by Lauren Smith
“It’s too early for bed, and we haven’t had dinner,” she pointed out.
“You’re right. I should cook something.” He put some distance between them again. Touching her tended to cloud his mind, and he needed to think clearly, at least for the next few hours.
“Actually, I was thinking maybe we could go out? As much as I like the quiet here, it would be nice to be around people for a bit.”
He agreed. He was usually a solitary person himself, but being out on the town, so to speak, would be a nice distraction for him so he wouldn’t overthink tonight’s new sleeping arrangements.
“Go change. I will see you downstairs in half an hour.”
She touched her lips with her fingertips, her gaze sweeping over his body in a way that she had to know was playing with fire, then she stepped into her bedroom and closed the door.
Dimitri went to his own room and stopped at the sink in his bathroom. He turned on the water, cupped one hand under the cold spray, and splashed it on his face.
What was he thinking? Agreeing to this was dangerous for them both. Now that he’d had a taste of her, he wasn’t sure he could keep his promise to go slow. He stared at his face in the mirror, but he wasn’t really looking at himself. He had known the moment he’d gone after her in the Moscow airport that this was a possibility, but it had seemed infinitesimal at the time. Now it was a certainty.
He was in danger of breaking his vows, of putting a single person above the cause of the White Army. For once, he was glad his father wasn’t alive. His parents had put duty and honor above all else, even their love for each other. He had been raised to be the same, but somewhere along the way he had found a new purpose, one that he straddled along with the path he had been born into. It had been easy when those roads had traveled parallel to each other, but if they were to diverge? He’d choose Elena and he feared it might cost him dearly.
Meeting Wes Thorne, a man he’d met while getting into the Parisian art markets, and Royce Devereaux, the charismatic college professor, had changed him. They had shown him a side of life that a part of him had always longed for. A life with love and independence. He fought for the freedom of his people, but he rarely ever felt free himself. He wanted to be the master of his own fate, not a pawn in a larger battle. But that could never be. It would mean abandoning Leo, Maxim, and Nicholas, and he couldn’t abandon the brothers of his heart.
Dimitri changed into a pair of jeans and a white button-up shirt that he left untucked and the sleeves rolled up. Then he headed downstairs and retrieved his wallet and keys. He paused, listening to the sound of water running above him. Assured he had a moment to himself, he opened the hall closet and retrieved a slim black case. Royce had told him where to find this before Dimitri had left Moscow. Inside was a simple sidearm. Nothing fancy, but it would do for now. He hadn’t brought anything through customs, so this would be, for the moment, his only weapon.
It was a CZ 75 B, a handgun made in the Czech Republic. The model was well tuned and had slide rails on the inside of the frame, which made it incredibly accurate when firing shots in rapid succession. It was a favorite firearm for many European military and police forces. Dimitri loaded it and then tested the weight in each hand. He tucked the gun into his jeans and pulled his shirt down over it, then closed the case and put it back into the coat closet. He’d need to get a concealed-carry holster soon since Royce didn’t have one at the house for him to borrow.
He returned to the entryway just as he heard Elena’s steps on the stairs, and his heart skipped a beat as he saw her. She had combed out the loose waves of her blonde hair, letting it tumble past her shoulders. She wore a pair of seersucker shorts that stopped midway down her thighs and a white blouse that had long sleeves that gathered at her elbows. She wore navy-blue cork wedge sandals. It was one of the outfits she had purchased at the store today.
“How do I look?” she asked and bit her bottom lip as she reached the bottom stair. “I still don’t feel comfortable wearing dresses,” she added a bit more quietly.
He understood. Vadym would have kept her in revealing dresses or practically naked for easy access to her body. The thought sickened Dimitri, and he tried to banish it from his mind.
“You look beautiful,” he told her. Too beautiful, if he was honest with himself.
She brightened at that. “So, where are we going?”
