by Lauren Dane
“It’s not stupid,” she said, more to poke at him than because she truly agreed.
He snarled as he shifted to face her better, arranging her body the way he wanted, which always amused her.
“It’s stupid to say you’re sorry for falling asleep. You have an adorable little snuffle snore. It’s stupid—and offensive—to assume I’d be upset with you for sleeping. Am I such a monster?”
Snuffle snore? She found herself softening, smiling at his silliness. She nuzzled into his side and took a deep breath. “You smell really good.”
The tension in his muscles eased. “You think you can get around me on this by being adorable?”
“Only if it works.”
He snorted, bending to kiss the top of her head and making her feel so damned safe she decided to share a little.
“You asked me the other day why I like bird tattoos. But then you unleashed your penis and I forgot everything else.”
He squeezed her, laughing. “So good for my ego.”
“Inside, where I was being kept, none of the sounds were good. But just outside, when things were quiet enough, I could hear birds. At first it was a way for me to figure out where we were being held. Whip-poor-wills and nighthawks, and every morning I’d hear a yellow-bellied sapsucker. That gave me a general idea of where we were.” Her mind had grabbed on to the first birdsong she’d heard, beginning to catalog and analyze to stave off panic. The song she’d heard told her he hadn’t gone very far from where she’d been taken.
“And then it became a way to mark time. A reminder that there was a world just outside the walls of the house.”
She tried to hold back tears, but wasn’t entirely successful. He knew, he had to have known because he was so damned in tune with her. But he didn’t say anything about it, merely held her and let her tell the story in the way she could get it out.
“It was birdsong that kept me from losing my mind to the fear. Birdsong that reminded me I could still find a way out.”
When he spoke, emotion choked his voice. “Birds are freedom and you, my tigryonak, are like them now. Free and full of life and art. And your parents are trying to cage you. Again.”
She managed to burrow even closer into him, her body overruling her impulse to run the other way because this man could hurt her like no one before. This man and his open heart and endless patience and understanding eased right in to her innermost self.
And that self felt so fucking fragile sometimes. It made her mad and guilty and ashamed that she was weak and scared. That for three years not a single person other than her sister had slept next to her. Nightmares and insomnia had sent her into survival mode when it came to bedtime.
She should run but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to hurt Vic, but that was a ruse anyway. She didn’t want to walk away from this growing thing between them.
Being known was the most miraculous thing in the world. So few people came into your life who could truly know you. She had Maybe and Cora who saw her heart and loved her not despite it, but because of it.
Feeling like this with Vic, coupled with their chemistry, filled her with happiness. Made things in her life more vivid. He smelled good, brought her bread, had a giant penis and loved giving her oral sex. It was like her birthday every day.
She’d have to be a lot more unbalanced than she currently was to turn away from all that.
And she might be weak and fragile but she wasn’t a coward.
* * *
VIC HATED THAT she would have normally been alone when whatever memory had been served up as nightmare fuel hit. Hated the expression on her face. Terror. Hated most of all that Price decided to focus on her, kidnapping and holding her for three weeks while he tortured and killed his other captives.
He’d known the details mainly from newspaper accounts and the like. She’d said things here and there over the years that had added to his understanding. But nothing had driven it home like the sound of that strangled scream and the hopeless fear on her features.
That she tried to make him mad by apologizing for sleep had been aggravating, but he simply stepped around it. He wasn’t in this thing to play those sorts of games.
And now, the story about the birds.
He’d had an idea, of course. But the telling had frayed the rest of his nerves. He wanted to gather her close and protect her from anything that could hurt her again.
Right at that moment he had to settle for holding her close. She’d cozied up to him, wriggling to get as close as she could. At first he figured it was a way to keep him from pushing where she didn’t want to go. To change the subject and get him all addled with the way she felt against him.
But then, as she’d sighed and relaxed, her nose against his neck, arms around his body, he’d realized she’d needed comfort and had taken what he so freely offered.
Humbling.
“I’m here for you to lean on now,” he said quietly. “Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t have men sleep over,” she said, groggy.
“Of course you don’t. But I’m not someone you picked up to satisfy your carnal urges. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You work pretty well on my carnal urges. You also happen to get up very early though.” She said this still pressed against him with no indication she planned to move.
“Somehow I think you’ll sleep through it when I leave. I’ll be extra quiet.” He paused. “Let me be here to chase the dreams away. You need sleep. I like to be around you and just now I feel very lazy and warm and don’t want to go back out into the cold night all alone.”
“You’re so full of it.” Her voice was lazy, as if she tumbled toward sleep again. “Okay. Stay over and save me money on my gas bill by being so warm I don’t have to keep the heat up so high.”
So brave and she didn’t even see it.
Not one to look an opportunity cross-eyed, he tucked the blankets around them after quickly turning out the bedside lamp.
* * *
“HOW’S RACHEL?” GREGORI asked him a few days later. His cousin lounged, drinking a cup of tea while watching Vic work.
