Chapter Seventeen
In which there is such a kiss…
Ava…
Dmitri and I are dancing. He finished off his speech in style, with much toasting and cheering from the guests.
By then, I'd gulped down a couple of glasses of champagne, feeling giddy and weirdly victorious.
I'm not sure why, it's not like I shot those assholes.
But sailing back into our seats with Ella and Maksim made me feel powerful, like them, how both look completely unaffected by what just happened. I felt like I belonged.
One of Maksim's men came over to our table and whispered in his ear, getting a regal nod in return.
Maksim put his arm around Ella, murmuring to her and she sagged a little in relief.
Taking pity on me, she whispers, "They found Daniil and Ivan, my bodyguards.
They were knocked out with a stun gun and shoved into a storage space for chairs and tables. They're alive."
"Oh, thank god." I smile gratefully and she squeezes my hand.
So, dancing with the best man while spitefully enjoying the glares of a good 76.3% of the female wedding guests and around 21.9% of the men, feels like a boss move.
"Are you certain you want to stay? Your wrists are still bloody. We should get them treated," he says with a frown as my abraded skin escapes my sleeve.
"I've had worse in the hospital. And not even the ER," I brag a little.
"A big lumberjack-type guy came roaring down the hallway, fleeing the lab because he was terrified of needles.
He plowed me and two security guards over like we were the last bowling pins he needed to knock over for a strike.
I still got up and went into a three-hour surgery.
These assholes didn't rank in the top ten of injuries I've suffered. "
Dmitri frowns, turning us to avoid a tipsy, giggling couple. "I'm thinking that it brought up memories of-"
"Tell you what," I say. "Can I reserve the right to have a debilitating panic attack later on? A full meltdown - if I need it - that will involve excessive weeping and rocking back and forth?"
Dmitri chuckles, his grin feels warm and approving.
Finally, after Dmitri shakes a dozen hands and hugs a happily drunk Adam, we're ready to go home. Ella - of course - keeps an enormous and proactively well-stocked first aid kit in every one of their SUVs, so she insists on wrapping my wrists before she allows us to leave.
It's not until we walk into the entryway of Dmitri's penthouse that the bubbly, fizzy feeling I had from before evaporates along with my momentary surge of confidence. "Your plan didn't work," I say bluntly. "They still got to me."
"They almost got to you," he corrects me, leaning against the doorway to the living room. He puts one arm up, his hand resting on the molding over the door and again, I am struck by the size of this man.
"I mean, there was a roving pack of bodyguards and they still got me," I say. "I'm grateful that your two bodyguards were only knocked out and not killed, because I don't think I could stand it if someone had died for me."
"It's their job," he says. "Working for the Morozov Bratva means that you know you might have to give your life at any moment in the protection of another. And that doesn't just include the bodyguards. The family also bears that responsibility."
"Hell of a way to live," I say.
He shrugs. "It's the only way I know."
"There has to be another way," I say, lacing my hands on top of my head. "I've got some money saved. I can move overseas and take a job there. There's a million places that need physician assistants."
"No, you will not," he says firmly. "You don't think that they can find you anywhere? You're a loose end, Ava. Powerful criminal organizations do not like loose ends."
"So you keep reminding me," I say. "Though the reality is that being under your family's protection was not enough to keep me safe. They still had the audacity to step into a wedding filled with crime families and pull me out through a bathroom window. This is not going to work."
"There are other options," he says. "I've been working on them." His face is half in shadow, and I can't see his expression well enough to know what's going on in his mind. Though to be honest, the man has Resting Poker Face. Unless he wants you to know, you'll never guess what he's thinking.
It occurs to me that I have never asked about any other options past my initial query in the hospital. "What if I did go to the police?" I say cautiously. "Then, I'm no longer your problem. They could maybe put me in witness protection or something."
"It doesn't work that way," he says, shaking his head.
"Unless there is a person or organization to specifically identify and charge for the crime, there would be no witness protection for you.
Even with it, your safety is never guaranteed.
For someone under police protection, the highest risk of assassination is during the trial. "
"Well, that's very reassuring."
"I know you're new to this life." Dmitri's tone softens.
"What you need to understand is the offense these fuckers have caused.
They came into our city. The Morozov Bratva has a lock on New York.
We do not allow human trafficking. It's always there, of course, popping up like fucking toadstools.
We crush it wherever we find it. This is something very different.
This is well organized, and the fact that it's happening right under our noses is a direct challenge to our authority. "
He pulls off his tux jacket and his bow tie, sighing slightly in relief. "Right now, you are one of our best resources for finding these ublyudki, these fuckers. You might see something, or remember a face or a name. But regardless, you are now mine to protect."
Dmitri's face turns into the light and now I can see the slow curve of his smile. "Don't you remember racing into my arms?" He walks toward me slowly, with a panther's grace. "You knew I'd protect you. You knew instantly I wasn't one of them, didn't you?"
"I don't know what I thought." I rub my suddenly sweaty hands on my dress. "I was getting shocked repeatedly, my brain was oatmeal."
That's a lie.
Was I in agony? Yes. Terrified out of my mind?
Of course. But… I saw his expression, his shock.
I saw how his arms opened instantly as I raced into them.
And then how he whipped out that knife and tore that monstrous collar off my neck.
I knew without proof or rational thought that he would keep me safe.
