9. Adriana
9
ADRIANA
As we drive back toward the bay, the air in the car grows heavy and thick as if we’re brewing trouble or maybe witchcraft. At first, I worry we’re going to fight because I’m unsure what the tension means.
Slowly, I realize, the thick, unyielding air isn’t about that. This tension between us, so heavy it’s like a suffocating blanket, isn’t about violence; it’s about sex .
It weighs on me and presses against my skin, heating it. My breath comes in ever increasing puffs, and my heart picks up speed. My lips are dry, and I must lick them repeatedly.
Now and again, I risk a glance at the man driving. At Dimitri.
He looks like the same intimidating, bossy asshole that he did before. Except, a muscle ticks in his cheek, and he blows out breath every now and again, as if he’s chairing a meeting and needs to let off a little steam. His leg bounces, and there is a new tension in the lines of his body.
He’s radiating a pent-up energy. Lust? Desire? Need?
God, we have only just met, and yet the crackling energy between us could power a small city.
We’ re yearning to touch; I can sense it in both of us.
The thought makes me tingle. All through the meal I tried not to stare at him, but seated opposite him, the light of the afternoon hitting him so perfectly, it was hard not to.
He’s beautiful. Big. Powerful, so fucking strong; it makes me want. Yearn.
Sitting opposite this man made me feel things I haven't felt before. It confused me that my body seemed to want him so much when the whole situation is such a mess.
Am I sick in the head? Twisted somehow? I’ve spent my life avoiding the male gaze, and now I want the gaze of a … what? Mafia man? If he is Russian organized crime as his name and slight accent might suggest, then he’s what? Bratva ? Whatever name he’d give himself and the organization he works for, he’s clearly not an upstanding, law-abiding citizen.
I always thought I was a good person. Decent. I tried to be, at least. Tried to live up to the standards my mother set for me. I thought when I found myself attracted to a man this way, he’d perhaps be a teacher. Or a doctor. Someone quietly spoken and kind. He’d have eyes that crinkled when he laughed, and he’d drive something nondescript, vote vaguely liberal, and give to the food bank.
Instead, I find myself lusting after a man with a body that screams power. A face that screams don’t fuck with me and a vibe that is utterly terrifying. He must work out regularly, and hard , to look that way. I’m wet for a man who is always followed by armed men guarding him. A man who slapped another for merely looking at me the wrong way.
Is it sick that the memory of him slapping Jinx so violently merely for looking at me is hot to me? That his territorial possessiveness is a turn on?
I need protection. So maybe my body is just reacting in a way that makes sense for me right now. Cade and I need a fighter on our side. Someone in our corner.
I look at him again and take in his profile. An aquiline nose that could belong to a prince, but not quite perfect. It almost looks like he might have slightly broken it. Nothing major, but the slightest flaw that somehow only makes him more attractive. The rest of him is masculine perfection with a jaw that is smooth and sharp. High cheekbones. Gorgeous eyes and a short beard with a jagged little scar in one corner. There’s another scar on his neck.
His knuckles have broken skin in places. A bruise on one. The face of a prince and the hands of a fighter.
Who is he really?
He was military, and now he works for a crime organization.
He’s many contradictions wrapped up in one delectably handsome package.
“I can feel you burning my skin away, you’re looking so hard,” he mutters, his eyes never leaving the road. “Trying to figure me out?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t bother. I can’t even figure myself out.”
“Me neither, so that’s something we have in common.”
“I think I’ve figured you out. To a degree,” he says.
I should be offended; instead, I’m intrigued.
“Oh? And what do you think you’ve realized about me?”
“I don’t mean the surface stuff, like what color you prefer, and where you want to vacation, but the deep shit. The real shit.”
“Why don’t you tell me, and we can see?”
“You’re scared, but deep down you’re brave. If you had been sold at auction, I do believe you’d have resisted to the very last. You don’t go down without a fight. There’s a defiance in you. I think you have depths of bravery you haven’t mined yet. You’re a good person, and you are kind. But you have a weakness. You’re too soft. You care about other people. Which isn’t bad in itself, but you do it way more than you should. You still have hope. So much of it, and you think the world is essentially good, with a few bad people in it, and that’s what will be your undoing.”
His words are so fucking accurate they take my breath away. Instead of freaking out about how this man who doesn’t know me can actually, really, truly know me, I focus on the last thing he said. “The world is essentially good with a few bad people in it.”
“No, Littleblue,” he says softly. “It’s entirely the other way around.”
