I took a few minutes reining in my temper before going upstairs to help her. In that time, she’d managed to get herself out of the tub and dry off, and she’d wheeled into my bedroom and put on the clothes I’d left out.
Her tits were like small pebbles, poking out against the soft fabric. Damn if I didn’t get hard again just looking at her like that. I’d never seen a woman in my clothes before. A few of the ones I sometimes went home with wanted to put on my shirt, but I always left before things could progress to that level.
Seeing London like this had me rethinking everything, which was a terrifying prospect.
“So your steaks are on the grill?” she said. Smiling. Everything made her smile, which only made me scowl even more.
“Ready to go down?” I barked.
She licked her lips, and her eyes flashed down to my crotch—just long enough that my cock twitched in response. “Sure.”
Hell. I might not make it through the day, let alone multiple days of this.
SOMEHOW WE GOT through dinner without either starting World War III or fucking on the dining room table. Don’t ask me how I avoided jumping her, because she spent as much time trying to figure out the symbolism and deeper meaning behind each tattoo she’d discovered on my body earlier as she did actually eating her meal. I wanted to shut her up so she’d stop fishing for answers I’d never even admitted to myself.
Easier said than done.
Finally, though, we were finished with our meal. London wheeled herself out to the living room, and I took a few minutes to clean up the kitchen in peace.
My reprieve didn’t last long.
“Dima?” she called out.
I shut off the faucet and pressed my eyes closed in a silent prayer for patience. “What?”
“Your phone.”
There was only one person who’d be calling me in the middle of an Oklahoma snow storm, and I couldn’t do a damned thing to help him right now. How the hell was I supposed to get to Hunter’s house when driving to the end of the street might take half an hour? I couldn’t be the baby whisperer now, no matter how much everyone wished I could.
I dried my hands, tossed the towel on the counter, and went out to answer the call, snatching the phone out of London’s hands. She shrugged and smiled at me. Again. Damn her.
Harper’s anguished screams assaulted my ear before I could even say anything, echoing from somewhere in the distance. Her sobs were loud enough that even London could hear her. She raised an eyebrow in question.
I glared and turned so I couldn’t see her. “I can’t get there,” I said. My hand clenched, itching to pat the little girl on her back and soothe her.
“I know,” Hunter said. His voice was raw, like he’d been up for hours. He probably looked like shit, too. “I told Tallie you couldn’t come, but she’s going insane. We both are. So I told her I’d call and ask anyway.”
“How long she cries this time?”
“It’s been going on for two hours. But she kept us up all night last night, and—”
“Why didn’t you call last night?” I cut in, going back into the kitchen to finish loading the dishwasher.
“Tallie wanted to, but I told her we needed to find a way to calm Harper down on our own. We can’t keep taking advantage of you like this. Besides, we’re heading out on the road again almost as soon as the Christmas break is over, so it’ll be all Tallie.”
“It’s not taking advantage.”
“Whatever.” He sighed. I’d never heard him sound so exhausted. “The point is, she hasn’t stopped for more than an hour here and twenty minutes there for almost twenty-four hours, and we’re both going insane. We don’t know what to do.”
“Grow beard and talk Russian,” I said.
“I’m being serious, Dima.”
So was I, but I doubted he wanted to hear that. Then I had an idea. “You hold Harper. Go rock in her chair and put on the speaker.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Serious.” I was very serious.
He waited for a pregnant pause, but then I heard Harper’s cries grow louder, until they rang out inside my head. “All right,” Hunter said. “I’ll try anything.”
“I’m on speaker?”
The sound crackled and clicked a few times. I assumed he was shifting the baby into his arms and trying to get the phone how he needed it. Then I heard everything more clearly. Especially Harper’s shaky sobs.
“Yeah. You’re on speaker.”
“Rock her,” I said to him in English. Then I switched to Russian. “I don’t remember my mama, little one, so you be sure you hold on tightly to yours. Mine left me and Papa when I was only a bit older than you. Ran off with another man to America. Said she wanted a better life. That’s what Papa told me, at least.”
To my surprise, Harper’s screams were already starting to fade. Maybe Hunter was figuring out the right way to hold her.
Or maybe it was my voice.
Either way, I took a seat at my dining room table and kept talking. I told her how I met Sergei when I was seven and he was ten, and how we became best friends despite the difference in age, mainly because I had an extra hockey stick that I’d let him play with. I told her about the winter, and how rocky the ice would be along the shore of Lake Baikal even though, out in the middle, it was a perfectly smooth sheet. So clear you could still see down through it. I told her about the summer I found out Papa had cancer. And when he died.
I told Harper all the things I couldn’t tell London.
And then I thought of London again, sitting in my living room and wearing my clothes and making sexy, smiling faces at me while she laughed, and I couldn’t stop myself from telling Harper all about her. The baby wouldn’t understand, after all.
