“Don’t you think I would have?” He raises his voice, and it sounds pained. Either there is truth to what he’s saying, or he is one hell of an actor. “This is the last thing I wanted to happen. He’s like a brother to me. And you…” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I would’ve laid down my life to stop this from happening to you.”
“You’re crazy.” I’m full-out crying. “You don’t even know me. And Sammy would never give you my things. Not without telling me. And I never heard him talk about you. He never even mentioned you.”
He pulls me into his arms. “I swear I’m not lying.”
I push against his hard, chiseled chest, solid and strong. I struggle to break free from his hold, but it’s no use. He’s not budging an inch.
“Let me go!”
“Not until you stop fighting. I don’t want to tie you back up, so you need to calm down.”
Another threat. Somehow his actions and words don’t pair up, no matter how bad I want them to.
I end my struggle. It isn’t getting me anywhere. I need to reserve my strength and create an opportunity.
He holds my head between his hands again and stares into my eyes. He’s not moving, not speaking. It’s like he’s searching for something. I have no idea what he thinks he’s going to find.
“Please, we have to talk calmly and figure things out.”
“Like what? What is there to talk about?”
He releases his hold on me. Both the physical hold and the emotional hold his eyes used to disarm me. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “I need you to trust me.”
“Trust is earned.”
“I know. And I’ve given you no reason not to trust me.”
Is he kidding?
“Except kidnapping me. Tying me up. Holding me against my will!”
He nods, realizing the hole I blasted through his argument.
“Yes. But that’s it.”
“That’s it! That’s it? Are you serious?”
“Yes! I am.” The volume of his voice makes me jump. “I didn’t hurt you. It could’ve been a lot worse and you know it. And since we’ve been alone, I’ve been nothing but kind to you.”
“Nothing but kind? Letting that bitch torture me? That’s being kind? And using the threat of my brother to make sure I comply? Is that being kind, too?”
He releases a long breath, turns, and takes a few steps away from me. “This is getting us nowhere.”
The instant he creates space is the instant I want to pull him back to me. I can’t just leave it alone. I should let him go and get far away from me, but I can’t. My heart pounds heavier against my chest. I need to lure him back.
What is wrong with me?
“You want my trust?”
He turns, and I have his attention.
“Then I need you to prove you’re worthy of it.”
“I’m listening.”
“If any of what you said is true, get me the hell out of here.”
He closes his eyes tight and shakes his head. “I want to, but it’s not that simple.”
“Because you’re full of shit.”
“Because if I get you out right now, they’ll kill Sammy. Can you live with that? Knowing you’ll be the direct cause of his death?”
I don’t answer. I drop my eyes, knowing he has a point.
“I didn’t think so. And believe me, they will kill him. Without a second thought. They’ll make sure it’s as painful as possible to teach you a lesson.” I don’t respond to him. There’s nothing to say. “And then they’ll hunt us down. And make no mistake, they’ll find us, because we’re being watched right now. They aren’t dumb. The second we make a run for it, they’ll be notified. They’ll find us. I’ll be beaten to within an inch of my life, and they’ll drag you back. Only this time, I won’t be there to run any interference for you. You’ll be completely unprotected. And they’ll make sure they hurt you so bad, you’ll never try to escape again.”
I don’t answer, because I know in my heart he’s telling the truth. He closes the distance between us once more, and I swear I feel the pounding of his heart in the air around me.
“Say the word, Kiera,” he whispers, and his voice makes me shiver. “Tell me you can live with the consequences, that you won’t hate yourself or me for the rest of your life, and we’ll leave right now. We’ll risk it all, leave everything behind.”
“I can’t leave Sammy.”
He nods. “I know. He thought if you were mad at him, super mad, you’d be okay leaving him behind.” The beautiful, pained man standing before me runs his hand through his hair, and for a split second, I wish my hands were running through it instead. His eyes pin me in place. I can’t move, even if I wanted to. “I knew it wouldn’t work.”
It takes a long moment for his words to sink in. “Wait. You’re not saying…? He’s not really mad at me? The fight, that was all a ruse?”
He nods. “He wanted to hurt you so bad you wouldn’t come back. He thought if he could keep you away at school, you’d have a chance. He only wanted to protect you.”
Tears streak down my cheeks. My brother to the rescue again, with no regard for himself.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” I say to no one. I just hope in Sammy’s unconscious state, he somehow knows. Warmth spreads through me as Dima smoothes my hair. I feel a smidgeon better with him touching me, and I’m all too aware of the dangers that could lead to. I wipe the wetness from my skin and regroup. I need to figure shit out. I need to figure out why I’m so infatuated with this man that I should hate.
“We can run away and take him with us. There has to be some way.”
“Not now.” He shakes his head and brushes his knuckles down the side of my cheek. The touch is light and gentle and wakes up my senses with its tingling effect. Warmth and comfort spread through me, a complete contradiction to the feelings his touch should cause. “Not until he’s off the ventilator. He’s doing better, getting stronger, but we can’t move him yet. We don’t have the know how or the equipment. Plus it’ll slow us down so much, we won’t have a chance.”