That evening as the sun draws down on the horizon and the yacht bobs gently on the unusually calm waters of the bay, I sit in a corner on the deck, curled up under a blanket. I’m reading, and the men are effectively ignoring me, which is heaven. I had to choose a book with fairly large print because I don’t have my glasses, which reduced my choices considerably. Half the time I just pretend, so I can avoid talking to any of the men.
Some of them are noisy, though. Raucous. Dimitri says they are all going soon, and there will just be the guards, a few on the yacht and an entire boat of them moored to the side of us, but soon keeps getting delayed.
Eventually, a craft pulls up, and the men begin to disembark. Jinx is one of the last to leave. I can feel his heavy gaze on me.
It’s not hot with desire the way Dimitri’s is. Ever since sandwich-gate, it’s cold with disdain. He’d like to hurt me; I’m sure of it. I have the gut instinct that Jinx strongly dislikes me now.
Dimitri’s phone rings. Jinx hangs back as Dimitri takes the call and his face clouds with anger, but Jinx smiles.
What is going on?
“Jinx, hang around. You’re staying,” Dimitri barks.
Jinx bites back his smile and manages to school his smirking face into something approaching respect.
“Yes, boss.”
I sip at my drink and pretend to read, but I’m acutely aware that something has shifted. Something is going on. When all the men have left, Dimitri asks Jinx to talk with him. They move to the far corner of the deck and sit in the dark there, as they begin to chat.
Not long after they head to the corner, a second boat joins us close by. It’s nowhere near as big as this yacht, but it’s large enough. I glance over at it and swallow hard at the outlines of men patrolling the deck, weapons in hand. This all feels so real now. The men were sent back, but in their place are armed guards. Both on this boat and on the sister boat now bobbing alongside us.
All the while Jinx and Dimitri continue to talk.
I'm desperate to know what they're talking about. Not because I'm a nosy person, but because I have the horrible feeling that this might involve my fate. Luckily for me, where they are talking is right next to the bar. As well as a selection of alcoholic and cold drinks, there is a coffee maker. Using the excuse of wanting a coffee, I quietly stroll to that end of the deck. I fill my cup with some hazelnut syrup and then start the coffee machine. Again, luckily for me, it's a quiet machine, and that means I can hear some of what is being said. The men are speaking in dulcet tones, but I still manage to overhear the general gist of the conversation.
It seems that Jinx has been ordered to stay by the man who is his boss, Virgil. However, Dimitri is not happy with this.
“Why the hell does he believe I need a babysitter?” Dimitri demands. “If it wasn't for me, his daughter would still be on this boat.”
Jinx shrugs. “You know how it is, boss. The brigadier is the one who's in charge of making sure that everything runs smoothly. Perhaps he's just ensuring that everything goes according to the plan that he and Jacob have implemented. After all, Jacob has none of his men on board either; it’s you and all your men. That is highly unusual, no? With all due respect, I mean.”
“Why is it fucking unusual?” Dimitri scoffs. “We have run things this way many times before.”
“This is why, no offense. It shows at times that you are not from our world. In our world view, for the enforcer to be left in charge of a situation without some of the Pakhan or one of the brigadiers’ men is unusual.”
Dimitri lets out a low, grumbling laugh. “Oh, come now, Jinx. Let's talk freely as friends. Don't pretend that this organization is run the same way as the Bratva back in Russia. It hasn't been that way for a long time. Hell, your leader, my stepfather, isn't from Russia. He’s from Crimea, with Russian roots. This group has been a mix of Russian, Ukrainian, and other Eastern European people as well as American-born citizens for a long time. We left the ways of the old world behind long ago.”
Jinx shuffles in his chair, licks his lips, and runs his fingers through his hair. He might be arrogant, but right now he clearly feels uncomfortable. His body language is screaming “Get me out of here.” He sighs and steeples his fingers. “Dimitri, between you and me, there are some who think you overstep. That's all I'm saying. Perhaps, sometimes we need to think about how things look. About the visual we're creating with our actions. Perhaps, sometimes, we need to think about making sure we don't put people's noses out of joint for the sake of it. Don’t tarnish your reign as the second when it is only just beginning. One day it will all be yours and you don’t want to have made things difficult.”
“Is this coming from you, friend ?” I get what he means but it’s not his place to say this to me. Plus, I think my reign is already tarnished, because the entire damn kingdom is. Tainted. Bloodied. Tarred by violence and vengeance. What an inheritance.
“Who else would it be coming from?”
“Oh, I don't know, perhaps your boss. You know, the man whose daughter I just saved.”
