was probably the last time.

She sat up unsteadily, groping for the covers. “You don’t need to concern yourself with this. Being pregnant is my business, as it is my business that I decided to have the baby. I only thought it was your right to know. Just as it is your right to feel and act as you wish concerning the fact.”

His grimness was absolute as he, too, sat up, as if rising from under rubble. “You don’t want me near your baby.”

Did her words make him think that she didn’t?

She forced out a whispered qualification through her closing throat. “It is your baby, too. I welcome your role in its life, whatever you want it to be.”

“I mean you don’t want me near your baby. Or you as a new mother. I’m not a man to be trusted in such situations. I will give the baby my name, make it my heir. But I will never take part in its upbringing.” Before she could gasp out her confusion over his contradicting statements, he carried on, “But I want to remain your lover. For as long as you’ll have me. When you no longer want me, I’ll stay away. You will both have my limitless support always, but I cannot be involved in your daily lives.”

He reached for her, his eyes piercing her with their vehemence. “This is all I can offer. This is what I am, Caliope. And I can’t change.”

She stared up into his fierce gaze, knowing one thing. That the sane thing to do was to refuse his offer. The self-preserving thing was to cut him off from her life now, not later.

But she couldn’t even contemplate doing that. Whatever damage it caused in the future, she couldn’t sacrifice what she could have of him in the present to avoid it.

And she succumbed to his new terms.

But as the weeks passed, she kept bating her breath wondering if she’d been wrong to succumb. And right in believing the pregnancy would shatter their perfection.

She did sense his withdrawal in everything he said and did. But he confused her even more when he always came back hungrier than ever.

Then just as she entered her seventh month, and was more confused than ever about where they stood, her world stopped turning completely when Maksim just...disappeared.

One

Present

“And he never came back?”

Cali stared at Kassandra Stavros’s gorgeous face. It took several disconcerted moments before she reminded herself her new friend couldn’t possibly be talking about Maksim.

After all, Kassandra didn’t even know about him. No one did.

Cali had kept their...liaison a secret from her family and friends. Even when declaring her pregnancy had become unavoidable, with Maksim still in her life, she’d refused to tell anyone who the father was. Even when she’d clung to the hope that he’d remain part of her life after her baby was born, their situation had been too...irregular, and she’d had no wish to explain it to anyone. Certainly not to her traditional Greek family.

The only one she knew who wouldn’t have judged was Aristedes. Her, that was. He would have probably wanted to take Maksim apart. Literally. When he’d been in a similar situation, her brother had gone to extreme lengths to stake a claim on his lover, Selene, and their son, Alex. He’d consider any man doing anything less a criminal. His outrage would have been a thousand fold with her and his nephew on the other end of the equation. Aristedes would have probably exacted a drastic punishment on Maksim for shirking his responsibilities. Knowing Maksim, it would have developed into a war.

Not that she would have tolerated being considered Maksim’s “responsibility,” or would have let Aristedes fight her battle. Not when it hadn’t been one to start with. She’d told Maksim he’d owed her nothing. And she’d meant it. As for Aristedes and her family, she’d been independent far too long to want their blessings or need their support. She wouldn’t have let anyone have an opinion, let alone a say, in how she’d conducted her life, or the...arrangement she’d had with Maksim.

Then he’d disappeared, making the whole thing redundant. All they knew was that Leo’s father had been “nothing serious.”

Kassandra was now talking about another man in Cali’s life who’d been a living example of “nothing serious.” Someone who should also hold some record for Most Callous User.

Her father.

The only good thing he’d ever done, in her opinion, had been leaving her mother and his brood of kids before Cali had been born. Her other siblings, especially Aristedes and Andreas, had lifelong scars to account for their exposure to his negligence and exploitation. She’d at least escaped that.

She finally answered her friend, sighing, “No. He was gone one day and was never heard from again. We have no idea if he’s still alive. Though he must be long dead or he would have surfaced as soon as Aristedes made his first ten thousand dollars.”

Her friend’s mouth dropped open. “You think he would have come back asking for money? From the son he’d abandoned?”

“Can’t imagine that type of malignant nonparent, huh?”

Kassandra shrugged. “Guess I can’t. My father and uncles may be controlling Greek pains, but it’s because they’re really hopeless mother hens.”

Cali smiled, seeing how any male in the family of the incredibly beautiful Kassandra would be protective of her. “According to Selene, they believe you give them just cause for their Greek overprotectiveness to go into hyperdrive.”

A chuckle burst on Kassandra’s lips. “Selene told you about them, huh?”

Selene, Aristedes’s wife and Kassandra’s best friend, had told her the broad lines about Kassandra before introducing them to each other, confident they’d work spectacularly well together. Which they did. But they’d only started being more than business associates in the past two months, gradually becoming close personal friends. Which Cali welcomed very much. She did need a woman to talk to, one of her own age, temperament and interests, and Kassandra fulfilled all those criteria. Although Selene certainly fit the bill, too, ever since Cali had given birth to Leo, being around family, which Selene was now, had become too...uncomfortable.

So Kassandra had been heaven-sent. And though they’d been delving deeper in private waters every time they met, it was the first time they’d swerved into the familial zone.

