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“And what would the old man want with you?” he asks in a dangerous whisper. “Don’t tell me you shared his bed as well?”
He frowns in a way that makes my cheeks flame. He’s serious.
“Of course not!”
“Because you werehis.” He nods to himself, as if a suspicion of his has been proven once and for all. “He would have never used you as a decoy, not even for his sister.”
“Why does it matter?” I try to wrench my arm back, but his grip tightens and I wind up stumbling into him.
“Because him, I understand, Little Rose,” Mischa utters near my ear, his voice cold. “I know your husband. I know how his brain works. But you…” His fingers sink into my hair, grasping strands at random. “You are a mystery that makes no fucking sense.”
He lets me go so suddenly that I stagger into the table, forced to brace my hands against it to stay upright. His footsteps advance on me and I sense him standing there, inhaling my scent, breathing out hate.
“You say you love him,” he accuses, “but he’s hurt you. You jump when I say his name.” His touch nudges my spine as if to point out the reaction I wasn’t even aware of. “But you call for that fucker in your sleep. You moan for him. Did you know that?”
I didn’t. Heat sears behind my eyes as my body stiffens. He’s lying. Though maybe he isn’t. I haven’t remembered a nightmare in years. There’s no point. I wake up and purge my soul of anything I might have dreamt of.
Until now.
“I want to know,” Mischa demands.
I gasp as his fingers slip beneath my dress, brushing the back of my thigh. Instantly, I regret wearing it. Though, ironically, isn’t this one of the many reasons I had in mind for choosing it in the first place?
There’s less hassle when his mind switches to sex—which it seems to do so often around me. But as if reading my mind, he grates out a harsh scoff and his nails dig in, making me flinch.
“You play your innocent act. You walk around here, batting your fucking eyelashes, getting Vanya to do your bidding. Was he easier to seduce than I was, Little Rose? Has he tasted you already—”
“Stop!” I push against the table, attempting to flee.
Laughing, he presses harder, grinding my stomach into the wood. “You are very skilled,” he insists. “Sometimes, you even have me fooled. Convinced that it’smycock getting you off. Making you come. But it’s not me, is it?” He grabs the hem of my dress again, lifting it.
“What are you doing?” I try batting his hands away, but he pushes me aside and yanks the dress up further.
“I could understand if he was a normal, pathetic, bleeding-heart motherfucker,” Mischa says over me. Our eyes meet and the look in his sends my pulse hammering. “I would understand it. If he never hurt you, I would understand.”
Still holding my dress, he brings his free hand to my cheek, nudging my healing wound. “But he did.Thisis me,” he says, stroking the outermost edge of the wounds he inflicted.XV.Next, he traces the outline of my sore right eye. “So is this. And this…” He moves down to my neck and then my shoulder, aggravating old injuries I’d nearly forgotten. “Buttheseare him.” His gaze cuts a brazen path down my front, raking over the various scars. “This is him,” he snarls, fingering a healed cut along my rib cage. “And this.” He turns his attention to my stomach, stroking the length of a raised, silvery scar. “He’s hurt you way more than I have.”
But Robert had years to inflict his damage. Looking back, only now can I admit that—despite my insistence to the contrary—his true abuse started when I was seven years old and he made me ogle a captive woman for sport.
“And what about you?” I croak, shivering as he meets my gaze directly. “You don’t talk about…her. Anna.”
The woman who he inferred was his love. I picture her, those wide, brown eyes. With Mischa? It doesn’t fit. Not until I envision the boy who crept into a room that he thought was Briar’s, intent on using her as a tool in their war.Thatboy would belong with a girl like Anna.
“You say Robert is in my head,” I point out when he says nothing. “But you don’t mention her. You have no pictures of her—”
“Who says I don’t?” His tone sets my nerves on high alert. Dark. Grated. Ragged. “Who says that I don’t talk about her? Think about her? Because her memory doesn’t rule my life the way your fucking Robert does?”
Danger! I’ve gone too far. Mischa fists a handful of my dress in both hands, and tearing cotton is my only warning to brace as he tugs. Tears. Strips me bare.
“You think I don’t think of her every fucking second of the day?” He doesn’t even seem to realize what he’s done. What’s he’s doing: invading my space, crushing me against the table, all while bringing his face within inches of mine. “You think I don’t miss her?”
I shove against his shoulders, but he doesn’t budge. “N-no.”
“No?” He laughs, tossing the remains of my dress to the floor. “She was better than you. Better than you will ever be.” He roughly tilts my chin, probing my gaze from a different angle. “She was good, and innocent, and sweet. And your husband destroyed that innocence.”
I gasp as he grasps the back of my scalp and wrenches my head back. Eyes streaming, I stare up at the ceiling while his breath fans my exposed throat. Panic renders me motionless—but deep down I know that he could truly hurt me if he wants to.
But he isn’t.