He opened the door and gestured for her to go ahead of him. “There is a food truck near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that has a rather interesting reputation.”
“Oh?” Curiosity illuminated her green eyes, and he smiled back at her.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
It was dusk when they arrived at the row of food trucks. People were already lining up and ordering dinner.
“Are we going to get tacos again? If so, I’m not complaining.” Elena focused on the three Mexican food trucks nearby and almost missed Dimitri’s bemused smile.
They stopped in front of a dark-blue truck with a green, white, and red Italian flag arching over part of the back.
“The Prince of Venice?” Elena read the name and looked at Dimitri.
“You see the man there?” He pointed to an attractive guy with sandy-brown hair who was cooking over a stove by the truck’s open windows as he spoke with customers.
“Yeah . . .”
“That is Emanuele Filberto di Savoia. He is the grandson of King Umberto II, the last reigning king of Italy. He is of the royal Savoy dynasty that has existed since 1003 in the Savoy region of Italy.”
Elena studied the prince more closely. “I didn’t know the Italians had a king so recently.”
“After Mussolini’s regime ended, King Victor Emmanuel III was temporarily in charge of Italy, but in 1944 he handed his powers over to his son, Umberto, hoping to bolster the monarchy. But Umberto only ruled for thirty-four days, from May 1946 to June 1946. He was called the Re di Maggio, the May King. Now his grandson, a true prince, runs this food truck. This is the most authentic Italian food you will find in Los Angeles.”
“Wow . . .” Elena’s lips parted as she simply stared at the food truck. “A real prince.”
Dimitri put a hand on her back, his touch gentle as he guided her to the line in front of the prince’s food truck.
“What would you like?” Emanuele asked as they stepped up to the window.
Dimitri looked to Elena, who scanned the menu before she ordered. “I would like the orecchiette al pesto.”
“And I would like the lemon bucatini,” Dimitri added, then slipped Emanuele his credit card.
Their pasta was soon ready, and they took their carryout boxes to a park nearby that had some comfortable picnic tables.
“It’s crazy to be wearing shorts in the middle of winter,” Elena said as she took her first bite of pasta. It was so creamy, so decadent, the flavors so rich and savory, that she barely stopped herself from moaning.
“You and I both come from cold places. Maine and Russia.” Dimitri chuckled and raised his bottled water in salute.
Elena smiled. After a few more bites, she realized she had at least a dozen questions that still needed answering. “Dimitri, if we do this, I need to know who you are.” She’d sensed from the beginning that he wasn’t just some beautiful badass dominant. Something about him was filled with an almost heartbreaking tenderness, which seemed to be at constant war with the darker side of him. He wasn’t just any man. He was someone powerful, but in what way she didn’t have a clue.
His blue eyes softened, and he looked away for the briefest second. “Kiska, there are some things that I cannot tell you, things that only my family or my wife could be told.”
“You’re married?” she gasped.
“No, no, I am not,” he rushed to reassure her. “But someday, if I married, those deeper truths would be explained to my wife.”
His wife . . . For some reason, the thought of him marrying someone sent a pang of desperate longing through her that e
choed like a church bell. But she couldn’t think about marriage, or even Dimitri marrying; that was a muddled mess of thoughts and emotions she wasn’t ready to untangle, so she forced herself back to her line of questions.
“What can you tell me? I need something, Dimitri.”
He reached across the table to take one of her hands and hold it between his own. He gazed deeply into her eyes in a way she was beginning to suspect mesmerized her.
“My name is real. I have not hidden that from you. What I will tell you now is known only to a few, and I hope you will respect my confidence in sharing it with you.”
She nodded.
“My mother died when I was four, murdered by agents of the Kremlin. My father raised me, but I wasn’t alone. He gave me brothers in the life he chose for me. That life is what I must keep hidden, but the brothers of my heart, I can tell you a little about them.”
“You aren’t like Vadym, are you? Into mobster stuff and hurting people for the pleasure of it . . .”
