Chapter 58 Dimitri #2
He grumbled sleepily, but the moment his paws hit the ground, his nose was up in the air, sniffing deeply. When he shook out his body with a languid stretch, it confirmed the results of my perimeter sweep. We were alone.
I led the way inside, going straight to the kitchen and filling a glass of water. Sienna sat down on the couch, fingers tightly interlaced, and Vovk lay down by her feet.
I handed her the water. “Drink.”
She took a small sip. For once in her life, her face didn’t give away everything she was thinking, and that, more than anything, made my inner turmoil bubble over. I paced in front of the couch like a caged animal.
“What were you thinking?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“I was thinking I had a job to do.”
A red haze fell over my vision, and my commitment to not shout flew out the window. “Fuck. Fuck! Do you understand how much danger you were in tonight? Anything could have happened!”
Her eyes flashed with fire. “You didn’t care when you thought it was the Hedgehog.”
“That’s because I don’t give a fuck about the Hedgehog! How long have you known I was your client?” My chest heaved and I fisted my hands.
She flinched—a tiny, involuntary movement that cut through my rage. My eyes squeezed shut, and I dug the heels of my palms into their sockets. What was I doing? I wanted to be better for her. The husband and father my new family deserved.
“Not until I saw you tonight,” she muttered after a few silent moments. “Though I’m sure you won’t believe me because I’m an evil mastermind, right?”
I swallowed hard. Of course she would expect me to doubt her. Why wouldn’t she after how I’d treated her in New York?
My fear and adrenaline finally caught up to me, and the strength leeched from my muscles. I slumped down on the couch, my head cradled in my hands. I wished I had the right words to say. Wished I could take her hand in mine.
“How did you get to the shipping yard so quickly?” she asked.
I lifted my head. Sienna stared straight ahead, her fingers tightly intertwined in her lap. “What?”
“It only took you two hours to get to the shipyard after I messaged Atlas with the Souleater’s location. How did you get here so fast?”
“I got your message mid-flight. We were already flying back to Chicago.”
“Why?”
The urge to lie burned the tip of my tongue. The truth was too vulnerable to share, but I owed it to her. Fuck, it was the bare minimum of what I owed her. “You needed me back here, so I came.”
“I needed you?” she asked, eyebrows furrowed.
I swallowed hard. “Maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe you didn’t need me, but I needed you. After you called—” I cleared my throat, swallowing the hard lump of emotion. “You’ve comforted me after so many nightmares, and I wasn’t there for you.”
“You were there for me,” she said softly. “You stayed on the phone until I fell asleep.”
My chest tightened at her undeserved kindness. “I haven’t been there for you like you deserve, but that’s going to change.”
She fidgeted with the hem of her sweatshirt, and I mustered all of my patience when I waited for her to respond.
“I don’t understand. You thought the Souleater was still in Europe and you still came back…for me?” Her voice cracked, and that quiet sound destroyed me. I clutched her hand in mine before I realized what I was doing, but she didn’t pull away. She entwined our fingers and squeezed.
“I’ve been an ass to you, Sienna. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but from now on, you and the baby are my priority.”
A jagged pain twisted beneath my sternum at the dark circles shadowing her eyes. I brushed a messy strand of hair out of her face. “I need to check you over. Make sure you’re not injured. Sometimes shock can mask pain.”
“I’m not in shock. I just want to go to bed.”
“People who are in shock don’t think they’re in shock. Do I have permission to check you over?”
“I guess…”
Before she changed her mind, I lifted her into my arms. She let out a squawk of protest, pushing at my chest, but I just tightened my hold as I carried her into the primary bedroom. Vovk slowly followed, slipping into the room before I closed the door. He sprawled on the rug and closed his eyes.
I gently set Sienna down on the bed, my hands bracketing her body as I stared down at her.
“You were gone all this time because you were looking for the Souleater?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Maybe I should have put it together, but I didn’t know you were Atlas. I swear.”
My shoulders curled inward, but I steeled my arms from giving way. When she ran her fingers through my hair, tenderly brushing it back from my forehead, a fault line cracked through my hardened heart.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Her soft question broke something inside me.
My breath hitched, and I collapsed against her.
My face pressed into the crook of her neck, my trembling arms just strong enough to shift us so we were on our sides, facing each other.
She kept running her fingers through my hair, lightly massaging my scalp when I had done nothing to deserve her kindness.
