Page 36 of The Darkness is Calling

The scenarios and the pounding of my heart, which barely manages to settle, keep me company until, close to midnight, the door opens.

Chapter 9

Artem

The moment I see her lying in my bed, I stop in my tracks, my hand on the doorknob, letting the hallway light outline her curves. Her waist is covered by one corner of the sheet, one leg bent outside it, long and smooth. And her silky hair, spread across my pillow, reaches all the way to the place where I’m supposed to rest my head.

I still wonder why she dyed it.

The voices, the demons, the fury, all fall silent. All I feel is a hungry desire to lie down beside

her, wrap my arms around her, pull her back against my chest, and bury my nose in that soft hair. The image alone gives me a sense of calm unlike anything I have felt in all my thirty years.

I don’t know whether she is asleep, since her back is turned to me, but from the way her body seems tense, I assume she is awake.

I move forward, and when I close the door behind me, the room sinks back into half-darkness, its shapes visible only because of the moonlight slipping through the sheer curtain.

She didn’t close the drapes, so the light doesn’t bother her. Normally, I would draw them shut, because I like losing myself in darkness, but tonight I think I will leave them as they are so I can watch her while she sleeps.

I move slowly into the dressing room to get rid of the clothes that smell like tobacco after spending the past few hours in a poorly ventilated room. But while I was there, I got the latest updates from my men in the field about the Irish trying to take our territory.

Then, just as quietly, I step into the bathroom for another shower, one meant to wash away all the ugly moments of this day.

When I return to the room, with my hair still damp and a pair of pajama pants on, she is in the same position she was fifteen minutes ago. And when I stretch out in bed without touching her, I am sure she is not asleep.

She is breathing too quickly for someone lost in sleep, and her body is too rigid.

I smile.

I like that she is afraid of me.

But I also remember that because of her, I laughed today. My god, I do not do that, but when I let my towel drop in the dressing room and she did not know how to turn away fast enough with her cheeks on fire, I found it terribly amusing.

No one has done that in many years.

Not with a gesture of pure innocence from a woman trying with all her power to prove me that she is independent and cold, untouched by anything.

Lying on my back, my palms resting on my abdomen, I turn my head toward her, savoring the pleasant sensation of her soft hair brushing my cheek.

I breathe in the elegant scent of this creature and exhale slowly, but heavily.

Then I whisper. “Good night, Ekaterina.”

My words seem to lift a weight from her soul, because she sighs, and her body visibly relaxes.

“Good night, Pakhan.”

I don’t know whether she is being ironic or genuinely trying to be respectful, but right now, I have no desire to go to war with her again.

In the silence of the night, in this bed where we are so physically close yet so far apart as people, I feel the need to bring her closer, at least in the only way I am allowed to, without touching her.

“You can call me Artem.”

“Why not Voron?”

I’ll be damned if I don’t smile again when I realize she feels like talking at this hour.

“Voron is for those in the Bratva. Or enemies. You are... something else.”