“No, I am the opposite of that bastard. My brothers and I fight against everything men like him represent.” Dimitri rubbed gentle patterns over her palm with his fingers. Such a simple thing, to be caressed, and so innocent a location, yet somehow it touched her to her very core.
“Good, because I can’t do that ever again. I can’t be under the power of someone like that.” She’d felt silly for even asking, since every instinct inside her told her he wasn’t like Vadym, but she liked him too much to trust her instincts.
Dimitri continued to caress her palm in that easy way. “Ask me anything, and I will do my best to tell you the truth when I can.”
“You mentioned brothers, but not blood relations?”
“Yes, I called them the brothers of my heart. We first met when we were eight years old, and since then we have been inseparable. Leo is a technical specialist, Maxim a security expert, and Nicholas, well, I suppose you could say he’s a diplomat of sorts.” His affection for these brothers was so clear in his voice.
“What is it you really do?” she asked more quietly.
His eyes darkened. “All I can tell you is that my life is devoted to stopping men like Vadym.” That was all he would say, and for now it would have to be enough. “And what of you, kiska? Why did you want to go to Moscow?”
It was a personal question, but he couldn’t have known that. But he was being honest, so she would have to be as well.
“I was adopted when I was a baby. Last year I did one of those DNA tests. It came back as fully Russian. I don’t even know my mother or father’s names or anything about them. I guess I wanted to feel closer to them, to know them. My mother died right after I was born. She bled out—that was the only thing the hospital could tell the adoption agency and she was alone, there was no sign of my father. I decided to take a year of Russian language at Pepperdine and they had a semester long abroad program to Moscow. I thought it would be good to go there and see where she’d come from.”
“You’re Russian,” Dimitri mused. His gaze turned distant, and she wished she knew what he was thinking.
They finished their pasta and the bottles of water, and then, without a word, Dimitri held out his hand and they walked toward the Los Angeles County Art Museum. Several dozen white-painted streetlamps from the 1920s and 1930s had been installed in a tight pattern in rows. The streetlamps’ rounded globes were pearly white and gave off a shimmer like moonlight upon fresh snow. It was an indescribable sight. Music played from some distant park, a single violin’s song wavering upon the evening air.
Elena stopped walking as she reached the middle of the posts and touched one of the metal columns, tilting her head back to gaze at the lights above and the darkening sky beyond.
“I was without light so many times,” she said.
Dimitri cupped her face and turned her toward him. “You are never without light.”
He pulled one of her hands to his chest and pressed her palm flat above his heart. She could feel the faint but steady beat beneath her palm. “Light comes from within, and you always shine.” His deep voice and the gentle rumble of his accent was slowly becoming enjoyable to hear rather than unsettling.
She leaned back against the lamppost and stared at Dimitri’s mouth. The sudden hunger for his kiss left her dizzy and confused. Her hand was still on his chest, and she curled her fingers slightly, fighting the urge to grab his shoulders and cling to him.
“Would you kiss me?” she finally asked.
He cupped the back of her head as he leaned in. “I can ask for no greater gift than that,” he said as he lowered his head to hers.
That touch of lips was fire and light, banishing the shadows that slithered within her, threatening to hold her back from life. The healing presence of this man was so potent, it was as though she had discovered a miracle drug that could cure her, and she was desperate to bottle it. Memories of other hands, another body hurting her, pressed against the mental box she’d locked them in. But they had no power over her when she was in Dimitri’s arms.
He deepened the kiss, her lips parted, and she curled an arm around his neck, holding herself close to him as he conquered her fears with her. As long as she was with him, she had hope that she could heal.
Viktor lingered by a picnic table, eating a burrito from one of the food trucks. As he finished his meal, he walked toward the Urban Light display in front of the Los Angeles County Art Museum. Straight ahead of him, two hundred yards away, was his target. He had tailed her movements to a house in Malibu that evening and had waited for the car to leave. He was good at tailing without being seen, but he’d almost lost the car twice. He hadn’t expected her to be with someone, however. Not that it mattered. It was just one more body to handle when the time came. All he had to do was wait for the right opportunity.
