That was how Natalie and Aleks had met?
"He'd been blessed with a new father, while Maksim and I had been cursed with a monster. I blamed Aleks for all that befell us. Maksim did as well to a lesser extent. Rationally, I knew Aleks wasn't at fault, but the anger wouldn't subside."
"Did he believe you two were okay?"
"Da. And much better off without our father. He couldn't have guessed what happened to us. He only learned of it a few years ago."
He must've felt so guilty. "Will you tell me what happened when Orloff arrived?"
Dmitri hesitated. "In the beginning . . . he was kind to me, doing nothing unusual. When he started to touch me, it was so different from the violence I'd known that I mistook his behavior for genuine affection. He told me all boys my age had a guardian to touch and kiss."
My fists clenched under the cover.
"Maksim sensed something was wrong. He asked me if Orloff hurt me, and I could honestly say he didn't because he never did anything that would cause me pain. Orloff would rather have died than to injure his 'perfect little boy.'" Dmitri gave a shudder of revulsion.
I choked back bile and imagined burning Orloff in a ring of tires.
"Yet then he began firing servants and isolating us even more. At the same time, he pushed me to do things I couldn't reconcile. When I refused, he threatened to kill Maksim. Finally, I saw what Orloff truly was. After that, I was so infuriated and disgusted, I grew detached, my mind and thoughts far from him. Sometimes I would dissociate for long periods."
"How did Maksim find out?"
"My brother sneaked into my room on Christmas Eve to set up toys, but I wasn't there. Maksim discovered me in Orloff's bed."
Oh, God. "That's when Orloff beat him? Because your brother tried to protect you?"
Dmitri nodded. "Orloff flayed his back open repeatedly and locked him in the cellar for months."
I would never have suspected Maksim's traumatic past. Today he was so confident and so at peace with himself, with Lucia. "How did you two escape him? Was Orloff arrested?"
"No, he . . . died. An elderly woman was put in charge of us, but it was Maksim who looked out for me, and I got better. Or so I thought, until my teens." He rubbed a hand down his face. "Whenever I felt sexual pleasure, I'd start to dissociate. I fought with everything in me, but I couldn't stop it. After sex, I couldn't remember what had happened. It ruined the act for me, and each time I drifted, slipping away grew easier."
Now I understood more about our wedding night. He'd feared dissociating with me. "Did you get help?"
His lips drew back from his teeth. "I tried everything. Any kind of therapy you can think of, I tried. For years. I learned what my issues were and how best to cope with them, but the dissociation continued to plague me. Every day I felt robbed; every day I was reminded of wrongs inflicted upon me. I could deal with my past, but my present was providing fresh misery."
I couldn't imagine having a wound that festered--for decades.
"Logically, I knew there would come a day when I would stay gone. I was just twenty-five when I concluded I could never sustain a relationship. Which meant Orloff had left his mark on me, was having the last laugh. That filled me with so much rage. For years, rage was the only emotion I felt. In a way, I was unwillingly being true to him, but I knew how to shuck off that monster's hold forever." He rubbed his scar.
Suicide. The culmination of all that terror and violence and pain.
"After Maksim intervened, he pressured me to go to a facility. A doctor suggested a pill to keep me anchored in reality, one with a notorious side effect. It killed my sex drive. I had a choice. Sane and celibate, or insane and sexual. My protocols of pills and no sex enabled me to concentrate on my work. I spent years like that."
"Before me, when was the last time you were with someone?"
"A while."
I could tell he hoped I would leave it at that. "How long is a while?"
"Years."
"How many years?"
He squared his shoulders. "I was completely celibate for eight."
I masked my astonished reaction. This explained so much of his behavior, starting with our first night together--the wonder in his expression as he'd explored my body in the penthouse bathroom. . . .
Not to mention his family's unnerving enthusiasm at his interest in me.
