I could imagine it was the same with the Bratva. I could picture a small Nikolai as a child, his dark hair tousled, his blue eyes looking in horror as his father made him do unspeakable things. I could picture his innocence being stripped away, bit by bit, layer by layer until he’d been shaped and molded into the man who stood before me right now.
Beating the hell out of someone for the simple infraction of not seeing that I snuck away.
“It’s my fault. Not his. You don’t have to do this.” I kept my voice soft and low and reached up and cupped either side of his face. I could feel the scruff underneath my palms, and heard his breathing start to slow down as the seconds ticked by.
I didn’t dare look at the man he’d just attacked, but I could hear him moving, the groans and grunts as he pulled himself off the ground and stood. Without looking at him I said in a steady, even voice, “you need to go. You need to leave me and my husband alone.” Nikolai growled and I clicked my tongue. “Hey, you just focus on me. He’s no one, okay? He’s no one.”
Thankfully he didn’t question, didn’t speak. He kept his movement slow and steady, probably realizing Nikolai was right there at the precipice of breaking down once more, using violence to get his point across because that’s all he knew, all he’d ever been taught.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” I smoothed my fingers over his cheekbones and added a little pressure to bring his head down toward me so I could brush my lips across his.
He had splatters of blood on his neck and on the white collar of his button down shirt. But I didn’t care. Talking him down from the proverbial ledge was my only focus.
Despite knowing I should’ve been terrified of him, fearful he’d use that power against me, I knew he wouldn’t hurt a hair on my head.
“Take me home,” I whispered again, and he sighed, as if he were releasing the pent-up aggression that kept him caged. I knew a man like Nikolai—the things he’d seen and done through his whole life—couldn’t be “healed”.
And I didn’t want to change him.
I just didn’t want the darkness to swallow him whole.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Amara
I could feel the wild energy pouring off of Nikolai. Although I thought I’d talked him down back at Yama, it wasn’t until we’d gotten back to the apartment that I realized he was an expert at masking what he felt
Maybe he had calmed down slightly, enough to not kill that man, which was where he’d been headed. So there was that. But now I was alone with him. Right now I felt like the sacrificial lamb and he was the lion, pacing his cage as he waited to take me down.
As soon as we’d stepped through the door and it clicked shut behind us, Nikolai had made his way to the bar. Sasha had seemed to sense his volatile temper also, as she eyed him, then padded over to me to bump her nose against my leg before making her way down the hall and out of sight.
I stood there for a moment just staring at him, seeing how tense his shoulders were, the flex of his muscles underneath his jacket.
I hadn’t said anything, worried that stopping him from taking out his aggression on that soldier hadn’t been the right move. But what was I supposed to do? Stand there and watch him kill somebody with his fists?
I couldn’t live with that, and was surprised I was handling everything that happened tonight as it was. So I’d silently excuse myself to the bedroom, knowing we both probably needed to be alone.
And that’s where I was now, standing in front of the window and staring out at the city that was now my home. My reality. For a split second I felt a twinge of homesickness. It wasn’t for my father, not really for my mother in the sense that I missed her loving embraces and her soft words
But I missed my sister and brother, when I did see him. I missed the routine I had, all the things that were familiar to me. Small items that I’d taken had helped me feel slightly more at ease, but everything had changed in such a short amount of time that it was hard to grasp my footing.
I felt like I was on a slab of ice running but not making any headway, not putting any distance between me and the life that I’d had.
With a sigh of defeat, or maybe of acceptance that I had no other choice but to grab the proverbial horns and hang on, I reached behind for the zipper of the dress. I struggled for a few seconds, but then I felt a heavy presence behind me, body heat spearing into the skin that was exposed. It was my turn to tense, not sure how Nikolai would react, not sure what he would do.
Would he finally show me his true side? Would he be just like my father and take out his aggression on me with fists and cruel words?
And even though in my heart I didn't feel like he was like that, would never harm me, I was braced for it, knowing I could fight all I wanted but he was bigger, stronger. I closed my eyes when I felt him gently brush my hand away from the zipper, his fingertips sliding along the dip in the back of my gown.
A moment later he was pulling the zipper down, the sound of the teeth unhooking seeming overly loud in the quiet room. I felt his knuckles graze the length of my spine as he kept pulling it down.
“You’re trembling, kukolka.”
When the zipper was undone I didn’t move. The straps hung loosely over my shoulders, and I pressed my hand to the center of my chest to keep the dress on my body.
“Are you afraid of me?” I felt like his voice was deceptively calm given the violent energy surrounding him. I didn’t speak right away, just continued to stare out at Desolation, feeling the gentle brush of his finger up and down the length of my spine.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I finally said. “But I am afraid of the power and violence you have at your fingertips, how you can destroy lives as easily as taking a breath.”
I felt like it had been beaten into me since I was old enough to walk that the men in my life held life and death in their hands.
Nikolai was no different, but even in the short amount of time we’d been together he never hurt me, never so much as said a cruel word or gave me a hard look.
“I’d never hurt you.” His voice was still soft… but sharp like the edge of a blade. “I’d never raise my hand at you in anger.”
Up and down. Up and down. His touch on the center of my back was slow. Thorough.
I turned and faced him, his hand sliding from my body to rest on my hip. I stared into his eyes, his pupils spreading out and eating up the blue, looking as dark as the night upon us, as dark as what swirled around him.
He was trying so hard to stay in control, the adrenaline still pumping through his veins from what had happened tonight. I could see it, sense it. Feel it.
“You know,” he said in an even tone as he dipped his gaze down to my mouth.
I wet my lips, his intense stare having my entire body tingle. Nikolai was like an exposed electrical wire, and getting too close to him had the hairs on my arms standing on end.
It had danger flashing in me, like big bold letters, my mind telling me not to touch, not to get too close because I would get hurt.
Yet here I was, wanting that pain… but only by him.
“The only reason I didn’t kill Yuri for not watching you properly was because I didn’t want you to see me kill another man.”