Danil’s Mate(32)

But now her soft little fingers pressed into his shoulders and she was tugging him toward her? Asking him to act like a man would? With her? He searched her face. No. She could not know what she was asking of him. Even at 25 years old she was still a girl. Still innocent.

But a small movement had him dropping his eyes. Her sweet, pink little tongue peeked out of her mouth, wetting her bottom lip. His eyes fell there, burned the image into his brain. Added it to the 100-foot-high stack of things that he could never have.

Apparently it was one thing too many. Because something in him snapped. Quick as a cat, Anton was lifting AJ by her slim hips. He seated her up on the washing machine and stepped easily between her legs. He slammed his hands on either side of her, pressing himself close.

“You want me as man?” he asked of her, quiet and demanding.

“I - I,” she stuttered and they were close enough that he could feel her breath on his lips. Taste it. But he didn’t dare. Because her eyes were wide and racing back and forth between the two of his.

Shit. Fuck. God damn his greedy, fucked up self. He’d scared her.

He took a step back from her and it was like a pincushion to the heart when he saw how little she looked, sitting there. How delicate in her oversized sweater.

He took another step back, disgusted with himself.

“Anton,” she whispered, leaning forward and holding a hand out to him.

She would always reach out for him. He knew this. Because she was so kind. So sweet. She’d reach for him even after he’d been a brute and almost taken her on a washing machine in the back of his mother’s house. And that was why he could never let himself have her. He’d only spoil her sweetness. Like dirt on snow.

He took another step away from her and another. He didn’t hesitate at the door. Anton disappeared into the night. And left her trembling, vibrating, fighting for breath.





CHAPTER TEN





“Oh, Jesus,” Dora said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “How could I have missed this? I just never thought. Naturally occurring. CHRIST!”

Dora leaned forward with her head between her hands for a second. Her genuine shock, her sympathy for Anton, her deep remorse at having been so cavalier with the news, all of it was so palpable that she’d won back the hearts of everyone in the room.

“If I had known that Anton had been tortured, I never would have brought it up like that.”

“I know, ptuška. You are not cruel. Brash and forceful? Yes. But not cruel.”

When Dora looked up, into Danil’s eyes, she saw that he was smiling at her.

“Okay, will someone explain this to me?”

Danil took a deep breath, wondering where to start, but it was Maxim who spoke, surprising them all. Generally, he spoke about it the least of all of them excepting Anton.

“Belarusian bears are a legend over there. But one that most people believe is rooted in fact.” Maxim’s accent was stronger than Danil’s but he’d obviously spent more time with English than his other two brothers. “Navuka, what we thought was just a tech company, followed the signs, much like you did, to track us down. They approached us, wanting to use us for study. It didn’t take much to figure out that they wanted to figure out how to use us as weapons of war.”

Maxim’s eyes had taken on a distant blur as he looked into his family’s past. He was so sad. Sadder than Dora had ever seen him. “So, we moved. To a different part of Belarus. But they found us there. They found Anton. The two of us, we were throwing ball in a field behind our new house. Many men. A helicopter. I couldn’t get to him. They took him.”

Maxim broke off as Emin rose and put an arm around his shoulders. The two brothers leaned on each other in a way that spoke of infinite sadness, pain, and healing. Here together.

“You came here to heal,” Dora guessed, looking around at all the faces. “You came to America to leave it all behind.”

“Yes and no,” Danil said, holding her hand in his. “After we rescued Anton, the three of us,” he looked at his brothers, “we knew that we weren’t safe there anymore. We had to come someplace we could start fresh. Maybe even blend in.”

“We thought we were,” Emin said; his eyes had a cold fury burning behind them. “Yet you say that Navuka has come within fifty miles of us?”

Dora nodded, hating that she was the bearer of this news. “They’ve had a sort of criss-crossing pattern over the west coast, as far as I have been able to tell. They’ve abandoned place after place over the last five years. But in the last year they’ve had three in the Spokane area.”

“Not a coincidence,” Ilya said quietly, laying a hand over his wife’s hair for just a moment, as if he were drawing power from her.