Chapter 22
22
LUCY
T he pounding of my heart sputters with every passing minute. Tomasz knows I understand every word of his and Anton’s exchange, yet he doesn’t lower his voice or take the conversation elsewhere. With a flit of his pensive gaze to mine, he draws in a deep breath.
“They want the girl, and Dimitri wants to make a deal. Your father will come and get her himself if you don’t take her back to Moscow.”
Exhaling, Tomasz nods at him while still holding my stare. Blue eyes glint with possession as he tells him, “I have a call to make.”
“She won’t be able to fix this mess for you.”
She? The bite of toast dries in my mouth as my chest tightens. Who’s Anton talking about?
“Mikheil Sarapov is out for your head. You killed his son…”
“And I would do it again. That bastard plotted against me, and while he may have a deal with my father, ultimately it’s me that will have to follow it through?—”
“Tomasz.”
“I’ve never taken kindly to traitors, and I won’t start now.”
When he pulls his phone out of his pocket, the sudden movement chills through me. As calm as he is on the surface, I can sense the anger roiling deep. It darkens the clear oceans in his eyes to a murky midnight storm that makes it hard to focus on anything other than its silent roar.
Pushing the rest of my breakfast away from me, I force down my last bite with a sip of sweet tea.
“Get dressed,” Tomasz tells me before he leaves the sunroom overlooking the forest we’ve explored every night for the last week.
The snow is getting impossibly thicker and the air so cold that even warm clothes struggle to keep you warm. But every night, it becomes a little easier to forget about the world outside of the compound. Every night I see a little deeper into him, and even though I know I shouldn’t, I let him steal more of me. It’s impossible to resist the lure of his charm and the call of his soul to mine. Contrary to all the lies I keep whispering to my heart, we don’t feel like enemies anymore.
“You look worried,” I say as Anton taps furiously at his phone.
With a wry expression, he looks up at me. “Someone is going to die over this, and my job is to make sure it’s not Tomasz.”
“I can help you,” I tell him quickly, the intensity of my words surprising me. “I can help you protect him.”
An incredulous laugh bursts from him. “You? Help me?”
He pockets the phone and comes to stand beside me. He doesn’t touch me in any way—he wouldn’t dare—but the way he’s looking down at me makes it feel as though he’s got me in his grip. “You caused this.”
“He came for me. He came for me in London, and he came for me then too…and you were right there with him.”
“Because he will not get taken out on my watch.”
“Then let me help you. I have good aim, and contrary to this whole…” I shake my head, gesturing around us with my hand to indicate all that’s happened in the last five months. “Despite this whole shitshow, keeping Tomasz safe keeps me alive…it’s in my interest to help you.”
“That would require me to trust you, and I do not.”
Grasping the napkin that’s on my lap, I throw it onto the table before I stand and hold his stare. “Whether or not you trust me, we’re on the same team now.”
The remark doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I keep waiting for the guilt to hit me as I walk back to the bedroom and do as Tomasz instructed me. It never comes, and as I sit in front of the vanity to style my hair, I find it too easy to look myself in the eyes again.
My body is still sore from all the ways we fuck at every given opportunity. And while my breath catches at the memory of his touch heating my skin and making my pulse rush through me, I find that I’m at peace. Not just with myself, but with him and who we are together. For once, I feel as though I belong. Serendipity brightens everything around me as though I’ve finally found my right place at the right time.
Dressed and with my hair tied at my nape by a silk scarf that was with the clothes the maid put in the closet for me, I head back downstairs. The library in this place is well stocked. Mostly Russian literature with a few Latin additions that are clearly worth a lot. But there’s one book that I keep going back to— De Deo Socrates . Running my finger over the spines on the shelf, I pause and pull out the well-loved hardback. It’s surprising that it’s not falling apart.
I flip through Apuleius’s words until I get to the highlighted passage: Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
“He was a wise man,” Tomasz states, surprising me from my scrutiny of the passage.
“Is that why you quote him?”
A slow grin cuts across his face as he saunters closer, looking like the cat that got the cream. When he reaches where I’m sitting close to the wood burner, Tomasz pulls me up from the window seat by my arm before sitting down and tugging me onto his lap so that I’m sprawled on him, my back on his front.
