AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Neither of them had left the house for the past couple of days. His captivity was mainly to ease her concern. To make her happy.
Luka didn’t have to wonder why she stayed inside. She didn’t think it would be fair to leave since she expected him to stay. He didn’t have to figure out what she was thinking or how she was feeling. Alina talked more than anyone he knew. From what she’d told him about how isolated she was, he realized she’d developed the habit of talking aloud to herself to feel less alone. He figured talking to him must be about the same for her, and he liked the sound of her voice.
He enjoyed knowing her, the inside her. With so many people, he’d had to guess, and he so often guessed wrong because he barely understood himself. It had turned out that he hadn’t known Willow at all, and Ivankov was unfathomable.
Giovanni had shaken him when he’d gotten married. Luka had thought of them as similar and couldn’t imagine doing the same.
He’d been relieved that his heated reaction from before hadn’t returned. He would have fled Alina’s presence early on if he’d been subjected to constant erections. His body reacting that way was ugly and wrong.
He tested himself each night with his fingers around her wrist, but while a continued mix of pain and tingling occurred, it had almost become soothing in its familiarity. He only touched her that way, and one other way, but he didn’t allow himself to think about the other. It shouldn’t have been something he enjoyed.
Alina talked them both to sleep that night, as she’d taken to doing. Her voice became a pleasant hum, even though she didn’t always talk about pleasant things. He wasn’t surprised as she reminisced about one of the first extended absences of a woman he might have made an exception for and killed himself if she hadn’t already been dead. Alina called her the one who had taken care of her over the years, but there had been no care.
“I thought she wouldn’t return at all, and I was out of food and crying.” Alina’s voice trailed off, and tension filled her wrist under his loose fingers. “I couldn’t stop crying even when she showed up. She hit me for it, telling me she’d give me something to cry about, and I didn’t even mind.” Her breath hitched in the darkness. “I must sound so pathetic to you.”
Luka had been relieved by Ivankov’s beatings in his first years with him, though for a different reason. The anxiety over when it would happen next had been worse than the pain itself. “No,” was all he said.
Her wrist relaxed within his grip, and a sudden rush of tingles outweighed any pain.
“The bruises on my face actually helped,” she murmured as her body continued to relax into sleep. “They were proof. Proof that she’d come.” Her breathing evened out, and no more words followed.
Luka ached to repeat his promise to return to her, but panic filled him at the thought. He didn’t know what Ivankov would do to him after such a long absence. He wondered if it would be better to rush back to him or take the time to visit Giovanni first. Giovanni thought he owed Luka and wanted to help him. Asking him to take care of Alina would be a much better option than dragging anyone else into killing a monster. He still hadn’t decided the best path when sleep claimed him.
Alina’s pained moan awakened him some time later, as it had the last two nights. Her wrist thrashed in his grip, and he released her. He blocked her thrashing leg, knowing how upset she’d be if she caused his wound to open again. Her movements shifted her to her back, which she never slept on, and like before, her entire body stiffened. Luka rose on the bed, careful not to hover over her. Her eyes were wide and vacant as they stared at the ceiling. His gaze moved to her chest. It barely moved, almost a full minute passing between breaths. He’d thought she’d stopped breathing altogether the first time he’d seen it.
He turned her to her side. When he’d done that the second night, the episode had been shorter. His fingers found the clammy edge of her hairline. He began to stroke her face there. He hadn’t known what to do for her the first time. The crazy thought that he wanted the pain of touching her one more time led to the solution. It never took long after his strokes began for her body to relax again in sleep.
His touch had never saved anyone before. That fact seemed to reduce the pain down to nothing during these brief moments. He liked doing it.
He’d expected her to react the morning after it had first happened, but she never said anything. Though her eyes were open during the episodes, he came to the realization that she wasn’t aware of what was happening.
As her breathing became regular, indicating a more normal type of sleep, he forced his hand away despite his desire to linger.
Alina talked about so much, but she’d never mentioned anything about her time with the Balakins. Luka suspected her night terrors were about that, but he’d never ask.
With how much of herself she gave, Luka wouldn’t ever demand more.
Chapter 18
Luka trailed Alina as she made her way to the diner. It felt odd to walk out in the open instead of trying to slink in the shadows.
Alina kept shooting glances at his stomach, as if the act of walking would bust his stitches. He didn’t have the words to reassure her, so he pretended not to see.
She froze at the corner before the glass windows of the diner, her hands rubbing along her jeans as if they were sweaty.
“I haven’t told them my name,” she admitted. She ducked her head, as if keeping it from them was something to be ashamed of. “I mean, it’s not like I think you’ll tell them, but I thought…” She blew out a breath as her feet carried her forward again. “Come on.”
The bell above the door jingled to announce their arrival. Luka hated being stared at, and shifted in place when the few diners present went silent.
The woman, Meg, he recognized from one of Alina’s drawings and from how Alina described her, turned back to the skillet. “Well, look what dragged itself in. I thought you skedaddled.”
Alina’s hands clutched at each other. “Sorry about that. Something came up.”
Meg frowned down at the skillet before plating what she’d made. She turned and put it in front of a wrinkled old man at the end of the counter. Her eyes pinned Luka. “He that something?”
Some of the men chuckled.
Alina’s face grew pale, and Luka stepped in front of her.