Glad to steer the conversation away from herself, she grinned at her new confidante. “Selene only told me the basics, said she’d leave it up to you to supply the hilarious details.”

Kassandra slid lower on the couch, her incredible hair fanning out against the cushions in a glossy sun-streaked mass, her Mediterranean-green eyes twinkling in amusement. “Yeah, I flaunted their strict values, their conservative expectations and traditional hopes for me. I wasted one huge opportunity after another of acquiring a socially enviable, deep-pocketed ‘sponsor’ to procreate with, to provide them with more perfect, preferably male progenies to shove onto the path of greatness, following my brothers’ and cousins’ shiningly ruthless example, and to perpetuate the romantic, if misleading, stereotype of those almighty Greek tycoons.”

Cali chuckled, Kassandra’s dry wit tickling her almost atrophied sense of humor. “They must have had collective strokes when you left home at eighteen and worked your way through college in minimum-wage jobs and then added mortification to worry by becoming a model.”

Kassandra grinned. “They do attribute their blood-pressure and sugar-level abnormalities to my scandalous behavior. You’d think they would have settled down now that I’ve hit thirty and left my lingerie-modeling days behind to become a struggling designer.”

Kassandra was joking here since at thirty she was far more beautiful than she’d been at twenty. She’d just become so famous she preferred to model only for causes now. And she was well on her way to becoming just as famous as a designer. Cali felt privileged to be a major part of establishing her as a household name through an innovative series of online ad campaigns.

Kassandra’s generous lips twisted. “But no. They’re still recycling the same nightmares about the dangers I must be facing, fending off the perverts and predators they imagine populate my chosen profession. And they’re lamenting my single status louder by the day, and getting more frantic as they count down my fast-fading attractions and fertility. Thirty to Greeks seems to be the equivalent of fifty in other cultures.”

Cali snorted. “Next time they wail, point them my way. They’d thank you instead for not detonating their social standing completely by bearing an out-of-wedlock child.”

A wicked gleam deepened the emerald of Kassandra’s eyes. “Maybe I should. It doesn’t seem I’ll ever find a man who’ll mess with my mind enough that I’d actually be willing to put up with the calamity of the marriage institution either for real, or for the cause of perpetuating the Stavros species. Not to mention that your and Selene’s phenomenal tykes are making my biological clock clang.”

Cali’s heart twitched. Whenever Kassandra lumped her with Selene, it brought their clashing realities into painful focus. Selene, having two babies with the love of her life. And her, having Leo...alone.

“Being a single parent isn’t something to be considered lightly,” she murmured.

Contrition filled Kassandra’s eyes. “Which you are in the best position to know. I remember how Selene struggled before Aristedes came back. As successful as she is, being a single mother was such a big burden to bear alone. Before her experience, I had this conviction that fathers were peripheral at best in the first few years of a child’s life. But then I saw the night-and-day difference Aristedes made in Selene and Alex’s lives....” She huffed a laugh. “Though he’s no example. We all know there’s only one of him on planet earth.”

Just as Cali had thought there was only one of Maksim. If not because of any human traits...

But Aristedes had once appeared to be just as inhuman. In his case, appearances had been the opposite of reality.

Cali sighed again. “You don’t know how flabbergasted I still am sometimes to see how amazing Aristedes is as a husband and father. We used to believe he was the phenomenally successful version of our heartless, loser father.”

It had been one specific night in particular that she’d become convinced of that. The night Leonidas—their brother—had died.

As she and her sisters had clung together, reeling from the horrific loss, Aristedes had swooped in and taken complete charge of the situation. All business, he’d dealt with the police and the burial and arranged the wake, but had offered them no solace, hadn’t stayed an hour after the funeral.

That had still been far better than Andreas, who hadn’t returned at all, or even acknowledged Leonidas’s death then or since. But it had convinced her that Aristedes, too, had no emotions...just like their father.

She’d since realized that he was the opposite of their father, felt too much, but had been so unversed in demonstrating his emotions, he’d expressed them instead in the support he’d lavished on her and all his siblings since they’d been born. But after Selene had claimed him, as he said, something fundamental had changed in him. He was still ruthless in business, but on a personal level, he’d opened up with his family and friends. And when it came to Selene and their kids, he was a huge rattle toy.

“So your father was that bad, huh?” Kassandra asked.

Cali took a sip of tea, loath to discuss her father. She’d always been glib about him. But it was suddenly hitting her how close to her own situation it all was.

She exhaled her rising unease. “His total lack of morals and concern for anything beyond his own petty interests were legend. He got my mother pregnant with Aristedes when she was only seventeen. He was four years older, a charmer who never held down a job and who only married her because his father threatened to cut him off financially if he didn’t. He used her and the kids he kept impregnating her with to squeeze his father for bigger allowances, which he spent on himself. After his father died, he took his inheritance and left.”

Cali paused for a moment to regulate her agitated breathing before resuming. “He came back when he’d squandered it, knowing full well that Mother would feed him and take care of him with what little money she earned or got from those who remained of her own family, those who’d stopped helping out when they realized their hard-earned money was going to that user. He drifted in and out of her and my siblings’ lives, each time coming back to add another child to his brood and another burden on my mother’s shoulders before disappearing again. He always came back swearing his love, of course, offering sob stories about how hard life was on him.”

