Guarded Rebellion (The Baranov Legacy)

20. Eva

20

EVA

L ev pulled away from me more and more each day since he drove me home to check in with my uncle. Aloof and barely speaking to me, he returned to the grumpy, untalkative asshole he was when this semester started.

Stuck in the apartment with him, day in and day out, the uncomfortable longing to be near him got to me. We were so close. Within reach. Always present. Yet, he kept himself at a distance. We didn’t talk—about anything. Not these developments about Irina being attacked, her friend being raped, or the fact that an Ilyin soldier had tried to force himself on me. Nor did we engage in a conversation about how we’d had sex on the couch.

That has to be it.

He had to be reacting with regret after he’d claimed my virginity.

Maybe Uncle Oleg had words with him after I couldn’t take it anymore.

Slumping in my seat in yet another lecture hall, I failed to focus on what the professor droned on about. All I could think of was how I’d struggled with the close proximity to Lev on that teeny loveseat in the sunroom last week. He’d been so close. His smell invaded my nose and messed up my senses. All his body heat invited me to snuggle against him and seek more of his touches than accidental bumps of my leg to his. I’d been squeezed in next to him so soon after his mastering my body the night before that I felt unprepared to resist him.

I left that room flustered, so overwhelmed with my inability to ignore him and how he turned me on.

Uncle Oleg wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t blind. The Baranov boss was very perceptive and he had to have noticed how terribly I fought not to show my awareness of the hulking, sexy guard at my side.

Even if he told Lev to stay away and keep his hands off, Lev wouldn’t have given anything away. He wouldn’t have told my uncle that he’d had sex with me, that it was already too late to be warned away from me. Lev wasn’t so dumb as to admit that he—that we—had done the unthinkable and forbidden.

Is that why he’s keeping his distance?

Maybe he was bashing himself and hating that he’d done something he knew he shouldn’t have. If Uncle Oleg scolded him, that would definitely put him in a crappy mood like this.

Or did it mean so little?

I scorned how my confidence took a deep dive like this. Self-esteem issues never inflicted me. I was sheltered, yes, but I knew who I was. I was strong in my sense of self, and even though I was so clearly inexperienced as a virgin, I was certain that Lev had enjoyed taking me the way he had. I witnessed how affected he was, how he’d been warring with keeping his control. He’d snapped—because of me. He’d caved, as I had, due to how badly he’d wanted me.

He can’t regret it…

I didn’t, and I worried about the chance that he might.

Lev had fifteen years on me. He was a hard man who’d lived viciously. I didn’t want to imagine the number of women he’d had before me because it was just an exhibit of proof that I couldn’t possibly measure up to them.

Even though he only spoke to me with grunts and one- or two-word commands as he acted like nothing but a hard-ass bodyguard, I detected that original resentment he’d harbored for me from day one of my college experience.

He had to view me with a filter. That I was still the younger, spoiled woman who was so greedy and trivial as to want to attend college. What bothered me more on that note was how I was coming to understand this really was pointless. I was still interested and excited about my class, but the idea that it would all be for nothing was a hell of a drag to tolerate.

What is the point anymore?

It was almost as though my experience with Lev—losing my virginity and feeling so damn liberated and free after he made me come so epically—surpassed any experience I could obtain from being a not-so-independent college student.

I could exercise my mind whenever I wanted. Reading and even taking online courses could go a long way in keeping my mind sharp.

But in the wake of Lev touching me and showing me what it could be like as the center of his attention, I had no idea how to protect my heart. My soul.

Yeah, no. We’re not going there.

I shook my head, irritated that I could be letting my thoughts meander into the realm of feelings . Of love. I was attracted to Lev, and I wanted a lot more of that wickedly hot intimacy with him, but it was just physical. It had to be.

There was no room for the concept of love in my life.

“I thought tonight is your study group at the library?” he asked later that night at the apartment.

I sighed, pausing in my walk from the kitchen to my room, where I stayed most of the time to avoid the pain of him pushing me away.

“It is, but Kelly said she wasn’t going, so I don’t want to go.” I shrugged, amused that this was the most we’d talked in a whole week.

As if mentioning her was a cue, my phone buzzed with a call. “Oh. Maybe she’s changing her mind about that.” I continued to my room, unwilling to look at Lev when he was determined to be so hard and stiff around me.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ava?” a woman asked.

It wasn’t Kelly, even though it was her name on the screen. I furrowed my brow, stopping before I reached my bedroom door. “Eva,” I corrected. “Who is this? And why do you have Kelly’s phone?”

“I’m Laura. My room is down the hall from Kelly’s. You’re listed on the website as her roommate so I used her facial recognition to unlock her phone and call you.”

“What’s going on?” I tensed, knowing without any further information that something had to be wrong.

“My friend and I found Kelly in the showers. It looks like she’s been drugged. I didn’t know who else to call and I didn’t want to tell the dorm supervisor. They’re such bitches around here about any mention of a drug or booze.”

“Is she awake?” I jerked at Lev coming up behind me, taking my phone, and setting it to speaker. I glared at him, hating this invasion of privacy, but I was too focused on this news about Kelly to care about his highhandedness.

“She’s sort of waking up,” Laura said, “but she’s totally out of it. She had to have taken something. You’re the only contact on her phone that’s not a school number, so I figured… I don’t know. That you could help?”

“Yes. Of course. I’ll…” I frowned at Lev looming over me. Concern covered his face as he glowered, tuned in to this call. “I’ll be there to help her.”

Laura told me that she’d stay with Kelly in the dorm bathroom until I came, and she’d keep the dorm supervisor away. As soon as I disconnected the call, Lev reacted.

“When could she have taken something?” he demanded, curt, direct, and businesslike. He was an individual who’d take charge and command any situation. That was who he was and what he’d been trained to do as a lethal and powerful Baranov soldier.

But I tried my best to squash this flicker of frustration with him, this niggle of jealousy.

All week, he was cold and aloof with me, but the second he heard about Kelly needing help, he’d snap out of that distance?

“I don’t know,” I told him as I grabbed my coat. “But I intend to find out.”

I might not know how to handle him and navigate how much we’d changed things between us since we had sex. But I was clear and determined to assist my one and only friend in her time of need.