Page 113 of Poison Evidence
“Once I have you aboardSteel OrchidI’m liable to take you out to sea and have my way with you.”
“It sounds like paradise.”
Ivy was strangely nervous when she stepped aboard the boat,Steel Orchid. Not about being alone with Dimitri—Matt—but more that this was too good to be true.
She’d been prepared to wait years before they were certain Dimitri was free of the GRU. These last ten months had been an eternity, but still, it was far sooner than she’d expected.
The first thing she saw when she stepped inside the salon was a framed photo. Ulai Umetaro, looking happy and healthy standing on the deck of a yacht that looked suspiciously likeLiberty. A sign mounted to the rail indicated Umetaro Charters was open for business. “I didn’t knowLibertyhad been recovered.”
“She was found a few weeks after you left the islands, but it took months to get her ownership transferred to Ulai.”
She grinned as she stared at the photo. Dimitri’s arms slipped around her waist. His lips found her neck, and she wondered if it was possible to combust with joy.
She turned in his arms and tugged on his belt buckle. If she was going to explode with happiness, she’d take him along with her. He kissed her deeply as he scooped her up and carried her into his stateroom. They didn’t even make it to the bed.
Her cocktail dress was pushed up and underwear brushed aside as he held her against the stateroom wall and thrust into her, hard and fast and everything she’d ever dreamed.
“Oh God. Dimitri.”
“Matt,” he corrected, then thrust into her again.
She laughed. “Matt. Matthew. Matt.” She practiced his name with each thrust. Operant conditioning with the ultimate pleasure as the reward.
She came, hard. Intense. Euphoric. He came after she did, then continued to hold her against the wall, kissing her neck. “I love you, Ivy,” he whispered.
“I love you, Matt.” She could get used to the name. A Dimitri by any other name was still the hottest, most incredible man she’d ever wanted. She cupped his face. “How is it you’re even here? That this is even possible?”
He pulled out of her and deposited her on the bed, lying down beside her. He pulled her against his side.
“Ian had the idea of switching Zack’s and my dental records. The Coast Guard had mine, and the CIA had Zack’s. After the switch was made and they identified Parker Reeves as dead, the FBI closed the book on him. The GRU had never confirmed that I was their man, but there had been information shared when Parker disappeared. Through those existing channels, the GRU was presented with evidence of my death. Given that Sophia died in the jungle too, there was no reason for them to doubt the evidence.
“Between the shock of how deeply Sophia had betrayed the GRU and their scrambling to figure out how much she’d compromised them, they took my death in stride. An insider said I was even labeled as loyal and never having defected, because they found proof I’d reported in to Sophia and was working for her—who I believed to be my official handler with the GRU.”
Ivy traced his cheek, which had been reshaped and scarred thanks to the blast in Palau. He looked different, but not too different. “Because Rudy didn’t have any living relatives,” she said, “the FBI and Child Protective Services entered Julian into the system under a false name, to protect him from being monitored by the GRU. Officially, Alyssa, Rudy, and Julian Fredrickson all died in a boating accident in Palau last April. Julian won’t know the truth, unless we decide to tell him when he’s older.”
Dimitri’s eyes clouded. “It feels wrong not to tell him, and yet…”
“He needs to have the memory of the mother who loved him very much. She sacrificed herself for him.”
“I have trouble…even thinking about her,” Dimitri—Matt—admitted.
“I know.” She ran her hands over his freshly shaven cheeks. So much like that first night they’d met. The entire world had changed in the intervening months, yet here they were, meeting again for the first time. “I know.”
She sat up and pushed him onto his back, straddling him and gazing down on his handsome face. He was no longer blond—even his eyebrows were dark—and he wore colored contacts. Those changes added to the broken cheekbone, new scars that wrapped around his eye, and a broken nose that now had a prominent bump, and his face had been subtly transformed. But he was still hotter than Death Valley in July.
She traced all the changes in his face, and then touched the familiar lines of his smile. She still wanted to see creases at the corners of his eyes, for joy to be stamped into his skin, indelibly. “I’ve spent a lot of years hating myself for loving Patrick once upon a time. But over these last few months, I’ve realized I need to stop beating myself up about that. Stop feeling ashamed. I loved him, and my feelings were real, and I need to honor and respect the woman I was then instead of holding her accountable for things she couldn’t possibly know. If I can’t do that, I’m no better than all the people I’ve met who’ve accused me of awful things. I’m a good person. I don’t deserve that.”
She ran a fingertip across the new scar on his cheek and over the bump on his nose. “You are a good man. You’ve spent your whole life trying to protect the only person you could. She did horrible things to you, and made you do terrible things to others. But at your core, you’re a good man. I want you to know it’s okay that you loved your sister, and it’s okay, even now, to want to love her in spite of what she did. I won’t judge you for it. She was your baby sister and you were in an untenable situation, put there by people who didn’t actually give a damn about either of you. Sophia was a victim just as much as she was a villain. Just like you.”
His eyes teared. “I still hate her sometimes. And then I remember the years right before our parents died, and I love her and wonder who we could’ve been. Siblings, like you and Hazel, taking a vacation together.” He paused and cleared his throat. “I met Alec several times in the last few months.”
“You did? He never said a word.” But then, she knew he couldn’t.
Matt smiled. “It’s obvious you’re close to him. I love what I’ve seen of your family, Ivy. I want to be part of it.”
“You already are. Julian, he’s going to love you. And someday, you’ll be able to give his mother to him. He’s going to need stories of her childhood. The good times.”
“I can’t wait to see him.”