Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“It’s not just a question. You’re probing for information. It doesn’t matter whether it’s part of some intricate plan or to satisfy your curiosity—I am not going to trot out my pain for your amusement.”
His grip tightened slightly. “You don’t have to keep running.”
The audacity of him almost left her speechless. “Why?”
He frowned. “Why?”
“Yes, Dmitri, why? Why don’t I have to keep running? Is it because I’m safe here?” She motioned with her free hand. “We both know that’s a fucking lie. I’m no safer here than I was in Boston—less so, because anyone targeting you will target your wife as well. Am I safe because you’re here? Please. You’re the most dangerous to me of all. You were honest when you said that you couldn’t offer me what I needed—don’t try to change your tone now.”
His frown deepened and then cleared. “Love. You’re talking about love.”
Five little words to cut right to the heart of her. She let go of the washcloth and stepped back, all too aware that he allowed her to do it. “I know better now.”
“Keira—”
“Can we just be done for tonight? It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.” Her exhaustion surged again, threatening to buckle her knees. As much as she didn’t want to share a bed with him, the thought of walking down the stairs to hers was too much. She pulled her sweater off and slid out of her jeans. When she turned around, he was staring. “What now?”
Dmitri gave a sharp shake of his head and stood. “You are safe tonight.”
The implication being that she wasn’t safe other nights. It would be worrying, but it was a truth she’d known since she was a child. The type of danger might change in any given situation, but it never went away completely.
She waited for him to walk into the bathroom before she climbed into the massive bed. It really was like wrapping up in a cloud. By all rights, she should have passed out the second her head hit the pillow, but her mind unfurled like some dark-winged thing chased it.
Going home had been a mistake. She knew it was necessary, but the world seemed so far away when she was closed up in the Romanov residence. Being back in Boston, even for a limited time, had memories banging against the walls of her mind that she had no interest in dealing with.
It had been far too many years since her siblings were happy. Since they were close. Not since Aiden left for college, though things had started fracturing before then, but she’d just been too young to realize it. Too selfish. What did she care if her oldest brother was straining under the pressure their father put on him as heir? She was living as close to the dream as she was allowed. While her siblings slowly drifted away, one after the other, she’d lost herself in her art and her goals. She’d once had Devlin, after all, and that relationship was just as close as it’d ever been.
Until it wasn’t.
Until he died and she realized how alone she really was.
Until the illusion fell from the bars of her cage, revealing just how trapped she’d been from the very beginning.
The world was an ugly place, and the art she was so goddamn proud of didn’t do a damn thing to change that. All it did was remind her of the silly girl she’d been—so willfully stubborn, doing anything she had to in order to ignore the truth of her situation.
Trapped. Helpless. A pawn in a game she never wanted to play to begin with.
Nothing had changed, even if the city she lived in had. She was still a character in someone else’s play, required to dance to the tune not of her making.
God, I need a drink.
“Keira.”
Dmitri’s voice reached out to her in the darkness of the room. When had he come to bed? I really am a mess if I’m checking out so thoroughly that I didn’t notice him. She swallowed past her burning throat, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t about to cry. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” It sounded childish, but she couldn’t help it.
“We don’t have to talk.” He shifted, turning onto his side to face her. “Let me hold you, moya koroleva. I’ll keep the demons at bay tonight.”
She should say no. Doing anything to damage the reality—that Dmitri was no knight in shining armor—was dangerous in the extreme.
But if she didn’t do something, she was in danger of climbing out of bed and charging down to the vodka she’d hidden in order to drown out her racing thoughts. She teetered on an edge far more dangerous than the man next to her. She was clean. Actually clean. It was one thing to comfort herself with the lie-not-lie that she only wanted an escape from her shitty life. It was another to not be able to get through a tiny bump in the road without a substance as a crutch.