“Of course it does. It would have to.”
“You’re wrong.”
She didn’t like that, clearly, but she shifted position against the white couch, dropping her knees to the side and no longer hugging herself in that way, as if she was protecting herself from a blow. Her eyes moved over his hands, then back to his face.
“The more I train, the more I learn, the less I fight,” he said quietly. “The less I have to fight.”
He watched her take that in, start to think about it. He felt a trickle of relief when he saw that frown of hers again, carving that familiar line between her brows. This was the Miranda he knew. This was his Professor.
He told himself that was only relief he felt. Nothing more. Nothing deeper, more dangerous.
“Come here,” he said again, softer this time.
“I don’t think I want to.”
“I think you do.”
He still didn’t move, and after a very long time, when the sun began to sink into vibrant golds and reds across the wide horizon and the house lights came on around them, low and warm, she exhaled a long and shuddering breath. And then, very slowly, very carefully, she moved back toward him across the polished wood floor. She stopped when she was directly in front of him, and knelt there, frightened eyes big in her delicate face.
He indicated the hands he still held there, open on his knees, and she swallowed convulsively. She took another deep breath. Then she reached out and placed her hands in his, one after the other, her fingers cold and stiff. He closed his fingers over hers carefully. Slowly. Giving her ample chance to pull away.
“I’d fight your demons for you, Professor,” he whispered. “But they’d put me in jail.”
She trembled, but she didn’t pull away.
“I thought my old boyfriends were bad at sex,” she whispered in a rush, not looking at him. “But it wasn’t them, was it? It was me. There’s something wrong with me. He— I’m ruined.”
“You’re perfect,” he told her very distinctly. “And you’re safe with me. I promise you.”
She shook her head, but she didn’t move her hands, and they were warming against his, her skin heating from the contact with his. She didn’t seem to notice that she was also breathing more steadily, more easily, breath by breath. That he was calming her with his touch.
“You don’t know that,” she said after a moment, looking down at the floor. “Look what happened today.”
“Look at me.” His voice was commanding then. Sure. Her head jerked up but she met his gaze. He felt her shiver slightly, and he didn’t let go. “I’m not a teenage boy or a coward. I told you. I can control myself. You can’t hurt me. And I won’t hurt you.”
He squeezed her hands slightly in his when she began to make a face, and her gaze slid back to his, reluctantly. So reluctantly, and he saw the fear there. And more than that, the hope. It moved in him, shaming him. Making him wish for things he knew he’d never have all over again. Making him wish they were different people. Making him wish they’d met a different way, played a different game.
And as she stared back at him, that terrible tension draining from her face little by little, her skin becoming less pale, looking more and more like Miranda by the moment, he told himself that it was true. That he could keep that promise, despite what he had to do.
That he would.
But then she tilted her head forward and kissed him.
MIRANDA didn’t let herself think. There’d been enough of that.
She simply kissed him again and again, angling her mouth over his the way he’d taught her, and it was sweet and right and then, once more, that fire.
That wild, unquenchable fire that, she understood now, had always been leading her here. To him. The only man who made her burn. Who made her want to burn. Who she believed would keep her safe no matter what happened when she was nothing more than ash. Who might even fight off her nightmares, if she let him.
Hadn’t he just proved it?
He pulled back, though he didn’t move his hands, and she knew, somehow, that he was afraid of scaring her off again. It made her heart kick hard against her ribs. Then ache.
“You don’t have to kiss me,” he said, frowning slightly.
She wanted to sob. It felt like she might—or simply explode all around him, and neither one was what she wanted. So she took refuge in her favorite suit of armor.
“Of course I don’t have to.” She raised her brows at him. “That would be coercive and repellent. Much like our public displays of feigned affection.”
He watched her for a long moment. Then blinked. For a breath, Miranda thought he might force her back into the fragile space she could still feel all around them, clinging to them—that he might say something else so devastatingly perfect, so miraculously right, that she would collapse before him all over again—
“Yes,” he said, the rich rumble of his mocking voice moving through her, like a shiver, his dark eyes shrewd as they tracked over her face, then down to where she gripped his hands too tightly—and didn’t let go. “I noted how repelled you were. It was your defining characteristic in all of those tabloid pictures.”
This time, she felt that sardonic lash like the gift it was.
“Ivan.” She waited for those midnight eyes to slide to hers again. So guarded as they searched hers, as if he was waiting for her to dissolve into sobs all over again, despite her brusque tone of voice. “Be quiet.”
His dark eyes gleamed.
And when she leaned in to take his mouth again, he didn’t say a word. He only kissed her back. Long and sweet. Endless. Heat spiraled into pleasure and rolled through her, making the body so recently racked in such old anguish begin to hum again. As if he was making her brand-new.
Miranda was the one who wanted more, who pulled her hands from his to hold his face between them, that strong, hard jaw scraping gently, erotically beneath her palms. She was the one who moved closer, then closer still, unable to get enough of his taste, his touch, the sheer, dizzying magic of his mouth on hers.
But he still didn’t move to hold her, to touch her, and eventually she couldn’t take it any longer.
“Why aren’t you touching me?” she demanded.
His rare, real smile lit up his face and charmed her straight through to the bone, as he lifted a hand to graze his knuckles over her cheek, like she was somehow precious to him. She wanted to sink into it—into him. She wanted to simply disappear into that smile, that touch.
“I don’t want to be another thing that scares you, Miranda.” Something moved over his face, like a shadow, but then disappeared so fast she thought she must have imagined it. “No matter what happens.”
“I want you,” she said with quiet conviction. Because she knew that, if nothing else. She knew it in the way she knew that she needed breath to live, and she didn’t want to examine that, analyze it. She just wanted him. Maybe she always had. Maybe that was why all of this felt so inevitable. “Not the watered-down version you trot out for the damaged woman who sobbed out a sad story on your floor.”
“This is not ‘watered down,’” he said, that rich current of laughter in his voice then, and flirting with that hard mouth. “This is patient. I’m not at all surprised you can’t recognize it.”
“You look at me and make me think you’ll burn me alive