Tempest - Book 1

- 30 -

He was quiet. 

My fingers traced softly over the ridges of his shoulders, skin still beaded with lustful glaze. It was unlike him to turn away from me so suddenly. 

We had returned home from Shanghai that morning, and he fell into an immediate reclusion, tucking himself away in his study as I tended to the luggage. I had traipsed around the house, watching him move spectrally as he bobbed throughout the shadows of his castle. 

He had been absent from dinner, a lone porcelain plate being sent unsuspectingly into the forbidding maw of that study.

I withdrew my hand, his body so rigid against my graze. His sudden respondences frightened me, my heart palpitating any time a storm brewed against his horizon. He was a powerful man, with a thundering temper. The melodic sway of his moods was tantalizingly dangerous, the anger sweeping you in like deadly tides, the consumption of the beauty negating the lethality of the actions. 

What was even more frightening was the fact that his movements had lost all fertility. He had been stoic, brow set firmly. He had placed me on my knees, fingers hardly grasping against my hips and it almost seemed over as it began. 

The inquisitive side of me wanted to ply him, dig my nails down under the surface of him. But the reposed side of me quelled her, insisting that safety was more important than that of inquisition. 

I felt the deep burn of his eyes, and I looked to him, my breath snaring in my throat. Those dark, dark eyes pooled with a raining sadness, shining exquisitely with crystal tears. 

"Luca?" 

And suddenly, almost as if it happened slowly and then all at once, his arms encompassed me, face buried comfortingly against my chest, his hands reaching helplessly for my back. For safety. I found my own frozen with utter disbelief at the man wrapped so vulnerable around me. 

Softly my fingers soothed over his skin, gently comforting him. There was a tremble set around his shoulders, a heave behind his breaths. 

My mind raced fervently, tumbling down what to say. To do. 

Instead, I held him silently, my hand scraping through hi hair, tracing gingerly across that sharp jaw. 

I felt a bloom wishing my heart. Suddenly, this man, was bare. The money, and the influence, and the bravado had been stripped away and he lie against me weakened and emotive. 

For the first time. 

It was jarring, and it should make me happy. Happy that the barriers between us had crumbled down. If that were to be true, then why did I feel so...

Pitiful? 

There was an instant that I held my breath, waiting for the upturn. The anger. The lash of his hand around my throat or the aeration of a word. I knew that weakness, of any kinds, was a signature of your death bed. That in this state, you were malleable. Coercive. 

But that thought was distinguished as I felt the warm trickle of his tears pooling against my skin. 

"I'm sorry." 

He muttered, his breaths labored with an immeasurable sadness. Guilt almost. 

"For what?" 

I breathed, my eyes fluttering closed.

"Every transgression I've committed against you." 

"Don't apologize." 

I whispered, nestling my cheek against his forehead. 

"But I must." 

He bellowed, those strong hands gripping my back possessively. 

"I must because you don't deserve what I've done." 

I couldn't help but be rendered speechless. I had never suspected these words would fall from his lips, let alone at such an intimate moment. I felt there were no combination of words to even begin to transcribe the complexity of how I felt. 

"I should have earned your love, instead of forcibly taking it. I am the monster that you claimed me to be Yelena." 

I embraced him, staunching my own tears now. They were not born from the raw empathy of his words, rather the screeching right that I had held onto all along. My mind screamed with that admittance of his footfalls. 

"I want to be loved." 

He whispered, discouraged by my silence. 

"I know."

 I squeaked, my heart quivering beneath his ear. 

"By you." 

Another heart breaking silence. 

"Yelena," 

My breath hitched once more. 

"Please tell me that you love me."