“She drives me crazy, kukolka. It’s her favorite thing to do—make your Dima go insane. She asks me questions. About Sergei. About that night. But I can’t talk about those things. Not with anyone but you, because you don’t know you should be afraid of me. You don’t know what a bad man I am, deep down inside. You only see your funny Russian friend with the beard you can pull and the funny words. But she would see me for who I am if I told her what she wants to know.”
Harper whimpered a couple more times, but then she sighed. I could almost feel her head melting against my shoulder, the way it did when she finally gave up the fight and settled in.
“Is she relaxing?” I asked Hunter in English.
“Close to sleep,” he said quietly. “But she’s going to rip my hair out.”
“Should have beard for her.”
He grunted. “Don’t stop yet.”
“Not yet.” Then I switched back to Russian. “London scares me, little one. I know I’m a big, mean man. But she scares me.” Because, even though she drove me up the wall, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. More than that, I didn’t want to. We had sexual chemistry that was unbelievably good, and we both seemed to be sadistic and masochistic in equal measure. That might be the scariest part of all. “Promise me, when you grow up, you’ll find a good man. A nice man. One who’ll treat you like a princess, not one like me.”
Because I was a monster, not someone capable of treating anyone like a princess.
“She’s out,” Hunter said a moment later. “I think you did it.”
“Go rest,” I told him. “Tell Tallie she can call me on the road if Harper won’t sleep.”
“Yeah. Will do.” Sheets rustled, followed by the soft hum of Harper’s deep breaths. “Thanks, Dima,” Hunter said.
“Nothing to thank me for. Go sleep.”
I hung up the phone and got up to finish whatever I’d been doing before he’d called. But when I turned around, London’s chair was in my way, and she had the strangest look in her eye.
This couldn’t be good.
THAT PHONE CALL helped me see Dima in a new light. Granted, I hadn’t understood much of anything he’d said, but the words weren’t important; their meaning was what mattered.
&nbs
p; Whether he liked it or not, and regardless of the fact that he did his damnedest to hide it from the world, he had a soft side. He had a heart.
Of course, I knew he had a heart. He wouldn’t have put together that sled hockey game to raise money for our team if he didn’t. But there was a part of me that had been wondering how much of it was because he cared and how much was due to the guilt he felt over the accident all those years ago. Maybe he had it in his head that enough do-gooder activities would wipe away his part in Sergei’s disability. Ludicrous, if so.
Now I was leaning more toward him caring more than he liked to let on. Why else would he bother to spend all that time talking to a baby—over the phone, of all things—to soothe her? Last week, when he’d gotten the call while we were having coffee, he’d been ready to drop everything to rush to that little girl’s side, and now this.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind—Dmitri Nazarenko was a softie. He was a great big, bearded, tattooed, grumpy marshmallow. One that had been toasted over open flames, maybe, but still a marshmallow. And everyone knew toasted marshmallows were the softest on the inside.
And since I had figured out that much about him, I had no doubt he was going to fight even harder to keep me from reaching the ooey-gooey softness underneath his charred exterior.
Dima stood before me, arms crossed in a defensive posture. “Move,” he said.
“Why? Don’t want me to know you sat here and talked that baby to sleep?” I rolled my eyes. “Too late. I was sitting here through half that call. Maybe longer.”
“Shouldn’t eavesdrop.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous. In case you’ve forgotten, you were speaking in Russian.”
“How do I know you don’t speak Russian?”
“Because I’m telling you I don’t.” Although I might have to rectify that situation if I intended to spend more time around Dima. It wouldn’t be a bad idea.
He shook his head and shoved his way past me, carefully avoiding bumping into my chair before stalking over to the sink. He turned the faucet on even though he’d already finished the majority of the dishes and the sink might as well be empty. Running away again. He always did that. “Could be liar,” he muttered.
“Well, I could be, but I’m not. Unlike you.”
“I don’t lie.”
“Maybe you don’t, but you sure don’t face the truth.”
He spun around, hands wet, to face me. “What truth? What do you know about anything?”
“I know you’re living in the past. I know you won’t let yourself move on. That’s what I know.”
“You don’t know.” He turned again and tossed a coffee mug into the sink, letting the clatter fill the air between us. “Fucking woman, think you know everything. You know nothing.”
You know nothing, Jon Snow, I thought to myself and had to stifle a laugh. Now probably wasn’t the best time to laugh, and I doubted Dima would get the Game of Thrones reference.
Since Dima was studiously avoiding paying attention to me, I wheeled up behind him and reached over to trace a finger along the outline of the eagle spanning his back and shoulders. He flinched as soon as I made contact, but he didn’t pull away before I felt what I was sure would be there. A scar underneath the design, much like the scar beneath the husky tattooed on his neck. In fact, I was almost positive that the majority of his tattoos were strategically placed to hide scars. Over the course of the day, we’d touched enough for me to feel the uneven texture. The words on the back of his hand weren’t—it was too small to do any good for something like that—but I’d wager a guess that the rest were.
“Can’t keep hands to yourself?” he said, jerking away from me. He moved to the side and put a few things in the dishwasher. “Haven’t had enough yet?”