Chagrin filled Kassandra’s eyes more with every word. “And your mother just took him back?”

Cali nodded, more uncomfortable by the second at the associations this conversation was raising.

“Aristedes said she didn’t know it was possible for her not to. He understood it all, having been forced to mature very early, but could do nothing about it except help his mother. He was only seven when he was already doing everything that no-good father should have been doing while mother took care of the younger kids. By twelve he had left school and was working four jobs to barely make ends meet. Then when he was fifteen, said nonfather disappeared for the final time when I was still a work in progress.

“Aristedes went on to work his way up from the docks in Crete to become one of the biggest shipping magnates in the world. Regretfully, our mother was around only to see the beginnings of his success, as she died when I was only six. He then brought us all over here to New York, got us American citizenships and provided us with the best care and education money could buy.

“But he didn’t stick around, didn’t even become American himself, except after he married Selene. But his success and all that we have now was in spite of what that man who fathered us did to destroy our lives, as he managed to destroy our mother. All in all, I am only thankful I didn’t have the curse of having him poison my life as he did Aristedes’s and the rest of my siblings’.”

Kassandra blinked, as if unable to take in that level of unfeeling, premeditated exploitation. “It’s mind-boggling. How someone can be so...evil with those he’s supposed to care for. He did one thing right, though, even if inadvertently. He had you and your siblings. You guys are great.”

Cali refrained from telling her that she’d always thought only Leonidas had been deserving of that accolade. Now she knew Aristedes was, too, but she felt her three sisters, though she loved them dearly, had been infected with a degree or another of their mother’s passivity and willingness to be downtrodden. Andreas, sibling number five out of seven, was just...an enigma. From his lifelong loath interactions with them, she was inclined to think that he was far worse than anything she’d ever thought Aristedes to be.

But while she’d thought she’d escaped her mother’s infection, perhaps she hadn’t after all.

Apart from the different details, Cali had basically done with Maksim what her mother had done with her father. She’d gotten involved with someone she’d known she shouldn’t have. Then, when it had been in her best interest to walk away, she’d been too weak to do so, until he’d been the one who’d left her.

But her mother had had an excuse. An underprivileged woman living in Crete isolated from opportunity or hope of anything different, a woman who didn’t know how to aspire to better.

Cali was a twenty-first-century, highly educated, totally independent American woman. How could she defend her actions and decisions?

“Look at the time!” Kassandra jumped to her feet. “Next time, just kick me out and don’t let little ol’ kidless me keep you from stocking up on sleep for those early mornings with Leo.”

Rising, Cali protested, “I’d rather have you here all night yammering about anything than sleep. I’ve been starving for adult company...particularly of the female variety, outside of discussing baby stuff with Leo’s nanny.”

Kassandra hugged her, chuckling as she rushed to the door. “You can use me any time to ward off your starvation.”

After setting up a meeting to discuss the next phase in their campaign and to go over Cali’s progress reports, Kassandra rushed off, and Cali found herself staring at the closed oak door of her suddenly silent apartment.

That all-too-familiar feeling of dejection, which always assailed her when she didn’t have a distraction, settled over her like a shroud.

She could no longer placate herself that this was lingering postpartum depression. She hated to admit it, but everything she’d been suffering for the past year had only one cause.

Maksim.

She walked back through her place, seeing none of its exquisiteness or the upgrades she’d installed to make it suitable for a baby. Her feet, as usual, took her without conscious volition to Leo’s room.

She tiptoed inside, though she knew she wouldn’t wake him. After the first six sleepless months, he’d thankfully switched to all-night-sleeping mode. She believed taking away the night-light and having him sleep in darkness had helped. She now only had the corridor light to guide her, though she’d know her way to his bed blindfolded.

As her vision adjusted, his beloved shape materialized out of the darkness, and emotion twisted in her throat as it always did whenever she beheld him. It regularly blindsided her, the power of her feelings for him.

He was so achingly beautiful, so frightfully perfect, she lived in dread of anything happening to him. She wondered if all mothers invented nightmares about the catastrophic potential of everything their children did or came in contact with or if she was the one who’d been a closet neurotic, and having Leo had only uncovered her condition.

Even though she was unable to see him clearly in the dark, his every pore and eyelash were engraved in her mind. If anyone had suspected she’d been with Maksim, they would have realized at once that Leo was his son. He was his replica after all. Just like Alex was Aristedes’s. When she’d first set eyes on Alex, she had exclaimed that cloning had been achieved. Now their daughter Sofia was the spitting image of Selene.

Every day made Leo the baby version of his impossibly beautiful father. His hair had the same unique shade of glossy mahogany, with the same widow’s peak, and would no doubt develop the same relaxed wave and luxury. His chin had the same cleft, his left cheek the same dimple. In Maksim’s case, since he’d appeared to be incapable of smiling, that dimple had winked at her only in grimaces of agonized pleasure at the height of passion.

The only difference between father and son was the eyes. Though Leo’s had the same wolfish slant, it was as if he’d mixed her blue eyes and Maksim’s golden ones together in the most amazing shade of translucent olive green.

Feeling her heart expanding with gratitude for this perfect miracle, she bent and touched her lips to Leo’s plump downy cheek. He gurgled contentedly and then flounced to his side, stretching noisily before settling into an even sounder sleep. She planted one more kiss over his averted face before finally straightening and walking out.

Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it. But instead of the familiar depression, something new crept in to close its freezing fingers around her heart. Rage. At herself.

Why had she given Maksim the opportunity to be the one to walk out on her? How had she been that weak?

She had felt his withdrawal. So why had she clung to him instead of doing what she herself had stipulated from the very beginning? That if the fire weakened or went out, they’d end it, without attempts to prolong its dying throes?

But in her defense, he’d confused her, giving her hope her doubts and observations of his distance had all been in her mind, when after each withdrawal he’d come back hungrier.

Still, that had been erratic, and it should have convinced her put a stop to it.

But she’d snatched at his offer to be there for her, even in that impersonal and peripheral way of his, had clung to him even through the dizzying fluctuation of his behavior. She’d given him the chance to deal her the blow of his abrupt desertion. Which she now had to face she hadn’t gotten over, and might never recover from.

Rage swerved inside her like a stream of lava to pour over him, burning him, too, in the vehemence of her contempt.

Why had he offered what he’d had no intention of honoring? When she’d assured him she hadn’t considered it his obligation? But he’d done worse than renege on his promise. Once he’d had enough of her, he’d begrudged her even the consideration of a goodbye.

Not that she’d understood, or believed that he had actually deserted her at the time.

Believing there must be another explanation, she’d started attempting to contact him just a day after his disappearance,

The number he’d assigned her had been disconnected. His other numbers had rung without going to voice mail. Her emails had gone unanswered. None of his associates had known anything about him. Apart from his acquisitions and takeovers, there’d been no other evidence of his continued existence. It had all pointed to the simple, irrefutable truth: he’d gone to serious lengths to hide his high profile, to make it impossible for her to contact him.

Yet for months she hadn’t been able to sanction that verdict. She’d grown frantic with every failure, even when logic had said nothing serious could happen to him without the whole world knowing. But, self-deluding fool that she was, she’d been convinced something terrible had happened to him, that he wouldn’t have abandoned then ignored her like that.

When she’d finally been forced to admit he’d done just that, it had sent her mad wondering...why?

She’d previously rationalized that his episodic withdrawal was due to the fact that her progressing pregnancy was making it too real for him, probably interfering with his pleasure, or even turning him off her.

Her suspicions had faltered when those instances had been interrupted by even-wilder-than-before encounters. But his evasion of her attempts to reach him had forced her to sanction those suspicions as the only explanation. Then, to make things worse, the deepening misery of her pregnancy’s last stages had forced another admission on her.

It hadn’t been anguish, or addiction, or needing closure.

She’d fallen in love with Maksim.

When she’d faced that fact, she’d finally known why he’d left. He must have sensed the change in her before she’d become conscious of it, had considered it the breaking point. Because he’d never change.

But if she’d thought the last months of her pregnancy had been hellish, they’d been nothing compared to what had followed Leo’s birth. To everyone else, she’d functioned perfectly. Inside, no matter what she’d told herself—that she had a perfect baby, a great career, good health, a loving family and financial stability—she’d known true desolation.

It hadn’t been the overwhelming responsibility for a helpless being who depended on her every single second of the day. It had been that soul-gnawing longing to have Maksim there with her, to turn to him for counsel, for moral support. She’d needed to share Leo with him, the little things more than the big stuff. She’d needed to exclaim to him over Leo’s every little wonder, to ramble on about his latest words or actions or a hundred other expected or unique developments. Sharing that with anyone who wasn’t Maksim had intensified her yearning for him.

Her condition had worsened until she’d started feeling as if he was near, as if she’d turn to find him looking at her with that uncontainable passion in his eyes. Many times she’d even thought she’d caught glimpses of him, her imagination playing havoc with her mind. And each time this mirage had dissolved, it had been as if he’d walked out on her all over again. Those phantom sensations, that need that wouldn’t subside, had only made her more bereft.

Now all that only poured fuel on her newfound fury. But anger felt far better than despondence. It made her feel alive. She hadn’t felt anywhere near that since he’d left.

She was done feeling numb inside. She’d no longer pretend to be alive. She’d live again for real, and to hell with everything she...

The bell rang.

Her heart blipped as her eyes flew to the wall clock. 10 p.m. She couldn’t imagine who it could be at this hour. Besides, anyone who came to see her would have buzzed her on the intercom, or, at the very least, her concierge would have called ahead to check with her first. So how could someone just arrive unannounced at her door?

The only answer was Kassandra. Maybe she’d left something behind. Probably her phone, since she hadn’t called ahead.

She rushed to the door, opened it without checking the peephole...and everything screeched to a halt.

Her breath. Her heart. The whole world.

In the subdued lights of the spacious corridor he loomed, dark and huge, his face eclipsed by the door’s shadow, his eyes glowing gold in the gloom.

Maksim.

Inside the cessation, a maelstrom churned, scrambling her senses. Heartbeats boomed in her chest. Air clogged in her lungs. Had she been thinking of him so obsessively she’d conjured him up? As she’d done so many times before?

Her vision distorted over the face that was omnipresent in her memory. It was the same, yet almost unrecognizable. She couldn’t begin to tell why. Her consciousness was wavering and only one thing kept her erect. The intensity of his gaze.

