AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
I don’t knowhow much time passes. I don’t know how much of what I see and hear is real or a dream either, a product of my fevered imagination and burning mind, or what’s really happening. Every time my eyes flutter open, it seems as if Viktor is there, but I don’t know if that’s true. It seems unimaginable that he would sit by my bedside, hovering there like some kind of guardian angel. Once I think that I wake up to see Max there too, his hand on Viktor’s shoulder as if they’re watching over me together.
There’s the doctor, too, his dry and cool hands moving over my fevered body, and I try to mark time by how often I notice him there, but it’s hard to keep track. It could have been hours or days or weeks since Viktor brought me here; I can’t figure out which.
The pain ebbs and flows, and I can only imagine that the doctor is giving me something to help with it. It could be part of what is keeping me in a half-dream state, too, but I’m not entirely sure I want to come out of it.
When I do, I have to face the reality of everything that’s happened and figure out what will come next.
The next time I wake up, it feels like I’m floating in cool water. It takes me a moment to open my eyes partway and realize that Iamin the water, in a bathtub, and there are hands on me, holding me down in it.
The panic that washes over me is frantic and instantaneous, chilling me straight to the bone and making my body jackknife instinctively, fighting the pressure that’s keeping me in the water.
“Caterina!” I hear Viktor’s voice calling my name hazily, but it can’t quite break through the fog of terror. Some small part of me knows that it’s him that’s there, that he’s the one holding me in the bath, but I can’t get it to break through. All I can think about are other hands on me, other hands holding me down, hurting me, choking me, and my brain is screaming that this is it, that I’m going to die. That I’m going to drown in a bathtub, held down by strangers, in a cabin somewhere in Russia.
That I’m back in that other awful place where they kept me for god knows how long.
“Caterina, it’s me. Caterina!” I feel the hands let go as I writhe in the tub, water splashing as I struggle to get away. My vision is hazy, and I squeeze my eyes shut tight, my hand gripping the side of the tub as I try to heave myself out.
It’s no good. I’m not strong enough. I jerk again, twisting as if to bite the hand on my shoulder, and then my eyes snap open as that hand tightens, shaking me just a little.
“Caterina.” Viktor’s deep, rough, and pained voice cuts through the fear just a little. “Caterina, it’s me. Come on, baby. Snap out of it. Please.”
Baby.That yanks me back as his face comes into view, and I see the fearful expression there as if what’s happening to me is scaring him, too.
Baby.A pet name. He’s never called me anything like that. I could hear the emotion behind it when it slipped out of his mouth, and that stopped me in my tracks too. He’d sounded afraidforme. As if seeing me like this hurt him.
Slowly, I can feel myself starting to breathe again, although I’m still trembling. Viktor’s other hand goes to my waist, steadying me in the sloshing water, and I gasp, forcing myself to relax inch by inch.
It’s hard. My heart is pounding in my chest, my skin tingling with the urge to run, to fight, to get out. But it’s Viktor.
A man that I’m not sure I can trust, but right now, isn’t hurting me. Who has me all the more confused because the look on his face just now wasn’t one of a man who would hurt me.
It looked like a man who is terrified to lose me.
And that makes no fucking sense at all.
VIKTOR
I’ve never witnessed a panic attack before. The way Caterina started to flail in the bathtub, shaking and trembling, sent a burst of fear and rage through me all at once. Fear for her, and rage directed squarely at the two men locked outside in the shed, who had done this to her.
She looked as if she were out of her mind, and in some way, she probably was. Something had transported her back to the days she’d spent in their custody, and the terror in her face had been painful to witness. It made me want to kill them in many slow and painful ways, but at the same time, nothing could have torn me away from her side at that moment.
She’s mine.The possessive, protective urge that has been growing steadily since I married her has taken even deeper root in the past days, and the thought that anyone could have hurt her so badly makes me nearly incandescent with fury.
I’m going to kill every last person who had a hand in taking her from me. And no one ever will again.
I don’t care how hurt she is or how broken. I’m going to piece her back together, one way or another. But from the look in her eyes when she realizes it’s me holding her, I can see that she doesn’t trust me. That I’m a lesser evil, not someone she feels safe with.
I can’t exactly blame her. But I’m also unsure of exactly why she’s so afraid of me when just the night before she was kidnapped, we’d shared a night together unlike anything we’d done before.
I’d thought that would be a turning point in our marriage. Not love, I’ve never been interested in that. But an understanding. An appreciation for what we can offer each other.
Not love, but maybe passion.
What I feel in this moment, though, holding her in the bathtub as her breathing slows fractionally and her eyes dart around like a frightened deer’s, is something deeper than just physical attraction. The body that I’m holding is barely one I recognize right now, but the person inside of it is still Caterina. A woman I swore to protect.
That vow must have gone deeper than I realized.
