The truth spilled out: “I’m afraid!”

Astonishment. He eased his feverish pace until he was slowly grinding me. He knew I was talking about more than one thing. “Moya zhena, just let it happen. I will always take care of you.” He was talking about more than one thing too. “Can you do that?”

Panting, I said, “I want to. I-I’m trying.”

He nodded. Lips thinned, jaw set, he accelerated his rhythm. He swelled inside me to the limit as he plunged harder and harder, relentless. “Let go, love.” At my ear, he groaned, “I’ve got you. . . .”

My orgasm hit me with the force of a shockwave. I threw back my head and cried, “Dmitri!” That agonizing pressure gave way, wrenching a scream from my lungs.

My mind blanked. I floated; I begged. I dimly heard him telling me I would be his forever. That he would fight for heaven. That I was making him spend so hard I’d feel his cum like a thrust.

I was still climaxing when his shaft pulsated inside me.

His back bowed, his mighty body racked with pleasure. To the sound of his tortured bellows, he shot his hot semen hard and deep—just like his thrusts.

After washing and putting on a robe, I returned from the bathroom. Outside, a breeze swept the fog from the grounds, rain beginning to fall.

Dressed in jeans, he sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He’d done the same on our wedding night, when he’d believed he could never have sex with me. “Did I . . . did I hurt you?” He sounded wretched. “The marks I left . . .”

In the bathroom, I’d run my fingers over them, getting hot all over again. I sat beside him, putting my hand on his back. “Have you seen your shoulders, big guy?” I pressed kisses to the claw marks across one. “I used you for a scratching post.”

He gave a strained laugh.

“You’re not capable of hurting me,” I said without a doubt.

“But I’m not capable of making you content either.” He raised his anguished face to me. “I don’t have any experience with this. Tell me how to make you happy. If taught, I can learn.”

Realization struck, and I knew I’d remember this moment for the rest of my life.

He is in love with me.

No longer could I call it obsession. Or craziness. Over the last four weeks, he truly had fallen. “You are perfect, Dmitri. It’s me and my baggage that’s the problem.”

He drew back with a scowl. “Perfect? Even after what I told you?”

“More so. You revealed a traumatic past you’ve worked hard to overcome. One you’re triumphing over. You’re so much more than your past.”

Sheer adoration shone in his eyes. And Lady Luck help me, I was close to returning it.

“Then why have you grown distant? You tell me little of yourself. You long for your family, but won’t visit them. You get antsy after every gift I buy you, though you know how much money we have. Vika, why are you afraid?”

I would give him part of the truth. “I was raised to believe if something seems too good to be true, it is. And I’m superstitious as hell. Put those two together, and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Lightning flared outside, as if to punctuate my statement. I warily noted it before returning my gaze to him.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s too good. I went from having no man to having one who amazes me every second. I went from cocktail waitressing and eviction notices to all this.” I waved around. “The whole situation feels like reaching for the stars, which is something I never do.”

Tension eased from him, moment by moment. “Why?”

“Because that would involve taking my eyes off the road and my hands off the wheel. Great way to crash.” The rain intensified, pouring along the coast.

He shifted closer to me, hope growing in his eyes. “How do we get past your superstition?”

“This feels like a dream, and all dreams have to end—”

“Why do they have to end?”

Not a rhetorical question. He wanted me to explain this? “I don’t know why. I just know they always have before.”

“You say I’m more than my past. Why can’t your dreams be more than the ones that ended?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. “Dmitri, what if I’m not good enough for you?”

He looked baffled. “I’ve told you what you are to me. How you’ve affected me mentally and physically. Emotionally.”

“I’m not responsible for that—you are. You got therapy for years, and you worked so hard to improve your life; you still do. All the changes you made must have helped you overcome the dissociation.” I could tell he didn’t agree, but wasn’t going to argue his point. “Now that you’re able to stay present, maybe you could find someone else. Someone who’s more like Lucía and Natalie.”

Someone who isn’t rotten from all the secrets burrowing inside her.

He blinked. “I don’t follow.”

“They’re both rich and educated. I couldn’t pick them apart with a fork.”

He squared his shoulders. “You are rich and talented and brilliant and exquisitely beautiful. You’re an artist.”

Yeah, a con artist. A breed apart.

Dmitri insisted, “I’m far from perfect.”

I sighed, giving him a sad smile. “Not from where I’m sitting, big guy.”