could take right now, but he needed his hands on her, needed her to know he meant what he was about to say.
“I don’t want that, Becca. I want a real relationship with you. I want you to be the first person I see when I wake up and the last person I see when I go to sleep. You’re the only woman I want.”
“For how long, though?” She ducked her head. “When you get bored, you’ll move on. I know you, Dimitri. I know how easily you get distracted and lose interest. I can’t…no, I won’t do that to myself.”
He tipped her head up to look at him. “Have I ever gotten bored with you in all the years we’ve known each other?”
“I don’t know.” Her brown eyes were fathomless. “I’m not around you all the time. We only chat on the phone or through text messages. You’ve never had the chance to be bored with me.”
“I’ll give you that, sweetheart, but only that. Here’s what I do know. You are the only person I have to talk to every day. In all the years we’ve been friends, when have I not called or texted each and every single day? Do you know why that is, Becca?”
“Why?” she whispered, her teeth biting her lower lip.
“Because I can’t sleep if I don’t talk to you, I can’t write. Hell, I can’t function without hearing all that sass from you at least once during the day. You’re the only woman who’s ever done that to me. I love you, Becca. Is it the love I write about? I don’t know, but I want the chance to see if that’s what this is. I know I’m an asshole, a manwhore, and have always been proud of it, but this manwhore wants the chance to try for happiness with the one person who means more to me than anyone. Will you try, Krasivaya? Please?”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Dimitri?”
He laughed, but he knew she was serious. “I’ve always loved you, Becca. Probably since that first day I saw you skulking in the back of the library.”
“I wasn’t skulking.” Pulling her food to her, she picked up her fork and stabbed at the rapidly cooling food.
“Yes, you were.” He winked at her. “I liked it, though. You intrigued me.”
“Only because I didn’t fall all over myself trying to get your attention. You had enough of that from the idiot girls who batted their lashes and threw their boobs in your face every time you passed by them. No, thank you. I have more self-respect than that.”
“That’s why I liked you. You were a challenge. If not for me talking to you in Russian every day, I think you would have ignored me completely.”
“Probably, or I would have told Jackson you were bothering me, and he’d have had someone come beat the shit out of you.”
“He wouldn’t have done it personally?” Dimitri twirled some of the pasta onto his fork, grateful she started to relax.
She laughed, a full-on belly laugh. “You wouldn’t have been worth his time. One of his lackeys would have handled it.”
“Not worth his time?” He pouted, plastering on his best outraged expression. “I was the captain of the fucking football team.”
“Football is not God in an MC.” She smiled, and he let out a breath he wasn’t even aware he’d been holding. Relaxed, she’d be willing to talk out this thing between them.
“Then what is?”
“You don’t want to know.” She bit off a piece of bread and sighed. “These are good.”
“Told you so.” He picked up his container and inhaled the delicious aroma.
They ate quietly, and it was that comfortable silence he’d never found with any other woman. He simply enjoyed being in Becca’s presence. It had nothing to do with his dick and that bastard’s lust-filled thoughts. No, it was Becca. Her personality, her kindness, her wicked humor. She soothed him.
Becca took a few minutes to process everything he’d told her. Last night, they’d both agreed to not pursue this, or at least she thought he’d agreed. She had zero desire to get her heart shattered, but he seemed so earnest. What changed?
“Why did you decide you wanted a relationship with me?” She sipped at her bottle of water. “You don’t do relationships. It’s something you’re proud of, so what changed?”
“You.” He leaned back, absently rubbing the tops of his thighs. “When you were just a voice on the phone or someone behind a text message,