"I had my work for most of that time," he said, a defensive edge to his tone. "And I wasn't alone in my suffering; Maksim battled his own shadows. His back is covered with scars, and because of what he endured in that cellar, he couldn't stand to be touched."
No wonder Maksim's longest relationship lasted for an hour.
"My brother was as scarred on the outside as I was on the inside. I assumed both of us would be damaged forever, wanting nothing to do with Aleks, the two of us sharing our secret burdens."
"Then he met Lucia," I murmured. Dmitri had told me he'd hated the idea of her. "You felt abandoned again."
He sucked in a breath. "Yes."
I put my hand over his. "That's normal. I would've too. Anyone would have."
"I was so frustrated with him." Beneath my palm, Dmitri's hand clenched into a fist. "He and I used to believe in reason and logic above all else, but he swore he felt a connection to her that defied any rational explanation. My ruthless, cynical brother started talking about something that sounded a lot like fucking soul mates."
Just as Natalie, Lucia, and Jess had said.
"I derided Maksim for that, thinking he'd gone as crazy as I was. But when he risked his life for Lucia, I accepted he did truly believe. I still didn't."
The jaded part of me wanted to scoff as well, but my parents . . .
"For some reason, Maksim loved her touch alone. He could sleep through a night with her beside him. He laughed. He even reconciled with Aleks." Voice gruff, Dmitri admitted, "When Maksim married, I felt more alone than I ever had before."
I pictured Dmitri by himself on that deck, gazing up at the moon. Lucia had said he was a lone-wolf type. Just like the beast from fairy tales, Dmitri didn't want to be.
I took his fist in both of my hands and pressed a kiss to the back of it. "No longer."
His brows drew together. "No longer."
"Please go on. I want to know more about you."
Seeming resigned to sharing, he continued, "Before I hit thirty, I'd made a fortune, but I derived no satisfaction from it. The money was like some grotesque entity, growing faster than I could ever spend it. My wealth mocked me, because the more I had, the more I became aware of what money couldn't buy: sanity, companionship, a family of my own."
And that explained why he was so adamant about spending it.
"Eventually I comprehended I was the only thing getting in the way of Maksim's happiness, and that I would always be a burden to him. A year ago, I made arrangements to check myself into a permanent facility in California, but on the way there, I decided to permanently check myself out. A life avoiding pleasure isn't worth living. I was done."
He'd been suicidal again just a year ago? "What happened?"
"A weather front forced the plane to touch down in Las Vegas. We were grounded until the next day. I figured, why not stay the weekend and drink myself into oblivion one last time?"
"Did you make another suicide attempt?"
He shook his head. "That night I had an epiphany, as if light touched all the darkened corners of my mind. I couldn't stop thinking: What if I might have what Maksim did? It may sound strange, but I wanted to have someone I'd face a loaded gun for."
Crazy, beautiful man.
"Maksim had turned his existence around because he had incentive: Lucia. Aleks too had changed his life because of Natalie. What if my woman was alive and well, only waiting for me to find her? I made a commitment to right my life and become a man worthy of a woman such as yourself."
Oh, Dmitri.
"I stopped taking those pills. They were dangerous and had been recalled in most countries. I improve
d dramatically just from that. I began working out and eating better. I studied sex to compensate for my limited experience."
And his piercing had made him "different" than he'd been--when abused by Orloff. "You had your scar removed."
He nodded. "I would never want to embarrass my woman in public. I organized my business, becoming more efficient, so I would have more time for the enjoyment I hoped would come. I bought this house, all to prepare for a wife and a life I didn't yet have."
He'd prepared himself for me. Well, not for me, necessarily, but for a future wife. "And you offered an olive branch to Aleks."
"Da. I began to comprehend the importance of family. Presenting a unified front is a very powerful thing, no? Then, a few months ago, I swallowed my pride to get his assistance with business matters that were crucial to me. He gladly used all his power and connections to help me. In the course of our dealings, I learned more about his life on the streets before Kovalev found him. Aleks had endured his own trials. We came to an understanding, and he has been helping me ever since."