“I don’t want sex right now. I just want to touch you.” I’d never had so much sex in such a short amount of time before. Too much more and I’d be raw inside. A good kind of raw, but still. Something told me we both needed a break from it. That, and I knew he was using sex as a means of running away from my questions.
“Touching leads to fucking.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“If you want to touch me, it does.”
“Are those scars from the wreck?” I asked, moving the conversation along to keep him off his game.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
His head shot up, and he glared at me. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Wish I knew. But it does.”
He muttered something in Russian.
Yeah, I definitely needed to learn at least a few choice Russian phrases. I put that on my mental to-do list, immediately following poke Dima in the ribs and just before poke Dima in the feels. “So are they?” I asked. “From the wreck? When Sergei lost his leg?”
“Nosy woman. Constant questions.” He dried his hands and threw the towel on the counter before kicking the door of the dishwasher closed.
“I take that as a yes then.”
Instead of answering me, he picked me up by the waist, pressed my back against the doorframe, and kissed me like he meant business.
Which, apparently, he did. His hard dick pressed into my belly, pulsing with the same kind of electricity we’d had all day.
But he was running again. Trying to distract me. Using sex to avoid talking about whatever it was he thought he could hide from.
I couldn’t allow that to happen. Not again.
I pushed back on his shoulders, trying to get him to stop, but he shoved his tongue into my mouth and ran his hands under the shirt I was wearing, sliding them along my ribs.
“Stop,” I said, my voice muffled in his kiss.
“Want to fuck you.” He bit my jaw and nibbled a path down my neck.
“No.” I pushed his shoulders again. Even though I had more upper body strength than any woman I knew, I wasn’t a match for him. His muscles were like steel, not budging. “We’re not fucking now,” I said. “We’re talking.”
He ground his hips against mine. “Let my cock do the talking.” Then his mouth came back to mine for another kiss.
I bit his lower lip. Hard. Almost hard enough to draw blood.
He reared back his head and glared at me with the same intense heat as standing on the surface of the sun. He wiped the pad of a finger across his lip and looked down, like a hockey player who’d just been high-sticked and was trying to bleed for the refs. Then he met my eyes again.
“I said no,” I repeated.
“You didn’t say no earlier.”
“I didn’t. But I am now.”
Another stream of Russian expletives flew through his lips, but he set me back in my chair.
“I want to talk,” I said.
“I want to fuck.”
“Tough. I’m not fucking unless we talk first.”
“How much talk?”
I shrugged. “Until it’s enough.”
He paced through the kitchen, a caged animal searching for a way out. But he was stuck in this house with me for now, and I had no intention of letting him off easy.
Every few minutes, he looked over at me and dragged a hand through his hair, saying something completely out of my realm of understanding. Then he paced again.
“Tell me about that night,” I said when it looked like he was slowing down.
“None of your business.”
“You really think you can brush me off like that after all the times we’ve had sex today?”
“Just sex. Just fucking.”
“Not to me, it’s not.”
“What, you think you want me to be fucking boyfriend? Take you on dates? Buy you flowers?”
“I don’t need flowers. I just need you to let me in. Or maybe not that. Maybe I need you to let it out, even if it isn’t to me.”
“Let what out? Nothing to let out. Fucking crazy woman.”
“Oh, I’m crazy, am I? But you’re the one pacing and blowing a gasket because I asked you some sim
ple questions about your tattoos and scars.”
“You asked about the wreck.”
“I did. Because I think it’s all related. And I think you still blame yourself for everything that happened. And you can’t move on, even though Sergei has. You’re still living in that night when you made a bad decision, but the rest of the world has moved on without you, Dima.”
He stopped. Glared. Kept glaring so long it almost made me squirm. Maybe I’d pushed him too hard when he wasn’t ready for me to chip away at all the burned, crusty stuff surrounding his middle. That was one of my biggest problems growing up, when I’d poked at Gray. Couldn’t back off in time.
Without another word, Dima left the kitchen.
I followed him until he went down the steps to the front door—where I couldn’t follow—and then he left. Barefoot. Without a coat. In what had to be nearly a foot of snow.
I might have gone too far this time.
HUNTER ANSWERED THE door with a confused look on his face, rubbing his eyes like I’d just awakened him. Which I probably had. Then he really looked at me, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He poked his head out the door and looked around. “No car. How’d you get here?”
“Walked.”
He stood there gawking at me like I had three heads.
“It’s fucking cold as balls. Let me in.”
He stood back and allowed me inside. “Surely you knew it was cold before you left. You could’ve put something on.”
I made my way to the living room and grabbed the first throw blanket I saw. Good thing Tallie kept them all over the place, because I couldn’t stop my body from shivering. I wrapped it around my shoulders and wished I had another for my feet, but I was too cold to walk the several steps required to get to another one. “Only a few blocks. No big deal.” I plopped down on the couch.
“No big deal,” he repeated, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. He rolled his eyes and picked up another blanket, tossing it toward me. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re here and not at your house.”
I wrapped it around my feet a few times. “Had to get away from her.”
Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Page 9
