Page 75 of Untamed Beast
Imust have slept in Leks’s bed all night.I didn’t mean to, but I don’t mind it.
His arms are wrapped around me, heavy and solid. I didn’t think I could be this comfortable touching another person, but it’s already morning.
I snuggle against Leks, inhaling the clean cedar smell of his skin, and let my eyelids drift shut again.
I don’t want this moment to end, because then I have to confront the day and decide what to do about my father. Right now I’m in a place of shelter, far away from the storm cloud of emotions that wrecked me yesterday.
I watch Leks’s sleeping face through my eyelashes, feeling the rise and fall of his chest muscles and the flex of abs against me. He’s so sculpted, his frame every bit as beautiful as the tattoos which line his skin.
Most of the ink dates from his years in the Ivanov Center. Ten years is almost half my life, an unfathomably long time. Imight not have been free, while I lived at home, but I wasn’t being tortured.
I trace the long line of the scar that marks his face, running all the way down to his neck, and I wonder once again how he got it.
Leks has so many stories that I worry I’ll never know all of them. He only just told me the truth about my brothers. It feels like a lot to ask him for everything I want, all at once.
I only realize he’s awake when his hand tangles in my hair, pulling my gaze up to his face. I press my lips to his jaw.
“You look sad,zolotse.”
I shake my head. “Just waking up,” I smile, suppressing the twist of pain in my chest.
I will not think about my father.
Not yet.
Not while I’m waking up with a man holding me for the first time in my life, feeling his heart beat against me, and wanting to savor the moment.
His arms tighten around me and he buries his face in my hair. “I like waking up with you here. In my dream you left me.”
“What? Why?”
He pauses for a beat and one of his hands glides over the small of my back, as though he’s making sure I’m really here. I shiver at the warm, rough feel of his touch.
“You didn’t believe me. I was scared about that before I told you everything last night,” Leks admits, his voice thick. “I didn’t want things to change between us.”
I brush my lips over his jaw. “I’m glad you told me. Even ifit wasn’t good news. My family never trusts me to handle things like that.”
“I’ve never been so scared about a conversation before.”
I laugh at that idea.
“Welcome to my world. I’m scared about conversations all the time.”
“With me?” His midnight blue gaze falls on my face.
“Especially with you.”
“Am I that intimidating?”
I pretend to consider it, bringing a finger to my lips. “That was before I knew you liked to cuddle.”
Leks squeezes me tighter against his chest in response to the teasing. “I don’t ‘like to cuddle’. I said I like to wake up holding you, specifically.”
I scoff. As if Leks hasn’t done this with women before.
“I’m serious,” he insists. “Natalia, I promise you that the last time I woke up with a woman in my arms was never.”
His face betrays no hint of a joke, so I let myself believe this. Even though it makes my heart pound with so much false hope that I might burst.
