Page 48 of Guarded Rebellion

I took her statement to heart.

During the return drive to the college campus, I didn’t talk at all. We reverted to the moody, pregnant silence that we stuck with in the early days of this arrangement.

It frayed my nerves for me to refrain from even glancing her way, to cut off the ties of wanting to give her my attention.

But it was far past time I recalled the hardest truths I’d ever faced.

She’s not yours.

It’s just a job.

Nothing more.

No other falsehoods had ever made my chest hurt like those did, but that would be my private burden to bear.

Alone.

20

EVA

Lev pulled away from me more and more each day since he drove me home to check in with my uncle. Aloof and barely speaking to me, he returned to the grumpy, untalkative asshole he was when this semester started.

Stuck in the apartment with him, day in and day out, the uncomfortable longing to be near him got to me. We were so close. Within reach. Always present. Yet, he kept himself at a distance. We didn’t talk—about anything. Not these developments about Irina being attacked, her friend being raped, or the fact that an Ilyin soldier had tried to force himself on me. Nor did we engage in a conversation about how we’d had sex on the couch.

That has to be it.

He had to be reacting with regret after he’d claimed my virginity.

Maybe Uncle Oleg had words with him after I couldn’t take it anymore.

Slumping in my seat in yet another lecture hall, I failed to focus on what the professor droned on about. All I could think of was how I’d struggled with the close proximity to Lev on that teeny loveseat in the sunroom last week. He’d been so close.His smell invaded my nose and messed up my senses. All his body heat invited me to snuggle against him and seek more of his touches than accidental bumps of my leg to his. I’d been squeezed in next to him so soon after his mastering my body the night before that I felt unprepared to resist him.

I left that room flustered, so overwhelmed with my inability to ignore him and how he turned me on.

Uncle Oleg wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t blind. The Baranov boss was very perceptive and he had to have noticed how terribly I fought not to show my awareness of the hulking, sexy guard at my side.

Even if he told Lev to stay away and keep his hands off, Lev wouldn’t have given anything away. He wouldn’t have told my uncle that he’d had sex with me, that it was already too late to be warned away from me. Lev wasn’t so dumb as to admit that he—that we—had done the unthinkable and forbidden.

Is that why he’s keeping his distance?

Maybe he was bashing himself and hating that he’d done something he knew he shouldn’t have. If Uncle Oleg scolded him, that would definitely put him in a crappy mood like this.

Or did it mean so little?

I scorned how my confidence took a deep dive like this. Self-esteem issues never inflicted me. I was sheltered, yes, but I knew who I was. I was strong in my sense of self, and even though I was so clearly inexperienced as a virgin, I was certain that Lev had enjoyed taking me the way he had. I witnessed how affected he was, how he’d been warring with keeping his control. He’d snapped—because of me. He’d caved, as I had, due to how badly he’d wanted me.

He can’t regret it…

I didn’t, and I worried about the chance that he might.

Lev had fifteen years on me. He was a hard man who’d lived viciously. I didn’t want to imagine the number of women he’dhad before me because it was just an exhibit of proof that I couldn’t possibly measure up to them.

Even though he only spoke to me with grunts and one- or two-word commands as he acted like nothing but a hard-ass bodyguard, I detected that original resentment he’d harbored for me from day one of my college experience.

He had to view me with a filter. That I was still the younger, spoiled woman who was so greedy and trivial as to want to attend college. What bothered me more on that note was how I was coming to understand this really was pointless. I was still interested and excited about my class, but the idea that it would all be for nothing was a hell of a drag to tolerate.

What isthe point anymore?

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