Page 65 of The Lies Between Lovers

“I don’t really do well with all of that,” Vera finally settled on saying, letting out a heavy exhale as she looked at him again. “Death, I mean. Especially if it’s someone I know or care about. I just ... I know what it means, but a part of me tries to pretend like that’s not what happens. And if I can ignore it, then it’s not real. It scared me when I was little, and it really terrifies me now.”

“So did you not want to be alone,” he started to ask, “or did you just not want to go home?”

Her lower lip quivered, but the hard press of her mouth was enough to quell the tiny show of emotions. It did little to hide the swimming water in her eyes that the flickering fire only made even more apparent to him. “When I go home, Mr. Anatoly won’t be next door like he should be. It’ll be real, then.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, because it’s a bit of both, I guess.”

“Nobody said you had to go back to the villa anytime soon, if you’re not feeling up—”

Vera’s eyes narrowed on him playfully. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

“Who is keeping you?”

“Just because you don’t have to try doesn’t mean it’s not happening, Vas.”

Well ...

That was also fair.

“I don’t know,” Vera said, melancholy thick in her dipping tone, “I just woke up alone and sad, and I can’t really ignore why anymore. That’s all.”

“Congratulations,” Vaslav returned as he rounded the chesterfield, and then dropped to sit in the middle across from hers with the coffee table between them. His arms snaked wide along either side of his head as Vera watched him warily.

“For what?”

“Being human, Vera.”

Flaws and all.

While the fire had taken her focus again, and he was fine to let her soak in her feelings and silence without his input, Vera still said under her breath, “Well, I never asked to be human—or to feel like one, anyway. Seems unfair when I was doing perfectly fine the way I was before.”

“Da, me either.”

Life simply didn’t work that way.

He considered urging Vera back to bed when he noticed the sleepy droop of her eyes, and the way her long lashes fanned her cheeks when she yawned. The only thing that stopped him was the fact she stood up before he could, but he didn’t expect her to shrug the quilt tighter around her while she rounded the coffee table, coming to a stop in front of where he sat.

“What, printsessa?”

“I’m a princess now?”

Vaslav grinned. “Mine, for the moment.”

He leaned forward, unable to keep a respectable distance when she was that close, and his hand disappeared under the edge of the quilt to find her bare knee. Her legs were as smooth as her sex—waxed, he imagined—but for the tiny patch of trimmed hair she kept neat on her pubis. Stroking his hand up the side of her leg to where her hip melted into the dip of her waist, he grabbed on tight.

And then yanked her a step closer.

Vera didn’t even stumble on the way to him. “What happened to your hand?”

“The one touching you looks even worse.”

She eyed the raw, bruised knuckles that she could see, lingering on the particularly bad spots where the skin had been split and ached with every flex of his fingers. How he hadn’t broken a finger or worse, he didn’t have the first damn clue. Luck, maybe. That, or his bones were simply used to taking a good beating now.

Or rather, giving one.

It could also be the double Vicodin he’d dropped in the den after shedding his bloody clothes making him numb. Who would know?