“This organization ran long before you joined it. It has a history and ways of doing things woven into the fabric of its being.” Jinx is slowly losing his conciliatory tone. “Anyway, it doesn’t hurt to have extra manpower right now. It’s a double win. An extra body and the upholding of tradition.”
He glances to the side, and I immediately look away and stir the syrup in the base of my coffee cup as I fiddle with the creamer, pretending I'm intensely interested in the coffee.
“That may be so,” Dimitri replies. “But before I joined there were many more incidents and raids against us. There were many occasions that our side lost soldiers to the enemy. There were organized groupings trying to take our territory. None of that happens anymore. The reason is me . Not because I think I'm some sort of superhero, but because I am the sort of person who will walk into the bedroom of a rival group's leader in the dead of the night and slit his and his wife's throats if they threaten me or mine. I will fucking end people who come for us, and the world knows it. When those men of Virgil’s betrayed their brigadier and forgot their duty, I cut off their fucking hands.”
I drop the spoon in the coffee cup, and the metal clatters against the porcelain side, making an awful racket.
Both men turn to look at me, halting their conversation.
Jinx, as usual has nothing but sneering disdain on his face, but Dimitri looks angry. Worse, he seems disappointed. As if he can't believe how stupid and naive I am trying to listen to this conversation. He may have a point.
“Can I help you with something?” Dimitri asks pointedly.
“No, it's fine. I'm done now.” I try to keep my tone light and breezy. “Sorry if the coffee machine was making it hard for you to talk. It's noisy; I know.”
“Quietest damn coffee machine I've ever heard,” Jinx mutters.
His gaze flicks down my body, fast, not lingering, but Dimitri must notice because he actually growls.
“Jinx, look at Adriana one more fucking time, and I’ll pluck your eyes out and wear them as a necklace the way I promised. Understood? Or I’ll give it to her to wear. I’ll fucking set them in resin, you piece of shit, and leave you alive with nothing but empty sockets.”
Jinx chokes a little.
“Under-fucking-stood?” Dimitri snaps.
“Yes.” Jinx doesn’t remotely glance my way as I pick up my cup.
I try to keep the cup steady as I walk across the deck, but my hands tremble uncontrollably at what Dimitri just said. Did he mean that, or is it just idle threats? The image imprints itself on my brain, and I don’t want it there.
Jinx staying is not good news for me, even without Dimitri’s unhinged threats adding to the tension. The man probably loathes me by now. It also seems that he doesn't have to follow everything that Dimitri says. I don't really understand the criminal world, or the hierarchies, but it seems that there is possibly some sort of battle for supremacy raging amongst these people, and I don't want to fall into the middle of it.
I vow there and then to do everything that I can to avoid Jinx. I'm also going to ask Dimitri to never make a show of him that way again over me. It puts me in a dangerous position. I don't need to be the focus of anyone’s anger while I'm here.
My mind lurches back to his words about cutting people’s hands off and plucking eyes out. I decide it must be a threat only. Surely to God.
Ten minutes later the two men stand and shake hands. The handshake seems like good news at least. Jinx heads my way and as he passes me by, he gives me a small dip of his head and averts his eyes, which is at least a sign of acknowledgment. I offer him a smile in return, but he doesn’t look back at me to see it.
Dimitri does not even glance my way as he heads inside, leaving me alone on the deck. A moment later, however, Alexis appears and sits opposite me as he takes out his phone and starts messing around on it. After a few minutes he curses, swipes the screen, curses again and stares at the screen shaking his head.
“I suck at this game,” he mutters.
“What game is it?” I ask.
“It's a word game. You’re sitting here with your head in a book; want to try?”
“I can take a look, but I warn you that I'm useless at anything like that.”
“You studied English literature, Dimitri said. I would have imagined that you'd be fantastic at word games.”
“Reading and analyzing texts is a totally different skill to being able to guess words from cryptic clues.” I shrug. “I've always been very bad at crosswords.”
“Me too,” Alexis says. “Not Yuri, though. He's brilliant at crosswords. Don't tell him that you learned this from me because he likes to keep it secret. Yuri is so good at crosswords that he has a paid side gig.”
“He gets paid to solve crosswords?”
Alexis chuckles. “No, he gets paid to create them. He has a crossword every week in one of the local Bay newspapers.”
I stare at Alexis, aware that I probably look like a fish with my mouth hanging open. I can't quite get my head around this information. Yuri, big, crude Yuri—who is an enforcer for organized crime—also writes crosswords.
