31. Lila
Lila
I’m fighting, but my arms won’t work, and my legs won’t move. I try to scream, but no sound comes out.
Mama!
The word echoes in my head, but it won’t come out. I can’t stop them. She’s crying and reaching out for me, but my arms won’t move to take her hand.
“Hey.” A low voice brushes over me. "Hey. I’m here. You're with me. You're safe."
I don’t know where “here” is for several seconds. My heart is slamming against my ribs. I can still see her face. Hear her trying to tell me to run with the only parts of her face that still worked.
“Lila.” Maksim’s hand presses against my belly. He’s not restraining me; he’s holding me. “Breathe.”
I drag in a breath, but it hurts. I’m shaking. He cradles me to keep me grounded.
“It was a nightmare,” he whispers. “You’re here with me. Miami. With me.”
With him. I’m lying in bed next to a murderer, and I feel safer than I ever did in that trailer with my mother down the hall.
I swallow and open my eyes. It’s dark, but I see the faint light from the moon. I’m in his room. His bed.
Far from Texas.
I exhale slowly. The nightmares have happened a lot lately. Usually, he’s still at work, and I wake up alone. But he’s here now.
He doesn’t ask what happened. He doesn’t turn on the light and ask me to tell him about it. He just holds on. He rests his chin on the top of my head.
I focus on his breathing and do my best to match it.
In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, my heart slows, my breathing evens out, and I stop shaking. I inhale his scent, letting it ground me.
I’m embarrassed by how long it takes.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t.”
“I woke you up.”
“I was awake.” He says. “Just got home twenty minutes ago.”
He kisses the side of my face. “Do you want me to let go, princess?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be right here. Do you want to talk about it?”
“She drove all night once,” I reply.
His arm tightens slightly around me. He’s listening.
“I was ten or eleven. She changed my birthday a lot. I honestly don’t know when my real birthday is.” That was a thought that just occurred. I might not be nineteen. What if I’m older? I feel older.
He gently rubs his thumb against my belly.
“We were in Louisiana. Some apartment near Shreveport. I don’t remember why we were there.
” I stare at the window with the faint glow of the security lights bleeding through the blinds.
“I woke up, and she was standing over my bed, already dressed. She had our bags packed. She said we were leaving, and that I needed to put my shoes on.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. She never did; that was just how it worked. We moved, and I was supposed to trust her and not ask questions.” I pause. “I asked questions anyway. She told me to shut up and get in the car.”
He presses his lips to the top of my head. I hear him exhale softly.
“She drove the whole night. I was in the back seat with a pillow and a blanket, and she had the radio on low so I could sleep. Country music. She always had it on country.” I can hear it if I try.
Tinny and soft from the old speakers. “I pretended to sleep for a while, but I kept watching her in the rearview mirror. She was scared. I knew it even then. She kept checking the mirrors. When we passed a car, she always turned her face away from the window.”
“But she didn’t stop.”
“She never stopped. We pulled off for gas somewhere in the middle of nowhere just before sunrise, and she bought me an orange juice and a pack of those little powdered donuts.” I feel the memory so clearly that it hurts.
“She sat on the hood of the car with me while I ate them. I got powder all over my pants. She drank coffee from a Styrofoam cup. I remember her telling me it was nasty. I asked why she drank it. She said, “Nobody will ever touch you. You hear me? Not ever. I’ll drive until the wheels fall off before I let anyone put their hands on you.’”
I inhale a shaky breath. “Snippets of those years have been creeping in. A smell. A sound. They trigger memories that didn’t mean shit before, but now, I see it all so clearly.”
“Your brain was protecting you,” he says.
“When I got older and realized she was drinking too much, I wondered why. She was always so sad. Or angry.”
I’m crying again. Silently this time. Just a stray tear.
“She taught me to shoot when I was twelve,” I say.
“We were in Arkansas. She took me out to this field behind wherever we were staying. She put a tin can on a fence post and handed me a .22. She showed me how to hold it.” I smile.
“She was a terrible shot. I figured that out pretty quickly. But she stood there with her hand over mine, and she made me do it over and over, until I could hit the can three times in a row.” I swallow.
“She said, ‘If someone ever comes for you and I’m not there, you make them regret it. You don’t hesitate.
You don’t wait to see what they want. You just make them regret it. ’”
“She was preparing you,” Maksim says quietly.
The ache in my chest is so powerful that it feels like it will never heal.
