The pleasure erupted from me with on final thrust. My hands dropped from her sides and she leaned forward, our naked skin pressed together from thigh to chin. My arms snaked around her, holding her tight.
14
Olivia
Akiss awoke me the next morning. Dimitri’s peck came on the forehead, not very fairytale-like, though neither was our marriage, so I guess it fit. A giggle erupted from my lips at my sleep addled mind’s ramblings.
“I have to deal with a situation this morning,” he apologized before adjusting his tie. “I’ll hurry back home once it’s done, maybe bring some lunch.”
Thoughtful as he was being, enjoyable as our nascent relationship had become, I bristled at the thought of staying in my exile, waiting for his return to the safehouse.
“Couldn’t we go out?” I asked. “If we went to lunch in Key West, nobody would even know who we are.”
“We don’t know who tried to take a shot at you, that’d be too dangerous,” he argued but then held his hands up. “You asked me to get rid of the security team. They’ve backed away. I have them stationed at hotel on Marathon, but until I’ve dealt with the person behind the attack, it’s too dangerous to risk.”
A sensible response. That it came from my husband, the man I’d only referred to as the Russian Thug until a week ago no longer surprised me. That it wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear rankled me, but I didn’t object.
“I could really go for a Cuban Sandwich,” I muttered before snuggling back under the covers.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.
His footsteps left the room. The door closed behind him. The front door to the safehouse opened and shut, then the engine of his SUV came to life, muffled but still audible in the early morning silence.
My hand moved across the sheets to his side of the bed. It didn’t hold his warmth, but I found myself rolling over to the middle of the bed. His pillow smelled like his hair, whatever woodsy shampoo he used. Sleep took me again, but not for long.
An unexpected and unwanted beeping woke me for the second time that morning. My sleepy mind didn’t recognize it at first but it was my phone. Well, not exactly.
Before leaving me at the safehouse that first day, Dimitri had given me a sat phone. Encrypted with no location services broadcast, he’d had my cell phone number ported to it. Not even Verizon knew my location, even if they were monitoring the call.
The screen displayed Celeste’s number. We hadn’t spoken since the incident on the street. Sleepy as I still was after last night’s exhaustive activity, I almost let the thing ring. No, that was unfair to the girl. I did want to try to become better friends with her.
“Morning, Celeste,” I answered, trying to banish the sleep from my voice.
“Are… Are you okay?” Celeste replied, punctuated with frantic breaths.
“Are you?” I shot back
Her tone mainlined a gallon of espresso straight to my veins. I rolled to the edge of the bed and planted my feet.
“I’m just worried.”
She sounded scared, just as she had after we’d survived the assassination attempt. That had been the only time I’d ever seen or heard her like that.
“My father’s been looking into the attack on us,” she continued, her breath steadying. “The shooter worked for Dimitri’s uncle, but—”
“The shooter? Dimitri’s uncle?” I interrupted, almost dropping the phone as the implication hit me. “He told me it was a dead end yesterday.”
“Dead because he killed the shooter, but that was after the man confessed to my father,” Celeste explained. She’d gotten control of her worry by now. “Did your new husband not tell you that?”
He hadn’t told me anything except it was a dead end. Was he not used to sharing and kept it to himself? Did he have another reason to hide the truth? As close as we’d gotten, as happy as I was becoming as our sham marriage turned into something real, I wanted to think the former.
“Oh, no,” Celeste gasped, “maybe what my father’s learned is really true.”
“What has your father learned?” I demanded. A pit opened in my stomach. I knew whatever she was about to share, I wouldn’t want to hear, but needed to. My life might have depended on it.
“Everyone thinks that Dimitri and his uncle hate each other,” Celeste’s tone was babbling, talking too quickly, “but my father has a source. He says it’s all a ruse. They were in on the hit together.”
The world around me spun at the revelation. It made perfect sense to my skeptical side, even while the rest of me raged against the idea. She had to be mistaken. Dimitri cared about me. I was even starting to love him.