It just goes to show that you never can judge a book by its cover.
“As for Dimitri, he almost has a photographic memory. Not completely, but almost.” Alexis taps his phone distractedly.
“Seriously?” I lean forward and then realize I look overly eager to hear crumbs of information about the boss.
“Yes. Show him a map, and he can remember it for hours. Give him coordinates, and they’re lodged in his head. Perhaps it comes from being in the military, but I think it was probably there before he joined, and it's partly what made him such a good soldier. That and the fact that he speaks so many languages.”
“How many languages does he speak?”
“I lose count, but I know he speaks a couple of the languages the military requires, certainly for the sort of high level work he was doing. He also obviously speaks Russian. He speaks Italian. I think he might speak some French. English, clearly. He picks languages up very easily. The thing about Dimitri is that most people underestimate him. Most of our enemies have no idea how highly trained he was in the military. Most people don't know just how intelligent he is either.”
Alexis looks around to make sure nobody is near. I follow the movement, glad to note that Jinx is at the far end of the deck, back where he was sitting before when he was speaking to Dimitri.
“The other thing about Dimitri,” Alexis says, “is he's always at least two to three steps ahead of the current situation. That's just how his brain works. Me, I'm sitting on this boat right now, and that's where my head's at. Any threats on the horizon? If the answer is no, then I'm happy. Dimitri isn't like that. His brain will already be figuring out what the next move might be from Dorian’s men, followed by our countermove. He can calculate the odds of a situation so fast. It’s amazing to see.”
“I had no idea,” I say.
“Why would you?” Alexis offers me an easy smile. The kind you give to friends. “You don't know him. You don't know any of us.”
“What are the three things you think I should know about him?”
Alexis thinks. “I'd say that the things you should know about him as a guest of his on this boat are that he's absolutely ruthless and determined. As I've already said, he's incredibly intelligent and aware of his surroundings. And finally, I would say for you, a really important thing to know is that he's a man of his word. If Dimitri promises you something, he'll move heaven and earth to keep that promise.”
His words give me a measure of comfort. I had already sensed that was the case, my gut instinct telling me it was so. To hear Alexis say it too is an extra layer of reassurance. Of course, Alexis could be telling me all this because Dimitri asked him to. He could be blowing smoke up my ass and making me fall into a false sense of security, but I don't believe that to be the case.
I finish my coffee and place the cup down. “Well, as you can imagine it's been an extremely tiring few days, and I think I should go to bed.”
“You have the room next to Dimitri’s,” Alexis tells me. “I've moved all your things there. I hope that's okay.”
“Why?” I ask, alarm suddenly hitting me. I might be attracted to the man, but I’m nowhere near ready for anything to happen between us right now. Is that why they moved my things?
“So he can know you are safe. That’s all.”
“Which room is Dimitri’s?” I ask, wondering where on the ship they’ve put me now.
“It's the room that you were in, waiting for Dorian.” He winces as if he hates saying the man’s name to me. “We've cleaned it all out, changed the furniture, and now it's Dimitri’s room. Yours is the one right next door. And I'm the other side of you. You're basically sandwiched between us. Hopefully that means you'll feel secure.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it because in most ways it does, at least now that I understand their reasoning behind moving me.
These men might not be good men. In fact, they're very bad men, but they are my enemy's enemy. And as the old saying goes, my enemy's enemy is my friend.
I grab a bottle of water from the bar, trying very hard to avoid looking in Jinx's direction. I can feel his gaze on me the whole way back to my room. I slip inside and close the door, and for good measure I slide the chest of drawers in front of it so that nobody can get in easily. If someone wants to get into this room, they'll have to make a heck of a lot of noise about it, and that should alert Dimitri or Alexis.
I drink the water and brush my teeth, wash my face, and apply some moisturizer. I slip into the night clothes that Dimitri’s sister purchased for me, thankful for the loose pajamas, and get into bed.
I prefer to read my Kindle in bed rather than a physical book, but I don’t have that option here, so paperback it is. My eyes are heavy, and they flutter closed as the words on the page merge into one another, forming nonsense sentences.
The book falls softly closed beside me as darkness slips over me, stealing me under.
The man is watching me, his eyes bright, glowing, and the others are laughing. Their mouths stretch and stretch until they’re nothing but huge, dark holes in their faces. They reach for me, their fingers not flesh, but shiny bone and when they touch me it is with the icy horror of death.
I wake with a jerk and struggle to catch my breath. The room is so dark. I can't see a thing, but I can sense a presence.
