AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She closed her eyes, languishing in his arms, absorbing his strength, his steadiness and open vulnerability. “I’ve never met a man like you before, Nik.”
“How so?”
“You’re able to be who you are. You can let your game face drop.”
“Are you aware of this birthmark you carry? The quarter moon?” and he brushed the hair away from her ear.
“Yes. My Mom said it was moon-shaped. I can barely see it myself, but I can hold a mirror just so and spy it.” Her voice turned soft. “Secretly? I dreamed it was the sign of a woman warrior within our family, too. I wanted badly to be like my Ukrainian family’s wonderful history.”
Nik nodded. “You have been a fierce warrior even to this day. Do you feel the Scythian blood is running through you?”
“In my childhood’s wild imaginings, I always pictured myself as a young woman riding this black stallion, clothed in armor, swinging my sword, riding with the rest of my horse-mounted women warriors into battle.” Shaking her head, “Dreams of a child, Nik. Reality is a lot harsher and unforgiving if you’re in the military.”
He heard the heaviness in Daria’s words, and understood as few ever would. “Yes,” he mouthed against her hair, squeezing her a little, “a child doesn’t realize the brutality, the pain or grief of war. Playing any war scene, whether daydreaming it, or on a game app, is nothing like it is in real time or real life.”
“We’re both older and wiser.” She lifted her leg a bit. “Wounded by it. Permanently.”
He leaned down, moving his hand gently across her wounded thigh. “But wounds can be cleansed, Daria, just as you are allowing that to happen within yourself, right now, to start releasing that grief and horror. It’s part of the necessary cleansing and healing process and you have bravely walked toward it, not run away from it.”
She studied him as the quiet eddied around them. “Because you gave me a safe place to let it go, Nik. You’re a medic, but in truth, you’re a healer. Somehow… and I don’t know how, you reached down inside me, released my pain and everything I was holding at bay. I couldn’t hold on to it as you massaged my thigh. It was as if you had some secret key and unlocked me, and it was like a volcano erupting. It caught me by surprise. I couldn’t control it any longer.” Daria turned her gaze over to where her hand rested on his chest. “I opened up to you, trusted you and you held me. You actually encouraged me to cry, to get it out, and I did.”
“Tears are always cleansing, Kitten. Always,” Nik murmured, giving her a tender look. “You should cry often. It will help you heal faster.” He saw her mouth turn down, as if to reject his words.
“It hurts so much to cry, Nik. I’ve had enough pain. I don’t want to feel it again when it comes back up. That’s why I try to sit on it. Ignore it.”
He shook his head. “You must trust me as a medic, Daria, when I tell you ‘better out, than in’. Any emotion that we have that is negative and dark, that cuts into us, causing us constant pain, needs to be released. Sometimes people cannot do it by themselves, but need another person or event to catalyze it within them.”
“Like you did with me,” she said, thoughtful.
“We shared a very important moment together,” he agreed, his voice suddenly roughened with emotion. “It is a compliment to both of us that we trusted one another enough to allow it to surface within you and be released.”
“I know I caught you off guard,” Daria said, apologetic. “I sat up, pushing your hand away from me.”
He gave her a wry look. “At first, yes, but I got it, Daria. You aren’t the first person I have touched and then have them break down in tears later.” Nik slid his fingers through her hair, watching the pleasure come to her half-closed eyes, seeing her lips part. It would be so easy to lean in those few inches and take her mouth gently beneath his own. Resisting, knowing she was open to him, fully immersed within him, Nik wasn’t going to break her trust. “I have had many women and children cry in my arms over the years.”
“You have seen so much trauma,” Daria agreed, her voice filled with concern, searching his eyes.
“It is the load that a medic carries, Kitten,” and he forced a slight smile for her benefit. Nik didn’t want her to worry abouthim.Hewas worried abouther. And he wanted to keep the focus on Daria. “I have broad shoulders. I’ve learned to carry all loads very well,” he teased her. “Tell me more about your growing-up years with your adopted family?”
“My Dad is a professor of Archeology at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. My mother is an adjunct professor of archeology at the same university. I grew up at archeological digs in Ukraine and their focus has always been on Neolithic sites. I grew up surrounded with artifacts, read many books on history, and I loved it.”
“So? Were you thinking about a life being a historian?”
“Archeology is history,” she said, “and my mother and I were very interested in the matriarchal world of Neolithic sites in Ukraine, as well as other surrounding countries that once were part of Scythia. Marija Gambutas, a woman archeologist and anthropologist from Lithuania, was famous for finding the matriarchal society of the Neolithic people in our area of the world. I was entranced with my family genetics going back to the central Asian people. I told them I wanted to be a warrior, not carry on the family archeology as they had.”
“Then,” he said, “our backgrounds are very different.” He saw her eyes widen a little in interest, and Nik couldn’t help but give her a pleased look. “My family grew up on a farm collective in the center of Ukraine where wheat is grown for export. Alex’s family lived close to us, and we were the best of friends growing up. Dan, my younger brother by two years, always followed us around. Alex and I would ride the family plow horses. We had a tractor, of course, but my father always kept a good team of draft horses on hand in case it broke down, which it did. Alex and I used to steal out to the barn, put bridles on them, leap upon their backs. Dan always rode behind me. The three of us would go cantering off along the pathways around the fields and into the woods. We’d find all kinds of things to explore and get into,” and he laughed softly, warmth stealing through his chest. “Those were good days,” he told her thickly.
“They sound wonderful. But I hear sadness in your voice, Nik.”
“It’s my turn to want to run and hide,” he admitted, irony in his tone. “Russian separatists destroyed Alex’s family farm. He and his sister, Kira, were the only survivors.” His mouth turned down, his voice growing dim. “At that time, Alex was in the Russian army with me and he came home to his family farm and it was no more. A year later, Kira, who was also in the Russian Army as a nurse, had their field hospital overrun by the separatists. Everyone was killed except the nurses, who were repeatedly raped. Kira was sent to Moscow for a while to be rehabilitated, but that did not work and she left the Army. She moved to Kyiv to try and start to live her life again. Dan joined Spetsnaz two years later and he also became a medic. It was then that our farm was raided by Separatists. They killed our entire family.”
Daria gasped, sitting up. “I’m so sorry, Nik. For you and Alex. He never told me any of this.” She laid her hand on his arm, searching his pained expression.
“It’s not something you bring up in social conversation, is it?” Nik took her hand in his, curling his fingers around hers.
“No… you’re right…”
“Alex and I waged war against the Separatists with our Spetznaz teams. We gave no quarter. It was bloody and it was brutal. I lost part of my soul during that time. I was torn open by the loss of my entire family, three generations, Daria. I couldn’t come to terms with it, with the murder of all of them at their hands. They’d done nothing to deserve that kind of fate. They loved the land; they loved their animals and all they wanted was to be able to find peace by working the land.”