“I used to think she was paranoid. Damaged. I thought the alcohol and drugs were making her act so crazy. By the time I was eighteen, she’d really lost it.
I couldn’t talk to her at all. She was drunk most of the time.
High. She was barely alive, and I wanted to leave.
She told me to leave her, but I couldn’t.
I kept telling myself I was saving up, but to go where?
I never understood why Mom told me I had a different name, but I think part of me knew. ”
“You were a child,” he says. “Don’t blame yourself.”
I shift and roll to my back. He stares down at me in the darkness.
“I wish—”
I stop. Wishes don’t change the past.
I don’t want to think about all the hurt. I want to be with my husband. He makes me forget. He chases away the darkness and makes me feel alive.
“Lila?”
“I wish you would kiss me,” I murmur.
He searches my face, using his thumb to brush the last tear from my cheek, and then he leans down and presses his mouth to mine. Soft. Careful. Loving.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “You sure, princess?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
He kisses me again, sliding his hand into my hair. There’s no urgency in his touch. No rush. Just his mouth moving against mine, his tongue lazily sweeping inside.
He moves his lips to my jaw. My temple. The corner of my eye. He kisses the tears with a tenderness that nearly has me crying again. But not sad tears. Happy tears.
“Maksim.”
“I’m right here, voinitsa,” he murmurs against my cheek.
He works his way down slowly, his mouth trailing along my throat, running his tongue along my collarbone and then lower.
His hands are gentle as he eases my shirt over my head.
He takes his time kissing my exposed flesh.
He kisses my shoulders and nibbles at the curve of my neck before moving down to the swell of my breast.
I sink back into the pillow and let him take everything he wants. His body is over mine, with only the weight of his lower half pressing against me.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
My throat tightens. I reach up and touch his face.
He turns his head and presses his lips to my palm.
Then he dips his head and takes my nipple gently into his mouth, his tongue tracing slow circles before he sucks it between his teeth.
I exhale a long, shuddering breath. I slide my fingers into his hair.
He moves to the other side, unhurried. His hands move down my ribs and stomach, his fingers tracing the waistband of my panties without moving any lower.
“Please,” I breathe.
He kisses down the center of my stomach, his lips brushing each inch of skin like he has nowhere else to be. He hooks his fingers in the elastic waist and inches the cotton down my legs. And then he settles between my thighs and looks up at me.
Even in the dark, I see his eyes.
"Let me take the fear away, princess."
He kisses the inside of my knee. Then my thigh. Then, the other side. He takes his time getting there, his stubble a soft drag against the tender skin of my inner thigh. By the time his mouth finally finds me, I’ve been holding my breath so long that it comes out as a low, broken sound.
He moves his tongue in long, unhurried strokes, paying special attention to my clit.
He knows what makes my hips tilt toward him.
When he finds the right rhythm, he stays there with his forearm across my waist. He slips one finger inside me while his tongue and teeth work magic. I twist my fingers into the sheets.
“God,” I whisper.
He hums softly against me. The vibration moves through my body. I press my free hand over my mouth. My thighs tremble. He slides one hand up my stomach. I grab it and hold on, lacing my fingers through his. He squeezes back without breaking his rhythm.
The release builds slowly, and when it finally crests, it moves through me in long, rolling waves. I arch off the mattress as his grip on my hand tightens. The low moan that moves up from the tips of my toes and explodes into the room startles even me.
He stays with me until I’m limp and shaking, and my chest is heaving. I see stars. My head is spinning with the overload of ecstasy.
“That better, voinitsa?”
He presses one last kiss to the inside of my thigh, and then he’s over me. He kisses me as he slowly slides his thick cock inside me. His hands come up to frame my face. He rubs the pad of his thumb across my temple, and I feel the dampness.
More tears. Good tears. He understands and keeps moving inside me.
I tighten my hold on him and close my eyes. I love him. I love what he does to me and for me. Gentle when needed and violent when I’m in a mood. He seems to sense what I need.
I bite back the words that threaten to expose me. Words that could hurt me. Hurt this relationship we’ve formed.
“You’re mine, voinitsa. Forever.”
And then he’s bursting inside me. Heat pumps through my body. My soul is singing as I come again. More tears. He kisses them away.
I love Maksim Sokolov.
Not the man I was forced to marry. Not the devil who dragged me out of hell.
My husband.
And that might be the most dangerous thing that’s ever happened to me.