He meandered closer to the glowing lampposts where the girl stood. She pulled her companion toward her, and the two began to kiss.
Viktor snorted. This was almost too easy.
The man’s shirt tightened on his back as he leaned in, and the hint of a blocky shape at his lower back made Viktor freeze. The woman’s date was carrying a gun. This complicated matters.
Moving again, but slower, Viktor removed his phone from his pocket and began to take pictures of the light display, acting like any of the dozens of tourists lingering nearby. He kept changing his position over and over, taking pictures each time until he was able to zoom in on the face of the man with Elena Allen. There was something familiar about him, but he couldn’t place the man’s face. He sent the photo to his contacts back in Moscow, asking them to run a facial recognition. He would go after the girl soon, but he needed to know what he was up against first. It might not be as easy to kill the girl as he’d first believed.
7
Elena was more than nervous when she and Dimitri drove back to Royce’s house. It didn’t help that she was wide awake now. Sleeping at odd times throughout the day had left her feeling that sleep for now was impossible.
“I think I am going for a walk on the beach,” she said as they entered the home. Dimitri set his keys down in a glass bowl by the door and looked at her, an unreadable expression in his eyes that she didn’t really like.
“Stay within sight of the patio,” he said, and it was clear that was an order.
“I’m not challenging you, but why? If Vadym is dead, I shouldn’t be in danger, right?”
For a long moment, he didn’t speak. “Vadym is dead, but I don’t trust anyone or anything when it comes to your safety.”
“That’s being a little paranoid.”
He stared at her, his lips thin. “If you had grown up the way I did, seen the things I have seen, you would know that danger can be anywhere.”
“I do know,” Elena reminded him. “And nothing is worse than what Vadym put me through, not even death.” She walked past him and out onto the patio, where she removed her shoes and descended the stone stairs to the beach below. The light from the house cascaded
down onto the beach, casting everything in monochrome.
The briny sea breeze cleared her head and let her think. She was going to sleep with Dimitri tonight. Just sleep. Would it build trust the way she hoped? It had to. She had already drifted off to sleep in his presence a few times. Something about him calmed her enough to trust him, but now she would be trying to do it on purpose. That changed things.
She cast her gaze out across the water and gasped when she saw a fin breach the surface. A moment later a second one followed. Dolphins! She stepped into the shallows, watching the dolphins fifty yards away as they played in the moonlit water. Something about them filled her with peace. They were pure creatures, full of heart and driven to protect those they loved, even the occasional human. It reminded her that there was good in the world. Not everything was darkness and suffering. Elena remained on the beach for another fifteen minutes before making the climb back up to the house.
Dimitri was in the office that Elena assumed was Royce’s, given that the bookshelves along one wall had a collection of fossilized leaves. Dimitri didn’t react as she put her head just inside the door. He was focused on his computer, reading something.
“I’m going up to bed. If you still want to . . . do what we talked about, you can join me whenever you wish.” She said this so confidently, but inside her soul was quaking with the thought. This was insane. Part of her knew that this whole idea that a complete stranger could heal her was madness. It was even more insane that she should trust him enough to sleep with him. But at this point she was desperate to feel something, anything but fear, and Dimitri summoned a dozen emotions within her whenever he walked into a room. Not one of them was fear.
He lifted his gaze to hers, their eyes locking.
“Sweet dreams, kiska. I will come to you soon.”
If that didn’t just make her melt, something so sweet that the old Elena would have laughed at it, but right now she loved that someone wanted to wish her sweet dreams. Not to mention the promise he’d left hanging that he would come to her. Just to sleep, she had to remind herself, but still, her imagination, the part of her that wanted love and passion, was waking up from its long slumber.