Page 38 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

Scents of the morning waft around me as I cross through the kitchen—coffee, bacon, various perfumes from multiple people having showered using different products. The house is awake. I acknowledge Eleanor as I move to the coffee machine, though my mind is elsewhere.

Armed with a coffee for Nicole, I enter the pool house, and my eyes automatically scan the room for her.

I begin at the bed and sweep across until I find her seated in the oversized chair, studying a new article of clothing with a critical eye.

Her smile of greeting is enough to put all other thoughts from my mind.

I go to her, hold out the coffee, and drop a kiss onto the top of her head. “Good morning, my med .”

Her small, sharp inhale brings with it a rush of satisfaction and fresh hunger. “Good morning.” She gazes up at me with a tentative expectation that she hides behind a blank expression, as if she is not affected. A pretty act to save face. I know she is aching, just as I am.

Over the past week, I have been trying to do small things to help acclimate her to my touch.

She reacts with surprise and delight every time, and it warms my cold soul to see her eager and willing for me.

I do not want her to think that my distance means more than what I told her it does—that I am trying to earn her forgiveness and deserve her trust. She will be mine, but she will come to me with no fear between us, and I will not have to hold back in any way.

She takes a sip, hiding a smile behind the rim of the mug. “This has oat milk?” she asks, eyes round. “You… know how I take my coffee?”

I know many more things than that. I know what time she rises in the morning.

I know she will not sleep in socks, but keeps a pair close to the bed so she can put them on before traversing the cold tile floor.

I know she chews her lower lip when she is concerned.

I know how she carefully detangles her curls with her fingers in the shower instead of using combs or brushes.

I know she gets along well with Eleanor and the others.

I know she does not like the television, but listens to the news.

I know she has a small scar on her thumb, just underneath the nail.

I know that when her heart races, her pulse is visible in a thrumming vein on the right side of her neck.

I know. I watch. I gather the details greedily and hold them close.

“Da . Though I do not understand why it is called a milk. Is it not extracted, more like a juice?”

“Oat juice? Yum,” she laughs and takes a sip. “Thank you for noticing and making it how I like.”

It seems a small thing to do, but her enjoyment of it warms me. I nod.

Her smile is private, but her eyes feel hot as she sweeps her golden gaze across my body. “So how many times a day do you work out?” she asks, eyeing a particularly veiny section of my forearm.

Unable to help myself, I flex a little, relishing in her grin widening. “As many times as I want,” I shrug, heading to the small refrigerator tucked under the kitchenette counter. I pull out a protein drink and begin shaking it vigorously. “I find it difficult to be idle.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she observes quietly. “I’m the same. ”

“And what will you do today?”

Her eyes cut to the bags and boxes piled haphazardly on the couch. “Well, I haven’t finished trying on all the new stuff I ordered because I was overwhelmed. I got a bit… carried away.” She cringes. “You’re sure it’s okay that I—”

“Of course,” I cut in. “I told you. Buy whatever pleases you—that card has no limit.”

My offer is genuine, though I initially harbored some irritation.

When I told Eleanor that I wanted Nicole to have some shoes, I thought she would continue to wear my pants and shirts.

I got over it very quickly when I saw her wearing something skin-tight and made of spandex that gave me a view of so much of her strong legs. Then I insisted she order more.

The laughter that spills from her mouth is startled. “Seriously? Of course you’re serious; you’re always serious. I mean, no limit at all? What if it pleases me to buy myself expensive jewelry?”

“I do not suspect that you wear much jewelry,” I observe calmly, recalling her bare neck the night of the wedding. Her ears are not pierced.

I wonder if she would wear a ring…

I have to clear my throat to continue, “But if you want it, buy it.”

When I turn to face her, shaking my drink, her expression is not alight with excitement as another woman’s might be at the idea of freedom with a credit card that is not their own. Nicole studies me with a pensive look. “Right. Mansion, garage full of cars, a closet stacked with bespoke suits...”

