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Danil’s Mate(24)



No. There was nothing simple about them. Her eyes were bottomless and there was an ocean of secrets behind them.

A low, long string of Belarusian curses tumbled out of Danil’s mouth as he stared at her. Into her.

“You can say that again,” Dora said as she pushed her sweaty hair off her forehead, letting her arm collapse back to the bed in exhaustion. She was worn out, he could see that and her body was relaxed, but he watched in fascination as her mind came back to her. He could almost watch the reservations start filing back into her brain. She wasn’t someone who seemed skeptical or suspicious of sex in general. No. Those were feelings she was reserving for Danil himself. Well, he figured they would need to get it out in the open if he was going to prove himself to her. And one of the best ways to get it out in the open was to fight about it. If his brothers were any indication. So, even though she was lying there, her eyes lazily blinking, a little smile on her face, Danil readied himself for the inevitable.

Danil crossed the bed and laid his head on her soft stomach, staring up at her. His fingers came out to play with one of her nipples, almost absentmindedly. He was marveling at their rose gold color, their responsiveness to his touch. Marveling at this view of her. It was all breasts and her beautiful, angular chin. Her fringe of dark lashes that moved so subtly with the track of her eyes.

“I’ll bet you can tie a cherry stem in your mouth, huh?” Dora asked.

Danil raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never tried this.” He was still discombobulated enough that his practiced English wasn’t quite back in its full, flowing form yet.

“Really?” Dora waved a hand through the air like it didn’t matter. “Well, some people can, and trust me. A guy who can eat pussy like you can would certainly make quick work of a cherry stem.”

Danil’s eyes raised even further at her frank assessment of his skills, the vulgar phrasing tripping easily off her tongue. Another puzzle piece of who she was clicked neatly into place. He was pleased that so much had been revealed to him in such short time.

“It never occurred to you to ask for help,” he stated, almost more to himself than to her.

“Hmmm?” she asked, tracing a hand through his hair as she started to glance around his room. Taking in every detail, he was sure. He knew that not much got past those eyes. That quick brain of hers.

“When you went snooping at the testing site. Or around my parents’ house in the woods. You never thought ‘this might be too dangerous so I should ask someone to go with me’.”

Her eyes dropped to his again and he saw her studying him. Taking him in. Her lazy look from a moment ago was gone, replaced with a careful neutrality. “No,” she said slowly. If she was surprised that he knew she’d been snooping at his parents’ house, she didn’t show it.

“You work alone,” he said. He was fascinated by the slightest flash of pain behind her eyes when he said that.

So, it was slightly painful for her to work alone, even if she preferred it that way. Well, she was his samotna ptuška, after all.

“You have handled so much on your own that you think you can handle everything on your own,” he continued. “You don’t scare easily and when you do, you use it as motivation. You’re always one step ahead with both feet on the ground. Like a cat.”

She was quiet now, her eyes shuttering like a house boarded up for winter time.

“But that’s over now,” he said, already knowing very well that what he was about to say were fighting words. He welcomed it. It was better than this silent version of her. “Now, when you go to gather information, I go with you. If you insist on finding the danger, then you find it with me.”

Just as he’d predicted, she sat straight up, dislodging his head from her belly and batting his wandering fingers away from her breast. “That sounded suspiciously like an order.”

“I prefer calling it the truth.”

She scoffed from where she sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t use semantics on me, lawyer.”

He skated a hand up the landscape of her naked, glorious back. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of looking at that hypnotizing hourglass. She was just so curvy. “Maybe my English is not so good,” he said.

She turned, her eyebrow arched in disbelief. “Don’t give me that, Dan. I’ve heard you speak without an accent at all.”

“Fine,” he agreed, pleased that she had paid such close attention to him. “Then perhaps it is because I am Belarusian. But I don’t want a woman I am sleeping with to be putting herself in mortal danger. So, when you need to go scouting for whatever you are looking for, you will ask me and I’ll go with you.”