He broke my gaze, seemingly trying to search for the right words. “I can’t let you leave. I nearly did back at the parade. But that would have been a mistake.”
“I hate you.” Even as I cursed him, I craved him.
“You have every right.”
Fury swept over me, and it refused to let go. Frustration for these roiling emotions, daggers of pain that felt like flung knives, forcing agony deeper and deeper until I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Do you feel anything for me?”
His denial hurt worse than anything I’d felt before.
“Tell me.”
He shook his head as though trying to shake off a thought. “You and I . . .”
“Because I’m his daughter?” Even as I said it, I couldn’t share the truth, couldn’t speak the words that would prove I was as deceitful as my family.
“My feelings are irrelevant, Anya.”
“How can that be?” Frustrated with him, I raised onto my toes, leaning in and pressing my mouth to his. Kissing him hard. Punishing him with a bite to his lip, feeling his mouth open in response. He let out a sigh, breathing into my mouth. His hands reached for my wrists, and he held them tight and lifted them above my head.
His crushing kiss widening my lips so his tongue could enter. Battling with mine, forging a truce between us, then launching an attack of passion, a fight for the truth in a rousing and needy way, biting and nipping and clashing teeth.
He pulled back. “Bad idea.”
“Why, because it’s me?”
“Because I want it. And what I want usually turns out to be a mistake.”
“What if this one time you did the right thing?” I’d tried to cure this longing for him, but nothing worked.
There was an endless need that tore into me.
Was he saying we’d never fall in love? We’d never get to that place of trust because there was too much distance between us? Too much had happened that could never be faced. Yet my heart clenched with the thought of not having him.
Tears pricked my eyes. “I want . . . this.”
“You don’t know what it is you’re asking for.”
“Yes, I do, Cassius. I see past the wall you’ve put up. I see the good in you. The fight. I see the pain. I’m trying to reach you. Meet me halfway.”
“I don’t do . . . feelings.”
“Really, because I can see all this is hurting you.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
His lips curled seductively, a coyness in his half-smile.
“I want you.” And it had always been yes to this.
The promise of intimacy between us—stretching beyond the world outside and all that it had done to us.
He let go of my hands, allowing me to shrug out of the white robe. It slipped from my shoulders to the floor, leaving me standing before him in my bra and panties. I reached behind my back and unhooked my bra. Let that slip from my shoulders, too. I showed off my breasts, feeling empowered as he drank in my nakedness.
Glancing down to see his erection rising out of dark curls, regal and as intimidating as him.
He stepped forward and pressed his forehead to mine. “Everything will change between us.”
“It already has.” I breathed. “I know you feel this, too.”
“I don’t deserve you, Anya. A man like me—”
I cupped his cheek. “I forgive you.”
“I’m not sure you can.” He squeezed his eyes closed at the weight of those words. The impossible shifting of us toward something more. It would be a cruel future, one where we both knew what his intentions had been for me. We wouldn’t survive it. Our past was too complicated. Too ruined. My body yearned for all that had gone before to be forgotten for these few hours ahead of us.
Tell him.
Tell him you’re not a Glassman.
He lifted me up in his arms and carried me down the hallway toward the bed. Laying me on top of the duvet and helping me climb beneath it.
He pulled on one of the bathrobes to cover his nakedness. “Only you and I would ever understand where we’ve come from.” He brought the duvet up and dragged it over me. “That’s something we can hold on to.”
“I know.” It didn’t make sense that he was tucking me into bed.
Not after all that sensual tension, not after my body was so alight with passion, I thought I might combust.
He gave a look of understanding. “After all you’ve been through tonight, us, being more at this moment, wouldn’t be right.”
I went to protest, but he held a fingertip to my mouth. “I promise to tell you everything tomorrow.”
“I can’t sleep.”
He gave a nod of understanding and lay down beside me, with him above the duvet and me beneath it; I felt the warmth of his body spooning behind me.
“Let’s catch our breath, Anya. I just want to savor this, okay? Let me have this one last night with you.”
I glanced over my shoulder in protest.
“After I tell you what you want to know, this may never happen again.”
With his words ruminating in the depths of my consciousness, I fought and lost the will to stay awake. Falling into sleep, begging my heart to be brave enough to hear the truth of what it would take for us to be more.
Cassius
We moved along in the small boat amongst the towering brilliance of nature’s cathedral, with its impressively tall cypress and tupelo trees rising all around us. Steering the small motorboat farther into the heart of Lake Martin, we took in the beauty of the swamp.
We’d spent the day at opposite sides of the property. With Anya in the library, needing solace from the scars from attending Mardi Gras, and me, staying in my office. Throwing myself into work. Though honestly, I was really trying to come to terms that this may be our last evening together.
Because I knew I was going to have to bring her here.
The place it all began. Where my story started. The reason I’d spent a lifetime trying to hold my very existence together.
We glided by hefty oaks adorned by Spanish moss draping over their sprawling branches, low enough to kiss the murky, brackish, untamed waters below.
“What are we doing out here?” Anya shook me from my musing.
“I wanted you to see this.”
She’d sensed my melancholy. Offering a kind touch to bring me back to the present, back to her.
I needed to do this.
Needed her to hear it from me. The truth that would leave a scorched earth behind us because there was no other way than to walk through the ashes of the truth. She’d never look at me the same.
I would miss this short-lived affection between us. Those moments that shimmied and shined to hint that we could have been more.
Only here, in the dimness of the marshland, could this be done. Where no one could overhear. I needed solitude. A place where no one else could judge me, other than her.
A pelican swooped over the boat, and we watched it climb higher, sweeping up and out of the towering trees flying southward.
Despite the heat, my body chilled as the memories of this place swirled. The open space was closing in around us.
A cold sweat snaked down my spine as I replayed the moments that had unfolded here. This marsh not that far away from my home. The events that changed my world.