Chapter 21
21
TOMASZ
T he best part about being on the slopes is that it never really gets dark. The moonlight reflects off the white dusting all around us. Red shivers when Nero bounds up to us with snow clinging to the front of his coat in such a way that he trips over himself and almost takes her out, too.
“Calm the fuck down, asshole,” I tell him, ruffling his fur until it’s snow-free. When I stand again, Lucy is watching me intently.
Her hair is a mess of wild waves and rebellious knots from where it’s been blustering around in the mild wind. The thrum of my heart picks up when I focus on the wool hat she’s wearing. It was left in the coat closet along with my mama’s gloves that she’s blowing into while rubbing her hands together.
This is the downside of being here. There’s nothing for miles but wilderness. It’s the perfect hiding place. Although we should’ve stopped off to get her some fitting clothes, I didn’t want to take the risk. After what happened in the Turkish hills, it would be stupid and reckless to be out in public.
It’s just as well that Red fits into my mother’s clothes. They’re oddly a little big on her, and it makes me think back to when Mama wasn’t sick. We used to come here often for weeks on end.
“Do you want to go back inside?” I ask Lucy, shaking off the thoughts that sour the moment. When she shakes her head, I state, “You’re cold.”
“Yes, a little. There’s a lot of snow…” Looking around us, she smiles lightly, and my chest tightens at the pretty sight.
Her cold-kissed lips are only a few shades darker than the tip of her nose. The freckles that normally pepper her face are hidden beneath the burn of the frost on her skin, and her blue eyes are brighter than ever. Almost too vivid, like sparkling glass. The girl looks as beautiful and perfect as a porcelain doll.
“Surely you’ve been in the snow before?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve always been more of a sunshine kind of girl. Skiing was more my sister’s thing.” It’s impossible to miss the twist of her features at the mention of her sister. “While my mother used to take me to the South of France, Laura and our father would go to the Swiss Alps.”
“Is that why you don’t like your sister?” I ask while pulling my scarf off and wrapping it around her hat and over her own until she really looks like a tiny babushka doll that every muscle in my body is pulling tight with the urge to unravel.
“No,” she replies far too quickly, deviating her eyes from mine.
“Liar.”
“Excuse me?” The bark of her voice is almost as sharp as I know her bite to be. “You don’t actually know me. You know nothing about me…not really.”
Wrong. I know a lot more than she thinks. I’ve watched her for long enough. Played enough games with her to know that her skewed sense of loyalty to her family and the role she was given drowns her in guilt.
“Soon enough, you’ll realise that we aren’t all that different. We both have duties and expectations…” I don’t know why I’m telling her any of this. In the end, none of it really matters. “I’ve freed you from yours. I told you, Red, you’re a ghost now.”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” she snaps at me, stalking towards the house and rambling angrily as I follow her. When I pull her back to me, she levels me with a glare. “Fucking my body doesn’t make you an expert on?—”
“Shut up and quit being defensive. You sound like a brat that needs reminding of who you’re talking to.” Grasping her chin, I tug her flush to me. “Fucking doesn’t wipe your slate clean, so think twice about giving me a reason to punish you because I won’t go easy on you.”
Releasing her chin, I grip her hand, holding it in mine for a moment before I lace our fingers together and tug her back towards the trees.
“Where are you taking me?” Red tugs back.
“I told you I was taking you out. You’ve been inside for weeks. It’s time to get out and get fresh air.”
“Of course…you care so much about me.” The bitterness in her voice brings me to a halt.
When I turn to look at her again, she asks, “Why are you doing all of this? I’m still your prisoner. I’m still your enemy. Nothing has changed for you. You are who you have always been.”
“You will always be my prisoner.” I nod at her statement. Not for the reasons she thinks, but because it’s the only way I can keep her safe. Stupidly, that is the only thing that matters with her. “And, no, I will never change. This is who I am, and you should be happy about that because any other sane man would’ve wiped their hands clean of you already.”
“Why don’t you, then?” Tears gleam in her eyes.
I wish I could answer it for myself. The only thing that I can say is “You belong to me. Isn’t that what you said last night?”
Doe eyes widen before she nods. “Yes.”
“Well, I care for what is mine. I do everything in my power to protect it.”
“Until you find another girl that’s better than me. Isn’t that what you do?”
A scoff pushes from my lips at her words, but the sadness that shadows her eyes is impossible to ignore as Lucy stares down at my chest. With her head slightly bowed, I can’t see her face, but I can feel her pain. She’s so full of it that it makes my insides twist with anger.
“You will look at me when we’re talking because I won’t repeat myself.” She takes a moment, but eventually, her eyes find mine. The reddened whites lend a purple tinge to the blue that in the silvered light of the moon makes her look every bit the ethereal creature she is. “If I wanted other girls, you’d be dead already. Or maybe you’d be an oligarch’s fuck toy by now. As it is, you’re here, and I’m keeping you.”
It’s a good thing she doesn’t vocalise the argument narrowing her eyes because I’m in good mind to spank it out of her. The fight she possesses is enthralling, but when it’s tinged with her self-doubt, it’s ugly as fuck, and I don’t have the time for it.
“You’re better than whatever insecurity it is you’re feeling, so act like it.”
“Then why did you show me those photos? How can you expect me to believe you when you…?”
