Seth's Cravings: An Endless Series: Book 2 (65 page)

     I knew this game of hers though. She liked putting on
this pretense like she didn’t give a shit about things when she actually did.

     Lowering the bottle she shut the refrigerator and
turned to face me, leaning back against the appliance nonchalantly. “So, what
brings you around when you haven’t bothered to contact me in days?”

     I could almost believe her indifference if two crimson
flags weren’t riding high on her cheeks bones, and her eyes weren’t spitting
retribution at me.

     For those eighty minutes I’d been waiting for her I’d gone
over multiple scenarios of explanations and apologies, but they all flew from
my head at the sight of her. The only thought in my head at the moment was to
get her in my arms…straight away. So, with that in mind I marched forward.

     Her eyes widen in astonishment—and possible excitement—when
I dragged her forward into my arms, capturing her mouth. I unleashed everything
into that kiss; my apology and regret, the fear of losing her, even the anxiety
I’d undergone from the arrest.

     And for one glorious minute Nadia gave free reign to her
own passions. Her hands latched onto my hair, her legs wrapped around my waist,
and she ate at my mouth like she was starving.

     But then she turned her face and began pushing me away.
“
Nyet
…no…let me go.” She moaned.

     My breathing bellowed from my chest, and my dick
throbbed painfully, remembering and wanting what it hadn’t had in forever, and
even though it was the last thing I wanted to do I did as she asked.

     Unclenching my hands from her ass I stepped back. “I’m sorry,
but damn, Nadia… I missed you.”

     Righting herself with trembling hands and breathing
heavily she gave me a fiery glare. “You could have fooled me; like I said, I
haven’t heard from you in days.” She marched unsteadily around the small break
table putting it between us.

    “Nadia…”

     She interrupted me cutting her hand through the air
sharply. “Five days was all you spent trying to get me back, and then nothing.
I was about to cave, believing the excuses you were giving me. But if you had
really loved me you wouldn’t have given up after only
five days
, Seth.”

     She wasn’t yelling at me and her accent was only
moderate, and I wasn’t sure how to take that. She had been extremely angry and
hurt the last time I’d seen her that she’d screamed and slapped me, but now she
appeared like…‘what ever’. That didn’t seem like a good thing. Screaming meant
she cared.

     I stepped toward her, giving her a beseeching look. The
last thing I wanted was for her to think I gave up on her, that my love for her
didn’t consume me completely. “Honey, I do love you, and I did not give up on
you. Something happened and I didn’t want you any way involved in it.”

     She looked outraged. “Oh, that sounds way better, Seth.
You don’t want me involved in your life.”

     Fuck a duck, somehow I was making this worse. “No…I
mean yes, I want you
absolutely
involved in my life, but…” I rubbed the
back of my neck agitatedly wondering how she was going to take my news.

     “But what…you’d rather I sit around for days imagining
all the reasons why you weren’t calling me any more; like he no longer loves
me, he went back to his ex-girlfriend, he never loved me to begin with, he just
wanted in my pants, he’s an asshole of epic proportions. Should I go on?”

     The sarcasm in her voice wasn’t difficult to perceive,
and neither was the hurt interlaced with it, and I hated that she’d been
thinking any of that shit. I realized that in trying to protect her I’d caused
her additional inadvertent suffering. I’d piled hurt on top of hurt with my
actions, and that did make me an asshole of epic proportions.

     I didn’t deserve her, but that didn’t mean I was going
to let her go without a fight. She was my other half, and because of that I’d
felt only half alive these past twelve days.

     “God, Nadia, it was none of those things. I got
arrested seven days ago for assault…against Dale the Asshole.”

     The only response I got to that was a raised eyebrow.
Really
!
Damn, she was hardcore, or her poker face was even better than I thought.

     She sighed as though annoyed and folded her arms across
her chest. “Seth, why would you bother with him? I told you I took care of it.”

     Anger and shame inundated me. No matter what I’d
previously told her I’d never let go of the guilt I had at walking away that
night, leaving her in that room with him. It had been like a knot in my belly
just waiting to unravel and choke me.

