Chapter 14
I giggle before I argue. Gotta start my engine.
— Keely to Dima
KEELY
I couldn’t believe I’d just forwarded that email.
Copper had eloquently laid out my resignation with the sleep center, giving all the information that I’d penned to him over the years as to why, and I’d signed my name to it, copied it verbatim, and then sent it off.
I was…freaking out.
I hadn’t been without a job since I was fifteen and realized that nothing was ever going to be handed to me the way that my father had always predicted it would be.
Closing my laptop with a pounding heart, I got up and went in search of Dima .
We were at his place for the night…not that I’d gotten much choice.
He’d told me he had to watch his nieces and that I would have to stay at his place tonight because he didn’t think my place was baby-proof enough.
I had honestly not questioned him and packed an overnight bag, but I might as well have left it at home.
Because , when I’d gotten into Dima’s place, I found that he’d fully stocked his entire place with me in mind.
He had my deodorant in his drawers next to his.
He had my favorite brand of hairbrush—one that I’d gotten from Tractor Supply that was actually made for horses.
He even had my free and clear laundry detergent that I shopped specifically for from Target right next to his Tide .
It was…great.
I loved that he knew what I preferred.
All of my other exes would’ve gone to the grave before putting that much thought into me, my likes and dislikes.
Yet , here Dima was, paying attention and giving me everything.
It was…a really great feeling.
Sure , he might’ve gotten all this information by stalking me instead of asking me, or observing these things by spending time with me, but I wasn’t going to complain about his means.
I actually quite enjoyed the thought of him liking me so much that he wanted to know my every like and dislike.
Sure , this should’ve been a huge red flag waving through the air, but I was pretty good at putting blinders on.
Kind of like I was right then as he discussed business with Shasha with me lying on his bed able to hear it all.
Shasha didn’t know that I was there, or likely he would’ve been a lot more careful with his words.
That showed how much trust Dima had in me, to let me in on his innermost thoughts.
Funny enough, I didn’t think Shasha would be too happy about me hearing all that I’d heard tonight.
They’d started talking about Dima watching Shasha’s girls so Brecken and Shasha could go out to eat just them.
Then they’d moved on to other matters.
Matters that involved torture, mayhem, and espionage.
It was rather interesting to listen to, and I wondered if some of their practices could be enacted in Castanon Enterprises .
Life would be a whole lot more simple if we could just dispose of the board members that I knew would put up the biggest fight to what Copper was wanting to do.
And what did it say about me that I was thinking about that instead of doing this the correct way?
Probably because you know that they’ll make yours and Copper’s life a living hell for the next however long it takes.
I got up from the bed, trying to be as quiet as possible, and headed for the shower.
I had a couple of hours until Dima was expected to start babysitting, and I wanted to be clean after the long night that I’d had.
I should really catch a few hours of shut-eye, too.
I knew from experience that sleep deprivation and me didn’t mingle well.
If they were still talking after I got done with my shower, I’d take a nap until Dima woke me up.
I was halfway through my shower with shampoo and conditioner that I had to special order because of its clean ingredients, when I felt the air shift behind me.
I opened my eyes after the suds finally rinsed free of my face and glanced over my shoulder to see Dima , naked, coming into the shower room behind me.
Dima’s entire place was extravagant, albeit quite empty.
The bathroom was no different.
The door to the bathroom looked innocuous enough, but that’s where the normalness ended. The moment you breached the doorway, you were met with a wall-to-ceiling marble slab. The entryway fed you right into a recessed room that had a pedestal sink to your right with a large mirrored wall behind it decorated in lights.
To the right of the sink was an elevated cabinet where there was a freakin’ towel warmer built into the cabinets, along with every single product from hair to skin to feet right under the towel warming shelf.
To the left was the clawfoot tub, and directly in front of the door was a shower that took up the whole back half of the space.
It was easily twelve feet wide, had six showerheads, and even more smaller water sprayers down lower to make sure that you never missed a spot.
There was a long-ass bench that stretched the entire length of the shower stall, and I decided the moment that I stepped into it that I was going to make it my new home.
I’d never thought that a bathtub could be beat, but that was before I’d stepped into this oasis…
“ I see you figured out how to use the shower,” Dima mused as he moved in behind me and pulled me into his painfully hard body.
I’d seen the man naked, of course.
But seeing him naked in glimpses, and seeing him naked in an unencumbered view were two very different things.
Dima was…built.
He wasn’t bulky. He wasn’t small.
He was just the right size, and all muscle.
