Inked Athena (Litvinov Bratva Book 2)

“Samuil!”

Myles’s voice crackles and cuts out.

I tilt my phone towards the sky like that might make a difference in the shit reception. Unsurprisingly, it changes nothing.

“I was starting to think you’d gone full homesteader on me,” he says. “Long time, no chat.”

It’s only been a little over twenty-four hours since I texted him an update, which is approximately twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes longer than he can handle without having a meltdown.

“I’ve been occupied.” The word choice is deliberate. Clinical. A wall between what I’ve actually been doing—which is holding Nova through fever-dreams and wiping tears from her cheeks and pretending I don’t notice how she trembles when I change her bandages.

He snorts. “That usually means one of two things, and since you haven’t asked me to come clean up a crime scene, I’m guessing the two of you have been very busy.”

The suggestion in his voice is obvious, but I’m in no mood to tell him that Nova and I have shared a twin-sized bed for the last three days without me touching her.

I’m also in no mood to admit that the feeling of her curled into my body every night, safe and protected, has been more than enough.

The thought makes me grind my teeth. Since when has anything ever been “enough” for me?

“We can’t stay here,” I announce, getting straight to the point. “The doctor was back this morning and, according to him, Nova should be fit to be moved in a day or two.”

“We have safehouses all over the country. Name your coast of choice, and I can organize⁠—”

“No safehouses. Ilya knows about too many of them. I want—” I scan the rolling meadow in front of the cabin, the dense ring of trees. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say I want to stay here. “Forever” would be preferable. “… I want something more secure where Nova can recover.”

If Myles is curious why I’m worried about Nova’s recovery right now and not her plot with the Andropovs, he doesn’t mention it.

I’m glad. Because I don’t have an answer.

I’ve asked myself the same question a million times over the last three days and come up empty every single time. But it’s easy to ignore—because there’s a voice in my chest purring in contended delight.

She’s here. In my arms. She’s safe. She’s whole, more or less.

And as long as all that is true, everything else is fucking secondary.

“It would help if I knew where the fuck Ilya was.” Myles’s frustration bleeds through the phone.

“What about Leonid?”

“Sitting pretty in Chicago,” Myles informs me. “My intel suggests that he’s livid about Nova’s disappearance. This is one thing he can’t blame on you, since you were out of the country at the time.”

“Doesn’t mean he won’t try.” And if history is any indication, he will. Several times. “If anything comes up⁠—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know immediately. I know the drill. But until then, you need somewhere to shack up.” Myles whistles as he thinks.

Suddenly, the line goes quiet.

I check to make sure we’re still connected. “Myles?”

“Still here. Just thinking.”

“Think out loud.”

“I was thinking about Castle Moorbeath.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve spared a thought for the crumbling Scottish castle I forgot I own. I bought it on a drunken whim the year after my divorce from Katerina. “The place isn’t even inhabitable. It needs millions in renovations.”

“Which makes it the perfect cover. Parts of it are livable. That old caretaker you hired still lives up there, right? There must be some running water and lights.”

“Running water and lights,” I mutter sarcastically. “All you need to run an empire.”

“People have done it with less,” he replies, unbothered. “And no one but me knows about the place. It could work.”

“Except I have a shit ton of work to do. I need to be close in case Ilya, the Andropovs, or anyone else decides to make a move. I’d also like for Nova to have access to healthcare and to be in a position where I can see my enemies coming for miles and miles.”

“That’s what I like about working for you, Sam—your expectations are so reasonable.” He lets loose a long-suffering sigh. “Lucky for you, I’m exceptional at my job. What about The Sofia?”

“Now, there’s a fucking idea.”

Thanks to a deal I brokered for a fellow pakhan, Oleg Pavlov, last spring, I was handed a spare set of keys to his superyacht with an open invitation to use her whenever I needed. A floating fortress where I can keep Nova safe while maintaining my grip on my empire.

The thought of having her trapped on a boat with me for weeks makes something dark and hungry twist in my chest.

“I’m full of ‘em,” Myles brags. “I also know Oleg is in the Maldives for the next three weeks. The yacht is available and outfitted with enough bells and whistles to avoid detection from any radar or satellite. You’ll basically be sailing a luxury high rise with an invisibility cloak. It just comes down to whether you’re ready to be at sea for weeks. Maybe months.”

“Weeks,” I counter. “Just until I find somewhere more permanent to settle.”

“‘Permanent?’”

I ignore the question because, again, I don’t have an answer.

For most of my life, there’s been a firm five-, ten-, fifty-year plan. I woke up every day knowing where I wanted to be when I was old and gray and even more obscenely wealthy than I already am.

Now, for the first time in as long as I can remember, my future is blurred. It’s rippling around a Nova-sized blip, and I’m flying fucking blind.

The strange part is how it doesn’t feel strange at all.

“Nova will be ready to move in a couple days, but she has a ways to go before she’s recovered. I’m going to keep an eye on her until she’s healed, and then…”

I hoped the right answer would tumble out of my mouth, but the rest of the sentence disappears into the void like the rest of my plans.

“And then…?” Myles pushes.

And then… And then what? And then we get married? Then I knock her up as many times as she’ll let me, and we fill Castle Moorbeath with a dozen dark-haired little hellions scampering around barefoot? Children with my eyes and her smile?

Then I give up my Bratva and my empire and content myself with spending nights in the Scottish wild with my bride and our family?

Does that really sound so fucking bad?

I clear my throat. “Get the yacht ready. We’ll set sail in two days.”