“The first few days after they found out the order wasn’t going to be extended were hard. But she’s...Rachel.” Vic shrugged. “She’s titanium.”
Gregori raised a shoulder in agreement. His broody artist cousin had taken a liking to Rachel. He’d joked that it was the fact that Rachel was broody and artistic too.
“At least she’s letting me be there. I can’t protect her from everything.” God knew he wanted to storm over to Richie Dolan’s house and beat the shit out of the man for treating his daughters the way he did.
“She doesn’t need you. She wants you.”
Gregori’s girlfriend, Wren, was a pretty amazing match for his cousin. Strong, bold, artistic. Apparently the kind of woman who didn’t need, but wanted him in her life.
Seems the men in their family turned out to be blessed in that department.
“I hate to push but I want to know how she’s feeling.” He hoped it looked effortless to Rachel, but it was difficult not to be a lot more up in her business.
“Sometimes it’s fucking alarming how much I care about Wren’s well-being.” Gregori frowned.
Vic got that so clearly it was nearly painful.
He huffed a breath as he tipped several more loaves of fresh bread into a basket before he hung it on a rung at the bottom of the stairs with the others. Someone would collect them and replace them with empties for him to fill up again.
Gregori finally sighed. “You like to fix things. You can’t fix this, Vitya. You can’t fix her. She’s messed up. Who wouldn’t be in her place? She has darkness you will never breach. That’s the price with a woman like Rachel. She’s not easy. She’s messy. And comes with baggage.”
Vic didn’t argue. Mainly because it was true.
Gregori’s delivery didn’t indicate derision or judgment, he wasted little time on small talk, especially with those he trusted.
Gregori continued, “I’ve found in my life though, that messy is better. Difficult women are sexy. Not dramatic women.” He made a face. His ex-wife was one of those. “Some people are worth the work, yes?”
As he turned dough out onto the worktable and began to knead, he thought about that.
“I know that there’s never been anything in my life that approaches how this feels. I want to make her tea and tuck her in. I also want to go to war to protect her. The sex too.” He looked up at his cousin with a smirk that was impossible to repress.
It was beyond anything he could begin to put into words. He was so connected to her, especially during sex. It made the entire experience so much more intense. She fit him. So perfectly it left him a little raw.
Exciting and terrifying and bone-deep satisfying.
“Sometimes it feels like I can’t ever get enough of her. As if there will never be a moment in my life when I don’t always carry this burn for her in my belly.”
Gregori smiled a little as he nodded in agreement.
“Have you told her this?”
Vic scoffed. “She’s skittish. She needs a slow seduction and then after she’s in love with me, I can tell her.”
“Having been the skittish one in the relationship,” Gregori said of his own life, “there will come a time when she retreats and you have to storm her gates.”
That made him laugh. “Is that what Wren did?”
“She flew to New York and got in my face and was so delicious and delightful I lost all the will to stop running. She wouldn’t let me.” His smile returned a moment. “She demanded I love her. How could I resist that?”
As his cousin had changed only for the better in the years since he and Wren had gotten together, it was easy to only like her more. Respect her more for the work it must take to be in a relationship with his cousin.
Like Rachel, Gregori had his own kind of darkness. His own pattern of jagged edges. Clearly Vic needed to pay attention to how Wren dealt with it. He could undoubtedly learn a few things.
And she was an artist like Rachel. Wren had branched out from comics and manga to a short animated film that had made the indie film festival circuit. He’d need to make it a point to invite the two of them to more social things with them.
His aunt Klara, Gregori’s mother, popped down to grab the basket of fresh bread. She paused to leave a plate of pastries for them, kissing Gregori on the forehead as she left.
“She’s happier being here full-time,” Gregori said. He’d wanted his parents to retire and let him take care of them but his father was a proud man and he liked working. And after Danil had died, she’d filled in a lot until she’d come back full-time. Klara had been at Vic’s side, bringing his parents back from the brink, keeping the bakery successful.
“I couldn’t have kept this place going without her. And she and my mom are a mini mafia running this place. It’s good. They still travel. But once you and Wren marry they’re going to start in on you about kids,” Vic told him.
“Start? She’s past the hinting point. She asked me if I was going to freeze my sperm because they were getting old and while I was at it, to tell Wren to get a move on before her eggs went bad. I keep telling Wren if she just marries me at least part of that will stop. Of course then she’d be on us about the wedding details and the like.”
“I could totally see my mom doing that to Rachel.” He wondered if he should warn her and decided to let it roll. It wasn’t like he could tell his mother what to do—or that anyone could. She saw Rachel and Maybe as her family already so of course she’d meddle and love as well as defend.
And if anyone ever needed family in that sense, it was the Dolan sisters.
“Rachel can handle it.”
Vic was pretty sure she could too.
And the truth was, he couldn’t change what he came with. A big, nosy family with lots of opinions and no hesitance about sharing them. He wouldn’t even if he could.
