by Christa Wick
She attempted a smile, the gesture hesitant and vulnerable, then returned her attention to Bogdan as he launched the app.
An hour later, they sat around a table at a Cracker Barrel, the boy wolfing down dumplings and chicken. Alina had ordered a pot pie, and Mikhael smiled to see her eating and not just pretending to eat.
Things weren't fixed. He knew that. But they appeared to be improving. The boy had built up a tough shell living under Dima Rodchenko's thumb, but, just like any other child his age, he wanted to be loved. Mikhael didn't think Dima had ever offered Bogdan that emotion.
Alina would not heal as quickly, but he could see the fragile spark of hope in her gaze.
"Mishka," she softly chided as she gestured at his untouched food.
"Right," he grinned then shoveled some mashed potatoes and gravy into his maw. "Need to get moving soon."
"Yes." She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. "The storm is still rolling in."
They finished their meal, returned to the sedan and beat the rain home, but not the wind. It battered at the windows as Alina made sure Bogdan brushed his teeth and changed for bed, then curled up next to him and read a few chapters from A Bear Named Paddington.
By the time she noticed Bogdan had fallen asleep, rain pattered softly against the windows—the larger storm still brewing beyond the city limits.
Leaving the boy's room, she paused next to the couch, her hands folded in front of her and her fingers lightly pinching at the cuff of their opposing sleeve.
"I thought I would try to fall asleep before the worst of it hits."
He nodded. They both knew she would be wide awake as long as the storm was nearby. Mikhael figured she wanted to avoid him, especially now that their son was in his room for the night. He wished she didn't need her space, but he would give it to her.
"Let me know if there's anything I can do," he said, watching her disappear into the bathroom.
Listening to water run in the sink, he pulled his phone out and opened a real estate app. So much was in flux, but he knew he needed to sell his one bedroom condo in Alexandria no matter what Alina decided.
He hoped she wanted to stay with him and for the two of them to raise Bogdan as a couple, not separately and definitely not her striking out alone in the world. But her staying was still a big "if" and he knew it.
Hearing her turn the knob, he put the phone down, his attention jumping to the bathroom door. She emerged, her face scrubbed clean of the cosmetics Vivian had applied. Alina's gaze bounced off him as she mumbled a goodnight.
He wanted her to look at him, to see in his face that he found her every bit as lovely as before she had washed the makeup away.
She simply wasn't ready.
When she shut her bedroom door, he sighed and turned off the couch-side lamp. Then he stood and went around the house, making the same checks he had when they returned from Dallas. Windows locked, security system armed, doors locked, land line working, the street clear of unfamiliar cars.
Going into his bedroom, he shut the door and stripped down to his boxers. After turning off the light, he re-opened the door. In the dark, he settled under the blankets. Hands folded across his chest, he listened to the storm building in intensity and prayed his Alina would come to him as she had so many years before.
25
Alina
Alone in her room, Alina listened to the storm intensify. Reaching blindly along the nightstand, she found her phone and pulled it under the covers. Clicking the weather app, she checked for flood and high wind warnings and wished the safe house had come with a basement.
Wouldn't that be the story of her life—to die from a tree falling on her room after Bogdan seemed to have finally accepted her as his mother?
Better pull back on that Russian fatalism, she scolded, clicking off the phone and returning it to the nightstand.
Thunder boomed, the sound waves rattling the window. She pressed her hands against her ears. The tactic only muffled the next clap of thunder. Sitting upright, she braced her back against the headboard and drew her legs up close to her chest. Her arms curled around her head as she pressed her face against her knees and began to pant.
You will not go to him.
She wanted to. Mikhael was the only one who had ever made her feel safe from the storms. He was the only one who had ever made her feel safe, period.
The window shook with more thunder. She trembled in response. When the noise subsided, she found herself stroking absently at the silk nightgown from the box of carefully folded clothes that Bogdan had helped select. The gown itself was sleeveless, but Vivian had been sure to include a matching long sleeve robe in a blush pink.
The smooth material soothed her fraying nerves until the next cracking boom. A half birthed shriek escaped. Diving under the blanket, she pulled a pillow over her head.
Had the thunder or her scream disturbed Mikhael? Was he awake and wondering if she would come to him?
Did he want her to?
Still sheltering beneath the pillow, she shook her head. He had said those things earlier to build up her confidence, to make her a better mother. For him to say she was most beautiful naked was ridiculous and had exposed his lies. That's why she couldn't go to him—she wanted it so badly it would kill her to be rejected or know that he was only playing along for Bogdan's sake.
That was what he was doing, right?
She slipped a hand under the nightgown, her fingertips skating lightly atop the surface of her scarred skin, feeling what Mikhael would feel if he reached beneath the fabric. She wondered when she had become such a coward.
With her chest muscles squeezing mercilessly at her lungs, Alina rolled out from under the bedding and sat up gasping for air. Pushing her feet into silk slippers, she pulled on the robe folded at the end of the bed.