Before he can point out my non-answer, I hang up and step back into the cool dark of the cabin.

As soon as I do, I realize I’m making plans to run away with a woman who hasn’t even spoken to me in days. Not unless you count whimpering nightmares and groans of pain as I change her bandages.

We need to talk—but I don’t know how to start.

No matter how many ways I turn things over and shift them around, I can’t make any goddamn sense of the fact that I watched Nova betray me on video, and yet… I’m here tending to her wounds. I’m stroking her sweat-soaked back through nightmares and combing tangles out of her hair and force-feeding her broth I made by hand.

I’m taking care of her, when, if she was anyone else, she’d already be dead.

A fact I’m sure she’s aware of, which is why she flinches when I open the bedroom door.

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but a t-shirt, gray sweatpants pooled on the floor around her ankles. She drops her gaze the moment she sees me and tucks her long locks behind her ears.

“I made broth.” My voice comes out rough, hungry in a way that has nothing to do with food.

“I’m not hungry.” Her forehead pinches at the center, mouth turned down at the corners.

“Eat anyway.”

She turns her head to the side, chin set. “No, thank you.”

I sigh and bend to grab the sweatpants to help her pull them on.

“No! Don’t—” She wheezes out a breath. “Leave them there. I’ll get them.”

“A week from now, when you can bend at the waist without crying, you mean? You’re going to want pants before then.”

“I’m not helpless. You don’t have to do—” She gestures with her good arm to me and the broth and the sweats. “—this. Any of it.”

I know I don’t. By all accounts, I shouldn’t be.

In another world, Nova would be wrapped in a trash bag in the back of a freezer somewhere until the police stopped looking for her.

Instead, I’m reasoning with her to eat soup and let me help her get dressed.

I fucking dare someone to make that make sense.

“Well, I don’t see anyone else lining up for the job, so I’m what you’ve got.”

“I never asked you to follow me here and play nurse.”

“No, you didn’t. I came to the middle of nowhere for the simple joy of your company,” I fire back.

Her brown eyes are on mine, stormy and stubborn. Then her chin wobbles and the fight drains out of her.

She drops her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. “I’m sorry. I’m— I wanted to take a bath. I thought I could make it, but I can’t— I couldn’t⁠—”

“No, you can’t,” I agree, already turning towards the bathroom. “But I can.”

Her lips twist together nervously. I’m sure she’s thinking what I’m thinking. Well, not exactly what I’m thinking—my thoughts have taken on a hot, gauzy quality all of a sudden.

But our minds are in the same general location: I’m going to see her naked.

I gave her a sponge bath when she was unconscious, cleaning her wounds through her clothes. But this is different. This is skin and vulnerability and trust she probably shouldn’t give me.

Her shoulders slump with resignation, and she nods. “Okay.”

“Great. While I run a bath, you can eat.” I slide the end table in front of her and place the broth there.

She stares at it and then at me until it becomes clear I’m not moving another step until she takes a bite. She rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the way her lashes flutter closed as she spoons the broth into her mouth.

She swallows and a soft moan slips out.

I turn and leave before she can see exactly what that little sound does to me.

Not that it matters much. Five minutes later, I carefully help her limp into the bathroom and pull the threadbare t-shirt she’s wearing over her head.

Fresh scrapes and bruises mark her skin, goosebumps rippling down her chest and arms.

But she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I swallow down the burning desire rising in me—now is absolutely not the time—and begin to peel away her bandages.

Her lacerations are already beginning to close, but the sight of the mottled skin blending into the silvery scars on her wrists bothers me more than it should.

I’ve seen men gutted and bleeding out at my feet. I’ve done the gutting more times than I can count.

But it can’t be Nova. I won’t let it be. Ever again.

Nova eyes the high sides of the tub and then glances back nervously at me. “I don’t think I can— It’s high.”

Without a word, I bend and lift her naked body into my arms. She’s too thin and shivering, but as I lower her into the warm water, she groans.

A dreamy smile slips across her face, and I’m in danger of crawling into the tub with her.

“Better?” I growl through clenched teeth.

She draws her fingers over the surface of the water. “Much.”

I try not to stare at the curve of her breasts as I ladle water over her back and shoulders. Nor when I lather my hands with bar soap and begin cleaning her in slow, gentle circles.

She lolls her head back against the lip of the tub. “God, that feels good.”

I say nothing, because fuck knows nothing I have to say will be appropriate for where she is, where we are, for what’s happened between us and what might still happen in the future.

Instead, I take my time washing her. Because I want to be careful. Because I don’t want to hurt her.

It has nothing to do with the ache pressing against the seam of my pants or the way she sighs as I soap and rinse her chest and her stomach.

When my hand slips deeper into the water, her legs part in what can only be an invitation.

I’m nowhere near strong enough to refuse.

Nova’s eyes stay closed as my hand curls over the center of her once and then again. When I circle a finger over her, her lips part on a sigh.

It’s the first time she’s looked relaxed in days, and I want to give her more. Everything.

I keep my gaze fixed on her face as I touch and stroke her beneath the water. Her hips begin rising to meet me. Her brows pinch together and small whimpers slip between her lips. All of it gives me some sick kind of pleasure I can’t name. It satisfies some deep part of me that I never knew existed.

It’s not the kind of gratification I find in work or sex—it’s a selfless kind of joy I never would’ve thought a soulless fucker like me could be capable of.

But when Nova stiffens and cries out, her body pulsing around the press of my fingers, I don’t have to keep a grip on the beast in my chest at all.

It’s already content watching her get off.

Somehow, taking care of her is enough.