Then something hit her even harder. The way he sagged against the door frame, as if he, too, was unable to stand straight, as enervated at her sight as she was at his. His eyes roamed feverishly over her face, down her body, making her feel he’d scraped all her nerve endings raw.

Then his painstakingly sculpted lips twitched, as if in...pain. Next second it was her who almost fell to the ground in a heap.

The dark, evocative melody that emanated from his lips swamped her. But it was his ragged words that hit her hardest, deepened her paralysis, her muteness.

“Ya ocheen skoocha po tebyeh, moya dorogoya.”

She’d been learning Russian avidly since the day she’d met him. She hadn’t even stopped after he’d left, had only taken a break when Leo was born. She’d resumed her lessons in the past three months. Why exactly she’d been so committed, she hadn’t been able to rationalize. It was just one more thing that was beyond her.

But...maybe she’d been learning for this moment. So she’d understand what he’d just said.

I missed you so terribly, my darling.

Two

That was it. Her mind had snapped.

She was not only seeing Maksim, she was hearing him say the words that had echoed in her head so many times, waking up from a dream where he’d said just that. Then, to complete the hallucination, he reached for her and pulled her into his arms as he’d always done in those tormenting visions.

But he didn’t surround her in that sure flow of her dreams, or the steady purpose of the past. He staggered as he groped for her. His uncharacteristic incoordination, the desperation in his vibe, in every inch that impacted her quivering flesh, sent her ever-simmering desire roaring.

Then she was mingled with him, sharing his breath, sinking in his taste, as he reclaimed her from the void he’d plunged her in, wrenching her back into his possession.

Maksim. He was back like she’d dreamed every night for one bleak, interminable year. He was back...for real.

But he couldn’t be. He’d never been with her for real. It had never become real to him. She’d accepted that in the past.

She wouldn’t accept that anymore. Couldn’t bear it.

No matter how she’d fantasized about taking him back a thousand times, that would remain an impossible yearning. Too much had changed. She had. And he’d told her he never would.

The fugue of drugging pleasure, of drowning reprieve, slowly lifted. Instead of a resurrection, the feel of him around her became suffocation, until she was struggling for breath.

He let her go at once, stumbled back across her threshold. “Izvinityeh... Forgive me.... I didn’t mean to...”

His apology choked as he ran both hands through hair that had grown down to the base of his neck. One of the changes that hadn’t registered at first that now cascaded into her awareness like dominos, each one knocking a memorized nuance of him, replacing it with his reality now.

He looked...haggard, a shadow of the formidably vital man he’d once been. And, if possible, she found him even more breathtaking for it. That harsh edge of...depletion made her want to crush against him until she assimilated him into her being....

God... Was she turning into her mother for real? Is this the pattern she’d establish now? He’d leave without a word, stay away through her most trying times then come back, and without a word of explanation, say he’d missed her and one soul-stealing kiss later, she’d breathlessly offer him said soul if only he’d take it?

No way. He’d submerged her mind because he’d taken her by surprise, just when he’d been dominating her thoughts. But this lapse wouldn’t be repeated.

Maksim was part of her past. And that was where she’d keep him.

Yet even with this resolution, she could only stare up at him as he brooded at her from his prodigious height, what was amplified now by his weight loss.

“Won’t you invite me in?”

His rough whisper lashed through her, made her breath leave her in a hiss. “No. And before you leave, I want to know how you made it up here in the first place. Did you con a tenant to let you in, or did you intimidate my concierge?”

He winced. No doubt at the shrill edge in her voice. “I won’t say these things are beyond me if I wanted something bad enough. And I certainly would have resorted to whatever would have gotten me up here. But in this case, I didn’t have to con or coerce anyone to get my way. I entered with your pass code.”

How did he know that?

She’d once thought it remarkable a man of his stature walked around without bodyguards and let her into his inner sanctum without any safeguards. She’d thought he’d trusted her that much.

But what if she’d been wrong about that, too? Had he just seemed trusting because his security measures were of such a caliber they’d been invisible to her senses?

It made sense his security machine dissected anyone with whom he came in contact, especially women with whom he became sexually intimate. Come to think of it, they probably collected evidence on his conquests to be used if they stepped out of line. He probably had a dossier on her every private detail down to the brand of deodorant she used. What if he...

“I once came here with you.”

His subdued statement aborted her feverish projections.

She stared up at him, unable to fathom the correlation.

“You inputted your pass code at the entrance.”

If anything, that explanation left her more stunned. “You mean you watched me as I entered it, and not only figured out the twelve-digit code, but memorized it? Till now?”

He nodded, impatient to leave this behind. “I remember everything about you. Everything, Caliope.”

With this emphasis, his gaze dropped to her lips, as if he was holding back from ravishing them with a resolve that was fast dwindling.

Her lips throbbed in response, her insides twitched...

He took a tight step, still not crossing the threshold. Which really surprised her. The Maksim she knew would have just overridden her, secure that he’d melt any resistance. Not that he’d ever met with that, or even the slightest hint of reluctance, from her. But that had been in another life.

“Invite me in, Caliope. I need to talk to you.”

“And I don’t want to talk to you,” she shot back, struggling not to let that...vulnerability in his demand affect her. “You’re a year too late. The time for talking was before you decided to leave without a word. I got over any need or willingness to talk to you nine months ago.”