"It took you a year before you found me?"
"You and I met a year later. Everything Maksim had told me--everything I'd scorned as idiotic--was true. I'd once asked him how I would recognize my woman. Theoretically. He'd said, 'You'll feel as if you've been struck by lightning.' That was an understatement. From the moment I saw you, I knew."
Dmitri's first word to me: "You . . ." This man believed I was his soul mate.
"Vika, I wouldn't have been right for you before. You would hardly have recognized me." He turned to me fully. I imagined him feeling physically and emotionally open after revealing his secrets. "Even after my changes, I would have liked more time to prepare for you; I still feared drifting. I'd never experienced sexual pleasure with another and not dissociated. The more pleasure, the more detachment. But there you were."
"When we hooked up in the bathroom . . ."
"I wanted to believe I would respond to you differently, but I decided not to push my luck by coming. Yet then you were too arousing. I had to release. I went mindless in a completely new way"--he held my gaze--"and I remembered every blistering second with you."
I inhaled sharply. "You really never had before?"
He shook his head. "In your apartment, the same thing happened when I came: pure pleasure. But on our wedding night, when you went to your knees and sucked me, I realized there were yet more heights with you."
"That's why you stopped."
"Yes. I called Maksim, railing because he'd assured me things could be different once I found my woman. I told him I couldn't risk dissociating forever and never knowing you." Dmitri gazed past me as he said, "I just like . . . being with you."
I like being with you too.
He faced me again. "But Maksim said, 'Your wife deserves a full life, with everything that entails.' I decided you would have your wedding night if it killed me. For the first time, someone else's pleasure was more important than my own. Nothing was going to stop me from taking you. So after a lifetime of desperately fighting that dissociation, I stopped."
"You risked permanently losing yourself for me?" For a woman he'd known for mere days at that point? He was either the craziest man I'd ever met or the bravest.
Curt nod. "And when my mind was open like that, and I had surrendered to being ruined forever, you seeped into every inch of me. You took over my thoughts. Nothing could pry me away from the present because I was making love to my wife. Each one of your cries, the scent of your hair, the unimaginable softness of your skin--everything anchored me to you. You seared me."
"You're making me sound like the key to your recovery," I said, concerned about that.
"I did the work. I learned to cope. But I never had my own incentive to make truly frightening decisions."
Out on the cliff, he'd told me, "I let it fucking bleed."
I grazed his forearm once more.
His expression was grave. "Can you believe me when I tell you I'm a different man now?"
"Never again, Dmitri. Never, never again. Make me the promise."
"Very well. I can make that promise," he said, adding, "as long as you're alive."
"Dmitri!" I released his hand to pinch my temples.
"One of those things I shouldn't have said aloud?"
What was I going to do if he discovered all my lies? Hadn't I--just like Orloff--insinuated myself into Dmitri's life, deceiving him, using him, betraying him? The grifter in me clamored to rabbit out of this situation. But the snare was closing.
Dmitri had told me he'd known enough doubt and uncertainty to last a lifetime. Though I never wanted to cause him more, it seemed inevitable. Any move I made in the future would hurt him.
He cleared his throat again. "Now that you know these secrets, do you view me differently?" My husband was holding his breath.
He'd just laid himself bare for me. Despite such traumatic beginnings--his father's viciousness, his beloved mother's murder, his brothers' suffering, his guardian's appalling abuse--Dmitri Sevastyan had somehow grown to be proud and strong and courageous, amazing in every way. "Understanding your past makes me care even more deeply for you, Dmitri." Snared. "Understanding the risks you've taken since we've met shows me how brave you are."
He drew me into his lap--as if he'd been promising himself he could, as soon as he'd completed his task. "And how crazy?"
Was he? Yeah, at times. And I wouldn't sugarcoat that. "Well, you kind of are, big guy." I put my hand over his heart. "But I'd still rather have an honest madman than a sane liar."
