Page 51 of Sergei
“So, it had nothing to do with the kiss?”
I couldn’t believe that I’d actually had the nerve to ask him that outright, but I did. The words were out there, and Sergei seemed as surprised by them as I was. He was considering his response when there was knock at the door. Looking almost relieved, he grabbed his pajama pants and said, “Hold that thought.”
17
SERGEI
Sergei
Itold myself I didn’t need her.
That I didn’t want her in my arms or feel her mouth on mine.
That I didn’t want her in my bed or to claim every inch of her.
But it seemed that she was determined to make a liar out of me, and it was fucking with my head. I’d been attracted to many women in my time but never had I ever been so utterly consumed by one. Lina invaded my thoughts, my dreams, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was at the brink of completely losing it after that kiss. It lit a fire in me that I feared would never go out.
And I wasn’t alone in this catastrophe in the making.
I saw the way she looked at me when I was checking her foot, and her eyes drifted over my bare chest. It had been a long time since I’d spent much time with a woman, but I knew what that look meant. I just didn’t know what to do about it.
Thankfully, a knock at the door gave me a moment to think it over.
Or so I’d hoped.
It was early, so I figured it was Nikolai stopping by to aggravate me once again. I was almost to the door when there was another knock. This time louder and more impatient. Annoyed by the rush, I looked through the peephole and groaned when I saw Viktor’s face staring back at me. He scowled as he ordered, “Open up!”
I swung the door open, and before I could berate him for being a fucking nuisance, he shoved past me and roared, “Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“About Alina?”
His chest was heaving, and anguish marked his face. My brother was hurting, and he was hurting because of me. He studied me for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. “You knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That she was dead!” He took a step toward me. “You sorry son of a bitch! She’s dead, and you knew it, and you didn’t have the fucking decency to tell me!”
“Viktor…”
“Don’t!” He jabbed me in the chest. “You knew what she meant to me. You knew she was one of the only people I ever gave a damn about back in that hell we called home, and you didn’t even pick up the phone to call me. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand completely!” He started pacing like a caged animal. “After everything we’ve been through, the hell we’ve been through, and you couldn’t pick up the goddamn phone!”
“You don’t know the whole story. It’s complicated, and…”
“She’s dead. What’s complicated about that!”
His words hit me hard, and all I could do was stand there with my fists balled at my sides, knowing that the truth was only going to hurt him more. This was on me, and there was nothing I could do to make it better.
It didn’t help matters that Viktor was getting angrier by the second. “She was one of the few people who really understood me. Do you get that? Everyone else back home just saw me as Dimitri’s middle son. They saw nothing else, but she did! She saw me. And I had to find out she was gone from a goddamn newspaper that had been tossed in the fucking trash!”
He slammed his fist into the wall as he barked, “I just happened to see her picture… If I hadn’t, I would’ve never known.”
His rage collided with grief, and he was on the verge of a breakdown when Lina whispered, “Viktor?”
