by Hart, Callie
Pasha’s left hand cups the side of my face again. When I look up at him, the clouds from earlier have scattered, and a pristine night sky stretches on for eternity over his head. His eyes sparkle and flash, even brighter than the thousands of pin-prick diamond stars that interrupt the deep midnight blue, seeming to form the outline of his breathtaking crown. “I take it back,” he rumbles. “You’re no nightmare, Zara Llewelyn. You’re every single beautiful dream I’ve ever had. And I don’t plan on letting you go now.”
22
ZARA
BITTEN
Zara. My name on his lips is both a curse and prayer. I can’t stop the body-wide shudders that rock me to my core every time I hear him say it.
The walk back to the Bakersfield seems to take forever. My face burns from the cold, but the flame trapped inside my chest burns hotter still. Pasha glances at me out of the corner of his eye every two or three steps, as if he’s checking to make sure I’m still there. I get the feeling that he’s expecting me to vanish into thin air at any moment—ironic, really, since I’m expecting him to do the exact same thing.
At the start of the night, I might have even hoped he would vanish, but something’s happened between us since then. Something that neither of us can take back, and now the thought of him disappearing fills me with a panic and a dread that I can’t even begin to describe.
We don’t talk.
There’s nothing to say, at least not for now; we walk quickly in silence until we reach the front door of the apartment building, and I try to let us in, my hand shaking like crazy as I attempt to slide the key into the lock. Pasha’s hand covers mine, and the heat of his body soothes me as he takes the key from me. “Let me,” he says gruffly. “You look like you’re about to shiver yourself to death.”
Does he think I’m shivering from the cold? Or does he know how badly he’s affecting me right now? He must know. He must have some idea. His hands are steady as he quickly unlocks the door and pushes it open, ushering me inside.
The faint buzz of the tequila I felt back in the bar is now gone, and I feel surreally present as we walk up the stairs to my apartment. We’re on the third floor, walking down the hallway, when I see the figure standing outside my door.
Oh, shit.
Garrett’s eyes harden as he turns and sees me walking toward him. As he sees the man behind me, following closely, with his hand pressing into the small of my back. Garrett’s body language is screaming loud enough to be heard at a distance. Pasha tenses—I can feel the irritation rolling off him as he moves to my side, and then places himself slightly in front of me as we arrive at my front door.
This situation has the potential to end so, so badly. I grab Pasha by the hand, my fingernails digging into his skin, silently pleading for him not to do anything.
“Hi, Garrett. Everything okay?” I try to sound light and airy, but the embarrassment and panic that washes through me makes me feel like I just got busted by my parents, trying to sneak a boy into my room. Garrett’s eyes travel from me to Pasha, then he shakes his head. He points at Pasha, and then he violently shakes his head. His meaning is clear as day.
A low, threatening growl fills the hallway, and I dig my nails even deeper into Pasha’s hand. “It’s okay. He’s fine, Garrett. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Garrett isn’t convinced by my words, though. He shakes his head again, harder still, and Pasha steps forward, urging me back behind him.
“Pasha, don’t. He’s just looking out for me. He’s my friend. If you hurt him, I’ll never forgive you.”
Pasha, towering over both me and Garrett, taking up all the room in the hallway, sighs. He nods his head, just once, and takes a step to the side. A stressful moment passes, where he and Garret glare at each other, a ridiculous amount of testosterone exchanged between the two, and then Pasha releases my hand. He holds it out to Garrett, offering it to him.
“We haven’t formally been introduced. I’m Pasha Rivin. I own the tattoo shop on Derringer. You know where that is?”
Garrett stares down at Pasha’s peace offering. Burns holes into his flesh with angry eyes, like he’s waiting for a deadly viper to appear in the palm of his hand and for it to strike at him. He nods—yes, he knows where the shop is.
