"It's not nothing. You could have been killed tonight, Andrei. You could have?—"
I cut her off with a kiss. She melts into it, her hands coming up to frame my face, and for a moment the world narrows to just this—her mouth on mine, her body pressed against me, the steady beat of her heart. When I pull back, she's breathing hard. "Get in the shower," she says. "I'll find something to clean that wound with."
I do as she says, stepping under the hot spray and letting it wash away the blood and grime and exhaustion. The water runs red at my feet, swirling down the drain and carrying away the evidence of tonight's violence. I close my eyes and let the heat work into my muscles, trying to release some of the tension that's been coiled in my body since Viktor's call.
The shower door opens and Liesl steps in with me. She has a washcloth in her hand and she starts cleaning the wound on my ribs with gentle, careful movements.
"You don't have to do this," I tell her absently, but I hardly notice the pain from her touching the wound. It's hard to think about anything other than how beautiful she looks, even tired, naked with water streaming over her skin.
"I know." She doesn't look up from her work. "I want to."
I watch her as she tends to me, this woman who should hate me, who should be terrified of me, who instead is standing in a shower and washing away the blood on my skin. The tendernessof it breaks something open in my chest that I've kept locked away for so long I forgot it was there—or maybe I've just never recognized it before at all.
When she's satisfied the wound is clean, she sets the washcloth aside and starts working on the rest of me—washing away the blood from my hands, my arms, my chest. Her touch is gentle but thorough, and there's nothing sexual about it. It's that same care she showed me that first night, when she helped patch me up, and I have that same feeling again—the feeling that no one has ever done this for me before. That I've never been taken care of.
I want to take care of her, too.
"Your turn," I say when she's done. I reach for her, taking in the pleasure of having her naked in front of me, vulnerable and beautiful and mine.
I wash her the way she washed me, and more. I work shampoo through her hair, massage her scalp, rinsing away the dust and fear of the night. I run my hands over her shoulders, her back, her arms, feeling the tension slowly release under my touch. When I'm done, I just hold her under the spray, her back against my chest, my arms wrapped around her waist.
"Thank you," she whispers.
"For what?" I nudge my nose against her ear, breathing in the smell of her warm skin and soap.
"For keeping me safe. For—" She stops, and I can feel her struggling with the words. "For being here."
I press my face into her wet hair. "Always," I murmur. "I'll always keep you safe,ptitsa."
We stay like that until the water starts to run cold, and then I turn it off and wrap her in a towel. We dry off in silence, both of us too exhausted for words, and then I lead her back to the bedroom. I help her into an oversized t-shirt and she climbs into the bed, pulling the blanket up to her chin.
I should leave. Go back to the main room and continue planning, preparing for whatever comes next. But I can't make myself walk away from her. Not tonight. Not after how close I came to losing her.
I climb into the bed beside her and pull her against me. She curls into my chest, her head tucked under my chin, her hand resting over my heart. The bed is small and the room is cold and everything about this situation is wrong, but having her in my arms feels more right than anything else in my life.
"Andrei," she says after a long moment of silence.
"Yes?"
"The meeting with my father. You promised we'd try."
There it is. The thing I've been dreading since I agreed to it in the car. The promise I made when I was high on adrenaline and desperate to keep her—the promise I'm not sure I can keep without getting us both killed.
"I remember," I say carefully.
She pulls back slightly to look at me. "Do you still mean it? Or were you just saying what I needed to hear?"
The question stings. I have a history of telling her what she wants to hear and then doing what I think is best. She has every reason not to trust my word, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
"I meant it," I tell her firmly. "We'll arrange the meeting. You'll have your chance to talk to him."
"But?" She can hear the hesitation in my voice.
"But I'm not walking into another ambush, Liesl. He knew exactly where you were, exactly when to hit. That kind of coordination doesn't happen by accident." I cup her face in my hand, forcing her to hold my gaze. "So yes, we'll have the meeting. But it will be on my terms. And I'll have men positioned where he can't see them, ready to move if anything goes wrong."
She's quiet for a moment. "You don't trust him."
"I don't trust anyone." I stroke my thumb across her cheekbone. "Except you. And even that terrifies me."
