Page 39 of Tarnished Reign

Then, like a robot coming online, he blinks twice, and awareness rushes into those beautiful irises.

He drops the gun by his side and shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Adriana. I could have killed you. What the hell are you playing at?” He jumps up from the bed as if it’s burning lava. He paces a few times and then grabs the gun. With a string of curses and mutterings in Russian, he shoves it into the bedside drawer.

The pacing resumes, and he rakes his hands through his hair.

“I almost pulled the fucking trigger.”

My breath is coming hard and fast, as is his own.

“I'm sorry!” I exclaim. “I had a waking dream, and they terrify me. I couldn’t move, and I was so scared.”

He turns to me, and for the first time I see true fury raging and coursing through his veins. His face is a twisted mask of anger. His lips form a hard line, and his nostrils are flared.

Real fear of this man snakes into my consciousness. He promised not to hurt me, but I’ve done something stupid, and he almost killed me. Now, I can see the visceral anger that lives just beneath his surface. Is it this rage that allows him to do the unspeakable things he’s talked about that seem so out of character? The things I thought were mere threats but perhaps were real?

“Don't ever sneak into my room or into my bed again.”

His words are heavy and harsh.

“I’m sorry.” It’s a mere whisper.

He carries on as if I haven’t said a word. “I'm trained to react to any sort of surprise like that with deadly force. When I'm asleep, it might take me a moment to fully become aware of what's going on, and I could have pulled that trigger. Your brains could have been all over my bed sheets.”

The image is alarming, and a wave of sickness washes over me.

The tears flow down my cheeks before I can even blink them away. I can't help it. I know I shouldn't cry because it’s pathetic and some might say manipulative. But the stress of the last few days has piled on top of me, and this is the last straw.

“I'm sorry, I … shit … I truly, really am. My head is just such a mess. I'm scared. I just feel so … so … so…”

I clamp my mouth shut.

“So what?” he demands.

“Alone.” I hang my head as the tears pour down my cheeks.

“So absolutely alone,” I admit. “I've never been this alone in my life, and trust me, Dimitri, I've been lonely. I have very few people in my life. I don't make friends easily. My family is tiny. When I left England and came here, I had to start all over again. For someone like me, that wasn't easy, and so far, I haven't managed to create a social circle at all. Then I found out that my stepmother has basically given me away. My father is probably too drunk to notice. He spends his days staring into the bottom of a glass of whiskey.”

A salty well of self-pity bursts like an overripe fruit inside me, and the tears flow endlessly. Maybe I should be tougher than this. Perhaps I should get a grip and not cry in front of this man who probably doesn't care. I've had enough, though. I've been kidnapped. Manhandled. Threatened. It's all too much.

He blows out a breath and runs his hands through his hair yet again, making it stand up in all directions. He's wearing a pair of loose, almost gauze like, light cotton pants. Nothing else.

I'm so distraught that I didn’t even notice he's shirtless. As my tears slowly subside, and the moon comes out from behind a cloud and illuminates the room in even brighter light, throwing shadows around, I really notice. The size of his muscles are highlighted in stark relief against the light behind him in the window. He looks like a cardboard cut-out of a living, breathing, action man.

He's deadly, and I snuck into his room looking for comfort. More fool me.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “Shit. Don’t cry, Adriana.”

He sits on the bed beside me, and those big arms come around me as he pulls my tear-stained face into his shoulder. A warm palm cups the back of my head, and he drops his chin onto the top of my hair as he shushes me and soothes me.

He's so solid. So warm. That size that seemed so intimidating when he was standing above me, pacing, now feels like shelter.

As my self-pitying crying jag comes to an end, my brain notices other things. My hand is rested against his pecs, and his chest is all huge slabs of muscle. There's a light smattering of hair covering his chest, which is intensely masculine. He smells delicious, of sleep and warm man mixed with something fresh and light. He almost smells as if he's been drenched in the ocean itself and then climbed straight back into bed. There’s an airiness about whatever aftershave he's wearing.

I've never been held by a man of his size before. He must be almost six and a half feet in height, and he's incredibly broad built. It makes me feel tiny. I'm tall for a girl, and I've never felt this way before. Never felt delicate and protected like this.

It's a heady feeling.

I like it.

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