Dark Desire by Lauren Smith

Author:Lauren Smith [Smith, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952063121
Publisher: Lauren Smith Books
Published: 2021-04-15T18:30:00+00:00

Dimitri paced the entryway, his hands clasped behind his back. Every few seconds he paused to check his watch. She had been out there too long. She was going to get cold . . .

“Dimitri, stop or you’ll wear a hole in the floor,” Nicholas teased.

Dimitri glared at him. He and Leo watched him pace with bemused expressions. For the last several minutes, they had been joking with him about his overprotectiveness and how his little kiska had managed to get around them from behind. They had been impressed. He had been relieved. He knew she was strong and could take care of herself, but he didn’t want her to have to.

Yet the thought of her out in the night alone, shivering from the cold and facing the news that her life would never be the same again, was too much for him. He didn’t care if she needed space—he had to make sure she was all right.

“I’m going after her.” He opened the door, only to find her standing right in front of him, Maxim behind her, looking out to the road for danger. Dimitri’s focus locked on her red-rimmed eyes. His kiska had been crying. Her face reflected the devastation he felt inside, knowing he could never hold her again, never again touch her the way he had, and never be with her in the way they’d both dreamed. It was an icy hand of grim truth that dug into his chest and fixed its claws into his heart.

“Excuse me.” Elena stepped past him into the lodge, her tone emotionless.

“What did you say to her?” Dimitri growled in Russian at Maxim the second he followed her into the lodge.

Maxim lifted one dark brow. “Say?”

“She’s been crying.”

“She cried because of you and because her entire world was just turned on its head.”

Dimitri shot a look at Elena again, who was watching him and Maxim argue in Russian. Her eyes, such a lovely green, were shadowed with worry. Those beautiful eyes bored into him, carving out a hole and leaving him defenseless against her.

“She cried because of me?”

“She’s in love with you,” Maxim snorted. “I explained to her that we have been raised to put her above all others, that you aren’t good enough for her, not in that way. None of us are.”

Maxim’s words hit him in the gut. Not good enough . . . He supposed Maxim wasn’t wrong. Dimitri had no business trying to carry on a relationship with a woman who was the last of the Romanov bloodline. His sacred duty was to protect her, not indulge in fantasies of taking her to bed and soothing her painful past with pleasure.

“I’m not wrong,” Maxim said to Dimitri, a rare apology lingering in his tone. “But I understand what it means to want something you will never have.”

“Can you guys please stop that?” Elena asked.

“Stop what?” Dimitri and Maxim spoke at the same time.

“You’re talking too fast. I’m trying to follow, but I’m not fluent, so most of what you are saying is going right over my head.

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