Eventually, the water reached her neck, and she leapt up and toward the next cresting wall of water. Suddenly strong arms pulled her back. Air whooshed from her lungs as she was pressed into a massive hard body.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” an angry voice growled a second before she was hauled back, away from deeper water.
“Let go.” She thrashed, but he held fast to her as he carried her to the shore.
When he released her, she stumbled back on the wet sand, her feet sliding in the coarse grains. She glared at him, and he glared back. He was soaked down to his bones, just like her, and his shirt clung to his upper body. His chest rose and fell as he breathed hard. He must have sprinted down the stairs to reach her as quickly as he had.
“Deny it,” she yelled.
“Deny what?” he shot back.
“You’re just here to babysit me. I’m just some pathetic creature that Royce asked you to look after.”
“No, kiska, that is not the truth.” He stepped closer and she stepped away until they were almost circling each other.
“I trusted you, Dimitri. I know I shouldn’t have. You’re a stranger. But I just wanted to feel safe, and you . . .” She was torn between shouting and crying. “You lied to me.”
“I never lied, Elena. Never. But you are right, I didn’t tell you everything.”
“That’s the same thing!” she gasped. He came at her quickly, giving her no chance to evade him this time as he caught her waist and held kept her from retreating. Rather than be frightened, she was something else…something that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Before she could understand what was happening, she was reaching up to grab his neck and pulling his face down to hers. He seemed to understand what she was wanted the second their lips connected. His mouth was slanted over hers in a raw, silencing kiss. She went rigid in his hold, more startled at the fact that she’d begun this, than from fear. When he only kissed her and didn’t try anything else, that fear that held her still as marble began to fade. She pushed against his chest, not to make it stop but because her hands were trapped, and she had the desperate urge to touch him just to feel like a woman with healthy desires . . .
As quickly as he had swept her against him, he released her and tore himself away, putting his back to her. He raked his hands through his hair, muttering to himself in Russian. She caught a few words she understood: stupid, idiot, mistake . . .
Elena’s eyes filled with tears. It was her first kiss since Vadym, and she had just started to enjoy it and Dimitri thought it was a mistake.
Because he doesn’t want to be here—he doesn’t want to babysit me.
She’d never been one to feel self-pity, but in that moment, she felt truly wretched. Dimitri would never put up with someone damaged like her. All of her fears, her panic, which shut her down again and again—no man would want to deal with that. He would want the perfect woman, free of scars and issues.
“You’re wrong,” Dimitri said.
For a brief moment, she thought she’d spoken her fears aloud. “What?”
“I’m not here to babysit you, and you are not some pathetic creature.” He faced her again, and she held her breath. “Royce did not ask me to do anything. I asked him. I’m here by my own choice. It was my idea, not his.”
His words didn’t make sense. “Wait . . . Just wait.” She needed to understand. Maybe it was a language barrier issue. “What do you mean, you asked him?”
Dimitri was silent a moment before he said, “I know what happened in Moscow—with Vadym Andreikiv. I know all of it, Elena.”
His words echoed in her head, and suddenly the world was spinning and everything tunneled into darkness.
When Elena came to her senses, she was no longer on the beach. She was on her bed back in the house. Her wet clothes were gone, and a large T-shirt covered her body. A Sherpa blanket was cocooned around her, keeping her warm.
My clothes . . .
Dimitri had undressed her, had seen her body. She felt violated for all of a few seconds before she realized the necessity of him getting her out of her wet clothes. She could have gotten sick otherwise. She burrowed deeper into the blankets, and her nose brushed against the sleeve of the shirt she wore. Dimitri’s smell was there in the fabric, that hint of him that was too enticing. She was wearing one of his shirts. That should have freaked her out, made her feel like he was possessive, which Kenzie had said he was, but wearing his shirt right in that moment? She felt . . . safe.
How messed up was that? God, she’d definitely have to cover that in her next therapy session.
Elena didn’t want to think about what had happened on the beach, at least not about what she’d learned. What he’d said still made her stomach churn. He knew about Vadym, but he couldn’t know everything. She hadn’t told anyone everything. Her mind replayed the kiss, how she’d been the one to reach for him, to start something and how he’d met her equally in that moment, but hadn’t pushed for more. It was…unexpected, and again, she felt that same strange safety knowing he hadn’t demanded more like some men might have.
She moved on the bed and heard a crinkle of paper near her shoulder. She shifted on the sheets and found a note like the one he’d left earlier.
Elena,
Please come down when you have rested.
She lay back in bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long time. Her therapist had warned her this might happen, that she would feel overwhelmed at times and faint, but it felt like she was overwhelmed all the time. She’d been told to find someone here, someone who specifically treated sexual assault victims to help her cope with