     “Nadia, you shouldn’t have had to handle it. I should
have been the one to take care of that asshole, but instead I walked away. I left
you there, and you were nearly raped. Do you know how much that has eaten at my
insides?” I hit my chest with my fist in self-disgust. “When I saw him at that
fucking bar, there was no way I was going to let him walk away.”

     Nadia’s features softened in sympathy. “Oh Seth.”
Sighing, her eyes closed and her arms unfolded to grip the table in front of
her. Reopening them she stared at me, her gaze imploring. “You need to let that
go. I don’t blame you. Anyone would have done the same thing. I wasn’t fighting.
I didn’t scream for help. Unless you could have read my mind there was no way
you could have interpreted that scene as an assault. I thought I could handle
it myself, so if something had happened to me it would have been my fault for
not calling for help.”

     Fury filled me as the scene replayed in my mind and I
clenched my hands into fists. “Nadia, I’ve messed up with you since the
beginning. I was so fucking attracted to you the first time I saw you, like
I’ve never been with anyone before, but I was in a relationship with Melissa,
and because of that it pissed me off that you could make me feel that way. It felt
like I was cheating on her because what you made me feel that day was more than
I’d felt for her the entire ten weeks we were together. I attached all these
negative qualities to you trying to decrease my interest but it wasn’t helping
so I deliberately stayed away from you. However, you still dominated my
thoughts and I finally had to admit to myself that I wasn’t going to care for
Melissa the way I should, so we broke it off. We actually phrased it as a
break, but she never contacted me and I certainly didn’t miss her. Regrettably,
the miscommunication of our severed relationship came back to bite me in the ass.”
I growled, furious with myself and Melissa. That she had thought we would pick
up where we left off after months of no contact I thought was rather
dim-witted.

     Nadia stood utterly motionless, wide eyed and silent…maybe
realizing I needed to exorcise my demons, which I proceeded to do.

     “That night, I was finally allowing myself to get to
know you, and it was going well. Unfortunately, my previous erroneous judgments
of you, as well as intense jealousy, had me jumping to conclusions and walking
away from that room in anger.” I stabbed my fingers in my hair. “Fuck! You dragged
me down an emotional path I’d never traversed before with barely any effort on
your part and I blindly battled against it because of arrogant stupidity. Maybe
I would have seen what was really going on in that room if I had only accepted
my feelings for you for what they were instead of fighting them.”

     “Seth, that was back when we barely knew each other.
And you weren’t horrible to me, you just ignored me. I don’t fault you for any
of that. I don’t know how many times I can tell you that.” Nadia expressed
fervently, her eyes pooling with emotions. 

     “The thing is I’m still making stupid ass mistakes with
you.” I grumbled leaning my hands on the table toward her. “The situation with
my parent’s and not telling them about you, I should have realized how wrong
that was; how it would hurt you.”

     Nadia’s features tautened, and her eyes dimmed with
grief. “Yes, it did hurt; it still hurts if you want to know the truth. It felt
like my father all over again.”

     The sight of her sorrow gutted me and I made to move
around the table, but she shook her head, shifting in the opposite direction. Damn,
I wanted to hold her, but I held myself motionless. “Honey, the last thing I
wanted to do was hurt you.”

     “Then why did you keep silent about me? You said you
were having issues with your father, but you didn’t go into any details.” She frowned,
folding her arms across her chest again.

     That she was willing to listen seemed like a good sign
and I rushed to explain. “For years my father has had this expectation that I
go to Harvard for Architectural Design after I graduate from UVA. I was fine
with this…until I met and fell in love with you.” Her breath caught slightly at
my admission, like she doubted it, and again I hated that my actions had
brought about that doubt. “If I told him about you, if he met you, if he saw how
I am around you, he would know why I was changing my mind. Hell, I feel like my
face shouts ‘I love you’. But we have only been in a relationship for a short
time, and I didn’t think he would take my decision seriously. I thought an
additional two months would add a tad more credibility. That’s all I wanted,
just a little more time. I didn’t want
my
choice to bias them on how amazing
you
are, because you are amazing, Nadia; incredible, awesome, inspiring,
remarkable. I want them to love you like I do.”