He wrapped his strong arms around me. "I like that you don't shy away from calling me crazy. For so long, everyone did." He rested his chin on my head, tightening his hold on me. "But I want you to understand something. I took those risks not because I'm crazy. I took them because nothing matters beyond having you. I am obsessed with you. What I feel will never burn away."
My heart turned over in my chest, but my jadedness made me ask, "How can you say that if you've never felt these things before?"
He pressed a kiss to my head and inhaled the scent of my hair. "I believe when a man finds the one woman meant to be his, he associates her scent with happiness. In the deepest recesses of his brain, he thinks, This woman is where all happiness lies. She is my home. Every time he catches her scent, that link is reinforced." Another kiss. "My happiness lies with you, Victoria. You are my home. It is because I've never experienced these feelings that I recognize them."
My eyes pricked with tears, and I was glad he couldn't see.
He'd told me, When you've been in the dark as long as I have, there is no mistaking the light.
Maybe he had found his soul mate. Stranger things had happened, right? But the notion didn't comfort me. After everything he's survived, my betrayal will be all the more devastating. . . .
CHAPTER 33
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"Here we go." Dmitri guided me as I walked blindfolded through the house toward another of his surprises.
I couldn't see anything through the scarf he'd used, but I thought we were in the vicinity of his study.
Today was our one-month wedding anniversary. Sometimes I felt as if we'd been together forever.
Other times, a day.
This morning we'd driven up Highway 1 in his black Ferrari convertible. The sun had been shining, the road clear, and he'd been sliding me sexy grins. We'd shopped in an adorable seaside town--and he'd tried to buy me everything. Though uncomfortable in crowds, he had made an effort to prolong our outing and entertain me. Or perhaps he'd been stalling in order to get this mysterious surprise in place.
At my ear, he said, "We're almost there."
For his gift, I'd gotten him tickets to an eighties movie fest in L.A. and cufflinks made of tiger-eye for luck and protection.
I had a feeling I was about to be upstaged.
I'd thought about finally giving him a r
ing. All day, he'd proudly referred to me as his wife. More than one person had glanced at his bare ring finger. And he'd noticed.
After he'd shared his past, I'd ordered a gorgeous gold band, shipping it here. Dmitri hadn't seen the package among all the others that kept arriving. I'd hidden the band with my many jewels.
Though I was falling for him, my anxiety kept me from giving him that ring, a pledge for forever.
Among our other difficulties, my husband and I remained in a stalemate over my family--and his own.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
I could hear his smile. "Yes! Though you don't have to keep buying me things."
"I told you that I would give you the entire world." And that he would free me.
Over this month, Dmitri had freed me sexually. He needed to take control, and I'd found so much freedom in surrender. . . .
He sighed, adding, "And someone must spend our money, since you refuse to."
I stutter-stepped, but he caught me. "You really just said that?" During my shopping sessions on the couch, I'd relaxed and dreamed and felt the power of his fortune.
I'd gifted a huge stipend to a veterans' association in my grandmother's name. My grandfather, the great love of her life, had been a pilot whose plane had gone down while she'd been pregnant with Mom.
I'd set up design scholarships, because I'd wished for one myself.
I'd donated liberally to children's shelters, with Benji--and Dmitri--in my thoughts. . . .
"We're here." He began untying the scarf. "First, I will say something I never thought I'd be able to: Happy one-month anniversary, moya zhena." He removed my blindfold.
I blinked in disbelief.
I was looking at a large design studio--filled with dress forms, garment racks, and three brand-new sewing machines. Organizational systems for spools, tapes, and scissors lined one wall. Bolts of luxe cloth were arrayed along another. The fourth wall was blank; I could hang drawings there!
I murmured, "Until this moment . . . I don't think I'd ever understood the word glee." I crossed to a cutting table, sweeping my fingertips across the surface. Then I marveled at the sewing machines, the most advanced I'd ever seen. I checked out the assortment of cloth, a rainbow of hues and patterns.