Page 78 of One Last Shot

“Push me away like that.”

“How am I pushing you away?”

“You only call me Aleksandr when you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad ...” She trails off, either unwilling or unable to finish that sentence. But she does take a few steps into the room so we’re standing face-to-face.

“It doesn’t make it easier on the person you’re leaving if you start pulling away before you’re gone,” I tell her as I put my hands on her hips.

She looks away, her gaze focusing on the windows on the far side of the room.

“I just don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. And being with you now feels like a promise for the future.”

“I’m not expecting that.”Just hoping for it.

“Yes, you are,” she says, looking back at me. Her eyes are full of sadness, not the steely reserve I normally see there.

I’m not sure what to say to that. Do I admit that she’s right? That Idowant to know where this could go? That I do want her to stay so we can see what’s possible between us? We barely talked about the lawyer’s recommendation on our way back here after the appointment this morning because she said she needed time to think about it. There are so many strings left untied, and I want things wrapped up so badly, but at the same time, I know she needs time to process all this.If she thinks about it in LA, far away from me and Stella, will that make her less likely to want to come back?

I lock eyes with her, studying their bright blue depths. Her irises are like one of those prismatic pictures where all the colors are changed into geometric shapes that swirl into larger shapes. Hers are a mixture of the color of water in the Caribbean, the sky on a bright and cloudless day, and a dark storm over the North Sea.

“I promised myself a long time ago,” she whispers, and her hot breath bounces off my lips, “that I’d never again do anything I didn’t want to do, that I’d stay true to myself. And this—leaving—is me doing something I don’t want to do.”

Her admission is both hopeful and heartbreaking. “Then don’t go.” I squeeze her shoulders tightly, hoping she can feel some of what I’m feeling right now.

“Don’t you see, Sasha, Ihaveto. I—”

“That doesn’t mean this has to be over.” I need her to give us a chance more than I’ve never needed anything in my life. I don’t want to beg, but I can’t let her leave without knowing how I feel. “You have to leave New York, but you don’t have to leave this relationship.”

“How could we keep this going across an entire continent?” Her words are weak and hopeless.

“Let’s just see, okay? You need to go to LA. You have dreams and I want you to chase and attain them, to be everything you’ve always wanted to be. At the same time, I want to be with you and I can’t follow you to LA because my team and Stella are here. But we can still try to make this work.”

“You’d follow me to LA?” Her words are barely audible.

The thought hadn’t seriously crossed my mind until it came off my lips. My thoughts of us together had always centered around her staying here, because logically, I knew that was my only possibility. “If I could, I would.”

She leans forward, bowing her head and resting it on my chest. I wrap my arms around her back as her shoulders begin to shake.

“Why?” she asks. “Why does this have to happen right now? Why couldn’t we have gotten together years ago or years from now? We had to pick the one point in time that is impossible.”

She looks up at me and tears are streaming down her face. It’s only the second time I’ve ever seen her cry.

“Nothing is impossible,” I kiss her forehead and run my thumbs across her cheeks to smooth away the tears.

“It feels impossible,” she mumbles, looking down at my chest.

“It’s not. We just have to figure it out,” I say, and I trail my lips down the bridge of her nose to her mouth.

Her lips meet mine in a hungry, greedy kiss. She’s not giving right now, she’s taking, and I’m here for it—for whatever she needs. I have a good idea what that’ll be when she takes my hand and leads me down the hall, past Stella’s door and past her own, to my bedroom. She closes the door quietly behind me, then reaches up and threads her fingers into my hair, pulling my head down to hers. Her lips are insistent as they part, her tongue demanding as it strokes mine. Her other hand tucks under my shirt and her fingers play with the skin at the edge of my waistband, teasing me as she slides her fingers across my abs and over my hipbone. In one step, I have her back against the door, and she trails a foot up my leg and snakes her knee around my hip, pulling me even closer to her.

With one hand on her thigh to anchor her leg in place, I push my aching dick against her center and am rewarded with her groan as it reverberates into my mouth. She leans her head back against the door, eyes closed, and says, “I want you so fucking bad.”

I grip the hem of her tank top and pull it up over her head to reveal a bra I’ve never seen her wear. It’s pale pink and sheer with lace trimming the cups and a lace band. “You are unbelievably sexy.”

Her upper lip curves into a smile as she looks at me with those lust-filled eyes. The look saysI know, but at the same time, it communicates so much more than that. I know Petra is well versed in the bedroom, but I also get the sense that there’s an emotional component to our sexual relationship that doesn’t exist for her otherwise. Or maybe I’m just projecting my own feelings?

I move my fingers to the waistband of her shorts and she drops her leg, letting me slide them down to her ankles. I kneel at her feet to pull them off, and the matching sheer pink thong does nothing to hide her body from me. I look up at her from the ground, then trail my fingers along the edge of that fabric until I’m at the seam between her legs. I sweep my fingertips under the fabric and marvel at how wet she already is. As I slide the thong to the side, I use my other hand to lift one leg over my shoulder. My lips trail up the inside of that thigh as I tease her by stroking back and forth along her folds with my fingers while never actually touching her clit or entering her. When my lips reach the top of her thigh, she uses her leg to pull my head closer and lets out a throaty growl. “Sasha ... now.”

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