There's no one in the room. Of course there isn't. How could there be? The window is too small for anyone to climb through, and I have a chest of drawers blocking the door. It must have just been a nightmare that woke me. I can still sense that presence, though. I can’t move either. My limbs are still sluggish from waking so rapidly, my mind alert but my body caught in that awful paralysis between sleeping and waking.
Then I hear it.
Heavy breathing. By the door.
There's no one in the room, but there's someone on the other side of that wood. The floor by my door creaks, and I hold my breath.
What the hell ?
I'm frozen to the spot and unable to move. With a massive wrench, I finally break free from the inertia and move. I flick the light switch on, heart pounding and breath coming in shallow gasps.
I should bang on the wall between myself and Dimitri’s cabin, but my arms are simply useless right now. They feel like strands of spaghetti instead of fully functioning limbs.
A waking dream, night paralysis, night terror—call it what you will—it’s a horrific phenomenon that I sometimes experience when I’m exhausted or overwrought. Like now.
I still think I can hear heavy breathing even though I know that’s not possible. Terror fills me suddenly, cold and slimy in it’s grasp.
I glance back at the room and shiver. I can’t be in here alone. Not for a moment longer. All the trauma, the terror, the fear, it’s working its way out of me like a volcano, and I swear I’ll lose my mind and blow if I don’t do something.
Needing human contact more than anything else and fearing solitude more than I fear the man next door right now, I creep to my door and open it. Tiptoeing down the corridor, I reach the next door.
I open Dimitri’s door and slip inside the room like a thief in the night. I still and look around. My skin is tight, and my heart is beating way too fast, but I’m more scared of being alone than I am of the man in this room.
The curtains to his larger window are open, and light from the deck fills the space with a soft glow. I can see Dimitri clearly outlined under the light sheets. I glance at the couch. I could sleep there. It's warm enough not to need a blanket. The trouble is my feet. I can't ever sleep without a cover over me, or more accurately, over my feet. Ever since I was a child, I can't bear to have my feet out of the covers. I always get the most awful, dreadful sensation that something is going to grab my toes. You would think that as a grown woman that would have receded, but sadly not.
Taking in a deep breath and hoping against hope that he will be the gentleman he promised, I slide under the covers next to Dimitri.
I'm about to turn away from him and lie like a rigid board on my side, facing the opposite way so he doesn't get the wrong idea, when I'm grabbed by a heavy hand, thrown onto my back, and something is pressed against my temple.
Cold, hard, steel.
Shit.
I open my mouth to scream, but the hand that was at my throat is now covering my mouth. All that escapes my lips is a muffled moan.
The cold metal pressed against my temple is making the vein pulse as if it knows the lifeforce it contains could be extinguished in a flash. It's painful how hard he's shoving that piece of metal against me.
I realize with sickening horror that there is no way the gun won’t be loaded. Dimitri will have it full of bullets, and I’m a breath away from death.
I can't even speak to let Dimitri know that it's me. His face takes shape in the dim light as my eyes adjust to the darkness. My throat constricts, and my eyes widen as I stare into his unseeing, unblinking gaze.
Then, like a robot coming online, he blinks twice, and awareness rushes into those beautiful irises.
He drops the gun by his side and shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Adriana. I could have killed you. What the hell are you playing at?” He jumps up from the bed as if it’s burning lava. He paces a few times and then grabs the gun. With a string of curses and mutterings in Russian, he shoves it into the bedside drawer.
The pacing resumes, and he rakes his hands through his hair.
“I almost pulled the fucking trigger.”
My breath is coming hard and fast, as is his own.
“I'm sorry!” I exclaim. “I had a waking dream, and they terrify me. I couldn’t move, and I was so scared.”
He turns to me, and for the first time I see true fury raging and coursing through his veins. His face is a twisted mask of anger. His lips form a hard line, and his nostrils are flared.
Real fear of this man snakes into my consciousness. He promised not to hurt me, but I’ve done something stupid, and he almost killed me. Now, I can see the visceral anger that lives just beneath his surface. Is it this rage that allows him to do the unspeakable things he’s talked about that seem so out of character? The things I thought were mere threats but perhaps were real?
“Don't ever sneak into my room or into my bed again.”
His words are heavy and harsh.
“I’m sorry.” It’s a mere whisper.
He carries on as if I haven’t said a word. “I'm trained to react to any sort of surprise like that with deadly force. When I'm asleep, it might take me a moment to fully become aware of what's going on, and I could have pulled that trigger. Your brains could have been all over my bed sheets.”
The image is alarming, and a wave of sickness washes over me.
