Chapter 17 #2
“You have to do more than try this time.”
I hear movement from the bedroom. It’s a small sound—clothes over skin, a weight adjusting outside the door—but my body hears it and knows it’s him.
It automatically perks up, wanting to see him, to touch him, like my body can’t tell the difference between the man who saves me and the man who could ruin me.
“I have to go,” I whisper.
“Alina—wait—tell me where you—”
I stab the button to end the call. The phone is suddenly too heavy. I toss it on the bathroom counter like it’s burning my skin.
The door handle turns. Then there’s a knock demanding entry.
I go over to unlock it and pull it open.
Dominik fills the doorway like he built it around his massive body.
He’s wearing a shirt now, one that’s open at the throat because of the dressing.
He looks less pale than he did last night, but the exhaustion of playing tug of war with a fever for control of his body is clear in his gray eyes.
One thing that hasn’t changed, he’s still so beautiful and intimidating that he takes my breath away.
Especially when he’s eyeing every inch of me with one slow seductive sweep like he’s making a list of all the places where he wants to kiss me next.
There’s definitely desire warming his stormy eyes until they do a double take and see what’s on the counter.
“What are you doing with my phone, dikaya koshka?”
The pet name does something awful and bright in my stomach. It’s almost as intimate as his mouth on mine. I try to keep my face as still as I can when I answer him. “Nothing.”
One eyebrow lifts, reminding me of Gavriil’s surprise earlier. Except Dominik’s expression is disbelief. “You took my phone and locked yourself in the bathroom.”
Heat crawls up my neck and forces my arms to cross over my chest. If I stand too still, he’ll smell guilt on me the way he smells gun oil. “I was checking to see if anyone called about the… about yesterday.”
“Mm.” He steps into the bathroom slowly, like a tide that knows it will reach whatever it wants to reach, eventually. “Anyone?”
“Nope,” I say too fast. “No one.”
His mouth twitches. “You’re a terrible liar,” he says. “Which is a relief.”
“Fine,” I say, because if I keep standing here, the ground will swallow me up. “I called Archer.”
Dominik’s eyes narrow, not with the rage I expected, but with something colder. “What did you say?”
“I told him the truth,” I manage. “That you were shot protecting me. That your brother gave you a week. That if he doesn’t bring back the money and tell me where the guns are, I’ll be dead soon. Or worse.”
His head tilts, thoughtful. “That last part isn’t true.”
“It could be,” I say, and the crack in my voice betrays me. “If he doesn’t fix it.”
Dominik lets the silence sit for a moment, then makes a small movement with his hand. “And? What did he say?”
I swallow. “He said he can’t. That the money’s gone. That he doesn’t know where the guns went.”
“Lies,” Dominik grunts. “Half-truths at best.”
“He said he thought I was already dead.” The sentence lands like glass shards in my throat. “After seeing the photos and then the messages stopped…”
Dominik’s eyes flick over my face like he’s reading a language only he seems to know. “He let himself think that, so he didn’t have to put in the work. It’s easier to grieve a lie than fix a mess.” He takes one step closer. Then another. “And now?”
“I told him to offer up something in two hours,” I say. “Money. The location of the guns. Both. I told him if he didn’t, I’d end up with your brother, in his cage.”
That gets a reaction. Dominik’s eyes darken as if they’re going to war with just the mere thought.
Or with the words. His teeth clench tight, jaw twitching, making me want to stroke the muscle and soothe it, to place a kiss on it, especially when the exhaustion seems to suddenly weigh twice as heavily on him.
“Should we be expecting Archer for dinner?” It’s his roundabout way of asking if I’m expecting a rescue.
“No. He asked me to tell him where I was, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew it would be a suicide mission.”
I pick up the phone and offer it back to Dominik. When he reaches for it, his hand grazes mine.
The touch is a jolt. He feels it too. I see it in the way his eyes change, less distance, more heat again. His thumb brushes the back of my hand once, a soft, deliberate stroke like his tongue on mine, and the breath I was about to take goes somewhere else.
“Next time,” he says, voice low, “ask me for what you want, hellcat. Don’t steal it.”
“I didn’t steal—” I stop, because yeah, I did. “I didn’t think you’d say yes.”
“You could have tried,” he says.
“You may have said no, like before when I wanted to call him,” I answer, because if I don’t push back, I know he won’t respect me. “And I had to try to do something.”
He breathes out that near-laugh I’m learning usually means don’t be cute with me unless you want to find out how much I like it. “I would have said yes this time,” he replies. “Because sometimes the quickest way to make a snake climb out of his hole is to throw down a stick of dynamite.”
“I told him I might be killed,” I repeat, and hear the confession in it. “I lied because I needed him afraid.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” he says. “It’s just a possibility I have no intention of letting happen.”
For a second, I can’t speak. Relief and fury crash together, becoming something that feels like wanting. I shake my head to clear it and only make it worse.
“Gavriil was here earlier,” I blurt out, because facts are safer.
“Today?” Dominik asks in confusion, as if worried he was so out of it, he can’t remember a conversation with his brother.
“Yes, earlier. He wanted to see you. I told him no.” My lips nearly curl up into a smile when both of his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.
Something like pride flickers across his face and disappears before it can settle. “You told the Pakhan no?”
“I told your brother no,” I say, because the other word tastes like giving him power that I don’t want to even pass my lips. “He mentioned your promise.”
