Dirty Grovel: Chapter 7

“Take us home, Ilya,” Oleg commands.

I feel the resonance of his voice all the way to my core and immediately start pretending that it doesn’t affect me at all.

“It’s not my home,” I insist, turning my face towards the tinted window. “Wherever you’re taking me is not my home.”

“It’s a damn sight better than anyplace else you were going to go.” His lip curls.

“I have no place else to go.”

“Precisely.”

Sighing, I hug myself and keep gazing out of the window, refusing to meet his golden gaze for a second longer than I have to, even though I feel it on me.

“What was the plan, exactly?” he asks after a few beats of tense silence. “You were gonna hide out on one of my yachts indefinitely? Live off rations and avoid crew members?”

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” I mutter. “But I think the concept of hiding in plain sight had merit. And you did tell me that your yachts were the safest vessels on earth.”

He sighs. I wonder if he’s reluctantly impressed. “Why hide at all?”

I contemplate not answering him at all. Fuck it, I decide. There’s nothing lost from telling the truth. “I was scared.”

“Of whom?”

I pick at the scabs on my palms. “You know who.”

I see movement in my peripheral vision and cringe back instinctively.

But he ignores that, running his fingers across the bruise that’s still left an echo of pain on my skin.

“Drew,” Oleg murmurs. “He did this to you.”

I’m on the verge of another explanation. I desperately want to deny that we were ever “in cahoots,” as Oleg seems to think.

But I stop myself at the last second.

He doesn’t deserve my explanations.

He wouldn’t believe them anyway.

Oleg drops his hand. “Why didn’t you just come to me?” he asks.

A powerful snort whistles through my nostrils. Despite my earlier resolve, I meet his eyes, anger burning in my own.

“You’re kidding, right?” I shake my head, going back to the scab on my knuckles. “What makes you think I was any less scared of you than I was of him?”

He stiffens, his eyebrows pinching together to carve a deep crease in his forehead. “I never meant to scare you.”

“What did you mean to do then, Oleg?” I demand incredulously. “Because kicking a girl out of your home when you know she has nowhere else to go isn’t exactly conducive to feeling safe.”

His mouth falls at the edges. “I’m sorry, you know.”

My head spins in his direction. “Huh?”

He doesn’t blink.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, clear as day. “I was angry, yes. I felt betrayed. But I never meant to terrify you. And I certainly would never have hurt you. I would have been willing to hear your side of the story⁠—”

I let out another noisy huff of disbelief.

Oleg readjusts his position to face me. “Okay, you’re right. I handled the whole situation poorly.”

“On that, we’re in agreement.”

“I understand why you ran back in Palm Beach. But why the fuck did you run from me here in Nassau?” His frustration burns through the frown on his face. “You’re a foreigner here, with no money, no friends, no sense of where you are. You had no idea who you might have run into or where you would have ended up. No to mention that you were in a goddamn bikini!”

“You were talking to the cops!” I cry out. “In hindsight, it seems silly. But I was tired and panicked. I assumed you were going to hand me over to the authorities and I didn’t want to be arrested.”

“Arrested? Sutton, do you know who I am?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know what you’re capable of, Oleg. I wasn’t willing to stick around to find out either.”

He exhales. “I see.”

“I’ll admit,” I mutter, “it seems stupid now…”

I brace for him to rub salt in the wound. Instead, he grabs a bottle of water from the mini-fridge built into the bottom of the seat and hands it to me.

“Drink up; you need to stay hydrated. Doctor’s orders.”

I accept the bottle of water and pop the cap. “Thank you.”

“Just for the record, I wasn’t going to have you arrested. I had to check in with the port authorities about the yacht. It had nothing to do with you.”

“You just seemed really… buddy-buddy with those cops.”

“I come to Nassau a couple of times a year. I’ve established relationships here. Those cops are more like… friends.”

“Translation: they’re useful contacts that you use to your advantage whenever you’re in Nassau.”

He arches an eyebrow, his lips twitching upwards for the briefest of moments before his expert control is back in action.

“How about we call a truce?” he suggests. “Let’s stop arguing. Let’s try to put the last few days behind us. In any case, you need to rest and recover.”

“And then what?”

He hesitates a little too long for comfort. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, let’s just go home.”

“Home,” I murmur under my breath, wondering if I can even feel at home where Oleg is taking me.

There’s warmth at my fingertips. I look down and see Oleg’s hand curling around mine.

Freezing, I stare at our entwined hands.

Just the warmth of his touch is making my eyes tear up.

It’s the comfort I didn’t realize I needed.

From the man I didn’t realize I missed.

Because the truth is, over the last several months, despite that stupid contract that stood between us like the third person in our twisted little ménage à trois, I’d caught feelings.

The big kind.

The life-changing kind.

The kind of feelings that stick around even when you know they shouldn’t.

My fingers twitch against his, but I can’t bring myself to break the contract. Quite apart from wanting it, it also feels right.

Familiar.

Natural.

As much as I wish it were otherwise…

… Oleg’s hand feels like home.