Page 81 of Ace of Shadows
26
IVY
It really was the best orgasm I’ve ever had.
The next morning, while sitting on the balcony nursing a hot cup of tea and an aching core, I replay last night’s session in my mind. Never in my life have I done something as exciting as that. I wasn’t exactly a prude before I met Ruslan, but none of my previous partners knew the first thing about making things exciting in the bedroom.
It seems to come naturally for Ruslan.
The sex was fantastic, but more than that, my choice to trust him was exhilarating. I came close a few times to thinking I’d had enough, but each time, I reminded myself that trusting him hasn’t steered me wrong yet.
My reward for trusting him sits warm in my memory and hot between my thighs where my core throbs just at the thought of his cock. It’s probably a bad sign, but given how fun that session was, the thought of fucking up again for anotherpunishmentis rather alluring.
I drink my tea and bake under the hot, late-morning sun, watching birds fly past without a care in the world. Until my wandering eye catches a plane high up in the sky leaving a white trail behind its fins.
Reality returns with a crash and the light sensation within my chest fades immediately.
Speaking to Florence didn’t help, not really. Learning how deeply in love my father was with another woman doesn’t ease the pain of my family falling apart under my nose. I pray when Mom wakes up, she already knows. I don’t have the strength to give her such bad news after everything that’s already happened.
But if Ruslan’s right and there’s some sort of connection, then I don’t see it. How does my father’s affair connect to a plane full of drugs? And why is someone so determined to kill me when I have nothing to do with either of those things?
There’s something I’m still missing. Something I have to decipher before someone else gets hurt.
Everything I’ve learned spins around my mind like a Ferris wheel until the tea in my mug grows cold from my lack of drinking. Curling my lip in disgust, I rise from the chair and leave the sunlit balcony for the darker, slightly gloomier kitchen that lacks all the warmth from outside. I’m pouring my cold tea down the sink when a clatter behind me makes me jump right out of my skin. The cup slips from my fingertips and rattles around the sink, thankfully in one piece.
“Sorry,” comes a voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you!”
I rescue the cup from the depths of the sink as I turn. Raven stands behind me at the island counter with her hands buried deep in a medical box. Blood runs down her cheek from a cutin her brow and her lower lip swells as blood dribbles down her chin.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?”
Raven flashes me a smile, immediately winces when the slash on her lip pulls wider, and nods. “I’m fine, don’t worry.”
“You don’t look fine.” Abandoning my cup on the counter, I watch her trembling hands remove a bottle of antiseptic from the kit, but when she unscrews it and tries to pour some onto a cotton ball, her hand shakes so much that she pours it over her wrist instead.
“Shit.”
“Here.” I’m moving forward before I’ve even thought it through and taken the bottle from her trembling fingers. “Let me.”
“I don’t want to bother you.”
“It’s no bother, honestly.” I pass her the washcloth and as she wipes her hands clean, I spot bruises and red marks all over her knuckles. “Are you sure nothing happened?”
Raven huffs out a soft laugh, then eases herself up onto the stool, giving me an easier job of tending to her wounds. “It’s really nothing bad.”
As the antiseptic soaks into the cotton ball, I arch my brow. “Does everyone around here just brush things off?”
Raven chuckles, tucking her messy curls behind her ears. “I guess we’re all just used to getting on with things. That’s all.”
“Really? Because from what I’ve seen, Valentina helps Ruslan a lot and Cassian seems to help everyone.”
“Oh, Cassian.” Raven suddenly grasps my wrist as I dab as gently as I can at the cut above her brow. “Don’t tell him you saw me like this.”
“Why not?”
“He’s overprotective. Like a gigantic teddy bear, and he’ll do something dumb.”
“As dumb as the people who attacked you?”