Her feet tapped lightly against the rug, the music Mikhael had played in Vivian's office waltzing through her mind. It had felt so right for him to hold her, just as it had felt that night in the closet during the last storm, the two of them packed in like sardines.
As good as it had felt, she had still tried to push him away.
A roll of thunder shook the window, but she didn't jump, just stiffened as she kept the image of Mikhael holding her in the closet alive in her mind. If only she could survive on imagination and willful ignorance. She could pretend that Mikhael wanted her, that this wasn't just about "doing right" by her and the boy.
How many more years might they waste that way? Would it last until Bogdan finished high school or would they hold on tooth and nail until he graduated college?
God kept playing his drums, pounding away at the roof as the storm seemed to settle directly over the safe house for the sole purpose of magnifying her torment. She stood on shaking legs and walked toward the bedroom door. She would sit on the couch. The drapes were less lightproof in that room. She'd be able to count the seconds between lightning and thunder and brace herself.
Heading for the couch, she passed Mikhael's open door.
Did he leave it open for her?
No, she thought, he did it for the boy. Bogdan no longer needed locked down for the night.
Pivoting silently on one foot, she looked at the sleeping giant, his form faintly visible because he hadn't fully closed his curtains. He was on his back, the blanket folded all the way down toward the footboard, only the sheet around his hips.
His chest was massive, even bigger than when he was in his early twenties. She wondered what he had done to get so big. She wondered about many things. He had made powerful friends on the right side of the law—glamorous friends, too. He was supposed to be a charred corpse, but he wasn't.
How had he survived and then thrived? Did thriving include lovers? Was Alina's presence temporarily keeping him from the woman with whom he truly wanted to be?
She couldn't ask him any of those things. Some of the answers might crush her. Nor could she expect to get answers without having to respond to his questions, which
would leave her mired in memories of pain and humiliation.
Retreating, she bumped a side table nestled against the wall. Mikhael slid immediately into a semi-upright position, his elbows propping him up.
"Alina?"
The question confused her. Her form was visible enough that even if his eyes were slow to adjust, it was clear she wasn't an intruder or their son. Had he been dreaming of some other woman—confusing the dream for reality?
"Yes, Mishka," she answered, her voice soft and uncertain. "I didn't mean to wake you. I was going to close your door so I wouldn't."
That was a lie. It slid out as easily as all the other lies she'd told him.
Lightning brightened the room through his open curtains. He patted the other side of the bed. "Come, wait with me until the storm passes."
Alina shook her head, her body clinging to the doorframe for support as she anticipated the thunder. "I have to get over this nonsense."
She had to get over all of the nonsense—the unreasonable fear of storms heightened by her half-brother's cruel practices and the idea that she and Mikhael could be bonded by more than raising their son as a unit.
"Do you have to get over it alone?" he asked and waited.
The sky roared before she could answer.
"I want you in my bed, Alina."
"Don't say it that way," she rasped.
Didn't he realize how easy it was for her mind to twist his meaning when his voice dropped low and caught on each syllable before releasing it?
"What way?"
A definite tease entered his tone. He patted the side of the bed as light flashed inside the room.
Damn, he was sexy. He had looked like a demi-god as a young man, with flawless skin, gracefully sculpted muscles and those piercing blue eyes. Now he was decidedly mortal, his muscles cut and shaped from steel, his jaw rough and his face lightly lined with a decade of time and scars. The combined effect made him brutally handsome and devastating to look at.
Her slippered feet crossed the room to stand by the empty half of his bed.
"It's going to crack and boom in five...four...three...two—"
Before he could finish his countdown, she jumped onto the bed and buried her face against his shoulder. Her arm curled around his neck as he hugged her tightly to him. When the sky roared again, she didn't nestle closer and shake.
Instead, she lifted her head and looked at him in the dimly lit room.
"Why aren't you married?"
His embrace tightened. His face pushed against the black veil of her hair.
"I do not think a lover should feel like they are someone's second choice" he answered, his breath filtering hot through the silken strands to warm her neck. "And that is all anyone but you can be—second choice."
"I wish that we could have…" Shaking her head, she tried to pull away from him but he wouldn't let her.
"Don't waste your wishes on the past, my Alina. Wish about the future then work to make them come true."
26
Mikhael
Rolling Alina onto her back, Mikhael pushed the hair away from her face and cupped her jaw. Lightning flashed. She tensed, but he wasn't sure if it was in anticipation of the next crack of thunder or because she didn't welcome his touch.
He started to hum, imperfectly recalling the music from that afternoon. The rough purr of his voice seemed to soothe her. The windows shook and she didn't seem to notice as much.
His hand slid from her cheek to the front of her neck, his thumb and index finger lightly tracing the contours then lifting to return to a spot just below her chin and repeating the pattern. His back tingled with the knowledge that his bedroom door was open, but he didn't want to make her nervous by closing it.
In time, he would. Maybe not that night, but some future night. "One day at a time" he had once said to her. He had been both wrong and right. That was how they had survived her family, but it was no way to live.
