Dmitri hesitated. “In the beginning . . . he was kind to me, doing nothing unusual. When he started to touch me, it was so different from the violence I’d known that I mistook his behavior for genuine affection. He told me all boys my age had a guardian to touch and kiss.”
My fists clenched under the cover.
“Maksim sensed something was wrong. He asked me if Orloff hurt me, and I could honestly say he didn’t because he never did anything that would cause me pain. Orloff would rather have died than to injure his ‘perfect little boy.’” Dmitri gave a shudder of revulsion.
I choked back bile and imagined burning Orloff in a ring of tires.
“Yet then he began firing servants and isolating us even more. At the same time, he pushed me to do things I couldn’t reconcile. When I refused, he threatened to kill Maksim. Finally, I saw what Orloff truly was. After that, I was so infuriated and disgusted, I grew detached, my mind and thoughts far from him. Sometimes I would dissociate for long periods.”
“How did Maksim find out?”
“My brother sneaked into my room on Christmas Eve to set up toys, but I wasn’t there. Maksim discovered me in Orloff’s bed.”
Oh, God. “That’s when Orloff beat him? Because your brother tried to protect you?”
Dmitri nodded. “Orloff flayed his back open repeatedly and locked him in the cellar for months.”
I would never have suspected Maksim’s traumatic past. Today he was so confident and so at peace with himself, with Lucía. “How did you two escape him? Was Orloff arrested?”
“No, he . . . died. An elderly woman was put in charge of us, but it was Maksim who looked out for me, and I got better. Or so I thought, until my teens.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “Whenever I felt sexual pleasure, I’d start to dissociate. I fought with everything in me, but I couldn’t stop it. After sex, I couldn’t remember what had happened. It ruined the act for me, and each time I drifted, slipping away grew easier.”
Now I understood more about our wedding night. He’d feared dissociating with me. “Did you get help?”
His lips drew back from his teeth. “I tried everything. Any kind of therapy you can think of, I tried. For years. I learned what my issues were and how best to cope with them, but the dissociation continued to plague me. Every day I felt robbed; every day I was reminded of wrongs inflicted upon me. I could deal with my past, but my present was providing fresh misery.”
I couldn’t imagine having a wound that festered—for decades.
“Logically, I knew there would come a day when I would stay gone. I was just twenty-five when I concluded I could never sustain a relationship. Which meant Orloff had left his mark on me, was having the last laugh. That filled me with so much rage. For years, rage was the only emotion I felt. In a way, I was unwillingly being true to him, but I knew how to shuck off that monster’s hold forever.” He rubbed his scar.
Suicide. The culmination of all that terror and violence and pain.
“After Maksim intervened, he pressured me to go to a facility. A doctor suggested a pill to keep me anchored in reality, one with a notorious side effect. It killed my sex drive. I had a choice. Sane and celibate, or insane and sexual. My protocols of pills and no sex enabled me to concentrate on my work. I spent years like that.”
“Before me, when was the last time you were with someone?”
“A while.”
I could tell he hoped I would leave it at that. “How long is a while?”
“Years.”
“How many years?”
He squared his shoulders. “I was completely celibate for eight.”
I masked my astonished reaction. This explained so much of his behavior, starting with our first night together—the wonder in his expression as he’d explored my body in the penthouse bathroom. . . .
Not to mention his family’s unnerving enthusiasm at his interest in me.
“I had my work for most of that time,” he said, a defensive edge to his tone. “And I wasn’t alone in my suffering; Maksim battled his own shadows. His back is covered with scars, and because of what he endured in that cellar, he couldn’t stand to be touched.”
No wonder Maksim’s longest relationship lasted for an hour.
“My brother was as scarred on the outside as I was on the inside. I assumed both of us would be damaged forever, wanting nothing to do with Aleks, the two of us sharing our secret burdens.”
“Then he met Lucía,” I murmured. Dmitri had told me he’d hated the idea of her. “You felt abandoned again.”
He sucked in a breath. “Yes.”
I put my hand over his. “That’s normal. I would’ve too. Anyone would have.”
“I was so frustrated with him.” Beneath my palm, Dmitri’s hand clenched into a fist. “He and I used to believe in reason and logic above all else, but he swore he felt a connection to her that defied any rational explanation. My ruthless, cynical brother started talking about something that sounded a lot like fucking soul mates.”
Just as Natalie, Lucía, and Jess had said.
“I derided Maksim for that, thinking he’d gone as crazy as I was. But when he risked his life for Lucía, I accepted he did truly believe. I still didn’t.”
The jaded part of me wanted to scoff as well, but my parents . . .
“For some reason, Maksim loved her touch alone. He could sleep through a night with her beside him. He laughed. He even reconciled with Aleks.” Voice gruff, Dmitri admitted, “When Maksim married, I felt more alone than I ever had before.”