Page 487 of Rage

I tried to take the fork from him, but he held it firmly.

“No. Let me. Just in case you decide to try and stab me with it,” Dimitry said with a chuckle.

“The knife would be a better option,” I said, touching the cold metal.

Dimitry laughed and fed me another mouthful, completely ignoring my hand on the knife. I had no idea what he was trying to do or prove. What was he thinking? This man was a fucking dark mystery, and I mentally kicked myself once again realizing how drawn to him I was.

As he fed me, I waged a mental battle with myself. I shouldn’t let him do this. It felt too intimate, too vulnerable. It scared me. Ivan had never done anything like this for me. Neither had I for him.

“Good girl,” Dimitry said with a triumphant, arrogant grin as he fed me the last one.

I flushed, avoiding his gaze as a rush of warmth jumped through me. Desperate for distraction, I picked up the dessert spoon and took a piece of Medovik. But instead of eating it, I brought it to his mouth.

I wanted to believe it was because I needed to be sure it wasn’t poisoned. He didn’t taste the cake, after all.

But another part of me knew that I just wanted to do it. I felt the need to … to what? To feed him? To take care of him?

Fuck! What the hell is wrong with me? What was the medical term? Stockholm syndrome? Yeah, I’m going to blame it on that!

Dimitry stared at me for a second before accepting the mouthful. Tingles swirled through me as he wrapped his lips around it and my mind instantly went haywire with filthy fantasies about having his mouth on me.

God, I’m married! I have to stop this.

But instead of that, I found myself offering him a second one. Electricity pricked my hair as he wrapped his fingers around my hand and guided it to my lips.

“Your turn, crazy kitten.”

I obeyed, moaning as I tasted the honey sweetness. It had been some time since I had asked our chef, Aleksei, to make it for me. Something vibrated inside my core as he guided my hand again and again, feeding me more of the cake.

“How did you know these are my favorites?” I asked again.

I expected him to give me the same answer. Dimitry accepted the next mouthful I offered to him, and given the way he looked at me, I could tell he was studying me.

“Some of your husband’s men work for me,” he said in the end.

I stopped with my hand in mid-air. Dimitry smiled and gently took the spoon from me, feeding me the last bites. While I accepted them, he continued to talk.

“Your chef, Aleksei. Your driver, Yuri. Your maid, Alina. Your bodyguard, Vasiliy. And more.”

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but no sound left my lips. Those people had worked for Ivan for years. He could have ordered them to kill me and Ivan anytime.

Why didn’t he?

“I prefer direct confrontations, Katherine,” he said, almost as if he had read my mind. “But I like to stay one step ahead and know everything about my enemies.”

“Do you have spies in my father’s house, too?”

I didn’t expect an honest answer, but I hoped I could gauge his reactions enough to guess the truth. Dimitry surprised me as he nodded.

“Tatyana, Yakov, Yuri and Marina. Romanov hadn’t been on my radar, so I rarely asked for information from them. That was a mistake, since if I did, I would have known you’re his daughter.”

The confession shocked me. Why was he honest? Assuming he actually was.

Is he going to kill me? After all, now that I know this … does he have more people in Papa’s house? He was clear about being more in Ivan’s, but …

“Katya,” he murmured, and the gentleness in his voice surprised me.

He trailed his fingers through my hair, the gesture covering me in goosebumps. He skimmed them along the line of my face, and as he cupped my cheek, I instinctively leaned into his touch.

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