“Good. I’m not going to hurt Zara. If she’ll let me, I’m going to make it my life’s work to make sure no one ever hurts her. But now you know where I’ll be, five days a week. If I ever cause her even the slightest ounce of pain, physical or otherwise, you are more than welcome to come over to the shop and kick the living shit out of me. Or call the cops and have them arrest me. Or fucking kill me. I don’t care. I’m not a threat here. I swear it on my own life, whatever that might be worth to you.”
Garrett looks unmoved by Pasha’s promise. There’s so much hurt and pain in his eyes that I almost throw my arms around him and squeeze him to me. Never in a million years would I have predicted that he’d feel this way about me bringing a guy home. It’s painfully clear that I’ve hurt him right now, though, and my heart feels like it’s breaking in two.
Garrett’s expression remains hard and unhappy, but he takes Pasha’s hand and he shakes it. Releasing his grip a second later, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, handing it to me. He doesn’t hang around for me to open up the paper and read it. He spins on his heel and hurries off down the hallway, his shoulders hiked up around his ears as he makes his getaway.
Pasha leans back against the wall, arching an eyebrow at me. “I hate to say I told you so, but that man is madly in love with you.”
“You’re wrong. He’s just protective.”
“Whatever you say, Firefly. I know what a broken-hearted man looks like, though, and there was just one standing in this hallway with us not three seconds ago.”
God. The contents of my stomach churn so violently that I know he’s speaking the truth. How could I have been so blind? How could I have refused to see something that now appears so fucking obvious? Guilt claws at me as I flatten out the piece of paper Garrett handed to me, my eyes skimming over the slanted, looped handwriting written on it in black ball point pen.
Zara,
I’ve gone to visit a friend in Long Island for a week. I think I deserve a break, and I have some thinking to do. I’ll be back soon, though, sweetheart. Please don’t worry about me. I’m going to come back a new woman.
Love you,
Sarah
“You okay?” Pasha asks. His impossibly deep, baritone reverberates down the hall.
Handing him the piece of paper, I take my keys from him and I open up the apartment, stepping inside. He follows behind me as he reads. “So she’s safe, then. Sarah. She’s not missing anymore?”
“Doesn’t appear that way.”
“You must be relieved.”
I am. I’m all kinds of relieved. It would have been easier to believe she was okay if she’d told me this information in person, though. The handwriting is hers, without a shadow of a doubt. And she does have a friend in Long Island—Marion, a woman she used to work with at the nail salon, who moved back home to take care of her mother when the elderly woman fell sick. I feel kind of stupid for being so worried about Sarah now. I’d nearly called out the fucking national guard to look for her.
My living room feels like the set of a sitcom—too small, too twee, too colorful—as Pasha removes his leather jacket and sinks down onto my sofa. Besides Garrett, Waylon and Andrew, I realize that Pasha is the only other man that’s ever sat on that couch, and he looks like he’s right at home. “Are you relieved?” I ask.
“That the aunt I’ve thought was dead my entire life, who actually wasn’t dead, but who had gone missing is now okay?” He gives me a wry smile. “I am. I’m looking forward to meeting her. Especially if she hates Shelta anywhere near as much as I do right now. Maybe we can form a vitsa of our own—former Rivin royalty turned gadje miscreants.”
My mind works overtime as it tries to place both Sar
ah and Pasha in a room together. They’re both such strong personalities, it seems to me that they’d cancel each other out merely by sharing the same oxygen. There’s no one sharing the oxygen in the room with us right now, though, and it feels as though Pasha has managed to suck the air right out of the entire apartment all by himself.
“Um. Do you…do you want a coffee? Or a tea?” Jesus. How the fuck am I this awkward?
Pasha runs his tongue over his teeth. “No.”
“Whiskey?”
He smirks. “You don’t have any whiskey, Firefly.”
“Ahh…hmm. Actually, no, I do not. What about something to eat?”
“Zara. Come here.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
This is really happening.
I go to him, my body drawn to him, and Pasha sits forward, running his hands up the back of my legs. In two seconds flat, he’s pulled me forward, separated my legs, and I’m somehow straddling him on the couch. My palms are prickling like crazy. They’re going to start sweating soon. I haven’t been this nervous since I was about to go on stage to sing a solo in my high school choir performance.
