His hands on my waist turned to stone, but as my mouth slowly explored his, his grip yielded and slid down to the curve of my hip. His mouth found rhythm with mine, and soon we matched cadence, two birds soaring on the same current of air.
He exhaled and pulled me closer. His hands traveled up the sides of my bodice and back around to weave through my hair. My heart opened. The stitches that bound my grief tore free. I’d wanted this for so long. Within him, I felt the same sweet sense of release. Our auras entwined in a beautiful dance and affirmed the rightness of our union. I parted my lips and tasted him deeper. He was the mist in an evergreen forest, the reeds sighing into a river. My fingers curled around the nape of his neck. His warmth radiated sunlight through my body.
That effortless feeling, like floating on water, heated to something just as wonderful, but more turbulent. Our kisses pressed harder. Our hands roamed faster. My chest tightened as my breath became difficult to find. Even when I drew back to inhale, the feeling didn’t abate. It intensified until I recognized it as a seizing of panic. Anton grabbed my arms and pushed me away.
“I can’t . . .” His face was flushed with a light sheen of perspiration. “We can’t do this.”
My head spun. Every nerve under my skin longed to stay connected to him. It took me a moment to understand the panic was his. “Why?”
He worked to steady his breathing. “It’s late . . . and you’ve had a horrible night. Now isn’t the time to . . .” He sighed, and his eyes drooped at the corners. “You’re broken right now, Sonya. I don’t want to press my advantage.”
“You’re not,” I said. He slid up straighter against the wall and put a small measure of distance between us. It felt like an insurmountable gash in the earth. “This isn’t you, Anton. You’re not forcing me to feel this way. I need you—especially now. I want us to be together.” Why couldn’t he feel what was inside me, what was my own? “I want you,” I said, and reached for his hand.
He pulled back and raked his fingers through his hair. “Please.” His voice was pained. My gaze drifted to his sleeve, fallen back to his elbow to reveal his lynx-shaped birthmark. I wished I could blot it out, retract the words of the Romska fortune-teller, find the little boy in the prince and tell him his mother still loved him, even though she had to let him go. I’d felt the dowager empress’s devotion in her very blood. Why couldn’t it erase all his heartache? Why couldn’t I?
I moved closer, as close as Anton would allow me. “Do you remember that strength inside me you asked me to find and hold on to? Well, I’ve found it.” I smiled, trying to show him what it felt like. “It’s what makes me most grounded and sure and resilient. It’s my feelings for you, Anton. I don’t doubt them. They give me hope, like I’ve done one good and smart thing in this world by setting my heart on you.”
As he gazed back at me, his brows drew together in anguish. I felt him wanting to believe in my words, but he didn’t know how.
“You’ve lost just as much as I have,” I said. “You’re just as broken. I’m not the only one who needs comforting.”
I yearned to touch him, but I didn’t dare. He sat so rigidly and withdrawn into himself. As I watched him, a pang of loneliness and sorrow lodged in my breast. I couldn’t lose him now, not when I felt with the fullness of my aura that we were meant for each other.
I memorized every plane, curve, and slant of his achingly beautiful face, like I had long ago in the troika. I found the small mole near his eye, the delicate sculpt of his upper lip. And more wonders came to surface. A little freckle along his jaw. A tiny scar above his right cheek. The slightest unevenness of his aristocratic nose. Somehow it felt like I might never see him again, like through the small separation of our bodies, he was already slipping through my fingers like sand.
“You said I was your savior,” I said, “but you won’t let me save you, not truly.”
He shrugged in misery. “I don’t know how to be saved.”
I tucked my knees to my chest as my heart sank. We were at the same impasse as ever, divided by his inability to trust my feelings for him. And perhaps there was more, something deeper Anton didn’t trust about himself.
The light of the candle nearest us wavered as the wick sagged into the last of the melting wax. When at length it sputtered out, I rose and slowly brushed the dust from my dress. “Thank you for tonight,” I said. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.” My insides twisted with guilt and regret. They weren’t mine.
“Wait.” Anton stood. He blew out a shaky breath. “Stay.”
I frowned with uncertainty.
He advanced a step. “I promise I won’t kiss you again.”
I sighed. “I want you to kiss me.”
“Stay.”