Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (17 page)

HOURS LATER, I
woke up shivering, with a massive crick in my neck and my hips and knees aching like a son of a bitch. My couch had not been designed for a man over six feet tall to sleep on it. Regardless of that, though, I shouldn’t be this cold if I still had electricity. I mean, I had a fucking blanket on.

I blinked my eyes open and squinted toward the kitchen, expecting to see the green glow from the microwave clock, but it was pitch black. The streetlights outside weren’t even glaring in my house.

No power.

So we had no heat.

Lord only knew how long we’d been without. Quite a while, based on how cold it was in the house. And if I was already this cold, there was no doubt London was freezing her ass off. She was a woman, and in my experience, women were always complaining of being cold—at least until they reached menopause, when they were constantly hot.

There wasn’t any way around me building a fire and going up to check on her. I rolled off the couch and grabbed the blanket to take it with me, deciding to wake her first, and then stumbled up the stairs.

“Dima?” London said. Her voice shook, which made me feel like an ass. Not that it was my fault the electricity was out. None of this had been my fault, but I couldn’t stop myself from feeling like I should have done something to prevent it.

I stood in the open doorway to my bedroom and saw her, curled up in a fetal position and shaking as hard as I’d ever seen a person shake. Damn it.

“Power’s out,” I said.

“Has been for hours.”

“Why you didn’t call for me?” Not that I could have prevented the power lines going down under the weight of the snow and ice, but still.

“I thought maybe you needed more time.”

“Time?”

“To get over me poking at you so much.”

“You planning to stop?” I asked.

“Nope.” She tried to wink, but she was shaking so hard it made her look like a crazy person. “But I thought I should give you time to adjust, at least.”

“You’re freezing.”

“You think?”

“Need to make a fire. You have to come down with me.”

“I have to, do I?”

“Unless you want to freeze. I can leave you here.”

She shook her head. I crossed to the bed and threw the blankets off her. She was like an icicle when I picked her up, and she curled around me, sucking away any warmth I had left in me. “Fuck, woman. How long you planned to wait before calling for me?”

“Long enough.”

“Fucking stubborn-ass woman.”

She smirked at me.

I carried her downstairs, tossed her on the couch, and bundled her in blankets. Then I went outside to bring in some wood and started building a fire.

London made a dreamy, sighing sort of sound, which irked me.

“What?” I demanded.

“Just watching the way your back muscles work while you do that. You’ve got a gorgeous back, Dima. A lot like the rest of you. The moonlight is lighting you up like a Christmas tree. And speaking of Christmas trees, why don’t you have one?”

“Russian Christmas isn’t like American Christmas. Not even on the same day.” I threw a couple more logs into position and got up to find matches.

“What was Christmas like for you?”

Lonely, just like most of the rest of my life, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I came back to the fireplace with my box of matches and struck a few until I got the kindling to take flame. “Christmas was quiet. Me and Papa. That was all.”

“Not your mother?”

“No mother.”

“You mean you never knew your mother?”

I blew on the flames, gently urging them to spread. “Why does it matter?”

“Why are you so determined that you
shouldn’t
matter?” she shot back at me.

The flames took hold of some of the bigger logs, so I set the grate back in place. Too bad it hadn’t taken longer. Now I had to face her.

The moonlight combined with the flames highlighted the reddish undertones to her hair, making them dance in front of my eyes. Her gaze pierced me. Never wavered. Drove me mad with wanting, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was that I wanted, other than
her
. But that was a stupid thought, because she made me feel crazy all the time. How could I want her? And better yet,
why
would I want her?

But I did.

“Be back,” I muttered, going back upstairs before she could pick away at one more layer of the scars surrounding me.

I stripped all the blankets and pillows off the bed and grabbed as many more as I could from the closet. The pile was so big I couldn’t see over it, but I carried them downstairs with me and created a pallet on the floor in front of the hearth. When it was ready, I plucked London off the couch and lay her on it, tucking the blankets all around her.

She never took her eyes off me, damn her. Constantly searching, but I didn’t have a clue what she thought she would find. There wasn’t anything worthwhile in me for her to discover.

I tried to get up and go back to the couch, but she grabbed my hand.

“What you want?” I bit off, jerking to free myself from her grasp.

