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Grisha hesitates, and I can see that he’s trying to figure out how to work through an answer to that. Of course I’m right—a rich, influential man needs a trophy wife on his arm, not a free-spirited, passionate student withideas. He, like so many other men in his position, can’t reconcile their desires within the marriage bed, and so they go outside of it.
But Grisha wants me to believe he’s different, so he can get me to agree to a relationship again. So he can have what he desires.
“It’s what’s expected out of my wife, yes,” he hedges. “But that doesn’t mean she needs to be so proper and cold in public. It’s only with our children that she shows any warmth anymore. None for me.”
Maybe because she sensed you were being unfaithful. It takes everything in me to swallow down what I want to say, and curl my fingers around the hand touching mine instead, stroking the back of it.
“If she could accept your marriage was over, none of this would have happened,” I say quietly. It’s objectively true, and it’s the only thing I can force out right now, but the look of relief on Grisha’s face is palpable.
“See? You understand me.” He stands up, coming around the side of the island and reaching out to turn my seat towards him. The leather-topped stools on either side of the island are the kind that swivel, and suddenly I’m facing him, looking up as his hands find my knees, sliding up to my thighs. “How I’ve missed you, Lidiya. These two days have felt like two months. Like twoyears.”
He’s laying it on thick. This might have worked on me once, I’m sorry to say, before I knew about his wife and his business dealings and the other women, if he’d just fucked up in some more normal way. After all, I was falling in love with him not all that long ago. He’s still the same handsome man who made my heart race and my body shiver with pleasure. Even now, his hands sliding up my inner thighs make my skin tingle with remembered enjoyment, the memories of all the mornings and afternoons and nights spent together coming back here, in this place, that was his but so often felt like ours.
“I’ve dreamed about you,” he whispers, leaning forward as he spreads my legs apart, his breath warm on my neck. “I’ve wanted you so badly.”
I think it’s the panic that makes me feel as if I need to choke back a laugh. I want to tell him that it’s beentwo days, that he can’t possibly be that horny or that in love, that even if I believed him, we’ve spent two or three days apart every week that we were together, while I was visiting mybabushka.
If I’m being fair, though, I do remember every time I came back we ended up instantly in bed, sometimes not even making it to the bed, instead ending up against his wall or on his sofa or once—
Once on this quartz island, the top of it cool and then warm under my thighs as my body heat sank into it, his mouth between my legs.
“Say yes, Lidiya,” he whispers against my ear, his hands higher still. Any moment now, his fingers will find the edge of the lace panties I put on for him against my will, and slip beneath them. Any second now, he’ll discover that I’m not as aroused as I usually am, and then what?
That’s one thing I hadn’t considered, how to fake arousal when Grishaknowsme, knows my body’s responses to him, specifically.
He’ll know that something is off. He’ll know—
“Stop.” I push him away, my hands harder against his chest than they need to be, and he stumbles back a little. “Stop, Grisha—”
I repeat it, because he’s already coming back in, inserting himself between my knees that I hadn’t yet closed, his hands on my waist as if to keep me there long enough to convince me otherwise.
“Lidiya, please,” he murmurs. “Please, I want you so badly. You’ll remember how good it was between us, how much pleasure we brought each other—”
His hand is on mine, dragging it down, against his bulging fly. “Feel how hard you make me,” he groans against my ear, and I feel a physical revulsion so strong that I know in that instant that I can’t.
I can’t do it.
“I just need a minute, Grisha!” I gasp out the words, scrambling with my free hand for my purse on the counter, and I manage to wriggle out from beneath him, sliding ungracefully down from the stool. He tries to grab my wrist and pull me back, but I dart away, feeling a new type of fear fill me that I’ve never experienced before.
I’ve been lucky enough in my life to never have a man try to take advantage of me. To never have said “no,” and had it be ignored. But it’s clear that Grisha is convinced that if I leave this room, this apartment, he’ll lose me—and it’s also clear that he’s not prepared to deal with that.
“I just need a minute,” I repeat, backing towards the kitchen entrance. “I’ll be back, I just need—air.”
“You’re not even wearing a coat—” Grisha calls after me, but this time it’s me who ignores him. I make a beeline for the front door, already digging in my clutch for the burner phone that Levin gave me.
Only use it in an emergency. If your life is in danger. Not just because you’ve changed your mind—
He was very clear about how this phone was to be used. But in this particular moment, I don’t care. Iamin danger, as far as I’m concerned, and I can’t do this.
I can’t.
I hit the button to dial his number, the only one in the phone, as I burst out of the front door onto the steps, into the frigid cold, tears springing to my eyes from the cold or fear or desperation, I don’t know which.
I don’t even wait to hear him answer before I start talking. “Levin, come get me. Please. I can’t—you have to come get me. I’m scared. I—”
And then he says the words I was terrified I wouldn’t hear.
“I’m on my way, Lidiya. Leave the call going, I’ll track you. Just get away from there.”