“So what? I stay here and wait for them to sell me to the highest bidder like a mail-order bride?” He doesn’t say anything, but I see a sadness in his eyes and I understand. He’s powerless, just like me. I call him on it, not sure what I expect from him. “You can’t stop it, can you?”
He rubs his hand across his forehead. “I don’t know. But I’m doing all I can.”
“That doesn’t mean you can stop them before they marry me off.”
“Marry you? Kiera, that’s not…” His eyes scrunch up tight. His whole face looks like he’s in pain.
“But you said…” tiny bumps cover my hairless skin, making me shiver. “What do they want me for?”
He looks to the ground and presses his lips into a thin line before speaking. “They want to set you up in their strip club and rent you out.”
There’s no air in my lungs. I want to collapse into a puddle on the floor, but I don’t. I can’t allow myself that privilege. My throat feels strangled. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying. “Rent me out for what?”
“As a prostitute.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I forget myself for a moment and strike his chest with my fist. He grabs my hand to stop me and holds it tight. My breath is caught in my throat. For a nanosecond, I panic. I’m afraid to look up into his eyes, that they’ll reveal the monster he really is.
I struggle to break free of his hold. He doesn’t let me. Instead he pulls me to him and runs his hands up and down my arms while trailing delicate little kisses along the top of my head. Tears stream from my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, leaning his cheek against my head.
“Sorry? You’re not sorry. You’re the reason I’m in this mess. If you wanted to help me or save me, why didn’t you let me go at the hospital?”
“I only had minutes to get you out of your brother’s room without them knowing. I tried, but you f
ought me.”
“What did you expect? My brother was beaten to the edge of death and you grab me from behind. Did you think I’d go willingly?”
“We’re here now. We can’t go back and change the past,” he says, still holding me.
“No. But we can go to the police and tell them everything. We can tell them what these animals did to Sammy. I’m sure they’re investigating. Maybe they already know.”
“The police aren’t an option.”
“Why not?” I squeal as I pull away from him enough that I can look into his eyes.
“Because they’re on the payroll.”
“We’ll call the news. Everyone from the local and national television stations. They’ll blast it out and then everyone will know. Someone will help us.”
“If anyone even bothers to look into this, you’ll be made to look crazy. They’ll portray you as hysterical and say that the incident with your brother triggered PTSD from the death of your parents, and because of it, you’re convinced there is a conspiracy against you. You won’t be able to get a restraining order, or any other sort of protection, and they’ll have free access to you.”
“How do you know this?”
“They already ran through the scenarios. I tried to talk them out of it. Gave them every reason to think it was a bad idea. I thought I could make them see you weren’t worth the trouble.”
Those words shouldn’t make me flinch, but they do. They hit me like a slap across the face. Dima’s hands reach for my cheeks again. His lips are close. So fucking close. I should punch him in the nose. Push him away. Fight him. But my mind is screaming out for him to lean just a little closer. Like if he kisses me, it will make all the other shit disappear.
His eyes drop down to my lips, and I hold my breath waiting for him to kiss me. He’s hesitating, and I consider grabbing his shirt and pulling him the rest of the way to me. Before I decide, it comes to an end. It’s like there’s an invisible barrier between us that he can’t cross, no matter how hard he tries.
The air around us changes. The heat and energy that had just been kicked up about ten notches cools down. I shudder, unsure if it’s the thought that I wanted this evil man to kiss me, to fill me with a false sense of hope and phony promises, or because he didn’t and I’m afraid he has no real desire to. Disappointed, I let out the breath I held.
“That didn’t come out the way I mean it. I mean you’re not worth it to them. You’re worth it to me, or else I wouldn’t be here and you’d already be holed up in a room servicing dirty old men.”
I hug my arms around myself.
Trying to comfort me, he pulls me into his arms, but only for a moment. They’re warm and strong, and I’ve never felt safer until he curses under his breath and lets me go. I watch in silence as he steps away.
“I’m doing everything I can. We just need to give it some time.”
“How is time going to make it any better?” I sound weak and broken. I hate that I’m so frightened.
“That’s where the trust comes in.” He reaches out and cradles my face in his warm, strong hands, and I wish his hands would stay on me forever. His eyes bore into mine, like they reach inside me and stroke my heart. It’s like he’s fighting some internal battle the way touches me and then breaks away. He’s just as uncertain of what to do as I am. On top of everything else, I’m frustrated because I can’t figure him out.
“Why do you care?”
His hands drop and he pulls away once more. Physically. Emotionally. He’s so far, so unreachable, I think I’ve misread everything. He turns from me. “I promised your brother I’d look out for you as best I can.”
“Dima-”
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps, eyes narrowed. I feel the anger I brought up to the surface as sure as I feel the ground beneath my feet.
“Sorry,” I say, knowing I just crossed a line and not sure what it is I did wrong.
“My name is Dimitri. I hate when they call me that.”
Confused, I nod. I offended him. That wasn’t my intention at all. And how should I know that isn’t really his name? It’s what the other two sons of bitches called him.
“Shit, Kiera. You don’t understand,” his voice, his face, both are much softer, kinder. “They call me that because they know I hate it. You’re the last person I want to hear that from.”