“Da,” I say carefully, trying to assess if her tone holds any reproach. James once confessed to me that the fact that our money is so dirty was a cause for concern to Eleanor. But judging from her shrug, it does not seem to bother Nicole very much.

“Right, okay. Well, thank you, but I think I’ve got enough stuff for now.

So, after I finish trying on all of this, I figure I might as well embrace the vacation mindset.

Eleanor and I are going to do a streaming workout class and use the sauna—so cool—then we’re going to have brunch, and she wanted help taste-testing new recipes. ”

“A hardship,” I tease.

She grins. “I know. I’m really taking one for the team on that,” she chuckles. I love the sound of her laughter. “And then I thought I’d explore that giant library a bit. How many of the books are real, do you think?”

“All of them,” I reply confidently.

That takes her aback. “Really? Even the ones at the very top? I figured at least some of them were faux to fill the space. Do you do much reading here?”

“Yes, I like to read.”

“Back when we were… um, back on the boat,” she corrects, dropping her eyes to her hands.

For a second, thick golden spirals of coarse hair fall into her face, obscuring it.

Then she looks back up, shaking them away, and her eyes blaze with memory and resolve.

Whenever her time on the boat comes up, it is always like this.

It is a breathtaking thing to witness her grapple with her lingering unpleasant emotions and intentionally push them away so she can move past the experience. So we can.

She honors me with that—it is a gift I plan to spend our lives repaying.

“There was only that one book in English,” she finishes.

I nod. “ Anna Karenina. It is the book that helped me learn English years ago.”

Surprisingly, she smiles—not in jest, or in an attempt to mock, but in true astonishment. “Really? That’s so impressive. And it explains the occasionally archaic vocabulary.”

“Did you finish it?”

“I got about halfway.”

“You did not like it,” I guess, based on her tone and the slight curl of her lip. “Many people do not; it is bleak, like a Russian winter. Still, it is one of my favorites.”

“ Anna Karenina is your favorite?” she repeats, brows shooting up. “It’s so…”

“Poignant? Thought-provoking? Classic?”

“Russian,” she finishes with a laugh.

“True enough,” I allow, feeling my own smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Though I would hope that simply being Russian is not a cause for dismissal.”

She hears the drop in my tone, and her body reacts instantly to the implied meaning of my words.

I watch as her nipples harden through the brightly colored spandex, and I upgrade my earlier approval of her new clothes.

There is a strip of flesh above her waist visible to me that is a few shades paler than the rest of her skin.

It makes me want to peel off all her coverings to find all her tan lines and trace them with my tongue.

“Definitely not,” she says, and her eyes drag down the length of my shirt, which suddenly feels too constricting. “I can think of several admirable Russian traits. Your people are… proud, resilient, and have a dry, dark sense of humor.”

“Hmm,” I muse, watching her chew on her bottom lip. “Then you must have a little Russian in you.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she cries, turning away and shaking her head at me.

I frown, taken aback by this abrupt change in tone. Perhaps I should not be surprised, since I often make errors in my speech. But when it is with James or Wesley, I never let it concern me very much. “What did I say?” I ask.

She must see that my confusion is genuine, because her smile shifts. “Sorry. I thought you were going to… Sorry. It’s just that that’s the beginning of a particularly bad sexual innuendo.”

“What is? ”

“It’s like, ‘Do you have a little Russian in you? No? Do you want some?’ or something like that.”

“I do not… oh,” I say as understanding dawns. Then, I blow out a breath through my nose in amusement. “I would never say this. My cock is not little.”

There is a choked, surprised sound, then she laughs. She flushes a charming shade of dark red, covers her eyes with her hands, and groans. “That one’s on me—I dug the hole and jumped right in.”

The sound of her laughter wraps around my chest and squeezes.

My eyes follow her as she crosses over to the couch and grabs one of the plastic-film bags with something black inside.

Giving it a tug, she pulls it apart easily and assesses the pants that unroll in her hands.

She glances up when she senses that I am watching.

“This was too generous, I think,” she mutters, voice low.