His nod was difficult. “When Leonid was born.”

So he knew Leo’s name, though he used the Russian version of Leonidas. He probably also knew Leo’s weight and how many baby teeth he had. All part of that security dossier he must have on her.

“Your deduction is redundant. As is your presence here.”

His hands bunched and released, as if they itched. “I won’t say I deserve that you hear me out. But for months you did want to hear my explanation of my sudden departure. You wanted to so badly, you left me dozens of messages and as many emails.”

So he had ignored her, let her go mad worrying, as she’d surmised. “Since you remember everything, you must remember why I kept calling and emailing.”

“You wanted to know if I was okay.”

“And since I can see that you are...” She paused, looked him up and down in his long, dark coat. “Though maybe I can’t call what you are now okay. You look like a starving vampire who is trying to hypnotize his victim into letting him in so he can suck her dry. Or for a more mundane metaphor, you look as if you’ve developed a cocaine habit.”

She knew she was being cruel. But she couldn’t help it. He’d sprung back into her life after bitterness had swept away despondence and anger had cracked its floodgates. Feeling herself about to throw all her anguish to the wind and just drag him in after one kiss had brought the dam of resentment crashing down.

“I’ve been...ill.”

The reluctant way he said that, the way his eyes lowered and those thick, thick lashes touched his even more razor-sharp cheekbones made her heart overturn again in her chest.

What if he’d been ill all this time...?

No. She wasn’t doing what her mother had done with her father—making excuses for him until he destroyed her.

He raised his gaze to her. “Aren’t you even curious to know why I left? Why I’m back?”

Curious? Speculating on why he’d left had permanently eroded her sanity. Her brain was now expanding inside her head with the pressure of needing to know why he was back.

Out loud she said, “No, I’m not. I made a deal with you from day one, demanding only two things from you. Honesty and respect. But you weren’t honest about having had enough of me, and you would have shown someone you’d picked off the street more respect.”

He flinched as if she’d struck him but didn’t make any attempt to interrupt her.

It only brought back more of memories of her anguish, injected more harshness into her words. “You evaded me as you would a stalker, when you knew that if you’d only confirmed that you were okay, I would have stopped calling. I did stop when your news made the confirmation for you, forcing me to believe the depth of your mistreatment. You’ve forfeited any right to my consideration. I don’t care why you left, why you ignored me, and I don’t have the least desire to know why you’re back.”

His bleakness deepened with her every word. When he was sure her barrage was over, he exhaled raggedly. “None of what you just said has any basis in truth. And while you might never sanction my true reasons for behaving as I did, they were...overwhelming to me at the time. It’s a long story.” Before she could blurt out that she wasn’t interested in hearing it, he added, almost inaudibly, “Then I was...in an accident.”

That silenced her. Outwardly. Inside, a cacophony of questions, anxiety and remorse exploded.

When? How? What happened? Was he injured? How badly?

Her eyes darted over him, feverishly inspecting him for damage. She saw nothing on his face, but maybe she was missing scars in the dimness. What about his body? That dark shroud might not obscure that he’d lost a lot of his previous bulk, but what if it was covering up something far more horrific?

Unable to bear the questions, she grabbed his forearm and dragged him across the threshold, where the better lighting of her foyer made it possible for her to check him closely.

Her heart squeezed painfully. God... He’d lost so much weight, looked so...unwell, gaunt, almost...frail.

Suddenly he groaned and dropped down. Before fright could register, he rose again, scooping her up in his arms.

It was a testament to his strength that, even in his diminished state, he could do so with seeming effortlessness, making her feel as he always had whenever he’d carried her: weightless, taken, coveted, cosseted. The blow of longing, the sense of homecoming when she’d despaired of ever seeing him again, was so overpowering it had her sagging in his hold, all tension and resistance gone.

Her head rolled over his shoulder, her hands trembled in a cold tangle over his chest as all the times he’d had her in his arms like this flooded her memory. He’d always carried her, had told her he loved the feel of her filling his arms, relinquishing her weight and will to him, so he’d contain her, take her, wherever and however he would.

He stopped at her family room. If she could have found her voice, she would have told him to keep going to her room, to not stop until they were flesh to flesh, ending the need for words, letting her lose herself in his possession, and even more, reassure herself about his every inch, check it out against what she remembered in obsessive detail, yearned for in perpetual craving.

But he was setting her down on the couch, kneeling on the ground beside her, looking down at her as she lay back, unable to muster enough power to sit up. And that was before she saw something...enormous roiling in his eyes.

Then he articulated it. “Can I see Leonid?”

Everything in her, body and spirit, stiffened with shock.

All she could say was, “Why?”

She was asking in earnest. He’d told her he wouldn’t take any personal interest or part in Leo’s life. She could find no reason why he would want to see him now.

His answer put into words what she’d just thought. “I know I said I wouldn’t have anything to do with him personally. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want to. It was because I thought I couldn’t and mustn’t.”

The memory of those excruciating moments, when she’d accepted that he’d never be part of the radical change that would forever alter her life’s course, assailed her again with the immediacy of a fresh injury.

“You said you’re not ‘a man to be trusted in such situations.’”