“He was trying to find a common ground between Plato’s demons and Socrates’ god.”
“By finding common ground, do you mean argue by any chance?”
“Are you trying to suggest that I like conflict?” he asks in a skewed reply to my question, taking the book from my hand and placing it on the floor carefully. It obviously means something to him with the way he cares for it.
I peer up at him to find him watching me closely. The slightly overgrown shadow of his stubble is thick and dark, making my fingers itch to stroke over it. The scratch of it on the bridge of my nose when he tilts his head a tad closer to mine has me shuddering over him. Such an innocent touch, but it lights me on fire with a need that I can barely hear, let alone think through as he murmurs, “Rarity wins admiration. Do you know what that means?”
“That we always yearn for the unknown.”
“Very logical, but these philosophers were a little more poetic. So, no,” he chuckles over my lips. His hot breath is scented with the tinge of tobacco and coffee, making my mouth water for his kiss. “It means that we often give up on who we are to conform to our surroundings.” With his stare on mine, narrowed and probing, he adds, “It’s what you did for love, isn’t it? You gave up on yourself to please others…but in the end, it’s made you despise them. Conformity, or familiarity as Apuleius said, brought you nothing but contempt and disappointment.”
For a moment, I’m staggered by his words. Was I that obvious that a stranger could see through me? Worse…that my enemy could have a clear measure of my weakness?
“I told you, Red, we’re not all that different,” he tells me, probably reading my internal fret on my face.
“What?” I scoff back. The way he’s looking at me has my gut twisting in a way that cuts me to the core. So deep, intense, and with a silent keening that makes it impossible to catch my breath as I rasp, “You’d do anything for love?”
Tomasz stills. With his lips pursing and his brows drawing together, he swallows, and I’m struck by the way his throat flexes with the movement. My pussy mimics the action when he cups my face, holding my stare hostage as I’m about to look away.
“Sounds like a terrible pop song,” he finally states with a strained chuckle.
The air solidifies around us, a new tension forming that I can’t quite make sense of while my heart races so fast that I might break out in a sweat if he continues looking at me. He’s smiling with a softness in his eyes that I’ve never seen before on anyone, let alone him. Everything about this man is hard and unyielding, except for the way he’s smiling at me right now. And it’s doing things to me that are beyond wrong and tragic. Things that I need to shake off before our truce is confused with something that can never be.
Forcing a laugh, I fake a teasing smile. “The fact that you associated it with Meat Loaf says a lot more about you than you think.” I’m not sure what, but it certainly makes him appear more human than cruel monster or wicked god.
“I was an eighties baby. What’s your excuse?” With a hard nip of my nose, he pulls back to nudge the tip with his as the seriousness sets back in with the draw of his brows and the silent hitch of my breath. “We’re leaving.”
“When?” Not that it matters or that I have a say, but the questions make all of this feel a tad less helpless.
“When the chopper gets here.”
“So soon…”
A small smile upturns the corners of his lips. “I like it here too,” he says, shifting so that his arms are behind my knees and back. “We’ll come back soon enough.”
Standing, Tomasz lifts me in his arms. We’re almost out of the room when I look over his shoulder and spot the book on the floor by the window seat. “Can I take it?”
“Take what?” He pauses in the doorway, spinning to look back in the direction I’m looking. “You like it that much?”
Yes. That’s the answer that blares inside me while I tell him, “It’s interesting…” And it means something to you.
As ridiculous as it is, it seems as wrong to leave it behind as it is for me to take it, hoping that if it means something to him, and that he trusts me with it, that I mean something to him too. Or that I’m worth something.
“Sure,” he tells me, putting me down on my feet slowly. The weight of his gaze follows every step I take. When I pick it up and flick through it, it’s impossible to contain my smile. “Given it’s my book, are you going to look at me like that too for letting you have it?”
Of course, his words have my pulse roaring to life. Butterflies rage in my belly while I hold the book to my chest and sway on the spot.
God, he shouldn’t make me feel like this. After all the shit he did to me…knowing the depravity of his world…
I shouldn’t feel so overwhelmed with giddiness that I’m practically beaming.
