Page 133 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

“I can just roll up the sleeve.”

“No.” I unlatch the first aid kit I borrowed from the front desk and frown at the sorry excuse for supplies inside. “Your shirt is dirty. It needs to be cleaned before you can put it on again. I don’t want your arm getting infected.”

Dima grumbles, but eventually takes off his shirt and sits down. Only when his midsection is shielded by the table do I dare to look over at him.

Fuck. I don’t know what I expected—it’s not like he was going to look different than he did this morning—but he’s a fucking marvel from the chest up. His body is hard and muscled. Tan skin pulled tight over shaped muscles. He’s more sculpture than man.

Except for the scars.

And there are a lot of them.

I noticed them before, after he saved me from Taras’s nightmare. Knife wounds, bullet wounds, burn marks.

He has led a dangerous life, the proof of which is imprinted all over his skin.

It’s why I lied to him. I couldn’t bear to let him see my own scars. To hear about my own past.

To know what I’ve done. What I’ve run from.

I sit in the chair next to him and turn on the lamp. It doesn’t look like the wound is deep. The blood on his arm is mostly drying, letting me know the wound has clotted on its own. And based on the size, it doesn’t look like a bullet could be lodged in his arm. If it was, I suspect he’d be in a lot more pain.

“I think it’s just a graze.”

“Lucky me,” he drawls, twisting his arm to get a better look.

“But really. A few inches over and it’d be your heart instead. You are lucky. You could have died.”

Our eyes meet for a moment and then we both turn away.

I don’t think either of us are ready to contemplate how we feel about that particular story line just yet.

I clean his arm with a warm washcloth from the bath room, disinfect it with alcohol wipes, and press a large bandage over the wound.

“Am I done, Doc?”

I close the first aid kit. “All taken care of. No surgery required.”

Now that we don’t have something to do—and Dima is still shirtless—the tension in the air is thick. So thick it’s making it difficult to breathe.

He moves to sit on the bed. I stay at the table, too nervous to get any closer to him.

“What now?” I ask finally, unable to stay quiet for any longer.

Dima shrugs. “Sleep.”

I raise a brow at him. “Could you sleep right now?”

He shakes his head. “Me neither. Too much adrenaline.”

“Yeah, fights always make me…” The word he means to say floats silently between us.Horny.“Antsy.”

Finally, the tension is too much, and I stand up, hands raised in surrender. “I’m sorry.”

Dima eyes me, his dark brows low and brooding. “Sorry for what?”

“For lying to you.”

He looks at me expectantly, waiting for more. But I don’t know what else to say. The same thought I had back at Ernestine’s runs through my head again.

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