I was caught up memorizing the shape of her body and the curve of her ass when she bent over the couch, so it takes me a few seconds to respond. “It is common in my country for a man to show his respect by dressing his woman and giving her gifts.”

I expect a minor rebuff for my statement, but instead her eyes become hazy and her nipples harden against her bra once more. “Well, I suppose if it’s a custom from another culture, it would be poor form not to accept,” she says, swallowing.

Our eyes catch and we remain locked like that, staring, until she breaks first and adjusts her hold on the new pants in a way that presses her breasts together and emphasizes the deep line of her cleavage.

Vixen. She knows what she does.

I need to leave before the sexual tension becomes so heavy that I fold under it.

But I do not. Because I cannot. Instead, I search for more to say—to keep her engaged and focused on me. I love the feeling of her honey gaze .

“I am pleased that you are filling your days. I have been concerned that you might be bored here, or perhaps homesick,” I add, though I regret the words as I speak them. If she is, I do not wish to call attention to it, and if she is not, I do not wish to remind her that she could be.

“Can’t be homesick for a place you never called home,” she counters with a tight smile.

“And as for being bored, no. I admit I miss my phone and the mindless scroll occasionally, but I realized yesterday that this is the first time I’ve taken a vacation where I wasn’t being tugged back into work a hundred times—helping a coworker, answering a question about paperwork, stupid small things that add up and make you feel like you never got all the way away from it.

Not being reachable isn’t something I’ve ever let myself be—it’s almost peaceful.

“Of course, it would be more relaxing if I didn’t have the Russian mafia after me and I weren’t a missing person. Speaking of which, has there been any change to my case?”

“The police discovered your glasses at the marina, but the boat was lost to them as evidence. They are following the false trail Wesley created.”

She chews on her bottom lip. “How long will that hold them off? Long enough for me to, ya know, get back to my normal life?”

Something twists in my chest, making my breath expel all at once.

This happens every time she brings up leaving.

“I cannot say, but my promise remains unchanged. Once we crack the drive, we will discuss your return. The police are an unfortunate complication, but I am confident we can find a way to deal with them.”

She nods, then so do I.

“I am going to take a shower.”

“Okay. And Dimitri? Thank you. Again.”

“The clothing is nothing, Nicole. I do not require your gratitude.”

“No, I mean…” she blows out a breath. “Well, yeah, the clothes, but I meant for everything. I know I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be here at first, bu t Eleanor’s been explaining how it all works to me, and I know that what you’re doing is keeping me safe. Alive. So… thank you.”

I do not want her thanks for this; I would rather she understand that the alternative is unacceptable.

I stoop to pick up a towel from the ground to include in the laundry, then turn in time to see her eyes lingering on my ass, full of fire and longing. Heat slams through me, chasing out the uncertainty and listlessness. I have been giving her space. I no longer wish to.

“There is another way you can thank me, my med ,” I rasp. “A kiss.”

Her eyes widen. I watch her lips part as her eyes dart back and forth between mine.

It takes only three large strides to cross the room. Her head comes up as I prowl into her space, the top of her forehead level with my mouth. Still holding the pants, her arms are caught between us as I wrap mine all the way around her. She becomes loose in my grip.

How I crave her pliant response, her softness, her eager passion.

Moving slowly, I watch her watch me coming. Her eyes are locked on my lips, with a rawness and hunger to them. The way my woman looks at me… fuck. It unravels me.

Her own lips part in anticipation. Something soft hits my foot, and I realize she has dropped the pants she was holding so she can clutch at my sides.

I brush my lips against hers, reveling in the whispering exhale against my mouth.

I am gentler than I want to be, pressing a soft, brushing kiss to her open, willing, waiting mouth, and pulling away before either of us gets the chance to get lost in it.

Blood pounds in my ears, and my body strains for her. But when she does not reach for me to pull me back, I slide a hand into her hair and angle her head down so I can press my lips more firmly against her forehead before releasing her.

She is not quite ready. She must come to me. Because when I finally take her, I want it to feel like a victory for both of us.