A spasm seized his face. “You remember.”

Instead of saying she remembered everything about him, as he claimed to about her, she exhaled. “That was kind of impossible to forget.”

“I only said that because I believed it was in your and his best interest not to have me in your lives.”

“Is the reason you believed that part of the...long story?”

“The reason is the story. But before I go into it, will you please let me see Leonid?”

God... He’d asked again. This was really happening. He was here and he wanted to see Leo. But if she let him, nothing would ever be the same again. She just knew it wouldn’t.

She groped for any excuse to stop this from spiraling any further. “He’s asleep....”

His eclipsed eyes darkened even more. “I promise I will just look at him, won’t disturb his sleep.”

She tried again. “You won’t see much in the dark. And I can’t turn the lights on. It’s the only thing that wakes him up.”

“Even if I can’t see him well, I will...feel him. I already know what he looks like.”

Her heart lurched. Had she been right about this security report? “How do you know? Are you having us followed?”

He stared at her for a moment as if he didn’t understand. “Why would you even think that?”

Regarding him warily, she told him all her suspicions.

His frown deepened with every word. “You have every right to believe the worst of me. But I never invaded your privacy. If I ever were to have you followed, it would be for your protection, not mine. And I had no reason to fear for your safety before, since associating with me would have been the only source of danger to you, and I kept our relationship a firm secret.”

“So how do you know what Leo looks like?”

“Because I followed you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You did? When?”

He bit his lip, words seeming to hurt as he forced them out. “On and off. Mostly on for the past three months.”

So she hadn’t been imagining it or going insane! All the times she’d felt him, he had been there!

Questions and confusions deluged her. Why had he done that? Why had he slipped away the moment she’d felt him? Why hadn’t he approached her? And why had he decided to finally do so now? Why, why, why?

She wanted to bombard him with every why and how could you, to have answers now, not a second later.

But those answers would take time. And though she might be her mother’s daughter after all, she couldn’t press him for them now. She couldn’t deny him access to his son. Even without explanations, the beseeching in his eyes told her enough. He’d waited too long already.

She nodded, tried to sit up and pressed into him when he didn’t move. His hands shot out to support her when she almost collapsed back, his eyes glazing as that electricity that always flowed between them zapped them both.

As if he were unable to stop, his hand cupped her cheek, slid around her nape, tilting her face up to his. He groaned her name as if in pain, as if warning her he’d kiss her if she didn’t say no. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

As if she’d removed a barbed leash from his neck, relief rumbled from his depths as he lowered his head, took her lips in a compulsive kiss.

She knew she shouldn’t let this happen again, that nothing had been resolved and never would be. But at the glide of his tongue against hers, the mingling of his breath with hers, she was, as always, lost.

She surrendered to his hunger as his lips and teeth plucked at her trembling flesh, as his tongue plunged into her mouth, plundering her response. Her body melted, readied itself for him, remembering his invasion, his dominance, his pleasures, weeping for it all. He pressed her back on the couch and bore down on her, restlessly moving against her, rubbing her swollen breasts and aching nipples with the hardness of his chest... Then, without warning, he suddenly wrenched his lips from hers, shot up on his knees, his eyes wide in alarm.

It took her hard-breathing moments to realize the whimper she’d heard hadn’t come from her. Leo.

It took a few more gurgles for her to remember the baby monitor. She had a unit in every room.

This time when she struggled up, Maksim helped her. She didn’t know if his hands were shaking or if hers were, or both.

He rose to his feet, helped her to hers then stood aside so she’d lead the way.

The unreality of the situation swamped her again as she approached Leo’s room, feeling Maksim’s presence flooding her apartment. The last thing she’d imagined when she’d last made that same trip was that in an hour’s time, Maksim would be here and she’d be taking him for his first contact with her... With his... With their son.

She felt his tension increase with every step until she opened the door, and it almost knocked her off her feet.

She turned to him. “Relax, okay? Leo is very sensitive to moods.” It was why he’d given her a hellish first six months. He’d been responding to her misery. She’d managed to siphon it into a grueling exercise and work schedule, and to compartmentalize her emotions so she didn’t expose him to their negative side. “If he wakes, you don’t want him seeing you for the first time with this intensity coming off you.”

She almost groaned. She’d said “the first time” as if she thought this encounter would be the first of many. When Maksim probably only wanted to see him once because... She had no idea why.

Unaware of her turmoil, grappling with his, he squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again and nodding. “I’m ready.”

Nerves jangling, she tiptoed into the room with him soundlessly following her. She hoped Leo had settled down. She really preferred this first, and probably last, sighting to happen while he was asleep. The next moment, tension drained as she found Leo snoring gently again.

Before she could sigh in relief, everything disappeared from her awareness, even Leo, as Maksim came to stand beside her. Adapting to the dark room, she stared at his profile, her heart rattling inside her chest like a coin in a box. She’d never imagined he would...would... God.

His expression, the searing emotion that emanated from him as he looked down at Leo... It stormed through her, brought tears surging from her depths to fill eyes she’d thought had dried forever.

His face was a mask of stunned, sublime...suffering, as if he were gazing down at a heart that had spilled out of his chest and taken human form. As if he were beholding a miracle.

