Chapter 23 Mattie
MATTIE
As Dimitri closed the bedroom door behind them, the world shrank to a size that Mattie could manage.
No island. No Brotherhood. No hundreds of women and children behind concrete walls. No clan of mysterious immortals. No phone to steal, no surveillance to neutralize, no plan so absurd that it belonged in a movie.
There was only this room, this bed, and Dimitri.
She sat on the edge of the mattress and watched him go through his nightly routine. The mask he'd worn all day went into the trash bin, and his shirt went into the laundry basket, the fluid motion making the muscles of his back shift beneath his skin.
He was unfairly beautiful, and not just since turning immortal. She'd thought so from the first time she'd seen him in the bar, when he'd walked in with Petrov and sat at a corner table, and she'd served them drinks while pretending not to notice the way his eyes tracked her movements.
She'd known he was different than the others before she'd exchanged any words with him. The gaze in the eyes that had tracked her hadn't been possessive, entitled, or even carnal in nature. It had been curious. Interested.
When they'd later sat in the staff kitchen, he'd held her hand across the table and told her that she was beautiful with such quiet conviction that she'd believed him.
He still looked at her like that every moment of every day, but tonight, she was hoping for a little more carnality and possessiveness, which she would have found offensive the first time they'd met.
When he dropped his pants and stood with nothing on but boxer briefs, her thoughts turned definitely lustful, but then he reached for his pajama bottoms and pulled them on far too swiftly.
Dimitri had promised to make love to her tonight, so why was he bothering with his pajama pants? But then he turned to face her, and the look in his eyes made her breath hitch.
His eyes were full of need, raw and intense, held in check by a restraint that was beginning to show cracks.
His gaze roamed over the T-shirt that she wore as a nightgown, her bare legs that were folded beneath her on the mattress, and the bandaged hand that was resting on the pillow.
She saw the hunger surging and then retreating when his eyes landed on the splint.
At least the wince wasn't about her legs.
She was sitting on the bed and wearing only his T-shirt, her scarred legs on full display, and Dimitri was wincing about her splinted hand, not the twisted skin.
The scars had defined her lifestyle choices.
She had avoided shorts, skirts, swimwear and intimacy for far too many years, allowing them to define the boundaries of her self-worth, and now Dimitri had changed everything.
They were invisible to him. He had accepted her scars and all.
He believed she was still beautiful and worthy of love.
She would never get tired of that.
Dimitri ran his fingers through his hair. "I've been thinking about this," he said.
"All day, I hope."
"Most of it." The corner of his mouth twitched. "In between the revelations about secret immortal clans and debates about Morse code using smoke signals, yes."
"I'm flattered that making love to me made the priority list."
"You are the priority list. Everything else is context.
" He sat on the bed beside her, and the mattress dipped under his weight, tilting her toward him.
He didn't seem to notice. "The constraint is your hand.
Any position that puts weight on it, applies stress to it, or risks sudden movement is out.
Anything where you might instinctively brace yourself is also out, because in the moment, you'll forget about the injury and grab something with both hands, and then we're back to square one. "
"I have some self-control, Dimitri."
"You don't, and neither do I. Not when we get carried away. When things get intense, self-control is the first casualty, and your hand will be the second."
He had a point, and she hated that he was right.
"So, what's the solution, Dr. Volkov?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, which was a different tell from the hair. The hair meant he was stuck. The neck meant he had the answer but was either not sure about it or embarrassed by it.
"The safest position for your hand is with you flat on your back and not moving. Your right arm will be supported on a pillow, away from any contact."
Mattie grinned. "Sounds good to me. Nothing wrong with the good old missionary position."
He rubbed his neck harder. "I wasn't talking about missionary. I meant my head between your legs."
The grin froze on her face, but not because she was unhappy about his offer. On the contrary, it electrified her. She schooled her expression into a semblance of thoughtful consideration.
"Oh," she said. "Well. That's an acceptable proposition."
He smiled. "Just acceptable?"