“I wish you luck, Vitya. I need to get moving. I’m working on a new piece and I should get back to it. Just thinking about Wren and I’m feeling creative again. I’m taking all this pastry to present to my woman as tribute,” Gregori told him as he stood and stretched.
“I’ll see you later this week. Tell Wren I said hello.”
Vic grabbed a few of the baskets he’d refilled with bread and headed upstairs to switch them out and charm his mother a little.
And to his surprise and delight, Rachel walked in right as he got upstairs. He gave his mother a look and then grabbed Rachel’s hand, tugging her close and around the counter.
She smelled like salt water and a little bit of wood smoke and always, of jasmine. He pulled the knitted cap from her head to expose the raven’s-wing black of her hair. Tenderness crashed over him at the sight of the mittens she wore. He’d left them on her bed a few days earlier, wanting her to be warm.
“This is a nice thing. I wasn’t expecting you,” he told her before he brushed a kiss over her mouth.
“I had some time so I thought perhaps—” She broke off on a blush.
She’d come to him. Triumph made him kiss her once more before drawing her into a hug.
“Before they try to steal you away, come with me and I’ll feed you fresh bread and pour you a cup of tea,” he said into her ear.
“That’s an offer I’d be a fool to refuse.”
Her blush made him feel protective but naturally, his mother wanted a hug from Rachel so she bustled him aside and got one.
“You look pretty today. I like you in this color. You need more color. Eat something.” Irena swatted Rachel’s butt with her towel, startling Rachel into a laugh he’d never heard from her before.
He’d heard it from his sister plenty, though. A totally carefree moment with her mom.
His mother flicked her gaze to his quickly and he saw the emotion there, knew that she’d understood how casual maternal affection had become a scarce thing for Rachel.
“I have bread waiting for me to pull from the ovens,” he told Rachel as he grasped her hand once more and brought her through the prep kitchen and then around and down the back stairs.
“I came to watch you bake so that works out,” she said.
“Well,” he said, taking care to slowly roll his sleeves up, “I think I can accommodate your dirty fantasies.”
“Awesome.”
Because he could, he got close enough to steal a kiss. “Sit. There’s tea in the pot already.” He pointed at the stool his cousin had just been sitting on before he turned to pull several trays of dinner rolls from the ovens and slide them into racks.
“I’ve never been down here.” Rachel hopped up onto the stool and poured them each a mug of tea. “I think I gained three pounds just from how it smells.”
Rachel was pretty sure it was a sin to be all hot and bothered at the sight of him, forearms all muscly as he moved around his domain. He was just so self-assured, graceful in his way.
It occurred to her with a flash of heat that he often got that same look when they were having sex. Focused, enjoying what he was doing, confident that he was kicking ass at it.
“In that fridge to your left there’s some milk and preserves left over from the vatrushkas Evie made earlier,” he told her before grabbing three wire baskets full of pretty sandwich rolls and dashing them upstairs.
He wasn’t gone long and when he returned he joined her at the little counter where she’d placed his tea.
“I’m pleased to see you,” he said, pushing some brioche toward her. “Evie also made that this morning.”
“Your sister’s got some skills.” Rachel smeared some of the preserves on the fresh bread. She was quiet a moment before continuing. “I’m pleased
too. I mean, I’m happy to see you. I was thinking about you and then I found myself in downtown before I needed to be at the shop and then I found my way here.”
She snorted, shaking her head. “I’m a liar. I mean, I was thinking of you and I’m happy to see you. But I came here on purpose.”
He grinned her way. “Good.”
A buzz sounded and his aunt called down a thank-you. At Rachel’s questioning look, he said, “She thanked me for the bread.” In a quieter voice he said, “She and my mom are getting older. I was starting to worry about one of them falling when they came down to get the bread so I added hooks at the entrance to the upstairs kitchen. I just cart the baskets up, hang them on the hooks and it’s one less thing to be concerned over.”
So his mother wouldn’t feel like she was a burden or that she couldn’t do as much as she used to.
“You’re a very good son.”
“Mom’s had some dizzy spells but you can’t tell her anything. She comes up with one kooky health fad after the next. Usually it’s harmless. Once I did have to go down to some shop where this dude was selling bullshit cures. It’s bad enough that he was taking advantage of older people. But then he took advantage of my mother. We had a word. She pouted for a while, but she came around in the end. Just like with the baskets. Anyway, I can always use the exercise. It’s not a big deal.” He tried to look stern but she saw through him. Remembered the man who brought her mittens because he wanted her to stay warm.
That it wasn’t a big deal to him was what drew her closer every time. Each time she thought about not giving in to her desire to see or talk to him she would remember what made him so irresistible to start with.
He was a nosy, bossy control freak but he took care of the people he loved. He zipped up jackets and made sure his mom didn’t have to go up and down stairs too often.
He was a good man. A kind man who volunteered and flattered old ladies and babies. Worth more than all the carbs in the world. “I’m so turned on right now if your parents weren’t upstairs I’d do some seriously filthy stuff with you.”
