“I can’t believe they arrested you!”
“Why wouldn’t they? A crime had been committed.” He turned to the freezer to retrieve the bottle. “It was ruled self-defense and, supposedly, sealed because of my age.”
Ever-deepening levels of dreadfulness rippled over her. A deliberately set fire. A narrow escape. Petrifying violence. Catastrophic loss. His life nearly taken. She never would have known him. The thought pushed tears into her eyes.
And all at the hands of a man she had trusted and relied on. Bile and self-disgust rose to the back of her throat.
Aleksy would never pick her. Not to live with him forever. Her awful connection to Victor would always be between them.
“I’m so sorry,” she said with remorse, wishing the words weren’t so inadequate. “I had no idea Victor could do something so vile.” She took a deep swallow of the cocoa, seeking the numbing effect of the alcohol. The sweetness made her gag. She set it away, revolted.
“What about what I’ve done?” A scowl of self-hatred ravaged his expression. “I’m no better than the paid assassin who killed my father.”
“You were fighting for your life!”
“I shouldn’t have fought at all. I got my father killed and destroyed my mother.”
She shook her head. This was why he isolated himself. He thought he was some kind of monster. “You can’t punish yourself for a…mistake.”
“A mistake that lasts forever.”
“If you let it,” she asserted. “You can’t blame yourself, Aleksy. Victor brought about the tragedy by starting it, not you.”
“Stop it.” He stepped forward, every muscle bulging in confrontation. “I saw how you looked at me when you realized what I’d done. I know what you really think of me.”
“No,” she cried, assailed by guilt. “I was in shock from something completely unexpected. I didn’t know what to believe—”
“How could it be unexpected? It’s right here!” he railed, pointing at his scar. “From the first moment anyone sees me, they know what kind of man I am. You should have run far and fast the first day we met.”
“You didn’t give me a chance, did you?” she shot back, angry at his rebuke.
“No,” he agreed with a bitter bark of laughter. “No, I didn’t, but that’s the kind of man I am.” Snatching up bottle and glass, he elbowed his way out of the kitchen into the lounge.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’M NOT RUNNING now, am I?” Clair challenged behind him, barreling through the door on his heels.
Aleksy halted, teeth clenching as he searched for patience. Did she not realize his control was hanging by a thread? Without turning back to her, he guessed harshly, “Because you don’t know where to go? Call Lazlo. He’ll arrange a car and hotel.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Aleksy Dmitriev!”
Funny, he was terrified of her. Setting down the bottle and glass with deliberation, he turned and said, “You should be.”
“Why? Are you going to hurt me? Kill me?”
He jerked his face to the side, blind to all but splashes of color in his field of vision while he dealt with the sense of being rent open. No, he could never harm her, but he couldn’t have her poking heedlessly into his old wounds either.
“Back off, Clair.”
“You’re not a monster, Aleksy,” she said more gently. “You’re generous and compassionate and honorable.”
“What are you trying to do? Make it okay in your head that you ever let me touch you? I took a virgin for a mistress. I bought you clothes and gave you money for your charity because I wanted to have sex with you.”
Her breath caught as if she’d taken a stiletto to the lung. “That’s not true,” she gasped. “It wasn’t just sex. Was it?”
He mentally stripped her fleece vest, insulating V-neck and loose jeans, imagining her naked skin catching the glow off the fire, her nipples pulled into dark, shiny points by his mouth, her thighs relaxing open under his hand. “Very good sex,” he ground out, dying because he’d never have her like that again.