Page 67 of The Lies Between Lovers

“But it’s also pretty rich,” she said, drawing his gaze upward again where she challenged him with an arched eyebrow, “coming from a man who refuses to tell me if he’s dying.”

Vaslav smirked, and blew another breath on her trembling sliver of sin only inches away from his face. “Frankly, Vera, dying doesn’t get my dick hard.”

19.

“Vas,” Vera said as she lingered in the crack between the double doors of his den. He didn’t look up from his desk or answer her call of his name while his long, strong fingers worked along the side of his skull at a pace that she thought was too fast to bring relief. “I can stay another day, if you—”

“Things are figured out,” he muttered shortly like she would simply accept that. She didn’t exactly have a choice because he wasn’t offering any information as to why it was safe and fine for her to return to her villa, except that he expected her to. “I doubt you’ll have any trouble in Noble Row. Get a start setting order to your affairs while you have the chance. My offer about your father still stands as I first said it.”

Right—tell her father she’d be married to Vaslav by winter, or Demyan was guaranteed no protection if he came to Russia.

“Would you really do it?” Vera asked. “Kill my father if I didn’t agree to marry you?”

“You’d be shocked by how good a motivator violence is, Vera. In the end, it always gets me what I want. Unfortunately, on your side of things, what I want just happens to be you.”

His blatant threat—even if it wasn’t worded as such—had her wishing he would at least meet her eyes when he had the nerve to do that to her. To be cruel without a care. She bit back an equally mean remark that probably would have only earned her a laugh from his side of the room. She’d learned the night before that Vaslav in great pain who didn’t want help was far worse than one that would accept it. The memory of waking up at the very crack of dawn—still confused with sleep and more tender than she was willing to admit—to Vaslav rolling out of bed just in time for his vomit to find the floor filled her mind.

Whatever exhaustion he had managed to find fucking her to near sleep was gone the moment he cracked open his eyes, apparently. She couldn’t begin to imagine what pain like that felt like—never mind how someone could manage agony that came without warning or a promise to leave.

Pride could be a terrible thing, and she wanted to blame that more than anything else for the way the morning had played out between the two of them after he woke up like he did. It couldn’t be easy; she tried to give him grace for that, at least.

Not that he deserved much more.

Gone was the man in Paris who let her rock him on a tiled floor when he was in his worst pain. The man who’d let her be oh, so close, to do anything that would help, didn’t exist here. Or he surely hadn’t when he woke her up that morning.

That’s why she knew his meanness came from misguided pride, and the only reason she allowed him any grace at all.

“Now get out,” came the dark utter from the man behind the desk. All without raising his head even once, he effectively dismissed her after everything.

That stung the most.

Vera stood unmoved.

Still quiet.

Her fingers wrapped tighter around the edge of the door, and she silently willed him one last time to remind her of the man she’d just spent days with. Anyone but the angry shell hiding at the shadowed end of his den using his viciousness as a way to keep everyone else away.

And then he did.

Vaslav chin lifted subtly, enough that he rested his chin on both thumbs while his face squinted in pain at the light from the hall sliding in through the crack between the double doors. Every other curtain in the large space had been yanked shut to keep out daylight. In her opinion, it made the space more closed off and uninviting.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he told her.

Vera pursed her lips, considering that. “When?”

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t get an answer.

*

“Don’t even look at him.”

Vera’s attempt at hiding her surprise about the large black retriever sleeping at the edge of the front steps of the Federal Colonial hadn’t been very good considering Igor waited at the bottom with her bags already prepped for the trip to the city.

It was the first time she’d seen the dog around despite hearing about him from nearly everyone. “It’s Marrow, right?”

She eyed the dog from the side curious about the creature that was apparently as grumpy and unpredictable as his master. How could that be measured? Or maybe she was lucky not to know. Vera couldn’t say.

“Should have been called The Bastard,” Igor said under his breath.