The tears flow down my cheeks before I can even blink them away. I can't help it. I know I shouldn't cry because it’s pathetic and some might say manipulative. But the stress of the last few days has piled on top of me, and this is the last straw.
“I'm sorry, I … shit … I truly, really am. My head is just such a mess. I'm scared. I just feel so … so … so…”
I clamp my mouth shut.
“So what?” he demands.
“Alone.” I hang my head as the tears pour down my cheeks.
“So absolutely alone,” I admit. “I've never been this alone in my life, and trust me, Dimitri, I've been lonely. I have very few people in my life. I don't make friends easily. My family is tiny. When I left England and came here, I had to start all over again. For someone like me, that wasn't easy, and so far, I haven't managed to create a social circle at all. Then I found out that my stepmother has basically given me away. My father is probably too drunk to notice. He spends his days staring into the bottom of a glass of whiskey.”
A salty well of self-pity bursts like an overripe fruit inside me, and the tears flow endlessly. Maybe I should be tougher than this. Perhaps I should get a grip and not cry in front of this man who probably doesn't care. I've had enough, though. I've been kidnapped. Manhandled. Threatened. It's all too much.
He blows out a breath and runs his hands through his hair yet again, making it stand up in all directions. He's wearing a pair of loose, almost gauze like, light cotton pants. Nothing else.
I'm so distraught that I didn’t even notice he's shirtless. As my tears slowly subside, and the moon comes out from behind a cloud and illuminates the room in even brighter light, throwing shadows around, I really notice. The size of his muscles are highlighted in stark relief against the light behind him in the window. He looks like a cardboard cut-out of a living, breathing, action man.
He's deadly, and I snuck into his room looking for comfort. More fool me.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “Shit. Don’t cry, Adriana.”
He sits on the bed beside me, and those big arms come around me as he pulls my tear-stained face into his shoulder. A warm palm cups the back of my head, and he drops his chin onto the top of my hair as he shushes me and soothes me.
He's so solid. So warm. That size that seemed so intimidating when he was standing above me, pacing, now feels like shelter.
As my self-pitying crying jag comes to an end, my brain notices other things. My hand is rested against his pecs, and his chest is all huge slabs of muscle. There's a light smattering of hair covering his chest, which is intensely masculine. He smells delicious, of sleep and warm man mixed with something fresh and light. He almost smells as if he's been drenched in the ocean itself and then climbed straight back into bed. There’s an airiness about whatever aftershave he's wearing.
I've never been held by a man of his size before. He must be almost six and a half feet in height, and he's incredibly broad built. It makes me feel tiny. I'm tall for a girl, and I've never felt this way before. Never felt delicate and protected like this.
It's a heady feeling.
I like it.
I like his size, and I like that he makes me feel small. I relish the way his arms envelop me, and I’m engulfed by him.
It’s the safest and at the same time, the most feminine and vulnerable I’ve ever felt in my life.
This could be my new favorite place. In Dimitri’s arms.
As if my brain has decided that now that the pity party is over, she’s going to get interested in other things, I realize how my breasts are pressed against his lower chest. How his breathing is deep and regular. How his heart beats against my ear.
He’s so vital .
I lift my face, and he looks at me as his thumb raises to wipe one remaining errant tear away.
“Can I sleep in here if I stay on the sofa?” I ask. My voice is small. So pathetic.
“You can sleep in here with me. In the bed. I won’t touch you. Just in the future, don’t sneak up on me. I won’t touch you,” he repeats again, as if to convince himself too.
I almost blurt out, what if I want you to touch me , because I’m pretty certain that I do want him to.
My mouth stays firmly shut, thank goodness, because I’m clearly not in my right mind. I think I’m losing it. Losing any ability to make rational and reasonable decisions.
I can’t want this man.
He’s huge, scary, and hard, and certainly experienced in ways that I am not.
I’m na?ve, and compared to him, so breakable .
I really don’t think my first time should be with an ex-soldier who is now an enforcer for the Russian mob. I need to find a guy who is more my own speed. Perhaps a librarian, or a researcher in a lab. The kind man who will take his time and put me at ease.
A man for who a difficult day at work doesn’t involve murder.
That’s what I need.
So why do I burn for the touch of the man settling beside me? Why do I long for the fire instead of wanting the gentle burn?
As Dimitri gets comfortable, on his back, and I carefully position myself next to him on my side facing away from him, I’m intensely aware of his heat.
I want that, I realize.
I want the inferno.
I want to be consumed .
God help me.