“How long was it before Paxán found you?”

“A year and a half. Long enough for me to suspect Paxán was some sort of deviant when he offered to take me in. Long enough to be mystified when I recognized he was a good man.”

“How had you survived before then?”

Sevastyan rubbed a tattoo on his finger. I remembered that one signified thievery. “I stole. But as I got older, it became more difficult—I was getting taller and couldn’t slip away in a crowd as easily. There were times I was caught.” His voice broke lower. “If you crossed the wrong protection gangs and couldn’t fight your way free, things were . . . done.”

He’d been attacked by street thugs?

“Your father told you about how he first found me. But what I never confessed to him was that I didn’t always win on those streets. And when I didn’t”—he stared down at his fists—“I lost . . . much.”

Oh, God, no, no, no. I’d read about preyed-upon runaways in the States, read things that made my skin crawl; what had those men done to Sevastyan as a boy?

He glanced up. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Shame is more painful . . . ?

But he had nothing to be ashamed of ! Did he not understand that? Tonight, I might not be able to overturn twenty years of thinking, but so help me, ultimately I’d convince him.

His eyes went hazy once more. Was he reliving those agonies as well? I didn’t want him to, only wanted to comfort him.

In a hollow tone, he repeated, “I lost much.”

“Will you tell me?”

He closed his eyes. “I will. Just not today. Don’t ask that of me today.” His eyes shot open. “But you don’t leave.”

My heart was shattering, shards all around me. “I won’t,” I assured him. How easy it’d been for me to demand equal disclosure about our pasts when I had nothing shocking—or even noteworthy—to disclose. I’d wanted us to be equal, yet I hadn’t realized that our histories weren’t. “Why don’t you tell me what happened to your brothers?”

Clearly relieved to move past that topic, Sevastyan said, “We had no relatives, so they remained at the manor, with conservators brought in to arrange for their upbringing. I stayed away, fearing prosecution, but also because I look so much like my father, more with every year. I wanted to spare them the sight of me. I didn’t know until years later that Maksim had convinced the authorities that he and Dmitri had witnessed our drunken father’s fall, and that their older brother was missing because I’d become crazed with grief. Even then, Maksim could spin a tale like no other.”

Fondness for his brother had crept into Sevastyan’s tone, at odds with the chilliness between them earlier.

“I thought I had saved my brothers from an abusive tyrant, that they’d be free. At least I could wear that badge.” He clasped his forehead. “Yet just this week, Maksim admitted to me that the caretakers who came in to raise him and Dmitri were . . . worse than our father.”

“How?” I asked, but I could guess. His brothers had been abused, just as Sevastyan had—as if that was always going to be their fate, no matter what they did or how much they fought it.

“I won’t speak more about it, because that’s not my secret to tell.”

I recalled that day of the museum when he’d returned to the town house. He’d said nothing to me, just wrapped his arms around me as if I were the only thing keeping him afloat. Had he just learned of this from Maksim?

“I understand, Sevastyan. But you can’t take the blame for that. You were just twelve—you couldn’t have known.”

“I abandoned them. That’s how they see it, and they hate me for it. Maksim less than Dmitri, because he remembers me more. But deep down, they both want me to suffer for their fates. Why would I ever want to reveal my family to you, when I know they despise me?”

“I don’t care how anyone else feels about you.”

“Would you not? I didn’t want anything to affect your opinion of me. Sometimes you look at me as if I’m some sort of hero. I can’t explain . . . there’s no explaining what that feels like to me.” The look of longing on his face gave me an idea. “What would happen if you found out that most of my life has been everything unheroic? What if you discovered that I’m hated—and that I hate myself for every time I lost?”

He moved closer to me, shaving off the distance, and I wanted him to.

“Then, after finally managing to win—in work, in life—I was losing you.”

Not trusting myself to speak, I offered him my hand.

He stared at it in disbelief, then all but lunged for it. He absently took my other hand and began warming them between his own. Because they were cold.

At length, I said, “Thank you for trusting me with this.”

“You aren’t disgusted with me?”

“Of course not.” I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but I thought this moment was too tenuous. “With your father, you acted in self-defense. I think things got mixed up for you because you were so young.” Over time, his mind must have confused his memories, guilt overwhelming the reality of that night: if he hadn’t protected himself, he would have died. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“Every day, I look in the mirror—and my father stares back.”

“You’re nothing like him,” I said vehemently.

He scowled at me. “How can you say that when you tell me you don’t know me?”

“Would your father have harbored this guilt for nearly two decades? Would he hate himself for things he had absolutely no control over?”

Sevastyan swallowed. “And what about the other . . . ?”

“I’m just grateful you survived. I’m grateful you told me.”

He looked like he seethed with emotion. “You can’t expect me to believe that you’re willingly here with me after I confessed what I did—and what was done to me. Much less because I confessed it!”

“You have to believe it, because it’s true. What I know of you only binds me to you more.”

He fell silent for what seemed like an eternity.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Sevastyan. What you’re feeling.”

“Feeling?” He made a caustic sound. “You’ve just felled me. No, you’ve slain me. I’ll never want another, yet you were ready to give up on me.” He dropped my hands, his ire mounting. “You can’t think that all this is random! Paxán found me all those years ago. Across the world, you somehow found him, and then he sent me to you. At any point, you could have been lost to me.”

Sevastyan had told me in the banya that we were inevitable. Now I realized why he believed that.

Now I did too.

