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CHAPTER 21
They sat out on one of the patios one evening, surrounded by softly flickering candles, with the canopy of stars bright and astonishing above them. Addison leaned back in her chair and stared up at them, aware on some level, that time was passing even in moments like this one when she felt outside of time altogether.
‘Don’t forget what temporary means,’ she advised herself. ‘Don’t pretend that any of this can last. That he is yours… That this is going to be your life from now on… Because it’s not, and never will be…’
Across from her, Andrey was finishing a call with a CFO at one of his New York companies. He frowned out toward the dark ocean as he talked, his voice growing increasingly more impatient.
While sipping at her wine, Addison watched him, imprinting that impossible face
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SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 22
The moment she said that Addison just hated herself. So deeply and so comprehensively it made her feel ill. She slid the wineglass back onto the table and wrapped her arms around her middle, certain she needed help to keep herself together. Andrey didn’t look away. He simply sat much too still and much too close across the table, watching her fall apart.“I’m so sorry,” he began after a moment, his voice calm.“No,” Addison interrupted him, her words feeling thick in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. How would you know? It’s just… It happened rather recently and I’ve still not managed to figure out how to talk about it. About him…”“How recent?” Andrey frowned then.
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 23
Perversely, it only made him want her more. He’d told Addison that she was the only person he’d ever had any kind of close relationship with, and the stark truth of that haunted him. She was the only person alive that he had EVER trusted. He had allowed her unparalleled access to all parts of his life. To him. No employee had ever been so entrenched in his personal life before and Andrey had certainly never allowed one of his women anywhere near his business. Only Addison bridged those worlds. Only Addison. And his time with her was almost up. Giving in to an urge he hardly understood, as if it might ease the sudden heaviness in his chest, Andrey reached over and took her hand. Addison’s eyes flew to his, but he concentrated on the slide of her fingers against his. The way they fitted toge
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 24
‘If this is what it was like to love somebody,’ Andrey thought some weeks after he’d returned from Bora Bora and Addison had left him on the tarmac without a backward glance, ‘then I was absolutely right to push it away for my entire adult life.’ ‘When I decide to sabotage you,’ Addison had told him once, ‘there will be nothing the least bit passive about it.’ Andrey couldn’t help but wonder if this was what she’d meant. This… aching, annoying sense of loss, that colored everything a dull gray. ‘I hate it.’ He glared at one of his many vice presidents acros
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 25
Andrey had forgotten all about it, until now. Had she been warning him? Had she known that she would get into his blood like this, poisoning him from the inside out, making him a stranger to himself? He frowned out the window now, through the rain lashing across the glass. For the first time in almost twenty years, he wondered if it was worth it, this great empire he’d built and on which he focused to the exclusion of all else. Lately, he wondered if, given the chance, he would trade it in. If he would take her instead. Not that Addison had offered him any such choice. His intercom buzzed loudly behind him. He didn’t move. He didn’t know, anymore, if he was furious or if he was simply the wreckage of the man he’d been. And he didn’t like it, either way.
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 26
She laughed hearing him saying the word ‘clay’ referring at himself. He was anything but.“Metal that might, under certain circumstances, be welded, perhaps,” she’d said. “Never clay.”“I bow to your superior knowledge,” he’d said, swirling his sherry in his glass, his gaze oddly intent on hers. Addison had felt herself flush with heat and had felt out of control. Reckless. Yet it had felt right, even so. Righter than she could remember anything else feeling, maybe ever. He’d leaned close, then murmured close to her ear.“What would I do without you, Addison?” That was the first time, in three years, he’d ever said her name… and the last until Bora Bora
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 27
Andrey looked as though he wanted to take her apart with his teeth. Addison fought to control herself… Control her pounding heart, her galloping pulse, that heaviness in her stomach that couldn’t decide if it was desire or anxiety. Or some combination of both.“If you would like to beg, don’t let me stop you,” Andrey bit out after a long moment, though his midnight amber eyes gleamed. “You can begin on your knees.” Addison remembered that day in Bora Bora with picture-perfect clarity. She remembered crawling to him across the polished wood floor, smiling up at him from between his strong legs. Wanting him more than her next breath. She still did. Heat flashed over her, and Addison was afraid she turned bright red. His eyes were narrow and hot, and she knew b
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 28
He tracked her back to a part of London that was a world away from his three-story penthouse at the top of an old Victorian warehouse perched at the edge of the Thames. ‘This is what she prefers to a life with me,’ Andrey told himself as he caught the door from one of her neighbors and climbed the narrow, grimy stairs to her second-floor flat. ‘This dingy little place and the dim little life that comes with it.’ Andrey was so angry with her, he thought it might actually burn off the top of his head. He pounded on her door, not even pretending to be polite.“Open this damn door, Addison! I know you’re in there,” he growled. “I saw you enter this building five minutes ago.” He heard
SLAVE TO YOUR LOVE CHAPTER 29
For what felt like a long time, whole ages, perhaps centuries, Addison could only stare at him, stricken, too deeply shaken even to weep. She felt cracked open by his words. “And you do, Andrey?” she asked eventually, in a belligerent tone, though her voice quaked. “You know what love is?” Andrey’s eyes were brilliant. Dark and gold and molten fire, burning her alive. He reached over and took her hands in his, and Addison should’ve jerked away. But instead, she exulted in the feel of his skin against hers after all this time. It pumped through her like heat, as though there was no part of her that wasn’t his no matter what she told herself. Or told him. “Let me tell you what I know, Addison,” he said to her, his voice low, intense, urgent. “All I know is I want you so badly that my body literally hurts. I want you in ways that I don’t understand and I
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