Which Leo was. Against all odds, he’d come into being. And with all she’d suffered since she’d seen the evidence of his existence, she would never have it any other way.

“Can—can I touch him?”

The reverent whisper almost felled her.

He swung his gaze to her and she nearly cried out. His eyes! Glittering in the faint light...with tears.

Tears? Maksim? How was that even possible?

Feeling her heart in her throat, she could only nod.

After hard-breathing moments when he seemed to be bracing himself, he reached a trembling hand down to Leo’s face.

The moment his fingertips touched Leo’s averted cheek, his inhalation was so sharp, it was as if he’d been punched in the gut. It was how she felt, too, as if her lungs had emptied and wouldn’t fill again. And that was before Leo pressed his cheek into Maksim’s large hand, like a cat demanding a firmer petting.

Swaying visibly now, or maybe it was her world that was, Maksim complied, cupping Leo’s plump, downy cheek, caressing it with his thumb, over and over, his breathing erratic and audible now, as if he’d just sprinted a mile.

“Are all children this amazing?”

His ragged words were so thick, so low, and not only on account of not wanting to disturb Leo. It seemed he could barely speak. And his words weren’t an exclamation of wonder or a rhetorical question. He was asking for real. He truly had no idea. It was as if it was the first time he’d seen a child, at least the first time he’d realized how incredible it was for a human being to be so tiny yet so compact and complete, so precious and perfect. So fragile and dependent, yet so overpowering.

She considered not answering him. The lump in her throat was about to dissolve into fractured sobs at any moment. But she couldn’t ignore his question, not when his gleaming eyes beseeched her answers.

Mustering all she had so she wouldn’t break down, she whispered, “All children are. But it seems we are equipped with this affinity to our own, this bond that makes us appreciate them more than anything else in the world, that amplifies their assets, downplays their disadvantages and makes us withstand their trials and tribulations with an endurance that’s virtually unending and unreasoning.”

His expression was rapt as he listened to her, as if every word was a revelation to him. But suddenly his face shut down. The change was jarring, and that was before his rumble repeated her last word, reverberating inside her, fierce, almost scary.

“Unreasoning...”

Before she could say or think anything, he looked down at Leo for one last moment, withdrew his hand and stalked out of the room.

She followed, slowly, her mind in an uproar.

What was up with this confounding, maddening man?

What did he mean by all that? Coming here, the unprecedented show of emotions for her, that soul-shaking reaction at seeing Leo up close...and then suddenly this switch to predator-with-a-thorn-in-his-paw mode?

Was this what he’d meant when he’d said he wasn’t a man to be trusted “in such situations”? Did he suffer from some bipolar disorder that made him blow hot and cold without rhyme or reason? Did that explain his fluctuations in their last months together? His unexplained desertion and sudden return?

She caught up with him in the living room. He stood waiting for her, his face dark and remote.

She faced him, anger sizzling to the surface again. “I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t want to know. You came here uninvited, blindsided me into a couple of kisses and wheedled your way into seeing Leo. And now you’re done. I want you to leave and I don’t want you to ever come back or I...”

“I come from a family of abusers.”

To say his out-of-the-blue statement flabbergasted her would be like saying that Mount Everest was a molehill.

Her mind emptied. There was just nothing possible to think—or to say—to what he’d just stated.

He went on, in that same inanimate voice. “It probably goes back to the beginnings of my lineage, but I only know for a fact that my great-grandfather was one, and that the disorder got worse with every generation, reaching its most violent level with my father. I believed it ran in my blood, that once I manifested it, I would be the worst of them all. That was why I never considered having any relationship. Until you.”

She could only stare at him, quakes starting in her very essence, spreading outward. She’d lived for a year going crazy for an explanation. Now she no longer wanted to know. Not if the explanation was worse than his seeming desertion itself.

But she couldn’t find her voice to tell him to stop. Not that he would have stopped. He seemed set on getting this out in the open once and for all.

“From that first moment,” he said, his voice a throb of melancholy, “I wanted you with a ferocity that terrified me, so when you stipulated the finite, uninvolved nature of our liaison, I was relieved. I believed it would be safe as long as our involvement was temporary, remained superficial. But things didn’t go as expected, and my worry intensified along with my hunger for you. I lived in fear of my reaction if you wanted to walk away when I wasn’t ready to let go. But instead, you became pregnant.”

She continued to stare helplessly at him, legs starting to quiver, feeling he hadn’t told her the worst of it yet.

He proved her right. “As you blossomed with Leonid, I was more certain every day I’d been right to tell you I’d withdraw from your life eventually and never enter his. I found myself inventing anxieties every second you were out of my sight, had to constantly struggle to curb my impulses so I wouldn’t smother you. I even tried to stay away from you as much as I could bear it. But I only returned even hungrier, feared it would only be a matter of time before all these unprecedented emotions snapped my control and manifested in aggression. That was why I forced myself to leave you before you had Leo. Before I ended up doing what my father did after my sister was born.”

He had a sister?

His next words provided a horrific answer to her unvoiced surprise. “He’d been getting progressively more volatile. There were no longer days when he didn’t hit my mother or me or both of us. Then one night, when Ana was about six months old, he went berserk. He put us all in the emergency room that night. It took my mother and I months to get over our injuries. Ana struggled for a week before she...succumbed.”

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.”

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