His hands slide up my thighs, coming to a stop at my waist, and I let out a startled gasp and he tilts his hips up and I feel how hard he is beneath me. “Fuck, Pasha. How...”
“I’ve been hard since I walked through that door the first time three hours ago,” he growls. “All of my blood is basically in my dick at this point.”
I fasten my bottom lip between my teeth, and he does it again, grinding himself against me. “Ahh! Shit!” It feels so fucking good. His fingers dig into my skin, driving me downward, and the pressure between our bodies triples. My back arches without my consent, and my head tips back a little. I resist the urge to close my eyes as a wave of pleasure swells between my legs.
“Does that feel good?” Pasha asks through gritted teeth. “Is your pussy going to be wet for me by the time I put my hand between your thighs?”
Color explodes on my cheeks. Sweet fucking hell. “I—yeah. Yes.”
“Good.” He sits forward, away from the sofa, and wraps his arms around me, pulling me to him. The next second, a dart of pain fires in a looping relay between my breasts and my clit, my body reacting violently as he grabs my right nipple between his teeth through the thin material of my shirt and my bra and he bites down hard enough to make me cry out. “Fuck! Ahh, Pasha. Oh my god! What the fuck?”
He looks up at me, and my head swims. He’s so fucking hot, I can’t even bear to meet his eyes. “I thought we were done pretending. Don’t start up again now. You like a little pain, don’t you?” I watch, mesmerized as he wets his lips, and then he uses the tip of his tongue to flick the tight bud of my nipple that’s now standing to attention beneath my shirt.
“I don’t…I don’t even know,” I admit. “No one’s ever bitten me before.”
He accompanies his pleased smile with a rumble of approval. “Lucky me. I get to be the first. I’m gonna bite you, Firefly. I’m gonna spank you. I’m gonna make you gasp out loud. You’re probably going to call me every name under the sun, but it won’t be so bad. Your nipples might end up a little red. Your lips might be a little swollen. Your ass cheeks…” He smirks—a scandalous, treacherous looking twist of his mouth. “Your ass cheeks might end up a little…tender. You’re going to feel stretched and sore. Muscles you never knew you had are gonna ache and burn, Firefly, but I promise you this: I will never, ever hurt your heart. I’ll wrap it up in cotton wool if you’ll let me. Entrust it to me, and it’ll be my honor to defend it. I’ll make it sing in your chest. And if it ever stops singing for me, if I ever stop making it beat a little too fast, a little too wildly, I promise I’ll give it back unscathed. You have my word.”
His eyes are lit up from the inside somehow, glowing with sincerity, and the very last of my hesitancy, the last shreds of my uncertainty and doubt evaporates, leaving nerves and anticipation behind in their stead. I’ve been terrified of him ever since I met him. I was terrified of him before I met him, which feels so strange to admit. How could that possibly have been the case? The night I went to the fair, searching for Corey, was the very first time I ever laid eyes on him, but that doesn’t feel true to me. In the most inexplicable way, it feels as though I’ve known him far, far longer than that. He was right, back in the bar. I’ve been waiting for him to arrive, preparing for the hurricane of turmoil and chaos he will bring with him, and I’ve been biding my time, battening down the hatches, hoping the storm will blow right over me. And now, of all the stupid, remarkably dumb things I could be doing, it seems that I’m removing the boards from the windows, throwing the doors on my life wide open, and I’m inviting the storm inside, asking for it to claim me.
“I trust you,” I whisper. I shouldn’t. I’ve always been smarter than this, and Pasha is neither a smart nor a safe bet. But the way he’s looking at me right now, open and earnest, pleading almost…I believe every word he just said to me, and I find that every scrap of my faith is gone, because I’ve already turned it over to him, whatever the outcome may be. I’m willing to risk everything to roll the dice on him. I’m choosing to believe that he won’t destroy me in his quest to care for me.
God, so much has changed in the span of a few crazy hours.
