Page 60 of Devil's Vows
She shakes her head, her breathing becoming more haggard. She’s free-falling into uncontrollable crying, bordering on a panic attack. That look in her eyes, thefear…my stomach seems to churn with gravel, ripping at my insides as the urge to protect her from whatever has her in this tailspin boils up in me. I pull her close, cupping her head with my hand and hugging her to my chest.
“Shhh….shhh…” I try to soothe her, but she doesn’t calm down. It’s as if she can’t contain the dread of what could happen to the girls now that the idea has spilled out. I see her now, the level of devotion she will have for my daughters and their care, that she’d probably die protecting them if ever such a situation?—
I can’t think of it.
She leans into me, clutching my shirt, shaking with tremors.
“I’ve got you,moya ptichka. I’m here, just come back to me,” I murmur, needing to ground her in the present with words, with my body.
It’s as if I gave her permission to let go, because her legs cave, and I have her. It hits me that this is about so much more than the girls going missing, that something was wrong earlier today already, that something could have triggered her. Something that has been building up over the past few days of being in a strange place.
Without hesitating, I lift her up and carry her out of my room to hers, murmuring comfort all the way, and she pushes her face into my shoulder, breathing in gasps, fisting my collar. The gesture is so trusting, I want to hold her even closer and never let her go.
As I stride into the room, I consider lowering her to the bed, but the way she curls into me, her hand gripping my neck, signals she isn’t ready to let go. I walk over to the wingback and ease into it, keeping her on my lap.
She really is a light, feathery thing. My little bird, made of many fragile bones, but soft in all the right places, warm despite the cold she’s feeling. I hug her close, swaddling her with my arms as I did Irisha and Katya when they were finally able to come home.
Someone hurt this beautiful woman. Someone who is going to pay. I push down on the anger that has started to simmer in my gut. Instead, I focus on calming her, brushing my lips along her hairline, murmuring sweet nothings to her, how it will all be okay, the girls are safe—sheis safe.
After what feels like an eternity, the sobbing slows, the tremors cease, and we just sit there, a man and a woman, clinging to each other, anchored in a moment that’s quietly making a tectonic shift in our relationship.
We have both lived through horrors. I know mine, but something triggered hers tonight, and deep in my gut, I know it has something to do with her past, which she probably projected onto the girls and their future. I need to know more. I need to know everything.
In time, she will open up to me. Not through force, like I’d wield on an enemy, but through trust. Through caring. Through mutual respect and consideration of the past we can’t erase. I’m here for her and she’ll know this.
Eventually, her grip on my neck softens, and she brushes her hand along my jaw to my cheek as her head drops slightly so our eyes can meet.
I could kiss her right now, so easily, but I’ve never held a woman in my arms when she was this vulnerable. With this vulnerability comes trust, and I’d do anything to be worthy of it for her. She’s just staring at me, as if she’s lost something in my eyes and is trying to find it. Permission? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Who knows. I want to be her safe space, and with her finally relaxed in my arms, I crave a deeper understanding of what triggered her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, not wanting to push, but tempted to find out things about her without using Yuri’s network.
She shudders and presses her nose to my neck in a gesture that’s so sweet, it breaks me a little.
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she whispers against me.
“It’s okay. You can fill in the gaps as they come up,” I whisper back, my lips running along her ear and sending a little shudder through her…and a little shudder through me.
I’m actually holding her like this—a pure fantasy I’d never allowed myself to indulge in.
Her hand shifts to my shirt and travels, gentle, exploring, dipping a fingertip slipping between two buttons. It’s unexpected and sensual, and where I’ve been able to ward off my arousal, I feel myself hardening against the warm curve of her hip where it’s pressed to my groin.
“Gabriella…” I murmur, not sure this is what she wants, or needs.
When the rest of her hand slips in beneath my shirt, herfingertips searching then stalling when she brushes over the two bullet scars on my chest, my grip on her thigh tightens. I don’t talk about what happened, because I might have been shot and nearly died, but the man who pulled the trigger is dead, and it haunts me.
She shifts a bit, and I suppress a groan as her body rubs against my hardening cock, her fingertips still circling the scars on my chest she mapped out in her mind the first time she saw them. For all I’m getting aroused, Gabriella seems totally unaware of the effect she has on me, but her lips are right there, plump and pink and ready for the tasting.
“Did this hurt?” she asks softly.
Her question cuts me off midway to her lips.
Did it? The bullets were physical, and should have hurt, but everything that went with it was worse. So much worse. “Probably. I was too focused on what I had to do to survive to take stock of how they felt.”
She bites her bottom lip as her hand stills over my heart. When she glances at me, tears are pooling in her eyes.
“I always wonder how it feels,” she says, “because it all really started when they shot them, point blank, and I saw their bodies fall. That was the moment it hit me that my life was never going to be the same again.”
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