My lips skimmed the soft skin of her throat. “You could have died tonight.” I squeezed her tighter. “I could have lost you.” The scent of her vanilla shampoo lightly clung to her hair as I buried my face in it. “I can’t lose you.”
She stiffened beneath me and I pulled away just enough to catch her expression, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze.
“I thought I could go to the shipping yard, fix the surveillance system access, and get out of there without being noticed.” Her voice was hoarse, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t know I’d be trapped. I’m sorry I risked our baby’s safety.”
The tears dripping down her cheeks destroyed me. I cradled her face in my hands and gently pressed our foreheads together. “Sienna, I can’t stand the thought of losing you. Of course I want our baby to be safe, but you’re it for me.”
Her breath hitched and lips twisted, the doubt clear on her face.
“The fact that you don’t know that, that you have any doubts about my feelings for you, is my fault,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine a world without you.”
She blinked quickly, but her tears still fell. “For so much of this pregnancy, I’ve felt like…a vessel. Not like a living, breathing human with dreams and feelings.”
“Oh, malyshka.” My heart ached. I slowly leaned forward and kissed away her tears. The salt lingered on my lips. “I’m sorry. So fucking sorry.”
Sienna’s deep brown eyes swallowed me whole. I’d never experienced this with another soul—perfect contentedness in the silence, our gentle breathing the only metronome counting the passing moments.
She shifted and her stomach brushed against me. That’s when I felt it. A little nudge. My breath caught when she wrapped her fingers around my wrist and guided my palm to her belly. There it was again—the tiniest flutter against my hand.
“Is that—?” I couldn’t finish the rest of my sentence.
“Yeah,” she said. “Our Romaine Lettuce.”
Of all the unexpected things that had happened tonight, the most shocking was the laugh that burst from my chest. Sienna’s eyes lightened, and her sweet smile went straight to my heart.
“I can’t believe I missed out on this,” I said. “All this time, I couldn’t understand how our lives kept intertwining and thought you must be manipulating me.” I tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear. “I was taught never to believe in coincidences, but I think you’ve made me believe in fate.”
“Does that mean you believe me? That I didn’t know you were Atlas, that I didn’t know who you were in Paris?”
“I believe you,” I murmured. “I’ve been a fucking idiot this whole time because I was scared. You throw me so fucking off-kilter.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said with a yawn. Her eyes fluttered as she struggled to keep them open, and I couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to her cheek.
I stroked my hand down her belly. “Can I check you over, sweetheart? I need to make sure you’re okay.”
“I promise, I’m fine. His bullet missed me.”
A low groan left my chest, and I held her tighter.
She ran her fingers through my hair. “But yeah, it’s okay if you want to check.”
Blyat. I didn’t deserve her sweetness, her understanding.
I got off the bed and slowly stripped off her clothes, making sure to keep her as covered by the blankets as possible.
She was right; there were no hidden injuries waiting to tear her from me.
I wanted to brush my lips down her skin, kiss every single part of her, but I hadn’t earned it.
Not yet. So I pulled warm socks over her feet and a spare T-shirt from the closet, wishing I had something better to offer.
By the time I got her settled under the blankets, her eyes had drifted shut. I quickly stripped off my clothes and lay down beside her.
“Dimi? What’s going to happen now?”
I wrapped my arms tightly around her. Another thing I didn’t deserve, but I soaked it up all the same while I held her, mesmerized by another gentle movement against my palm.
“I’m going to keep you safe.”
“But what about the Souleater?”
I brushed my lips against her eyelids. “I promise we’ll talk more when you wake up. Right now, there’s nothing you need to worry about.”
She rested her head on my chest without protest—a sure sign of her deep exhaustion. Soft puffs of her breath skated across my skin as she drifted off.
I needed to contact Maxim so he could update me on what the fuck was going on…
and explain how my wife had snuck out of the house in the middle of the night without detection.
But for just a minute, I let myself relax into the mattress with my beautiful wife curled up against my side, our baby somersaulting in her stomach.
Something my mama used to say ran through my head, the echo of a distant memory I thought I’d forgotten.
The whole universe is in my arms. She had whispered it to me every night.
In those days, her voice followed me into sleep.
That was before the nightmares came, before Rustik and the Souleater turned me into a hardened monster.
The words slipped from my tongue in Russian, and Sienna stirred.
“Hmm?” Her fingers curled against my chest, her eyes still closed.
My hand trailed up her back until it was buried in her thick brown waves. “Sleep, malyshka. I’ve got you.”