Iwake up startled and confused. My foreign location isn’t the sole cause of my bewilderment. My aching backside is responsible for the majority of it. My tailbone is screaming more than my foot. Serves me right for falling asleep on a tiled floor.
I truly didn’t think I’d be left alone for hours on end, so I didn’t put much thought into the location of my sob-fest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the privacy, but sometimes it’s nice to have a shoulder to cry on.
Dimitri’s was the first one I used. It was weird to be comforted by a man who had threatened to kill me only hours earlier. However, it displayed there was more to him than his dark and dangerous outer shell. He has a heart, a big one, and now that he has his daughter back, he has the chance to show it off.
Regretfully, it seems as if I’ve been shunted from the festivities again.
While grumbling about the pathetic woman I’m portraying, I clamber to my feet. Dimitri has been waiting for this moment for almost two years, so why am I annoyed he wants to relish it? I’d be mortified if he didn’t at least ensure Fien settled in for the night.
Once I’m on my feet, I sway like a leaf in a summer’s breeze, and white spots dance in front of my eyes. The dizziness bombarding me makes the removal of the nightgown Rocco handed me hours ago a little tedious. The one I was wearing when they rescued us was grubby and dotted with Maestro’s blood, so I was more than eager to change into something fresh.
After peeling down the panties with a waistband that goes past my bellybutton, I suck in a fast breath before glancing down at the monstrous pad that should have offered more cushioning during my nap than it did.
My sigh is filled with both relief and devastation when I discover the pad is empty. I’m glad that stage of my life occurred quickly, but it will take more than a lifetime for tears not to prick my eyes when I remember the ebbs and flows of the past week.
I take a few moments drinking in my naked form in the vanity mirror. Usually, this is as uncomfortable as it gets for me. I’m not experiencing the same bother today. I look like a mess. My hair is knotted, my skin is mottled with marks, and my eyes are sunken from how much I cried, but I also look mature, strong, and undogged.
I fought, and although my victory can be accredited to the many men in Dimitri’s crew, some of the credit also belongs to me. If I hadn’t reached Maestro when I did, he might have left with Fien before the balaclava-clad men stormed the basement. He was mere feet from the exit. I stopped him from going through it.
That makes me proud.
That makes me strong.
And it has my chin rising instead of balancing on my chest as it has the past seven hours.
After giving my thanks to the warrior glancing back at me in the mirror, I enter the shower stall, twist on the tap until steam floats around me, then step into the heavenly hot stream of water.
I’ve barely drowned half the heaviness plaguing me when the heavenly gruff voice of Dimitri sends my head into a tailspin. “Eyes to the wall.”
Certain I’m dreaming, I don’t defy him this time around. I snap my eyes shut so fast, the scent my head is fabricating almost causes a tear to roll down my cheek. He smells so good. Dark and twisted, but oh so comforting.
My knees curve inward when the brisk scrub of a hand over a bristly chin is quickly chased by a second hand sliding around my waist. Even being afraid he might disappear won’t stop me from leaning into his embrace. I’m dying to feel the heat of his skin against mine, and I am willing to risk falling out of the shower like a drunken fool to get it.
After setting my skin on fire with the briefest flutters of his fingertips over my midsection, Dimitri asks, “What did Ollie say about your foot?”
“Who?” I ask, purring. My mind is so wondrous, I don’t just hear and smell Dimitri, I feel him thick and heavy behind me. He’s hard like the only thing we lost the past three days was time. Our connection is as bristling as it’s always been.
Dimitri peers down at me, smirking when he spots my groggy expression. “If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn you raided the liquor cabinet after dinner instead of sipping on the Sprite Rocco was adamant you must have.”
I’ve barely gotten over the shock he’s been spying on me when he stuns me for the second time. He doesn’t just spin me around to face him head-on, he adds a heap of sexy words to the lusty glint in his eyes.
“Hook your sore foot around my waist. I don’t want to hurt you, but I need your cunt to squeeze my cock like I squeezed the light from Rimi’s eyes an hour ago.”
His confession that he just killed a man should weaken the intensity brewing between us. It doesn’t. Not in the slightest. He knows as well as I do that men like Rimi Castro don’t stop what they’re doing with a warning. They must face whatever penalty Dimitri sees fit, and whether gutted, maimed, or killed, it will occur with haste.
Furthermore, I love how fearless he is when it comes to protecting his family. The knowledge he’d go to the ends of the earth to keep his daughter safe is the ultimate turn-on. It sees me kissing him with everything I have—teeth, tongue, hands—they all get in on the act. It’s a possessive kiss, both claiming and owning. It tells him everything I’m afraid to say but would give anything to change—that I am his as long as he wants me.
My head lolls to the side with a moan when Dimitri cranks my neck a couple of minutes later so he can trail his nose down the throb in my throat. Even without his growl, I’m aware my scent has changed since the last time he smelled me. It isn’t tarnished with the disaster of the past thirty-six hours, it’s harmonized with hope, fortified with determination, and it has the faintest hint of his daughter’s shampoo.
A shudder rolls up the length of my spine when he swipes the head of his cock across my clit. I’m buzzed all over and more than ready for the next stage of our exchange to occur.
Dimitri will never let that happen, though. He needs me wet enough to take him without pain because, for some reason, even loving the knowledge he’s ruined me for any other man, he doesn’t want to hurt me.
He hoists me up the shower like he did in the bathroom of my childhood home, inhales deeply, then growls when the scent of my aching sex teems into his nostrils. “You have no idea how much your smell brings me back from the brink. It can be so fucking dark, so fucking devastating, but your intoxicating scent is like a light at the end of the tunnel, forever encouraging me to find my way home.”
Home? I almost choke on the word.It’s the simplest phrase, but it has the biggest impact on my heart. I thought it had shattered beyond repair hours ago. Now it feels as if it is bigger than it was when it dawned on me that Dimitri had found us.
“Lean back, Roxanne. I’m about ready for a second helping of dessert.”