Okay, he’s unstable. “What should I call you?” I ask, not wanting to see his wrath if I mess up again.
“I want you to call me something else,” he says like I should know what that is.
“Is Dimitri okay?”
He bites his lip, and I see the struggle on his face shining through his eyes.
“For now. Let me get you some food.”
“Why are you so worried about my eating? Am I fat?”
I look down at my stomach. I can’t see it under my boobs. It’s flat. Sure, I’m not as thin as Masha, but I’ve never felt insecure about my weight before.
The corner of his mouth turns up into an amused smirk. “Fat?” His eyes inch up and down my body like fingers walking across my skin, fire burning bright in them, as the tip of his tongue touches his upper lip. I know he just used a secret superhero power to look at me with X-ray vision, because he had to see something more than what’s on the surface for his eyes to turn so dark and lusty.
“Far from it. Your body is…” a deep gravely sound escapes him as he shakes his head. “I think you’re gorgeous.”
Gorgeous. I shouldn’t feel happy or excited that he finds me attractive. No, not just attractive, gorgeous! In the middle of this shitstorm, I feel like I hit the jackpot. The giddy feeling inside me isn’t because someone said I was gorgeous, it’s because he said it. My stomach tumbles as I give him a good looking over. Sure I’m pretty, but gorgeous? He needs to look in the mirror. He is smoking hot! Every time I look at him, I’m more attracted than I was the time before.
I went from trying to break free from his arms to wanting to get wrapped up in them. He’s not touching me right now, and that means he’s too far. Everything about him calls to me, screams to me: his dark eyes and hair, those deep dimples in his cheeks, his perfectly carved body. Not to mention, no one ever cared enough to be this protective and kind to me. No one but my brother and the boy I used to hunt unicorns with when I was little.
I want to touch him, explore him. Feel the curves and cuts of muscle beneath his shirt. I shake the thoughts off. I’m losing my mind. No, to have these thoughts, I’ve already lost it. I am out-of-this-world-fucking-crazy.
He’s the enemy, I remind myself. The unworthy-not-to-be-trusted-under-any-conditions enemy.
Only in my heart, I don’t believe it. Try as I might, I can’t convince myself to stay away from him. I feel like I know him. Like he knows me. He does know me. He’s probably been stalking me for months and here I am, the desperate damsel in distress, hoping with every fiber of my being that he will find a way to steal me away in the night and rescue me.
Chapter 6
I don’t know how long ago Dimitri left the room. I hear him moving around and I’m tempted to follow him. Question after question swirls around my mind. So many questions, and he has plenty of answers. I might not like them, but I need to hear them.
I’m getting antsy in the small space. Between the bed and the air mattress, there isn’t much room to move around, and knowing the future I’m trying to escape, the last place I want to be is on that bed. I step to the doorway, expecting to walk into a kitchen, but it’s just another smaller, windowless room with a folding table and a college-size refrigerator. Dimitri is heating something up in the microwave that’s sitting on the table in the small rectangular area.
“Is it okay if I come in?” I ask, not sure what the answer will be.
He nods. “As long as it’s just the two of us and you promise not to try anything stupid, you are free to move around as you please.”
He doesn’t want me to try anything stupid. If my need to be near him is any indication,
that warning is useless.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he smiles as the microwave timer chimes.
“I hope you’re hungry. I made this special for you. I know you like it.”
A strange chill runs up my spine.
“What is it?”
“Cherry dumplings,” he answers, doling the portion out into two bowls. “They’re not as good as usual because they’re reheated, but they’ll do.”
I watch him take a spoonful of sour cream and mix it in with the dumplings. Thinking of how unappetizing that seems, I make a face.
“What’s wrong?”
I shrug my shoulders, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “Nothing, it’s just that I never had these before, and I’m really not a big fan of sour cream. I don’t even like it on a baked potato.”
“What are you talking about?” He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Of course you like it.”
It finally occurs to me that he’s the crazy one. Seriously crazy. Delusionally crazy. I just have to be sure not to upset him, not to give him a reason to become violently crazy, because I don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s plenty strong, and I already know I’m no match for his arms of steel.
I watch him sprinkle something white over my helping. He doesn’t sprinkle anything over his. I don’t say anything and look down hesitantly as he hands me the bowl.
“It was only sugar,” he informs me.
“Why didn’t you put any on yours?”
“Because you like it sweeter than I do.” His eyes are playful as they meet mine. “Here, look.” He stabs his fork into one of my dumplings and eats it. “If I was trying to drug or poison you, would I have eaten it?”
He has a point. Unless he’s so far gone he convinced himself it’s only sugar. I follow him back into the other room and sit on the side of the bed while he settles down on the air mattress.
“Eat!” he orders as I sit staring at my food.
I take a deep breath and decide to make it look like I’m giving it a chance. If it looks like I’m making an attempt to eat it, he might be more understanding that I really don’t like it. I touch my tongue to the cream-like sauce he mixed into my bowl. With the sugar, It doesn’t taste awful. I decide to give it a chance and pop a dumpling in my mouth.
My Russian Nightmare Page 5
