Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Like kiss her.
Tell her the words no one ever told me.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“It has to be.”
Because that would be a lie.
And I couldn’t do that to her.
Just as much as I couldn’t live with the lie on my lips, released into the universe manifesting itself, twisting around us in its dark ugliness.
A tear slid down her cheek.
I caught it with my finger and cupped her face. “Ask me.”
“If I die, he wins, and I can’t let him win. You gave me his tongue after all… I’ll see it through.” She swayed toward me, I caught her with both hands and held her there, afraid of what would happen if I was pressed against her again, if I had to smell her, if I tasted her. It was ruining my calm facade, because she was so fucking good.
And I wasn’t, was I?
I had a sex club where men killed women for pleasure.
And even though I saved who I could.
I fully damned the rest.
I was that man.
I wasn’t a savior.
I was the monster she believed I was, and it would be cruel to make her think otherwise.
“And after you see this through, dorogaya?”
“What does that mean?” she snapped. “Whore in Russian?”
I would take that to my grave.
My very early grave.
Because a part of me, the part that still craved… something, couldn’t call her six thirty-two all the time. But I couldn’t utter her name again, not out loud, not when it felt so innocent falling from my lips.
And wrong, so wrong that I would do anything to protect her from what it meant… when a man like myself said a name out loud.
She finally lifted her head, glaring at me. Her anger was back. Good. It would help her survive. “Are you calling me a whore again?”
“That depends, are you spreading your legs for me?” I gripped one of her thighs with my hands. “It’s an easy answer, since you’re willing to bite off my ear before letting me pull any part of you apart, and believe me when I say, you’d enjoy it… immensely.”
Her eyes searched mine. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Enjoy anything…” She gulped as her cheeks flushed. “That way.”
My nostrils flared as I leaned in and whispered, “He should die for that.”
“According to you, he will.”
I leaned back. “I’m not calling you a whore. It’s a term of endearment.”
Her eyes widened. “What sort of—”
I covered her mouth with my hand. “Your questions are exhausting. You,” I said pointedly. “Even more so.”
The fierceness of her gaze would feed me for days, the way she stiffened beneath my touch, ready to bite my fingers off.
Her fight.
It was her fight, wasn’t it?
That and the way she lay on her bed like a fucking queen taking court, waiting for her loyal subjects to serve her.
She was magnificent, and she didn’t even know it.
Better that way.
Better that she couldn’t reach pleasure from a man.
Because I wasn’t a man capable of giving her that.
“Tomorrow,” she said in a quieter voice. “Are you just going to keep me locked up in here indefinitely? Now that I know I don’t spread my legs for the great Andrei Petrov?”
I hated my last name.
Hated the memories it conjured up.
Men addressed my father by Petrov.
They addressed me by Andrei.
Putting the two together put me in a completely shitty mood, and I was already all the way there.
“Do whatever the hell you want, just stop asking so many questions. My trigger finger’s been feeling… aggressive.” I smirked.
She scowled and looked down.
I wanted more than anything for the fire to be directed at me, not our shoes, but I was all out of demands to give and I knew if I kept engaging her, she’d never stop, and I needed sleep.
With a sigh, I stepped away and walked down the hall to my private room. I heard footsteps stomping after me around one second later. I made it as far as my door before I leaned against it and uttered. “What the hell could you possibly want?”
“A job.”
I stared at the wood paneling and wondered if I’d ever been stunned into silence like that in my entire life.
And then I stared some more as I looked over my shoulder at the fire in her eyes. “A job?”
“I can’t just sit around, that’s what my brother and father did, they locked me, they—” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, if I’m not your whore that means that I’m something, that means I’m either already dead or you’re keeping me hidden to use me later, I get that, but until later happens, until I breathe my last breath, I’d like to do… something, anything! And if you say clean the kitchen…”
I smirked at that. “What? You don’t like cleaning dishes?”
“Your dishes are spotless, and you know it.”
“I like order.”
She snorted.
“I also like being alone, and yet here we are.”