Ignoring her question, I guide us through the darkened woods. The atmosphere between us is heavy, and I know that until I give her an answer it won’t dissipate. Not even the view of the mountain valley below us that trails to the minuscule lights of the small town in the distance does anything to appease her.
“Because you needed to realise that you were born into the wrong world.” Nearing the edge of the mountainside, I grasp her hand a little tighter and tug her close before wrapping my arm around her shoulders. We stand in silence for a beat before she says, “It’s wrong.”
She’s right, but it’s what makes this thing between us alluring. There’s a genuine sense of languishing where the dark moments we’ve shared haunt every part of my existence. A longing so deep that it calls to the derelict void of my soul. I’ve never had that. No one has ever made me feel like this—as though I need them to be myself.
“What you do…the things you do…”
“It’s who I am. Who I’ve always been. Nothing will ever change that, and I don’t regret any of it.”
It’s obvious my remark bothers her, but she doesn’t move away from me. Sinking to the ground, I sit on with my legs dangling over the edge while she watches me with that intent gaze that cuts through me.
“Sit.”
“I’m not really a fan of heights.”
“Sit. Your. Ass. Down.”
“Are you going to push me off?”
“Depends on whether you piss me off.”
“Promising,” Lucy groans down at me with a roll of her eyes while she joins me on the ground.
“I used to come up here with my mom all the time. The thing about this life is that it gives you a lot of wealth and privilege but not much freedom.”
“Not just your life,” she mutters. “My father is the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and it’s all that my life has ever been about. Even when he wasn’t.”
“You hate it.”
“Do you hate any part of your life? Maybe you don’t regret any of the things you’ve done, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t hate…this or it or… I…”
“Malyshka…” I take in a deep breath so that she doesn’t assume I haven’t given her words thought. “What you’re looking for will not make the guilt go away.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Liar.”
“Stop calling me a liar and answer my question. You want me to belong to you…to make peace with that?” Twisting slightly, she looks up at me with a beseeching look that I’ve never seen on her before. “I don’t know, Tomasz, give me something…anything…any part that I can have too. Everyone has regrets. Everyone has something they hate about their life.”
“I don’t do regrets. Life is too short.”
“Fine. No regrets.” She blows out a frustrated breath. With her hands trembling, she pulls the gloves off before cupping my cool skin with her warm touch. The heat permeates through me, top to toe, drawing me impossibly closer. “I hate that I trusted them to come for me. I hate that I believed them when they made me out to be something special. It’s pathetic that I bartered my entire life away on nothing but a half-cooked notion that I could be…better or more. I hate that I was desperate enough to fall for it all.” Blinking down between us, she drags in a shaky breath. When she looks back at me, a tear skitters down her face, marring the smile she’s trying to bolster her defences with. “So what do you hate?”
“I never had a choice.” The murmur sounds more like a scream that echoes into the distance rather than my almost whisper. “Now, I have to wait until my father decides that it’s my time. I’m thirty-two and I’m still taking orders from a man that has lost perspective on how the world actually works.”
“So, really…” she says with a slight lick of her lip as her thumb strokes over mine. “What you’re saying is that you hate not having control.”
Swallowing down the lump that Lucy’s accurate acknowledgement lodges in my throat, I turn my gaze back to the valley ahead while wrapping my arm around her and cocooning her to my side.
With her hands tucked between our thighs, I settle into the hum of our presence, focusing on the way the sound of her quick, quiet breaths lingers in my ears, marvelling over the fact that we can be two beings from two opposing worlds, and somehow her soul fits with mine. Somehow, we see each other in ways that we don’t see ourselves.
“What were you desperate for?” I ask as she lets out a soft sigh.
It takes her a moment to take in my question or maybe consider answering it. But then she burrows into me before saying, “Love.”
After another silent beat, Red tips her head back to find my stare. “I desperately wanted someone to love me the way I loved them.”
“Do you still love him?”
“Is that why you showed me the photos?” Slipping her hand beneath the hem of my coat, she flattens it to my stomach. “Because you didn’t want me to love him?”
“He doesn’t deserve it.” Regardless of whether she wants to hear it or admit it, it’s the truth.
“I loved the way I felt after…well…after we had sex. It made me feel good for the moment, and then I felt like I wasn’t enough. Like I needed to be better for Freddie to want to keep me.”
Before her words are carried away in the breeze, I tell her, “I want to keep you.”
“I want you to keep me. I want your control…even if it hurts. Even though it’s wrong.” Rising to her knees, Lucy turns to me. With her hands lacing around my neck, she rests her forehead on my shoulder. “I want you to own me.”
“Me owning you isn’t love.” It’s nothing but carnal desire. Lust.
I cup her face with one hand while gripping her hair with the other, tugging at it to tilt her face to mine as she tells me, “No, it isn’t. And I don’t want love anymore…I just want to be yours.”
The words float away in the breeze, and as if to reaffirm her statement, Red nuzzles her face into my hand, kissing my palm over and again. “You can be my master, and I can be your pet. I don’t really know what that means, but…” With a shrug, she looks up at me as though it’s not simply her kisses she’s left in my hand but her entire existence.
It’s impossible for her to know how incredible her surrender feels. Even in these miniscule gestures, the power that it makes me feel is addictive. And it doesn’t matter what happens after this moment, because I will never allow anything or anyone to hurt her again.
No one will ever touch her again. Not without getting through me.