Pasha exhales, and it sounds like he’s been holding his breath for a lifetime, waiting to hear those words. “I’ll earn it,” he says, his voice gruff. “I’ll earn that trust. And I’ll earn everything else, too. I’ll be the man you deserve. I’ll give you more than happiness. I’ll give you all of your dreams, because you’re giving me mine. Right here. Right now. I feel the weight of it settling in my bones. Shelta was right to be worried about you. You’re claiming me.”
His mouth is demanding as he brings it down on mine. How many times has this happened already in my dreams? How many nights has he come to me while I’ve slept, his body worshipping mine, his hands conducting a symphony of pleasure within me as he brought me to climax? I’ve lost track, but the cobwebs of my hazy memory are gone now. Blasted into nothingness. I could never remember his face when I woke. I could never remember the hushed, reverent words he whispered into my ear as he cradled me in his arms, like I was the most precious thing to have ever existed in his world. Now, I can remember every single occasion. Every single kiss. Every single second his bare skin met mine and burned against me. It was him, all along. They were beautiful dreams, those restless, lust-filled nights more glorious than anything else I’d ever experienced before, but this? This is so much more. This is definitive. This is the end.
As Pasha’s hands slide up underneath my shirt, underneath my bra, finding my bare breasts, I’m rocked to my very core. I’m his now, and he is mine. I won’t give him up. I won’t take the safe way out. I’m going to demand just as much from him as he demands from me and then some. At the back of my mind, I am fully aware that this is crazy. I barely know him. I’ve spent so little time with this man, in the flesh. But, like a wraith, the shadow of him has enveloped me every day for so long that I feel like I know him inside and out. For every monumental event that has ever occurred in my life, it’s as if he has always been there, standing in his rightful place, at my side.
My logical brain rails against the thought that Pasha and I are meant to be. The very idea that two people’s lives could be intertwined, conjoined by some outside universal force has me squirming inside my own skin, calling bullshit, but this is inexplicable. This is something that cannot and will not be easily explained away by science, or by hormones, or by the simple fact that I haven’t been laid in a really long time and Pasha has a devastatingly handsome face.
This is more.
This is so much more.
I’m more afraid of this, of him, than anything else in the world. Admitting the connection I feel to him feels like I’m confessing my deepest, darkest secret. My most heinous sin. But now that he’s here, in front of me, I can’t turn away from it. Like a plant, turning its leaves toward l
ight, willing every part of itself to face the sun and grow, I can’t deny the attraction that pulls me to Pasha. I hate him for the loss of my own control, but…there’s peace in this, too.
All my life, I’ve been trying to wrestle the world around me into submission. I’ve needed to be in complete control of even the smallest aspect of my life. The energy needed to succeed at such a monumental task has been so draining that I’ve always felt like I’ve been clinging to the ledge of a tall building by my bleeding fingertips, only seconds away from falling.
And then: Pasha.
I have no control here. None. Whatever happens between us is beyond my own influence. And instead of being crippled by the horror of this spiraling, freefalling, crazed madness, I suddenly feel…free.
Pasha hasn’t taken my control from me. He hasn’t snatched it from me, leaving me to try and figure out how to survive such an uncertain situation. He’s lost his control, too. He’s as helpless against this pull as I am, and knowing that we’re both so vulnerable to it, to one another, doesn’t feel like a compromise. We’re a team, facing something strange and a little frightening together. Pasha is simply braver than I can ever be.
My blood is a river of fire, raging through my body. I can barely breathe as I rip my mouth away from his. “Damn it,” I pant. “If this is what you want. My heart—”
“This is what I need.” He makes a strangled sound deep in his throat. His deep, resonating voice is thick with emotion as he winds my hair around his hand and closes it into a fist. “My heart is yours,” he whispers. “Take it. Keep it. Burn it. It doesn’t matter what you do with it. It’s no good to me anymore. Not if it doesn’t belong to you.”
This is a lot to take in. There’s a raging furnace in my chest, and every other second it blasts me with rolling wave after rolling wave of emotion. “I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