There wasn’t a single ounce of fat on him, not even at his armpits or his chin.
I’d never thought to consider armpits muscular before, but Dima’s were.
I allowed my eyes to trail down the length of his body, taking everything in as I let the rest of the suds wash free of my hair.
I was to his lower region, particularly his cock, when it started to swell at my obvious attention.
“ Are you done looking yet?” he asked. “ I’m ready to hold you.”
I smiled and nodded, thinking I’d get the lay of the land of his lower half later when I wasn’t in desperate need of feeling his arms around me.
He came toward me, his hands going down to scoop me right up into his arms.
I gasped when he took a seat on the shower bench with me on top of him.
“ How much did you hear?” he asked.
I bit my lip. “ How much was I supposed to hear?”
His lips twitched, but he quickly sobered. “ I’d like to say that I’m a good man.”
I blinked at him, and he reached for the bar of soap that I’d left on the ledge, ready to use later.
Proving that he’d been watching me for a while, he slowly started to work the bar of soap into the places that I’d yet to reach.
He started with my hand, then my arm. My neck, then down the other arm to my right hand.
My chest.
My breasts.
My belly.
My thighs and knees.
“ I let you listen because I don’t want to hide who I am from you,” he said, his earnest brown eyes taking me in from the soul forward. “ I don’t want to pretend that I’m this normal guy with you when I’m not. I want to be me, and sometimes, I’m not that great of a person.”
I smoothed my fingers over a couple of stray locks of his hair and voiced softly, “ Would you ever hurt someone innocent?”
“ No .” He paused. “ But I have in the past. I think.”
“ Was that you wanting to go after them, or someone sending you after them?” I asked.
I only knew what I’d heard from Dima’s family members when I’d met them the few times that I had.
And all of them were so freakin’ proud of Dima and what he’d accomplished in his military career. But the man in front of me wasn’t the same man that they said was all gung-ho about flying planes.
You didn’t get that kind of look in your eyes from being a pilot.
At least, I didn’t think you did.
“ I’d like to say that I was very confident that every single man and woman that I killed for Uncle Sam was bad, but they literally pointed me at them, and I took care of business. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t start to question until too late,” he confessed.
I reached for the bottle of shampoo on the shelf above me, which put my nipple perilously close to his mouth, and pulled it down.
He latched onto my nipple with a grin and smiled at me with it between his teeth.
I squirted some shampoo into my hand—way too much for the small amount of hair that he had—and worked it into his scalp.
He closed his eyes and I massaged him with my fingers as I said, “ I think you’re thinking that I’m this great person, Dima .”
His eyes slowly opened.
When they did, I grabbed his face with soapy hands and said, “ I’m not.”
His lips went flat. “ You’re a good person.”
“ A good person wouldn’t be insanely happy that you murdered someone for me,” I persisted.
“ No ,” he agreed. “ Maybe not. But let’s just say, I think anyone in your shoes would’ve been in that same frame of mind.”
“ I don’t care that my dad’s dead. I don’t care that Pettigrew is dead. I don’t care that anyone’s dead as long as it’s not someone I care about.” I shrugged. “ If they did something bad, good riddance.”
I reached for the closest showerhead and pulled it off its hanger, then said, “ Close your eyes.”
He did, and I sprayed him down.
I followed the shampoo up with conditioner, then started on the body parts of his that I could reach with my soap.
When I was done, and we were both as clean as we were going to get, I said, “ I’m not sure how I feel about having kids. I used to have my life all figured out, and I’m just not sure anymore.”
He curled a lock of my hair around his finger and said, “ Could take ’em or leave ’em.”
My lips twitched. “ I thought you loved your nieces and nephews.”
“ I do.” He shrugged. “ But I’m not all that gung-ho about bringing a kid into the world when I’m taking people out of it.”
I loved this man.
There was no doubt in my mind that he was my one.
“ Mine’s the opposite,” I admitted. “ I’m not all that excited to bring a kid into this world knowing what could happen to him or her, especially her. It doesn’t matter that you’re really good at protecting people. If trouble is going to find us, it will happen. There won’t be anything that you or I can do about it, either.”
His eyes went intense for a long second before his hand wrapped around my wet hair and tightened. He didn’t pull my head back, but it was tight enough to sting.
“ I would never, ever let anything happen to our child.”
And in that moment, I knew that to be irrevocably true, at least, to things that he could control.
“ You can’t control everything, Dima .”
His eyes were laser fire as he said, “ Watch me.”