Still caressing her neck, he kissed just below her ear. Her breathing melted, her breasts slowly lowering until all at once her lungs bottomed out and she seemed completely relaxed.
His cock responded to what felt like her surrender.
Oh, the things he wanted to do with her and the long hours he wanted to take doing them. He had experimented with a girl or two to stave off his hunger for Alina before that night in New York, but he had been green then compared to the experienced lover he had become.
He wanted to please her, to drape a carpet of ecstasy over her body that smothered her senses, driving her to the brink of annihilation before his soft kisses resuscitated her.
Sliding his hand along her collarbone, he dipped under the robe and curled his fingers around her shoulder.
Tensing, she tried to shrink away.
He withdrew, his hand on the outside of the fabric once more as he resumed the gentle humming.
"I want to touch you, love," he said when she had calmed again. "I want to stroke and kiss your breasts, your thighs. I want to taste you as I did before."
"Please," he said, his fingers glossing over her collarbone again.
Feeling her hesitate, he stopped.
"Do you know," she whispered after a few painfully long seconds, "that the French military helped invent Braille?"
Confused, he still managed a smile. His Alina had always been quoting him little facts from all her reading. Their new house would need a large library.
"No, I didn't," he murmured.
"Napoleon wanted something that could be read at night, without a light. A kind of code. So one of his men came up with what was called night writing. It was too complicated because you couldn't feel a symbol all at once."
"I see," he said and pressed his cheek against the curve of her neck.
"Do you?"
"I think so."
She was trying to explain why she didn't want him touching her, at least not directly on her skin. He had a feeling if he stroked at her with the fabric separating them, she would surrender again.
Slowly easing his hand within the folds of her robe, he found her shoulder and traced one of the scars detectible beneath his fingertips.
"This is your night writing," he said. "Even though I can't see the scars with the lights out, you're afraid what I might read while touching you, afraid of what someone else wrote on your flesh."
She let a shaky breath out that he took as confirmation.
Lifting his body up so that he leaned over her, his weight balanced on one elbow, he cupped her cheek with his free hand.
"You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known. The story your skin tells is one of love for our son and...I hope...for me. You were shielding our child, paying for your love for him when you weren't even allowed to acknowledge he was yours."
His thumb drifted up to stroke softly at the corner of her mouth.
"Do you really think some woman in a magazine or on television could ever match that?"
When she started to tremble beneath him, he didn't know if his words had made things better or worse. So he patted and smoothed at her hair and hummed again, some peripheral part of his brain aware that the storm had died out.
Alina pushed lightly at his chest, urging him away.
He surrendered without protest. He had damaged her in the past week from pushing too hard. He wouldn't keep repeating that mistake.
Quietly, she slipped out of bed and walked toward the living room. Reaching the doorway, she stopped. Her hand curled around the knob, then she eased the door shut, the faint illumination from the window showing him she remained inside his room, not without.
Turning, she walked back to the bed and took off her robe. Shyly, she climbed onto the mattress and laid next to him on her side. Heart hammering in his chest, he turned to face her.
"Promise this is because you want me," she whispered. "Not because you think it will fix me or because you think we should raise Bogdan together."
"On my life," he promised. "It is because I want you, desire yo
u. It has always been you, Alina."
Her eyes glittered in the dark. He thought he heard her sniffle as she maneuvered one arm between his neck and the bed and curled the other around his opposite shoulder.
"You were my only kiss," she said, the catch in her voice implying what he already knew.
He was more than her only kiss, he was her only lover.
"Then let me remind you what it's like to be worshipped by a man who loves you, my Alina."
She relaxed her grip on Mikhael. He guided her onto her back. Rubbing a soothing hand along her arm, he kissed softly at her cheek, starting near her ear and angling toward her mouth.
He bit once at the point of her chin before capturing her bottom lip. Her hands wrapped around his shoulders. He slid on top of her, his legs straddling hers and his weight resting lightly upon her. Trying to control his hunger, he buried his face against her neck. She pushed upward, her body instinctively knowing how to move against him.
Coiling his fingers through her thick hair, he gnawed at Alina's throat. Between them, his cock began to throb painfully as more and more blood flooded the already erect flesh. Growling, he straightened slightly and claimed her mouth with a hungry kiss.
His tongue swept in, darted back out as he bit at her lips, then plundered deep inside once more. She moved against him, her hips rolling and straining to stay in a constant grinding contact with his body.
Her fingers smoothed down the sides of his stomach then gripped his ass through the fabric of his boxers.
Shaking, he pulled back. "Baby, I'm going to explode if you touch me anywhere below my shoulders."
She laughed, almost giggled, and another shot of hard need penetrated his heart.
"Is it safe to touch you here?" Lifting her fingertips to his lips, she brushed a soft line from one corner of his mouth to the other. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back and groaned.
"Not really."
"Okay." She clasped her hands together and drew them close to her chin. "Where should I put them, then."