Page 77 of Taken By the Convicts
“You’re not on your own. You have me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I plan to take you home, Melina. I don’t know how yet, but I’m not letting go of you.”
She backed away a few steps.
“Why are you being so stubborn?” he asked. “You know it’s dangerous here.”
“I’m not helpless, Ivan.”
No, she wasn’t, but that didn’t mean she was safe either.
She grabbed a small glass bottle and placed it in the middle of the desk. “I added several microscopic needles loaded with a knockout drug to the underside of that ring. It was the only way to keep a weapon on me that no one would notice and take away.”
“You could have knocked yourself out, made yourself truly vulnerable,” Ivan said, imagining all the horrors of what could happen to her. She was already vulnerable. He hated when she was out of his sight, or those of their unit. Too damn vulnerable.
“I dosed myself with the antidote first. It lasts three months at a time, so I’m covered for a while.”
His little bird was smart, but then again, he’d always known that.
“Come here, Melina.” When she hesitated, he reached out to her as far as he could with the shackles. “Please. I much prefer to apologize to you close up, where I can see you.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You and I aren’t good together.”
He felt like he’d fallen into a thousand-foot hole without any way out. No rope, no ladder, and she stood at the top of the hole, looking down at him, debating what to do. She was giving up on him, but there was no way he would walk away from her.
She brushed the hair back from his head. “Reece did this to you, didn’t he?”
“How did you know?”
“I watch him on the security monitor when he’s here. I see the anger in him. I didn’t mean to make him mad. Or you, but—”
“But you need your freedom as much as any of us, little bird. I didn’t see that earlier.”
When she cupped his cheek, he turned his head and kissed the inside of her palm despite how much it pulled his healing cheekbone. Her expression softened. It was worth the pain.
“I was wrong, but you were too. Coming here puts you at risk.”
“I know,” she conceded.
That surprised him. All the anger from the past few weeks disappeared. He understood her better now, but that didn’t mean the situation had changed.
She couldn’t stay in the med-center. But he wouldn’t force her to return to the bunker. He had worried about Jayce forcing her to have sex, and yet what Ivan had been doing to her was just as bad, if not worse.
“Do you feel anything for me, Melina, other than guilt over what happened to my squad on Markov 4?”
She didn’t answer.
He eased his head back and stared at the ceiling. “For the past week, I haven’t been able to sleep, eat, or think straight. I start shifts in the mine, and then before I realize it, my hands are bloody and torn up because I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. My mind is elsewhere, wondering where I went wrong, how I drove you away. And it always comes back to the same thing. I can’t risk you. You’re all I think about, Melina.”
He wished he could hold her to him and whisper in her ear, to share his dreams and fears with her. But she’d made her choice. Crusher and Jayce. Both were good men. They deserved her, and she deserved men who’d protect her. She’d even chosen Zev over him. Hell, Ivan couldn’t afford to be jealous. That would get all of them killed, him and Melina included. A unit. . . They could still be a unit, and ensuring that had to be his focus. In time, he’d come to accept that she would never be his.
“You think about me, Ivan?” she asked with a true softness to her eyes. Even as she leaned in toward him, he sensed a hesitancy to her, and it wasn’t the first time either. She feared something. Or someone.
He entwined their fingers. “Who’s Namir? You called me Namir once.”
She tried to pull away, but he didn’t let her escape his hold. Damn, he should have figured it out before. The scars. Namir was the bastard who’d cut her.