She wouldn’t let go. Instead, she tugged on me, dragging me down beside her. “We can keep each other warm,” she said.

“Told you, next time I’m in bed with you, I fuck you.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess it’s a good thing this isn’t your bed, then, isn’t it?” Then she yanked harder on my hand and pulled me down beside her, wrapping herself all around me. It was kind of similar to how Tallie had wrapped herself around Hunter earlier, which was exactly the wrong thing for me to think about at the moment.

I couldn’t deny it felt good to have her warmth and to feel her body pressed against mine. But I also couldn’t relax.

Because I’d never slept with a woman before.

I’d fucked plenty of them, but it had only ever been sex.

This was feeling like a hell of a lot more than sex, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I’D NEVER FELT
so deliciously toasty as I did when I woke up the next morning, with the fire still burning, Dima’s limbs entwined with mine, and the sun streaming through the windows. My face, though—and the tip of my nose, in particular—was freezing. I definitely didn’t want to move out of my cocoon of warmth, and I wasn’t ready for Dima to get up yet, either. He was like a human furnace. Like
my
human furnace. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing his body heat, let alone the semblance of intimacy we’d forged in sleep.

Actually, lying here next to him, I was surprised to realize I wanted a whole lot more intimacy than the little bit we’d already established. Not just sex, but closeness on a soul level.

Which was a dangerous thought. Dima hadn’t budged an inch in terms of letting me in, or even letting go of all the negativity that he was desperately clinging to. He was as bound and determined as ever to keep living in the past. Based on my own history and my relationships with other people who’d moved past traumatic, life-changing events, that wasn’t something I could live with in the long term. I couldn’t be with someone who refused to forgive himself for a mistake. He’d never let me love him if he couldn’t love himself.

Still, even if indulging myself with the fantasy that Dima could ever move on and be ready for a life again was a bad idea, I needed to take advantage of this unguarded moment while it lasted. I snuggled closer to him, but instead of humoring me, he rolled away. In a flash, the dream fizzled out from under me.

Bastard
, I thought to myself
.
The man was hell-bent on keeping his distance in everything but sex.
“Don’t get up yet,” I complained, my voice cracking from sleep.

He kept going, though, climbing out from beneath the mound of blankets and getting to his feet. “Calling electric company.”

I felt the loss of him immediately, so I rolled back toward the flames.

“They won’t be able to tell you anything but that they’re working on it,” I shouted after him.

“Calling anyway.”

He futzed around in the kitchen for a few minutes while he was on the phone. It sounded like he was either on hold or listening to a recorded message, one of the two, since he didn’t say anything during the entire phone call. I took the time to text Gray and let him know that even though the power was out, we were perfectly fine. Then, after Dima had hung up, he marched straight past me and up the stairs. Not much time passed before he returned and picked me up, carrying me away from the blissful heat and depositing me in the bathroom, where he’d already situated my chair and purse. I pouted up at him, wrapping my arms around myself and shivering.

“Water heater is gas, so there’s hot water. Yell when you’re done.”

“What did the electric company say?” I asked before he could close the door behind him.

“Working on it. Might be a day or two. Crews coming in from Texas and Louisiana.”

“Should make for an interesting Christmas.” Not that we needed a power outage for it to be interesting. I definitely hadn’t ever experienced a holiday similar to what this one was bound to be.

He made an indistinguishable sound and left me to go through my ablutions. When I called for him, it took a few moments for him to come up the stairs to get me. I realized the reason for his leisurely reappearance once we returned to the living room. He’d moved the bedding away from the fire, removed the grate, and was setting things up so he could cook over the flames.

“Aren’t you a regular jack-of-all-trades?” I murmured as he placed me on the couch, where I could bundle up under multiple blankets.

“Still have to eat,” he said and got back to work.

He’d already placed a metal stand of some sort over the flames, and he had cast iron pans on top of it heating up. Now he went into the kitchen to get sausage, eggs, and all sorts of other things before coming back to cook them over the fire. Within about twenty minutes, he’d made a full, far more industrious meal than I typically ever bothered with for breakfast. I tended to grab a bagel with cream cheese or peanut butter on my way out the door. If I felt particularly adventurous, I’d take the time to toast the bagel first. Anything more than that was more work than it was worth and always felt like overkill to me.