“I didn’t choose Filip.”

“You didn’t choose me either! Not until you were alone and confused, reeling from Paxán’s death. I took advantage of you that night, and every night after.”

“No,” I said firmly, “I wanted you.”

“Because you didn’t know the real me. Can you understand now why I didn’t want to give in to my perversions with you, to give you pain? I feared becoming like my father. I fought so hard, but the thought of you going to another . . . it sent me over the edge.”

Was I hurting him by putting on pressure? To engage in sex he wasn’t comfortable with? Considering all the abuse I knew about—and the abuse I could only imagine—I had to wonder.

He might enjoy what we did together, then be appalled at himself.

He was talking to me now; I needed to dig deeper with him. “Will you tell me when you first realized your particular interests?”

His voice was so grave when he asked, “I’m to reveal even more?”

“Yes, Sevastyan,” I answered. “There’s no word limit here.”

His brows drew together. “It didn’t start out as a sexual thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

He exhaled. “I’d always had my brothers in my life, but in St. Petersburg, I suddenly had no one. Though there were other children, I couldn’t connect with them. Not with my background. Yet I hated being alone. Even at that age, I decided that I needed a wife—who would belong to me.”

I tried to picture Sevastyan as a boy, mulling marriage of all things. Yet decades later, he’d never wed. He wants to marry you, Nat. . . .

“I was young enough to make ridiculous plans, but old enough to realize I was homeless and penniless. I knew I had nothing to offer anyone. Until a year later . . .” He trailed off.

“Tell me.”

With reluctance, he said, “There was a back-alley prostitute that all the boys used to watch. I could tell she was feigning passion with her clients, faking screams—desperate just to be done for the night.”

I cringed to think of all the things he’d seen when living on the streets.

“Then one night, a man came to her, touching her in ways I’d never seen before—exacting, even cruel ways. He made her put her hands against the wall as he whipped her. I couldn’t believe he was striking her. I was ready to kill him for hitting someone so much smaller. I started for the man, but then I looked at her face—really looked. Her eyes were glassy, and she couldn’t catch her breath.” Sevastyan’s gaze flicked to me—to see if I was still with him?—then away. “She was . . . she was in heaven.”

“Go on.”

“Once the man finally f**ked her, this jaded woman melted for him. In those moments, she would’ve done anything for more. She belonged to him absolutely.” Sevastyan faced me, holding my gaze, as if he needed me to fully understand him. “He had something to offer her—something that other men didn’t. I realized if I could learn how to do the things he’d done, I could master a woman like that. I could make her melt. I didn’t crave the acts as much as I did the result.”

I’d suspected that kink for this man had more to do with a woman’s pleasure than his own. Now I was learning that he’d imprinted the day he’d seen a woman taken to heights he’d never before witnessed. “And then later?”

“As I told you, it always felt like practice. After I met you, I understood why. But then when my needs grew fiercer with you, I feared I was interested in pain for the wrong reasons. Maybe because I’d received so much of it. Maybe because I wanted to control it like alcohol, meting doses of it. I was terrified that I would scare you away—or lose control and harm you.”

And all I’d done was push him. Regret weighed on me. “Then I’ve pressured you into things you’re not comfortable with.”

He shook his head forcefully. “When someone like you had those needs . . . what I did to you didn’t feel sordid. You made it . . . clean. I went to a place like that club, and I felt hope too.”

I must have looked unconvinced, because he added, “I was right all those years ago. That night of the club, you looked like you were in heaven—and I knew you were mine.”

I recalled how his eyes had glinted, how he’d rested his forehead against my shoulder. He’d told me I was made for him.

“On the ride home, you curled your little fingers into my hair and shivered against me. You sighed like you loved me.” His gaze bored into mine. “I will do anything for that reaction.”

He’d seen how tastes of pain could affect a woman, and he’d internalized that want. This man only yearned to madden me, to take me to new heights. Which meant I wasn’t hurting him!

And he was actually communicating with me.

Right when I was growing convinced that we could make this work, his eyes turned bleak. “But you weren’t mine, were you?”

“I was. I am!” I made a sound of exasperation. “Do you know how frustrating it’s been to fall in love with every facet you let me see—even when I believed you’d never let me see more?”

“Love?” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Yes, Sevastyan. I’m willing to work on us, if you are too. If you’ll just keep talking to me, I believe we can handle anything.”

He eyed me suspiciously, as if he couldn’t fathom this turn of events. “You’re giving me another chance?”