“I told him that I would get back the guns and money,” he says. He slips the phone into his pocket, the white bandage under his shirt pulling slightly as he moves. “And I’ll make good on that promise.”
“You don’t have either yet,” I point out, hating the way my voice softens, like I can’t help protecting him with truth.
“I have men who know how to find both.” He studies me. “What I didn’t have was your foolish brother on a timeline.” He taps his pocket. “Now I do.”
“What if Archer doesn’t call back?”
“He will,” he says. “Because fear is a powerful motivator.” He takes one more step and the space between us shrinks until I have to tilt my chin up to maintain eye contact. “And because you asked him to. If he fails and you get hurt now, he’ll know it’s on him.”
The truth of that finds me where I didn’t want truth to go. I press my lips together. “I hate that you’re right.”
“I like when I am,” he says lightly, and then the lightness dies because he’s looking at my mouth and I’m looking at his.
We’re both remembering our previous kisses.
How intense they were. How easy it would be to do it again.
Would the third be just as amazing? No, we can’t, because once we start that up again, I’m not sure if I’ll have the willpower to stop, and Dominik needs more time to heal.
“Don’t,” I whisper, and I’m not sure if I’m warning off him, me, or both of us.
Dominik still reaches out and grips the small of my back, tugging me closer to him. “You scared off my brother for me.”
A small smile teases my lips as I gaze up at him, enjoying how impressed he looks. “I don’t think I scared him at all.”
“Were you scared?” Dominik asks as he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, his fingertips lingering on my skin.
“I was more worried about him disturbing you,” I admit. “You needed to rest.”
Dominik searches my eyes before leaning close, his lips grazing the corner of my mouth in a teasing touch. “Don’t risk yourself for me, hellcat.”
I exhale shakily, heat spreading throughout my entire body as he remains close. “You risked yourself for me. You’re hurt because of me.”
Dominik shakes his head before capturing my lips, moving with the kind of reckless carelessness only pain can’t stop. The kiss almost feels desperate. We both want it so achingly bad.
I need to pull away, but I get swept up in the intensity as his lips brush against mine. I place my hand on his abdomen, making sure that I don’t lean against his chest.
Dominik pushes his fingers into my hair, holding me close as our kiss deepens. His lips part against mine, his tongue flashing inside.
An uncontrollable moan breaks from me as I taste him, and it’s enough to knock me out of my trance. I pull away from him and give him a warning look since he seems damn near giddy about the kiss.
“No exertion,” I remind him. “I’d hate to have to call your ex to come patch you up again.”
“How did you –”
“I just did,” I reply.
Dominik huffs what’s almost a laugh, then he rolls his shoulders once, testing the bandage. Pain flickers in his face and then dissolves under his determination. Every movement looks like it cost him more than he’d ever admit.
“Go eat something,” he says, back in command. “That way you can sit at the dining table and pretend not to listen while I find out what my men have found out.”
I almost laugh, but it would only come out as a sob. “And you’ll rest while you’re doing that, right?”
“I’ll be resting. I have an incentive to heal as fast as possible, don’t I?
” He doesn’t wait for me to answer his rhetorical question, though.
He turns toward the door and then pauses.
“If you intend to make calls again,” he adds without turning back around, “you do it with me listening. And Yelena…was a casual fling, one I’ve already forgotten. ”
My chest does a stupid, traitorous little unclench at that statement, which I absolutely refuse to examine too closely.
Dominik leaves after that pronouncement. When the door clicks shut, I lean my hip against the counter and press my hands to my eyes to try and slow the world down long enough to breathe.
Two hours. Less, by now. Another clock I didn’t wind up is counting down again.
“Please call me back,” I whisper to the ceiling, to the city, to my brother who has made a fool of me too many times recently. “Please, Archer.”
Somewhere down the hall, Dominik’s voice lowers into the cadence I’ve come to know that he uses when he’s plotting. It’s steadier than mine. It always will be.
I scrub a hand over my face and go find more coffee. I make it by memory and luck, coaxing the machine into doing what I want with as few buttons as possible while I eat a bowl of cereal. Then, I pour two cups.
When I carry the second cup down the hall to his study, I don’t have to say it. He already knows I’m there. So do Viktor and Petrov. Both of their shoulders tense but they don’t look my way.
Dominik holds out his hand without looking, and when my fingers brush his as I pass the mug, the jolt is softer this time, no less real.
“Thank you,” he says. The words fit his mouth awkwardly like they don’t get spoken very often but they’ll find their way out for me. “Did you eat something?”
“Yes,” I answer.
I then sit on the couch in the back of the study and wrap both hands around my mug and listen to him plan his hunt. The clock on the wall keeps counting.
If Archer calls back, everything changes. If he doesn’t, everything changes faster.
Either way, I’m not the same girl I was before Dominik took a bullet for me. In fact, I’m not entirely sure who I am now.
A woman who lies to save the man who betrayed her and says “no” to a Pakhan.
A woman who likes the way the word “mine” sounds coming from a mobster.
The second hand on the clock moves—another reminder there’s always a countdown in this world. I drink my coffee so slowly I don’t have to worry about burning my tongue.
When Dominik’s phone finally begins to vibrate against the wooden desk, the sound is probably soft and ordinary to anyone else.
To me, it is the sound of everything about to change.