Time Stood Still (Volkov Bratva #3.5)(21)

Once Mishca dropped the anchor, she wasted no time diving in, smiling at the feel of the water enveloping her. When she came back up, she saw Mishca smiling at her from his position on the boat. She smiled back, but only for a moment before she began swimming for the rocks.

“What are you doing?” He called after her.

She had a choice, obviously. Either keep going, or pretend like she hadn’t heard him and keep going, knowing that if she did either, he would get upset. Of course, she picked the latter.

Mishca dived in after her, but it was too late. She was already climbing up to the top, a smile on her face as she went. Once she was finally in a relatively safe spot—after she waited for the waves to recede so she could see better—she gradually got to her feet, clapping at her success.

“I’ll be fine, Mish,” she called back, not bothering to look back at him, knowing that if she did that the look he was wearing would force her to climb back down. “This isn’t my first time doing this.”

“Get your ass down!” He was clearly upset, but Lauren tuned him out, almost to the top.

Once she got up there, and was steady on her feet, she smiled down at him, waving enthusiastically, even as he glowered.

“That’s the plan.”

Even from her distance, she could see his hands were balled into fists and she didn’t doubt that if he didn’t have a healthy dose of fear of heights, he would have come after her.

But at the moment, while she felt like was at the very tip of the world, the wind whipping her hair around, her arms outstretched, she felt invincible. She stayed there for a while, letting that emotion consume her entirely before she jumped over the edge.

The water came at her fast, and she only had a second to scream before she was underwater. She sunk for only a short amount of time before she breached the surface again, tossing her hair back and wiping the seawater from her eyes so she could see Mishca better. He was glowering, as she had expected him to be, but he didn’t look that upset.

“How many more times?” He asked sarcastically, probably thinking that once would have been enough.

It wasn’t.

And she made sure he knew that.

***

“What hurts?”

“Everything.”

Lauren was not above begging him to carry her the short distance from their car to the front door of their rental, but kept going, always thinking that she was one step closer to a wonderful down bed that she was more than ready to sink into. She had forgotten just how tiring swimming was, especially since it had been a while since the last time she had done it.

“Come here.”

He swept her up like she weighed next to nothing, and she nearly sighed in relief as the constant agony in her legs vanished. Mishca only set her on her feet long enough for him to unlock and open the door

“There are dozens of reasons why I love you, Mish. This is one of them.”

His lips twitched. “The feeling is mutual. Maybe now you’ll rethink this need to do things like cliff jumping?”

“Not a chance.”

When they hit the bedroom, Lauren would have been more than happy to plop down on the bed and spend hours that way, but Mishca had other plans. He kept a tight hold of her, going through to the bathroom instead.

“Mish—”

“Not yet.”

“But—”

“Pover’te mne—Trust me.”

Not about to argue—especially with the underlying promise she heard in his words—she let him sit her down on the counter, watching as he went over to turn on the shower, adjusting the taps until the room was filled with steam. He came back to her, helping her out of her dress, then her bikini.

Mishca helped her to her feet, walking them both into the stall, the heat of the water falling from the shower head above them, soothing her aching muscles. On one of the built-in stone benches, she relaxed, observing him, appreciating the view, cataloguing the tattoos that covered him.

The stars on his chest, the epaulettes on his shoulders, the rising sun and line of script on his forearm, and both crosses were familiar to her, ones that represented his life within the Bratva, but there was a relatively new one that was on his opposite arm that was devoid of any connection to the others. It was placed on his inner bicep, in a place easily hidden by the suits he wore daily, but she preferred it that way.

Lauren liked them having something to themselves, apart from the Bratva and more than that, she liked what it represented.

The tattoo was of a pocket watch, his artist adding in hints of gold, the only color that Mishca had in all of his tattoos. The clock was set at twenty minutes before eight o’ clock, the exact time in which they met. Of course, he would be the one to remember something as insignificant as that.

One would think that after he had taken the leading role in the Bratva, he would have put on weight, but not Mishca. He was as fit as he’d always been, maybe more so.

The muscles along his back and chest rippled as he washed away the day and she almost pinched herself when he turned to smile back at her, knowing that he was all hers.

Reaching a hand out to her, he pulled her to his side, reaching for the small shampoo bottle that had come with the place, squeezing some of it into her hair, carefully massaging it in with the pads of his fingers, drawing them through her hair.

He didn’t stop with her hair, he cleaned all of her, his intentions pretty clear. Unlike the last few times together, he took it easy on her, gradually bringing her to heights she wasn’t used to.