"Yes, but only if it's reciprocal." She held his gaze. "A sixty-nine is also a classic. You on top, me on the bottom. My hand stays elevated on the pillow with no weight on it. Problem solved. We can also do it on our sides, but I like the first option better."
The image her mind conjured was so erotic that she felt moisture gather at her core, and since she wasn't wearing panties, Dimitri was going to smell her excitement.
With his immortal sense of smell, he could probably smell her even if she was fully clothed, but that didn't bother her. What bothered her was that every other immortal in their vicinity could smell her too.
She made a point never to think about anything naughty when the Eight came in for their daily shots.
But instead of the arousal that she expected to see, Dimitri stood and looked away. Then he looked back at her, and the way he rubbed the back of his neck for the third time in minutes was different than the other two.
Mattie's teasing confidence wavered. "What? Don't you like my idea?"
"No. I do. It's just—" He exhaled. "I've never done that before."
She stared at him.
"You've never done a sixty-nine?"
He shook his head.
Mattie's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Of all the things she had expected to learn about Dimitri Volkov tonight, this had not been on the list. The man kissed like he'd been trained by professionals.
The things he did with his devastatingly competent hands implied experience.
These hands belonged to a man who knew his way around a woman's body.
"Did none of the women you've been with want to do it?"
Maybe Russians were not as adventurous in bed as Australians?
"That wasn't the issue." He looked away again. "I didn't want to do it with any of them. It was a level of intimacy that I didn't feel in my soul. My body would have no doubt enjoyed it, but for me, that's not enough. My brain and my heart need to be on board and in sync."
The confession hung in the air between them, fragile and honest and so completely Dimitri that Mattie's heart swelled with love for him.
The man who had survived a gulag, and who'd faced down immortal warriors with nothing but a syringe of neurotoxin and then his bare hands, had walls around intimacy that no woman before her had been able to breach.
The magnitude of that was not lost on her.
This brilliant, beautiful, stupidly noble man, who had held her at arm's length because he was afraid of hurting her hand, was sitting on their bed and confessing that he'd never been intimate enough with anyone to try the thing she was suggesting.
"Not that there were that many women," he added. "I don't have as much experience as you might think I have."
He sounded so sincere, so awkwardly honest, that her love for him swelled to such proportions that it felt as if it was going to burst out through her ribs.
She wanted to climb into his lap and kiss him until neither of them could think straight, but her hand wouldn't allow it, and besides, this moment deserved more than impulse.
"You could have fooled me," she said softly. "You're too good at this to have limited experience."
The cocky smile she loved emerged like sunlight through rain clouds. It transformed him from a brooding Russian scientist into someone who looked like he belonged on the cover of one of the romance novels she and her friends used to read before her abduction.
"I'm a quick study," he said.
"You are." She patted the bed beside her. "Come here."
He hesitated, his eyes searching hers to confirm the invitation.
She met his gaze and let him see everything. The wanting, the trust, her absolute certainty that she could be naked and scarred, broken-handed, and completely herself with him, and he would hold all of it with care.
"I mean it," she said. "Come here, Dimitri."
He came.
He stretched out beside her on the bed, propping himself on his elbow. The feel of his body along the length of hers was like a cocoon of warmth. His free hand came to rest on her hip, fingers curling into the hem of the T-shirt, and the contact sent a cascade of heat through her.
"We go slow," he said. "And if anything hurts your hand, you tell me immediately, and we stop."
"I will."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
"And no bracing. Keep your right hand on the pillow at all times. If you need to hold on to something, use your left."
"Dimitri."
"What?"
"Stop giving me safety instructions and kiss me."
The cocky smile returned, wider this time, and then his mouth was on hers and the conversation was over.
He kissed her slowly, which was its own kind of torture.
Instead of the hard, urgent kisses of the morning, this was deliberate and thorough, his lips moving against hers with focused attention.
He seemed to be cataloging every response, every sound, every shift of her body.
His hand slid from her hip to the curve of her waist, and his thumb traced a line along the edge of her lowest rib that made her arch into him.
"Easy," he murmured against her mouth.
"I'm not a lab experiment. You don't need to control all the variables."