Page 8 of Kneel for Me

Ivan grabbed my wrists once I was near the top and pulled me in the rest of the way. I collapsed on the floor of the helicopter, my vision wavering. I could barely breathe, and my head was spinning. I was so fucking tired. Just… exhausted.

“He’s gone into hypothermia,” Mark said as he began to pull the ladder in while my eyelids fluttered closed. Ivan smacked my face hard, and when I managed to drag my eyes open again, I could swear he looked a bit panicked, but hell, I was probably hallucinating at that point. Wasn’t hallucination a symptom of hypothermia? Fuck if I knew.

“What the fuck do we do?” Ivan growled. “Adrian, come on. Stay with me,” he rasped, smacking my face again. But my eyes were closing, and I was too sleepy to peel them back open. Everything hurt, and I was so fucking cold.

“We get him home and get the doctor to see him immediately,” Mark told him. The helicopter began to move once the door was shut, and then, something was draped over me. I couldn’t tell what. “For now, we do our best to keep him alive.”

“Mark, I can’t fucking lose him,” Ivan growled, his hands smoothing whatever was draped over me down and tucking it beneath me. “Hecannotfucking die.”

I didn’t hear anything else after that. The world faded to nothing.

I was pretty sure I was dying.

7

Ivan

Unable to sit still for very long, I paced back and forth at the foot of Adrian’s bed as the doctor checked his vitals. He’d barely been lucid when Mark and I moved him from the helicopter and into the house. The most Adrian had done since he’d gotten in that helicopter wasbarelycome in and out of consciousness. His breathing remained shallow and labored the entire time, making me come fucking unhinged.

Because there was nothing I could fucking do to help him. I’d insisted on him having to come to Russia to “help” me figure out this problem for James, and I’d damn near gotten him killed.

One of Dr. Lebedev’s nurses stepped into the room. She ducked her head immediately upon seeing me, casting her eyes to the floor as she rushed over to the IV pole that’d been wheeled in a little while ago, hanging up a bag of saline. I had no doubt I looked on the verge of a fucking mental breakdown—and not one that involved tears.

This kind of breakdown would involvea lotof dead bodies.

“He’d dehydrated,” Dr. Lebedev spoke up as another nurse, this one a male, wheeled in some kind of machine I didn’t recognize. “That’s a fluid warmer,” he explained before I could open my mouth. “With Mr. Miller’s condition, we do not want to give him cold saline.” He hung his stethoscope around his neck and turned to give me his undivided attention. “We need to get him out of these clothes, then cover him with as many blankets as you can spare until his body temperature rises again.”

I moved forward without a word, shooting both nurses a cold look when they didn’t move out of my way fast enough. Adrian mumbled something I couldn’t even begin to make out with how slurred his speech was, his eyes barely opening to slits when I began to peel his jacket off, but then, he was out again, oblivious to what was going on around him.

Once his clothes were off and tossed to the floor, Dr. Lebedev helped me get him covered up. His toes, which we’d already checked, were already beginning to regain their right color, which helped me relax a bit.

He was going to pull through this. He fuckinghadto. I refused to entertain any other possibility.

“I heard something about more blankets,” Mark said, appearing in the doorway, his arms loaded down with comforters. Grateful for him taking initiative, I strode toward him as the nurses worked on hooking up Adrian up to a blood pressure monitor and a blood-oxygen sensor. “How is he?”

I took some of the comforters from him and strode back to the bed. “He’s going to pull through,” I told him since I refused to believe any-fucking-thing else. His survival was theonlyoption. “Shouldn’t lose any fingers or toes. But I imagine he’ll feel like shit for a few days. He’s going to need some downtime to recover.”

Mark began helping me drape the comforters over Adrian’s still body. “Should we let James know about his condition?”

I grunted. I didnotfeel like dealing with James. He was going to bepissedthat not only had we crashed but that I’d still almost gotten Adrian killed. He might even come get Adrian himself and take him home. And that wasn’t an option.

I finally had Adrian within my grasp. I just needed some time to break him. I couldn’t do that if James came for him. And if he did, I couldn’t realistically stop him without causing a fucking war neither of us needed, especially when we might have a common enemy. Because I had no fucking doubt that my pilot had been killed, which caused us to crash in the middle of fucking nowhere where our survival odds were slim to none.

“I will… eventually,” I said because I didn’t feel like dealing with it right then. I wanted Adrian conscious and lucid first so he could assure James himself that he was alive and on the mend. James and I had a good working relationship, but when it came to family—especially family like Adrian, who he’d known basically his entire life—he wouldn’t be all that amicable. Or pleasant.

I stood back, crossing my arms over my chest as I watched the female nurse insert a needle into Adrian’s inner elbow before connecting it to the saline bag. When they finally slipped from the room, Dr. Lebedev turned his attention back to me. “I would like to do an assessment on you?—”

“No,” I growled. “Quite frankly, doctor, I’m tired, and I just want to rest. I feel fine, and all of my body parts seem to be in working order. If something changes, I will call you.”

He sighed but nodded, knowing better than to argue with me. “Then please at least make sure you eat something and drink plenty of fluids.”

“Will do,” I assured him. I had no doubt in my mind Mark would push the issue anyway until I agreed to let him do whatever he wanted just so he’d leave me alone.

The doc inclined his head to me. “I will be back soon to check on Mr. Miller.” With that, he left the room, pulling the door somewhat closed to where just a crack remained.

“What do you want to eat?” Mark asked me. I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t feel like eating anything at the moment because honestly, all I wanted to do was sit beside Adrian’s bed and protect him while he couldn’t protect himself. But I also wanted to work on finding out why the fuck my jet had crashed. Mark held up a hand, shutting me up. I scowled at him. “Boss, youneedto eat.”

I knew he was going to fucking argue with me.

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