We’re not all that different . His words echo, making the moment freeze. Everything fades as I watch him watching me with a barely contained smile that twists the pinched expression on his face.
“You didn’t answer my question before.”
“Your question,” he reiterates with a questioning lull while he comes closer.
Habitually, his hands push into his pockets, making his forearms bulge and his shoulders widen with his stance. I’ve never felt so small like this. My toes curl into the plush rug, and my chest constricts around my lungs. The gonging of my heart reverberates in my ears as he comes to a stop. We’re toe to toe, my head tipped so far back that my neck is craned.
“I know that love is non-existent to you. Control gets you off…and makes you happy…but you said we’re not all that different.”
“I did.” Slipping a hand from his pocket, he anchors it on my waist, tugging me closer.
“That implies that we have at least one thing in common.”
“It does.” Clutching his other hand on the other side of my waist, he pulls me all the way flush to him, lowering to my height so that I’m bending back to meet his gaze. The pressure of his fingers fizzes through me with his tight grasp and unyielding squeeze.
When I open my mouth to coax more of an answer from him, he sucks my lip into his mouth. Nibbling on the throbbing flesh, he tugs back to release it with a silent pop before licking into my mouth. The swipe of his tongue over mine draws out a low groan from me while I continue clutching at the book in my hand, and his hands palm down to my arse, kneading while he devours my whimpers and growls into his lungs.
Everything pulses and pounds, thrumming for him and his demanding touch. The moment is a piece of heaven while we’re standing at the mouth of hell. And when he finally pulls away, holding me upright through my hazy sight and gasped breaths, I am bereft. I want more. I need more.
“Breathe, malyshka, breathe…” he orders with a growl, shaking me to my senses with his hands trailing up my back and then hooking them over my shoulders.
“Yes…yes…” With a hiccupped gasp, I add, “Breathing.”
“We need to go.” Without warning, Tomasz lifts me, throwing me over his shoulder with a playful slap to my arse that makes me giggle as he tells me, “The book.”
“What about it?”
“We both like it…there’s one similarity.” Before I can say anything else, he swats my arse again, harder this time so that the strike heats through me and my giggle is cut through with a moan while he rubs the sting away. “My mother wants to meet you.”
“What?” I bluster, trying to lift myself so that I check his face for any sign that he’s playing with me. “Why?”
We’re at the back door when he stops to put me down and take the coats from the maid already waiting. While he’s helping me into mine, he says, “Typically, it’s poor practice to marry a woman before introducing her to your mother, so…”
I’m not sure what’s happening. I’m hot and I’m cold. My stomach is somersaulting while my heart races with panic as Tomasz puts the book in my coat pocket and then tugs my boots onto my feet.
When he stands, I ask, “What are you talking about?”
“My mother suggested it. A Vassily always protects their name. If you are a Vassily, my father will have no choice but to protect you that same way that he protects me and my sister.”
“You can’t… I can’t… Marriage shouldn’t be about?—”
“Do you still want me to keep you?” he snaps with a scowl that chills through me.
“Tomasz…”
“You want to be kept as a whore, I’ll send you to—” Before he can finish, my hand strikes his face with a loud thwack that has the maid cowering away in apprehension of his reaction.
“Call me whatever the fuck you want…pet, doll…but you will never call me a whore!” Hot tears burn in my eyes as his hand grips me by the throat.
“If you feel so strongly about it, you’ll follow my plan without another question.” Releasing me with a push, he turns to snatch his coat from the maid that’s staring down at the ground, clearly afraid that he’ll take my outburst out on her. He doesn’t.
Putting his coat on, he turns back to me, glowering as he zips up and then does the same for me. While he tugs the fur collar to close around my neck, he tells me, “You ever hit me again and it will be the last thing you ever do. I’m lenient with you because I failed to protect you once. I broke my word to you…but you will not disrespect me.”
“Respect goes both ways.” I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, given our situation. “Fuck me however you like, but…I’m not a fucking floozy.”
“If you were, you wouldn’t be mine,” he barks at me, grasping my hand before he leads me out to the vehicle awaiting us.
All the lightness from the library is gone. In its place is a stark silence that separates us even though we’re side by side, his hand grasping mine tightly as we convoy away from what has been our haven.