Dark Desire, Lauren Smith [reading well TXT] 📗

from his briefcase. The other passengers were either asleep or watching movies or reading. He’d chosen the back row of business class so he would have a large dividing wall between him and the first row of economy class. That way no one could see his tablet screen.

He turned on his computer and logged in with his fingerprint before he accessed the file he wanted and then scrolled down until he found Elena Allen’s dossier. His friend Leo was the technical genius in their small cell, and he had dug up all there was to know about Elena, right down to her blood type. She was twenty years old and a junior at Pepperdine University. She had skipped a year of college by having good exam scores and taking college classes while in high school. She was a double major in anthropology and finance. Her favorite foods were pizza, lobster rolls, clam bisque soup, chocolate ice cream, and Diet Coke. She loved silly rom-coms and romance novels. She was a dreamer, but also a doer. She had been adopted at birth, taken in by an older couple in Maine who’d always wanted children.

Leo had acquired pictures of Elena’s past from God knows where. There were pictures of a tiny blonde girl in a grass-stained soccer uniform grinning at the camera. There were pictures of her face bent close to birthday cakes ablaze with candles, graduation pictures, and even one of Elena standing in front of a car at sixteen as she proudly held up her driver’s license. From the outside it looked like she’d had a perfect, coddled life. But Dimitri could read between the lines, she’d pushed herself at school, worked jobs during high school and college, earned a scholarship and worked hard. She was strong.

Dimitri couldn’t help but smile at Elena’s adorable face in the pictures. She was so vibrant, so full of life. And that roaring fire that defined her had very nearly been extinguished by Vadym. Dimitri was not going to let that happen. He felt as though he were holding that flame in his palms now, shielding it until it could return to that unstoppable inferno that only grew stronger in the wind, not weaker.

He turned off the tablet and slid it back into his briefcase before he turned off the light above him. Then he retrieved the blankets from under their seats and pressed the button to recline Elena’s seat back into a bed. She didn’t even stir as the seat moved. He tucked a pillow beneath her head, wrapped one of the fleece blankets around her, and then finally closed his own eyes.

These next few months were going to be the hardest. He had to find a way into Elena’s life and begin the process of helping her heal. Maxim and Nicholas, his two other friends in his group, thought Elena couldn’t be healed, but Leo believed it was possible. Dimitri held on to that hope with all his might.

As he slipped into a land of dreams, images from his past plagued him, ones of empty palaces and ghosts who stirred up secrets in the shadows and dust. He kept seeing a face, one in a portrait that had once hung in an imperial palace a hundred years ago and had been smuggled away, the child in that painting now long forgotten . . .

2

Elena slept all through the night and into the morning, nearly nine of the twelve hours between Moscow and Los Angeles. When she finally woke, she found herself tucked beneath blankets she didn’t remember putting over herself. She sat up and hit the button to turn her bed back into a chair. The man next to her was sipping a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper. It looked like the Wall Street Journal.

A man who read a physical paper was kind of hot. Okay, really hot. And combine that with all the other things about him . . . she couldn’t stop looking at him. She was feeling true, deep attraction to this stranger. Just as quickly as the thought hit her brain, she banished it.

“Did you sleep well?” the man asked, still perusing his paper.

“Uh . . . Yeah. Really well, actually. I don’t think I’ve felt safe since—I mean, slept that well in months.”

He sipped his coffee again and then handed her a bottle of water. “Drink this. You need to rehydrate. Then you can order breakfast.” He passed her a slender menu, and she drank half the bottle of water before she looked at her options. By the time she was ready, the man beside her had summoned the flight attendant so she could order.

“I’ll take two eggs over easy, whole wheat toast, and bacon. Thank you so much.” Elena passed the menu to Dimitri, who handed it to the flight attendant. He took her order on a small electronic pad and left. Elena peeped at her seatmate, feeling suddenly shy.

“Thank you again for last night, for keeping me from . . .” She stopped just before she said “falling apart” out loud.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m Elena Allen,” she offered.

He held out a hand to her. “Dimitri Razin.”

Elena hesitated a second before putting her hand in his. “Do you have experience with a lot of crying women?” She tried to laugh, but the sound came out rough. She hadn’t felt humor, let alone joy, in months. It was one more thing Vadym had ripped away from her.

“A pleasure to meet you.” Dimitri clasped her hand in his. “And I do not have a lot of experience with crying women, but I am quite capable of dealing with it.” His grip was firm but not crushing, and his hand was warm, just like his body had been when he’d held her in his arms. A sudden feeling of despair came over her as she realized that she would never see this man again after the flight. Some part of her felt connected to him.

“So are you traveling to Los Angeles on business?” she asked when her food arrived. She