Page 60 of Savage Love

“When are you leaving?” I focus on the questions, the logistics, so I won’t cry.

“Tomorrow morning. I’ve got a flight scheduled. Isabella will be here before I leave.” He turns his head, giving me a brief smile. “I’m sure that will be nice for the two of you. Some time with the house to yourselves, without me here to bother you.”

He says it in a joking way, like any husband to his wife, but it hurts anyway. I want to tell him that heneverbothers me, that I’d rather have him here, and that anytime he’s gone, I miss him. But I don’t. I keep all of it to myself, because I can feel a kind of exhaustion creeping in, a feeling of being so very tired that I love him so much, and he’s fighting it so hard.

And I know in time, that feeling will turn to resentment. It might even turn to hate. It will drive us apart, and Levin will get what he claims he wants—a marriage of convenience, where we love our child but not each other, and he can protect his heart while it dies inside of him.

If he’s very unlucky, he’ll realize too late that he wants what I’ve wanted all along, when I’m the one who can no longer give it to him. It’ll be a bitter irony, and the thought makes my chest ache, because I don’t know how long we have.

Maybe things will be different when the baby comes.It’s the last hope that I have to cling to, and I dig my nails into it, holding on with everything I have.

I love him.

I don’t want to give up on us.

But even I can only try for so long.

Levin

When I wake up next to Elena in the morning, seeing her peaceful, sleeping face next to mine, her dark hair tangled around her cheeks, I have an overwhelming sense of wanting to stay.

I hadn’t thought it would be so hard to leave. When Viktor had told me weeks ago that he needed me to come and oversee some of the final testing, I thought it might be good for us. Some space for me to work through what I’m feeling, and for Elena to see that she can be happy even when there’s distance between us. That she doesn’t really need me there as much as she thinks she does. That she might even have enough fun on her own, with her sister, to put some distance between us when I return.

I told myself that would be for the best. That if Elena wants space, it will no longer be me constantly pushing her away, hurting her despite my best efforts.

But when I look at her, lying there for a few moments before I need to get up and get dressed, I feel a pang of fear instead. Aworrythat the days apart will result in exactly that—she’ll realize she doesn’t want me as much as she thinks she does. That she’s tired of trying so hard—that she feels relieved without me here.

That, added to the worry of what could happen with the baby while I’m not here to take care of her, makes me not want to go. To stay here in bed next to her and wake up with her, tell Isabella that she doesn’t need to stay and be here with Elena instead. To tell Viktor that I can’t do what he needs me to any longer—that I need to be here with my wife.

But I drag myself out of bed anyway, because I have a job to do, and staying here instead won’t make anything easier. In fact, it might make it much harder.

Elena stirs as I get up, lashes fluttering against her cheeks as her eyes open and she looks up at me, her expression soft and sleepy. “Leaving?” she mumbles, her hand fumbling across the blankets for me, and an ache spreads through my chest that feels as if it might settle there forever.

“Only for two days,” I tell her as I cross the room to get dressed. My phone vibrates, and I glance at it. “Isabella will be here in a few minutes.”

“I really don’t need a babysitter,” she grumbles, her eyes opening a little wider as she pushes herself up against the pillows, her hand running through her hair. She does that every morning, tugging her fingers through the tangled strands, and there’s a pang in my chest again at the knowledge of that small intimacy. That Iknowthat about her, a thing that only I know. No one else has ever woken up next to her as many times as I have. No one else has seen all the tiny things she does, the small habits that she’s formed, and remembered them. She’smine, in a way that she never has been anyone else’s, and it both makes me ache for her and sends a flood of guilt through me all at once, because she could have been someone’s who would love her the way she deserves to be loved.

It’s the great conundrum of my life that I can know that, and at the same time feel a flood of vicious possessiveness at the idea of anyone else touching her, a feeling that if anyone were to try, I’d kill them with my own bare hands.

It’s a feeling I don’t have any right to, but it’s there all the same.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” she says softly, her teeth sinking into her lower lip afterward, as if she knows she shouldn’t have. “I know you do, though,” she adds hurriedly. “You’re still working for Viktor, after all.”

“It’ll go by in no time,” I promise her, crossing the room to press a kiss to her forehead as I finish buttoning my shirt. I see her gaze flick to it, as if she’s considering the possibility ofunbuttoningit for me again, and my cock twitches against my fly.

I want to fuck her before I go.God, I want it. It’s been weeks since I’ve been inside of her, and as good as our afternoon playing in bed as I ate her out and she sucked my cock to a shuddering orgasm twice was, it’s not the same as feeling her around me, all that tight, wet heat rippling down my length as I thrust, and thrust—

Fuck. I’m rock-hard in an instant, my cock throbbing almost painfully, and I grit my teeth. Now I’m going to be fighting a hard-on for the entire flight, and I consider whether I might make myself a member of the mile-high club as I retreat from the bed, angling myself so that Elena hopefully doesn’t see my erection and get any ideas.

Of course, she does, however. “You can’t leave like that,” she calls out to me softly as I start to put clothes into my duffel, trying to focus on how many shirts I need instead of the painful throbbing in my groin. “Come back to bed for a minute.”

“I just got dressed.” I glance at my phone. “Your sister is going to be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Then make it ten.” I hear a rustling and turn to see that she’s pushed the duvet down, her legs spread invitingly as she nudges the loose fabric of the shorts she wore to bed to one side, and I realize with another painful throb that she isn’t wearing panties underneath them.

She gives me a small, wicked smile as she spreads herself with her fingers, giving me a mouth-wateringly enticing view of her soft, wet pussy, glistening temptingly as she rubs one finger over her clit. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been inside me,” she murmurs, her hips arching up a little, the last word ending on a gasp as she circles her clit with her finger. “You don’t even have to take your clothes off. Or mine. Just come fuck me before you go.Please.”

That last word comes out on a moan, and a part of my already lust-fogged mind is impressed at how well she’s learned me, how she knows exactly what buttons to push to make me question my decisions every time.

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