He reached out to grip my upper arms. “I went through my entire life, never knowing that I was starving for this beautiful, brilliant redhead. Then I saw her. I watched her. All the while, she had no idea that she went about her days and tormented me every one of them.”

I gasped. “Sevastyan . . .”

“The first time I saw you, you nearly put me to my knees. I wanted to invade your thoughts as totally as you had mine. When I did manage to sleep, I’d dream of you and wake up f**king the sheets.” His grip grew harsher, as if someone were trying to take me away from him. “I’d will you to look at me. And then, in that bar, you did. You showed interest in me, and amazingly Paxán approved the match. All he asked was that I give you time.” He released my shoulders to pace. “Time—while goddamned Filip moved in on my woman!”

“I didn’t choose Filip.”

“You didn’t choose me either! Not until you were alone and confused, reeling from Paxán’s death. I took advantage of you that night, and every night after.”

“No,” I said firmly, “I wanted you.”

“Because you didn’t know the real me. Can you understand now why I didn’t want to give in to my perversions with you, to give you pain? I feared becoming like my father. I fought so hard, but the thought of you going to another . . . it sent me over the edge.”

Was I hurting him by putting on pressure? To engage in sex he wasn’t comfortable with? Considering all the abuse I knew about—and the abuse I could only imagine—I had to wonder.

He might enjoy what we did together, then be appalled at himself.

He was talking to me now; I needed to dig deeper with him. “Will you tell me when you first realized your particular interests?”

His voice was so grave when he asked, “I’m to reveal even more?”

“Yes, Sevastyan,” I answered. “There’s no word limit here.”

His brows drew together. “It didn’t start out as a sexual thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

He exhaled. “I’d always had my brothers in my life, but in St. Petersburg, I suddenly had no one. Though there were other children, I couldn’t connect with them. Not with my background. Yet I hated being alone. Even at that age, I decided that I needed a wife—who would belong to me.”

I tried to picture Sevastyan as a boy, mulling marriage of all things. Yet decades later, he’d never wed. He wants to marry you, Nat. . . .

“I was young enough to make ridiculous plans, but old enough to realize I was homeless and penniless. I knew I had nothing to offer anyone. Until a year later . . .” He trailed off.

“Tell me.”

With reluctance, he said, “There was a back-alley prostitute that all the boys used to watch. I could tell she was feigning passion with her clients, faking screams—desperate just to be done for the night.”

I cringed to think of all the things he’d seen when living on the streets.

“Then one night, a man came to her, touching her in ways I’d never seen before—exacting, even cruel ways. He made her put her hands against the wall as he whipped her. I couldn’t believe he was striking her. I was ready to kill him for hitting someone so much smaller. I started for the man, but then I looked at her face—really looked. Her eyes were glassy, and she couldn’t catch her breath.” Sevastyan’s gaze flicked to me—to see if I was still with him?—then away. “She was . . . she was in heaven.”

“Go on.”

“Once the man finally f**ked her, this jaded woman melted for him. In those moments, she would’ve done anything for more. She belonged to him absolutely.” Sevastyan faced me, holding my gaze, as if he needed me to fully understand him. “He had something to offer her—something that other men didn’t. I realized if I could learn how to do the things he’d done, I could master a woman like that. I could make her melt. I didn’t crave the acts as much as I did the result.”

I’d suspected that kink for this man had more to do with a woman’s pleasure than his own. Now I was learning that he’d imprinted the day he’d seen a woman taken to heights he’d never before witnessed. “And then later?”

“As I told you, it always felt like practice. After I met you, I understood why. But then when my needs grew fiercer with you, I feared I was interested in pain for the wrong reasons. Maybe because I’d received so much of it. Maybe because I wanted to control it like alcohol, meting doses of it. I was terrified that I would scare you away—or lose control and harm you.”

And all I’d done was push him. Regret weighed on me. “Then I’ve pressured you into things you’re not comfortable with.”

He shook his head forcefully. “When someone like you had those needs . . . what I did to you didn’t feel sordid. You made it . . . clean. I went to a place like that club, and I felt hope too.”

I must have looked unconvinced, because he added, “I was right all those years ago. That night of the club, you looked like you were in heaven—and I knew you were mine.”

I recalled how his eyes had glinted, how he’d rested his forehead against my shoulder. He’d told me I was made for him.

“On the ride home, you curled your little fingers into my hair and shivered against me. You sighed like you loved me.” His gaze bored into mine. “I will do anything for that reaction.”

He’d seen how tastes of pain could affect a woman, and he’d internalized that want. This man only yearned to madden me, to take me to new heights. Which meant I wasn’t hurting him!

And he was actually communicating with me.

Right when I was growing convinced that we could make this work, his eyes turned bleak. “But you weren’t mine, were you?”

“I was. I am!” I made a sound of exasperation. “Do you know how frustrating it’s been to fall in love with every facet you let me see—even when I believed you’d never let me see more?”

“Love?” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Yes, Sevastyan. I’m willing to work on us, if you are too. If you’ll just keep talking to me, I believe we can handle anything.”

He eyed me suspiciously, as if he couldn’t fathom this turn of events. “You’re giving me another chance?”

“If you’ll give me one too. I do need to learn to be more patient, just like you said.”

He eased closer. “I know I’m not right. But if you help me, I can be better. That’s what I want. Natalie, understand me: I’m . . . asking.”

I was already reaching for him. When he swung me over to straddle his lap, I wrapped my arms around his neck. Against me, his body shuddered as if a weight had been lifted from him—like an overworked muscle finally allowed to rest.