Page 66 of The Dancer and the Grumpy Billionaire

“Oh,” he says. “I mean, I know he’s always cared about you… I guess I… Well, good. I am glad you have someone.”

It takes a moment for this to register, but then I laugh out loud.

“No, no,” I say. “No. Roman and I aren’t’…we’re not together, Vasily. He lives in town and helps me out here on the farm a couple of days a week. He has a girlfriend named Cecily.”

He puts his hand to his chest and lets out a long breath.

“Phew,” he says. “I thought…”

I shake my head. “He is just like a brother. And it does give me some comfort, knowing he is near. He helped me a lot, after…”

“So, you haven’t…met anyone?” Vasily’s voice is hopeful, and it makes my heart beat wildly against my ribs.

Perhaps he still loves me? It is a wild bloom of hope, the thought. I grasp onto it.

“No,” I say, stepping closer to him. “I mean, yes. I foundyou. You’re my someone, Vasily, and I hate myself for leaving you that day. I thought I… I thought I got you killed, and all because I got scared. I just panicked. I saw this life of running, stretched out ahead of me, never able to settle down or explore anything real. I thought maybe if I went to my father willingly, I could talk sense into him. I could tell him that you saved me, that you loved me, and I could ask him to let us live our lives. If all he cared about was protecting me, then he could let me go with you because you had already protected me. And maybe if we could just go make a life together, some of that life could be made up of things I wanted, that I chose.”

He reaches out and takes my hands. “Gigi, I am so sorry. What you said to me out there, that day… it gutted me. I did not want to be another person trying to control you, but I was out of my mind with the thought of losing you.”

I stare at our intertwined hands in awe. Feeling him, real and solid, is overwhelming me now.

When I look back up at his face, my mouth opens but nothing comes out.

“Do you…still love me?” I ask after many heartbeats.

“Gigi,” he breathes. “I drove here as soon as I learned you were alive. I dream of you every night. I never stop thinking of you. OfcourseI still love you.”

He pulls me close, holds me. I cry into his shirt.

“I feel the same,” I say. “I love you. I have never stopped loving you, even when I thought you were gone.”

He backs out of the hug, lifting the bottom of his shirt to bare his scars.

“I was almost gone,” he says.

I lift my shirt as well. “Me too.”

Vasily falls to his knees, his hand on my hips as he leans in to kiss my scars.

“Oh baby,” he says, “I am so sorry. So sorry.”

I move so that I am on my knees, as well.

“Haven’t we apologized enough?” I ask, placing a hand on each of his cheeks.

His lips are quick to find mine and the kiss is consuming. I lose myself in it and we fall to the floor, me unbuttoning his fly, reaching out to grip his hardening cock. He unbuttons my flannel, pulling it away so that my breasts go taut in the cold air.

“Fuck,” he murmurs before diving in, a starving man. His tongue rolls against my hard nipples while his fingers pinch, just enough to draw pain and desire in equal measure.

This is not a sweet reunion coupling. This is half a year’s grief and anger and fear mixed together with love. Real love. Complicated love. We strip each other bare, and the hardwood floor is unforgiving. The air is cold and the chill of a one-hundred-year-old house sweeps over me, a tantalizing feeling as I am warmed from the inside, Vasily’s tongue and fingers nearly making me levitate, my core on fire, my body reacting. I come quickly, easily, and then I come again. I am lightheaded from it, from his touch and his lips and this feeling of unmitigated joy.

When he enters me, his eyes do not leave mine. I want to cry, he fills me so well, so perfectly. He kisses me fiercely, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip. And when he starts to move, my orgasm starts and does not stop. Every cell in my body is focused on this feeling, this total ecstasy, the feeling of loving him, of him loving me.

My fingers scramble for something to hold on to as I ride the waves, Vasily’s face a mask of pleasure and fierce happiness. In the absence of anything to grab, I wrap my legs aroundhim, pushing myself as close as I can. He pumps into me with wildness, like a bucking horse, each movement of his hips harder, more purposeful.

I cling to him, my body still humming with endorphins, my mind in some alternate universe. He somehow flips us so that I am riding him in short, fast bursts, my head falling back, his mouth on my breasts. I ride him until he comes, my name softly on his lips, his eyes closing as his face takes on a look of pure passion.

“Never leave me again?” I ask.

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