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It was too much. It still is. I don’t want him to care for me that way. I don’t like being cared for. It makes me feel weak—weaker than the situation I’ve been thrown in. And I sure as hell don’t want Adrian to do it. Because he’s not genuine. Or maybe he is, but not toward me.
It’s toward his wife.
He’s now in black sweatpants and no shirt. I study the hard ridges of his abdomen and the fine hairs on his masculine chest. I wonder why he doesn’t have tattoos there.
His arms and hands are fully inked, but even as I watch them, I can’t tell the meaning behind most of his tattoos. There’s a compass on his forearm, but I don’t think it indicates direction. There are birds escaping at the top of his shoulders. A bloody flower is inked in the middle of an intricate map that doesn’t seem like one of the world. Maybe it’s a map of Russia. I wonder what he was thinking when he got them.
But why would I wonder? I’m nothing to this man. Only a replacement.
I try engraving those words to memory so I don’t get caught up in his gentle touch, in the way his fingers brush against the swell of my breasts every now and then.
He doesn’t see you, Winter. He sees Lia.
My mind drifts back to the figure I saw at the windows that day when I was kissing his cheek.
The pale woman with raging eyes, who looked just like me.
When I blinked, she disappeared.
Either I was imagining things or Lia’s ghost was actually there. I chose to go with the first option because the second one terrified me.
Whenever Jeremy and I play in the gazebo, I keep staring at that same window in case she reappears.
She never has.
I would probably have a better chance figuring out if my hallucinations are true or not if I go there, but Adrian’s guards are keeping an eye on the garden—or us—all day long. Not to mention that the man himself is always watching us like a hawk from his office window.
Yan is constantly there, too.
The only time I would be able to go into the guest house unnoticed is during the night. And that scares the shit out of me.
This housescares the shit out of me.
The man in front of me terrifies me more because he’s the reason I feel like I’m crawling into some fucked-up territory.
Adrian stands up once he’s finished and positions himself behind me, grabbing the blow-dryer. The slow humming of the machine fills the room as he removes the towel from around my head and dries my hair.
I shiver for a reason completely different from my wet hair meeting my neck. I keep my eyes downcast because I don’t want to look in the mirror to see him caring for me and blow-drying my hair. I don’t want to get caught up in these moments that aren’t meant for me.
Lia was one lucky woman. Or maybe it was the opposite, considering the savage ways he touches me—her.
I wonder how it felt to have a man as hard as Adrian care for her like this, as if she was his world. Was she tingling like me, or did she consider it suffocating as I should?
I wonder if he also made her wait before he fucked her. I internally shake my head. Why the hell am I thinking about him fucking her? Or me?
It’s just that it doesn’t make sense for him to keep coming all over my stomach, my breasts or even my ass. His hard-ons seem painful, but he still refuses to fuck me.
I refuse to let him hear me moan or scream, so I guess it won’t happen in the near future.
Is that what he did with Lia, too?
“How was your marriage with Lia?” I ask before I can stop myself.
My voice is quiet compared to the blow-dryer, so I pray to all the stars above that he didn’t hear me.
But then he says, “It was a marriage.”
My mortification at being heard disappears at his answer. He has this infuriating way of avoiding questions. He doesn’t exactly refuse to respond, but he gives something vague or rephrases the original question.
