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I try not to stare. I really,reallytry. Now isn’t the time or place to admire her beautiful marble skin and the lovely softness of her curves. I shouldnotbe fixated on the delicate dip of her collar bones and the roundness of her hips.
Come on, Dimitri. Get your shit together.
“How are you doing?” I ask her.
She glances at me. There’s no denying the way her bottom lip trembles when she says, “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” I mumble with a half-hearted chuckle. I step toward her and take a seat on the edge of the bed, looking at her injury. It isn’t deep and there shouldn’t be any permanent damage, but the longer I stare, the angrier I become.
It was a close call.Tooclose. Any further to the left and Natalya might have seriously been hurt. My blood boils and my throat constricts as I take the cloth from her hand. I tend to her wound without speaking. I should have been better prepared. I shouldn’t have indulged her request to take Simon and Lev to the park. Sometimes I forget who I am, the man I’ve become and the responsibilities I hold and the enemies I’ve made simply by existing. Natalya is innocent in all of this.
And she was hurt because of my negligence.
“You’re going to need stitches,” I say gently.
“I know.” Dark circles reside under her red-rimmed eyes. Was she crying?
“Should I play nurse, Dr. Chekov?” I tease, trying to lighten the mood. Seeing her upset makes me anxious. It’s a feeling I’m unfamiliar with. I need to remedy this at once.
I thankfully earn a light laugh. Breathy and barely audible, but Natalya still cracks a small smile. “Pass me the needle and thread?”
All I can do is watch in stunned amazement as Natalya expertly sews her own stitches. Her hand is impressively still, her concentration admirable. I’ve personally never been a fan of needles, so to see her conduct the procedure without breaking a sweat or wincing once leaves me in a state of awe.
“Snip off the end for me?” she asks.
I do so, helping her apply sterile gauze and a bandage around her arm to keep everything secure. “Do you think the patient will live, Dr. Chekov?”
She laughs, soft and sweet. It’s areallaugh, complete with a wide smile and a cute crinkle of her nose. The sound makes my heart leap into my throat. “I’m sure I’ll live to a tender old age, Nurse Dimitri.”
I’m fixated on the shape of her lips and the twinkle in her eye, thoroughly enraptured by her gentle grace and beauty.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” I tell her. “I’ll get to the bottom of this, I swear.”
“You must be a pretty important government official for someone to want to attack you like this,” she comments.
Guilt stabs me through the chest. Right. She doesn’t know who I really am. “Get some rest,” I say, starting to get up.
Before I can, however, Natalya takes my hand. “Dimitri?”
“Yes, Nat?”
She tilts her chin up just so, her lips parted slightly as she draws in a slow, thin breath. I can see a question in her eyes, punctuated by the furrow of her brows. Warmth stirs in the pit of my stomach, a sudden protective urge washing over me. There’s something electric in the air, tense and unspoken, but impossible to deny. We linger in each other’s orbit, locked in some sort of trance.
“Kiss me.”
Our lips come crashing together.
Chapter 13
Natalya
The man is a feral beast, wrapping me in his cobra-like arms as his kiss steals the breath from my lungs. A wet heat pools between my legs as his hands explore the shape of my body, greedy and rough and perfect. The tension keeping us apart has suddenly snapped, the flood gates thrown wide open. Deep down, I know this is wrong, but I can’t help myself. I can’t deny this desperate hunger that’s been eating me alive.
I need him on me, behind me, inside me. I want to know the burn of his searing touch on every inch of my skin. This one kiss feels like the answer to all my questions. Since I arrived, Dimitri has been nothing but courteous and polite. Definitely a tease and a jokester. But now, as I help him pull off his tie and hastily reach down to make quick work of his belt, I see the truth.
The man really is a monster. It’s almost gratifying in a way, like I’m finally getting the chance to see the man behind this careful facade. He grips my body a touch too tight. He grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls me close. He kisses me like a man starved, sucking and biting without remorse.
And Ilikeit.