His giant hand cups my cheek, tilting my chin up to his. I don't pull away when he kisses me. Instead, my hands find their way up his shirt, clutching his collar as he deepens the kiss.
And such a kiss.
His mouth is firm, kissing me slowly as if this was the plan, just this kiss, the fusing of the two of us together.
When his tongue traces the seam of my lips, I open them, letting him inside.
I don't realize I've been sagging against him until he chuckles gutturally, and slides an arm under my ass, lifting me up into his arms easily.
I wrap my legs around his waist, my hands around his neck and I kiss him back, tangling our tongues together, my fingers in his hair.
The very scent of him feels safe, the pine and sea salt I've come to love, and a slight tinge of woodsmoke.
My head tilts back as his lips find their way down my neck, his teeth fastening lightly against my rabbity pulse and I tighten my heels against the small of his back, hard enough that I think I hear his spine creak.
He's walking, I'm barely aware of it and I give a small yelp as my back finds the couch and he's over me, his hand brushing the hair away from my face.
"I want to make you feel good," he murmurs, so close that his lips move against the skin of my cheek. "Will you let me?"
Can I?
He pauses, his glacier eyes searching mine.
I know he's waiting, wanting to see if this triggers me, if the weight of him pinning me down in this darkened room is too much.
Nothing surfaces, though, no ugly memories.
None of the terror I'd felt in that horrible place.
Only something as clear and clean as the look I see in his eyes, and I sigh in relief, arching my neck to kiss him again.
"Say the words out loud." He pulls back. "I need to hear them. I need to know that you're here with me."
"Yes," I say, running a hand down his chest. "Yes, I would like that."
Oh, now a slow, taunting grin spreads across his full mouth. "That?" Dmitri questions solicitously. "Or this?"
His hand goes to the strap of my dress, pulling it down and baring my breast as his other one pushes up under the slit in the skirt of my dress.
His huge paw pushes higher, until the bottom half of me is bare, aside from a pair of skimpy undies that are technically useless in preventing anything that's about to happen.
His dark head drops to my breast, capturing my nipple in his mouth, tugging with his lips, and then his teeth.
A jolt sizzles up my spine, and my leg mindlessly wraps around his.
Dmitri's lips are warm, tracing from one breast to the other as his thumb makes a slow maddening trail up the thin skin of my inner thigh until it reaches the panel of my undies, which I am sure are already embarrassingly wet. How could he do this to me in the space of what? Thirty seconds?
Pushing his hips between my thighs, widening them, he asks, "Is this for me?" He's got a lazy, self-satisfied smirk that makes me want to both smack him and beg him to slide his fingers under that useless scrap of silk.
"No," I wheeze, "we had a really hot waiter at our table tonight."
He laughs and then punishes me for my audacity by biting my nipple again and tugging it slightly harder than is comfortable.
"Let me see if I can make you forget that hot waiter," he says.
Sliding his finger over my clit, he circles it lightly before growling with impatience and ripping my underwear clean off.
They do that in the trashy romances I've always loved to read, but I never knew men did that in real life.
Even though it left a red mark on my hip, I don't mind at all.
"That's better," he says, rising now to watch my face as he slides a finger inside me and then another, growling as I instinctively clamp down on them.
"Aren't you a treasure," he whispers darkly, moving his thumb to circle my clit again.
"So snug." His fingers curve, pressing against that spot inside me, scraping it very slightly with one fingernail…
And I come. Instantly, embarrassingly, needily coming, and he buries my shriek in his kiss.
I'm a medical professional. I know the names for all of the spots inside me, the nerve endings, how the nerves respond to stimuli, but none of those clinical things seem to relate to what is happening to me now.
The heat and hardness of his fingers, the sense that he has struck a match and something is kindling inside me for the first time.
Something I've never felt before, that really doesn't give a damn whether I'm ready for it or not because when he adds another finger, I can feel another orgasm threatening to crash over me.
He's watching my face intently and at any other time I would be embarrassed, it would pull me out of the moment and I would cover my face with my hands, but instead, I stare back.
I'm mesmerized by his icy blue gaze, the slow curve of his smile, and the feel of his fingers inside me.
Soft at first, then plunging harder. I'm embarrassingly wet now, my thighs are slick, and when we both look down, he gives that guttural chuckle again.
"I'm wet to the wrist," he says, kissing me.
He pulls his fingers from my channel and I'm humiliated by the shrill whine of protest that comes from the back of my throat.
I watch, helpless as he licks his fingers.
His cuff is soaked from me, his wrist shiny with my slick.
"I knew you would taste this way," he groans. "So sweet.
In seconds, his face is down between my legs and his shoulders are pushing my thighs even wider until my tendons strain, his hands gripping my knees tight as his tongue circles around my clit over.
Maddening little twirls that are meant to torture me and offer no relief as my poor clitoris throbs, the entire bottom half of me, needy, and desperate and hot.
When he finally puts his mouth on me and sucks, my hands go into my own hair, pulling on it, trying to ground myself and trying not to fly away, floating, mindless.
His five o'clock shadow prickles, and he adds to it by rubbing his stubbly chin against my opening and it's too much, too sensitive, too everything.
When he pinches my clit, it's all over and I shriek up at the tall, shadowed ceiling above us, feeling like there's a thousand pieces of me flung across this room and I'm not sure I know how to put them all back together in the same way.
I'm not sure I want to. I feel different, like someone else and it's not as scary as I would have thought.