Page 31 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
“So who are these assholes at Axon?” he asked. “And what’s Axon, anyway? It sounds familiar.”
I blinked, feeling all the blood drain out of my face. How did he know about that? Oh crap, I had been so angry about being trapped in the storm with Dan that I let it slip that I thought he was the same as my former coworkers with his deranged cockiness. I cast around for a believable lie and finally just decided to stick close to the truth.
“It’s just a place I worked before I started at Marlowe’s agency,” I said. “It was full of obnoxious, sexist pigs who couldn’t keep their eyes or their hands to themselves.”
He put his hand on his heart, acting like he was wounded, while at the same time glancing down at my chest in my snug thermal underwear. Then he scowled.
“Looking is hard not to do,” he said. “You’re completely fucking gorgeous. But touching? Get me names so I can make a list and end them.”
He was joking. Of course he was joking. But I nearly slid off the hard wooden chair. He reached across the counter and held onto my shoulder, going from teasing to concerned in no time.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I had to get it together. There was no way he could know about Axon, or he might end up on their list directly below my name, because I suffered no delusions that I wasn’t on it by now. I patted my cheeks and shrugged off his concern.
“I didn’t eat breakfast,” I said. A good enough excuse for nearly fainting at a joke.
He jumped up and grabbed one of the protein bars, sticking the kettle back on the stove so he could top up my coffee.Unwrapping the chalky oatmeal monstrosity, he placed it in my hand, still looking concerned.
“Okay, you don’t need to baby me,” I said, tearing off a bite. “It’s your deal, and this time I’m beating you for sure.
We got back to playing with minimal conversation, joking back and forth as he continued to win almost every round. He was right, it was nicer getting along, and I was sick to death of being angry and worried about things I couldn’t control. Certainly no one from Axon was going to find me here in this cabin. But they weren’t the only danger.
Dan’s smiles were infectious, and so damn handsome. Every time I snuck a glance at him, he was looking at me, and that proprietary gleam in his eyes kept me warm. Well, until the fire started dying down and I began shivering again. Dan popped up at the first sight of me rubbing my arms to calm the goosebumps. He checked the wood box and frowned.
“There’s not much,” he said, then pulled back a curtain. Gusts of snow still swirled outside, the sky pure white. “If there’s a woodpile out there, I don’t know what my chances would be to find it.”
“You are not going out there,” I said authoritatively. “Absolutely not. You’ll get lost after ten steps.”
He grinned, probably thinking I cared. We decided to ration the wood and let the fire die down until nightfall when it would be really cold. “Come and sit with me by the stove while it’s still going. Don’t worry, it’s just for warmth.”
Since I already owed him an imaginary thousand dollars, I threw down the cards and sat beside him on the bench, as close as we could get it to the woodstove. He draped a couple of blankets over us and we huddled under them as he told me stories about his childhood in Moscow.
“My uncle has a bar on the outskirts of town and I was doing some work for him, unloading boxes because I had… well, don’t worry about what I did to get the punishment,” he said, refusing to tell me no matter how hard I poked him in his rock hard side. “It started snowing and he made me keep bringing the boxes in off the truck. It wasn’t even an hour before the snow was higher than the tires and he still wouldn’t let me quit.”
“What did you do?” I asked for the tenth time. “It had to be bad for such a hardcore punishment.”
“You don’t know hardcore punishments until you meet my parents or my uncles,” he said, then continued to tell me more stories about various snowstorms that were worse than this one.
“That has to be made up,” I said, to the outrageous claim he’d been stuck on the side of the road and his entire car was buried before anyone found him.
“No, you can ask Aleks when we get back. I was seventeen and everyone thought I was finished. And you know what? Since I wasn’t supposed to be driving in the storm that day, I got punished for that, too.”
The fire was down to embers and even under the blanket with Dan radiating heat a half a foot away, I began to shiver again. I may have loved winter sports but I was a southern California girl and hadn’t been out in the snow in a couple of years.
“Get closer,” he said, putting his arm around me and pulling me flush against him.
His big hand slid down my arm, then back up, trying to smooth away the goosebumps under my shirt. The feel of it sent a jolt of electricity through me and I skittered away, shaking him off as well as the blankets that covered both of us.
“You’ve been working up to this,” I accused. Trying to be nice, acting friendly, then pouncing. “You really did plan it.”
He rolled his eyes, removing one of the blankets and throwing it back over me. “Even I’m not powerful enough to control the weather, and I would have picked a much nicer place if I could, little girl.”
A shiver went through me that had nothing to do with the chill air in the cabin. He was powerful though, and not just physically, with his hard muscles and tall frame. He oozed confidence, even now as I glared at him. Confident he’d get his way, probably used to it from being rich as hell.
Well, not from me.
After an awkward silence where I grew steadily colder without the natural furnace of his body next to me, I finally bit back my pride and slid over to his side again.