     She was shaking her head and looking off to the side
like my extolling of her virtues was excessive, but I saw moisture in her eyes
telling me that what she was hearing was affecting her. And if it was finally
affecting her then there was no way I was stopping.

     Moving around the table slowly I continued. “I’m sorry,
Nadia, but you know this is your fault.”

     Her gaze shot back to me in outraged astonishment. “
Chto
!?”

     Shock must have rendered her immobile because I was
able to step up directly in front of her. “My emotions become completely muddled
around you. You’ve done this to me from the very beginning, made me think and
act outside of my normal behavior. I used to be level-headed and rational. The
most emotions I would display were when I was on the lacrosse field, but being
with you brings out a whole different me. I’m not complaining,
at all
. I
feel exceptionally alive when I’m with you, but you have to give me some
leeway, honey, for the stupid things I do as a result. Like this arrest, and
not wanting you involved in it. My dad wanted you to tell the judge what had
happened to you in hopes that it would lighten my sentence, but I didn’t want
you involved in the off chance it could cause problems with your guardianship
of Issy and Luka. That was the reason I stopped all contact with you. It wasn’t
because I didn’t love you. I wanted to protect you all.”

     She smacked my shoulder, but it lacked real heat. “That
is so messed up on so many levels. Something like that should have been my
choice to make. You can’t go around making decisions like that for me. I’m a
grown woman. How do you think I would feel if you went to jail because of that
ass…even if you did kind of deserve it for being an ass yourself?”

     My heart warmed…she cared, and the half-hearted slap
represented a love tap to me. “How do you think I would feel if Issy and Luka
were taken away from you because of me?” I retorted.

     She only shook her head and rolled her eyes to that
piece of logic. She might argue with me, but Issy and Luka were extremely
important to her and she wouldn’t have wanted to put their guardianship in
jeopardy. Nadia might have been furious with me but her love and sense of
responsibility toward her siblings would have put her mind at war on what to do
to help me.  

     Cupping her cheek with my hand I bent down setting my
forehead to hers. “I made the decision to beat the shit out of The Asshole, so
I took the responsibility as well. It wasn’t your fight, and knowing you, you would
make it your fight no matter how pissed off you were at me. Thankfully, for
whatever reason, he dropped the charges, so I’ve dodged that bullet.
I am
sorry that I stacked hurt on top of hurt with that decision, but I’m not sorry
for protecting you, Issy, and Luka, and I do regret not revealing to you what was
going through my head in regards to my parent’s. That was pure stupidity on my
part, but no matter what stupid mistakes I’ve made I love you, Nadia. Please,
believe that, and please forgive me.”

     She stared up at me with eyes shimmering with moisture,
and when she blinked a tear slid down her cheek. The sight of it made my
stomach bottom out and I wiped it away gently with my thumb. Dammit, she was
not going to cry, she hated crying.

     “Don’t cry, honey. I can take anything but that. Did
you know I had this idea of what I wanted in the perfect woman? She would be
sweet, kind, a bit on the quiet side, and I would be there to take care of any
crisis she had.”

     Nadia pulled back, her tears starting to dry up as I listed
each criterion. Narrow-eyed, irritated, incredulity replaced it. I could handle
that. I wanted her fire, not her tears.  

     “But you know what, you blew that self absorbed idea
out of the water. You have a spice to your sweet that’s entirely addictive, you
are selfless to your own detriment, your mouth and everything that comes out of
it makes me hot as hell, and the way you take care of your own troubles makes
me proud to be your man…while at the same time making me feel absolutely
useless.” I gave her a self-depreciative half grin.

     Nadia stared at me, her probing gaze tracking my features
as thought searching for lies and truths. She was exceptional at reading faces;
I knew she would see that everything I was saying was absolute truth.