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The words made Luka’s momentum still. Alina had talked about her life before. As a silent doll when her parents were alive, locked in their estate for her own protection. Lonely in a small house in the woods, too scared to leave and be discovered. The only thing she didn’t talk about was the way he had found her, beaten and hurt and naked. After that she had stayed in the safe house. She’d been secure there, but again she’d been too scared to leave. And now she was locked away in an estate again. She’d come full circle. Nothing had changed for her at all.
Antonio was wrong. Luka knew how it sounded when Alina cried. The bedroom in front of him was silent. It was late. Almost around the time that her nightmares visited.
She’d left the light on, and it spilled out from under the door.
Luka’s feet moved into the light, and his hand reached for the knob. He closed the door quickly behind him, his eyes finding her where she sat on the edge of the bed, not yet asleep. She had the soft blanket he’d first covered her with wrapped around her. He’d packed it with her art supplies because she used it the most.
A soft exhale escaped her as she scrambled to her feet. “You’re back.” The smile she flashed him wasn’t the one he’d been craving but the one filled with nerves. “You’re back,” she repeated, as if she was convincing herself.
Luka crossed to her, almost bumping into the chair. It was out of place, pressed against the dresser instead of near the window. The confusion of his spatial awareness was barely a blip. He was much too intent on lifting his hand to brush along the edge of her hairline. She leaned into it, adding to the skittering along his skin that no longer felt exactly like pain.
Her eyes skimmed across his face. “I missed you. So much that I painted you today.”
The idea of it was like a siren song for him. He glanced toward the corner of the room she’d been using for her art. Like she’d said, his likeness filled one of her canvases. The tingles rushing through him were immediate, chased by heat. Luka wanted to ask her to finish it right then. He wanted to sit where she could look at him and enjoy the way his scalp danced under her scrutiny. To let himself get hard and aching, because it was safe to feel that way around her.
A sudden movement of air drew his gaze to where her blanket had dropped to the floor. His eyes skimmed up, finding her legs, pale and bare, completely bare, even when he reached her thighs, and his gaze jumped higher all at once.
Alina’s face was paler than usual. Her hands shifted as if they would lift to cover her breasts, then pressed into her sides instead. “This is harder than I imagined. It’s silly. I’ve been naked around you before.”
She’d been naked the first time he’d seen her. Then again, when he’d been so thankful she’d still been alive at the diner. Luka had been aware of it, but more as a vague acknowledgment. Her pale skin had made her seem vulnerable, and he’d given her his shirt both times.
He’d even bathed her once, the soap between them so it wasn’t his hands roaming over her under the shower spray. He’d been a little worried, but his body hadn’t turned treacherous. Alina had been suffering, and the part of him he hated had stayed calm and limp even though he had looked at her. He’d needed to look in order to take care of her.
Luka was too scared to look at her now, not when the tingling and heat and ache were already spreading. His hand flew away from her face as if it had been burned; all he wanted to do was touch her.
“Oh,” Alina breathed out. The sound reminded him of the way she’d gasped when she’d been on Giovanni’s bed. It didn’t help at all. She looked down, toward his pelvis. “Maybe you really do want me.”
“Alina.” Luka had to swallow around the roughness in his voice. His mouth remained dry when he watched a slight tremor rush through her shoulders.
“I like the way you say my name,” Alina admitted. Her cheeks didn’t look as pale. The most delicate of pinks spread across them. “I like you, Luka. No, it’s not like. I love you.” Her hands lifted toward him.
Luka should have felt panicked, but all he could feel was the comforting warmth of her words flowing over him.
Her hands clutched each other before they could connect, and she pulled them back to her chest, where her breasts were, so soft and delicate-looking. Her arms pressed into the rounded flesh, and her nipples were a rosier color than her cheeks.
He forced his gaze back to her hands.
“I love you, Luka.”
She was saying it again. He wanted to tell her to stop, that the rioting inside his chest was too painful to hear it again, but he also wanted her to never stop.
“Because I love you, I want to touch you. I know that scares you, but I can’t help it. You’re right not to trust me. If I let go, just a little, I’ll grab you even though I know it hurts.” The tense smile had fallen away. Alina looked like she might cry the way Antonio had said.
Luka wasn’t certain what he could say to make things better. He couldn’t tell her it would be fine. It wouldn’t. She would touch him, and in a way he wanted her to, but the pain would stab him inside, and he’d pull away. He’d hurt her. He’d make her expression fall even more.
“I want to try to have sex. I want to feel you inside me. After you leave, the memory of it will remain. It’ll stay with me, more than the other, at least that’s what I hope. I’ll know I have a part of you that no one else has ever had, and that will have to be enough, even though I want—” She stopped herself from saying what she wanted.
He hated that she didn’t feel like she could say it.
Her hands loosened enough to wave him back. “Move a little that way. I have something I want to try.”
He couldn’t deny her request, not when it was so simple to do. He wanted to flee, and stepping to the side gave in to that urge.
Alina moved to the chair that had seemed out of place before. She perched on the edge, her hands moving to the dresser behind her. Handcuffs hung from the handle on the top drawer, odd, fuzzy ones. Alina moved quickly, locking first one wrist, then the other. Her arms were lifted above her, and she shivered.
“No,” Luka said, the word falling out of his lips naturally. Her expression looked nothing like it had in Giovanni’s room. She never talked about the time she spent with the Balakins, but they had to have restrained her at some point.
He wanted to kill them all over again. Or maybe himself—his erection hadn’t gone away.
