Page 66 of Vitaly

My lips pull into an amused grin as I open my eyes. “Then why are you out here with me?”

Her mouth stays closed as she stares at me, hands clamped against my arms, legs a vice around my waist. Her lips beg to be kissed, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. Not yet.

Closing my eyes, I bring her head to my chest then fall back into the water, waiting a moment for the cold to say hello before kicking my feet off the lake floor and propelling us backward.

Mila gasps for air when we come up, throwing her hair out of her face as she leeches to me like a drowning animal. I turn us around and swim until my feet no longer touch, despite Mila’s obvious fear. It’s hard to say why. The desire to win her trust overrules the desire to coddle her mind. And I think it just occurs to me that she can take it. She can take fear, cold, andeven pain. I get the sense that she might even like it the same way that I do. That it makes her feel alive the same way it makes me.

I was wrong about her. Nine years ago, a week ago, and even earlier today, I was wrong about her.

She isn’t weak. Or stupid. Or slimy.

She’sloyal. Andstrong, stronger than any woman I’ve ever known. She fights for her dignity even when it’s stripped from her again and again and again. She trains for battles she isn’t invited to. She doesn’t leave not because she’s a fool, but because she refuses to run from a fight, even if I don’t understand what it is she’s fighting for.

She is awarrior.

Iam the fool.

“You’re fucking crazy.” She lets out a nervous laugh as we wade in the water, her chest heaving against mine. Her shoulders quiver with her shivers, and her lips, normally red, are a pale blue.

My teeth chatter along with hers as I stare at those lips, but still, I’m stopped from kissing them. Something she said earlier sticks in my mind and holds my attention.

For the people Nikita loves, he will burn the world to the ground.

That’s it. That’s what she wants. That’s what it is she’s fighting for.

Him.

Well, not him. His power.

“What?” she asks, reading my troubled expression.

I take a few moments to answer, unsure if the truth is the right thing to say, but knowing it needs to be said. The tension of Nikita wedges between us as an invisible force that’ll never go away unless she sets it free. We’ll always be enemies with it between us, no matter how good our bodies feel together.

But worst of all, I’m afraid her mind will never be free of his grasp, no matter what shackles come off.

“You’re never going to be one of the people he burns the world to the ground for.”

Her face softens with pitiful understanding, but she doesn’t look as hurt as I expect. She nods, her eyes holding a certainty in them that I get the feeling she just discovered for the first time. “I know.”

With that, her arms wrap around my neck, and she leans into me, pressing her blue-tinged lips to mine. I close my eyes and feel a warmth work its way through me, numbing me to the cold.

My hand lifts to her face as her tongue slides past my lips, kissing me with intensity I don’t deserve but accept nonetheless. Our bodies tremble in each other’s arms as we come undone, melding into one another in a way I didn’t know possible. Her lips shift a piece of my mind, changing everything I thought I once knew.

It’s with this kiss that I understand my father’s choice. I don’t know how he knew it would be like this, but he did. He saw things I never could, and I wish with aching regret that I could rewind time and do things differently. Wait the five years until she turned eighteen, watch her train in the gym. Watch her turn into the woman she is now. Everything could have been different, and yet still, it seems I’m getting it anyway. For now.

I want her. In a bed, in a lake, on the hood of the Jeep. I want her in every way she’ll take me. I don’t know how we’ll ever go back to the mansion. Don’t know how I’ll ever drive her back to my uncle when in this moment, she feels so irrevocably mine.

I deepen my kiss at that thought, needing her to know without words what’s in my head. We can never go back to the way it was before. She can never claim to be my enemy again.

She gasps as she pulls away, her blue lips even bluer. Her shaking seems to have intensified as well, a clear indicator that it’s time to get out of the water.

Without a word, I press my forehead to hers and allow myself just another few moments like this before I move her to my back and swim to shore.

We leave our clothes on the ground and rush inside the Jeep to blast the heat while we quake in each other’s arms in the backseat, warming each other with our rising body heat.

Mila says nothing the entire time, and I remain quiet as well, letting her stay in her head. For me, this is easy. Convenient even. For her … not as much. She has choices to make that go beyond what she feels inside or even what she wants.

We stay this way for a long time, letting the night pass with only one thing for certain…

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