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"You sleeping okay?" he remarked. "You look tired."
"No, not really," I answered. I wasn’t trying to coddle his feelings here. If he wanted the truth, he would get it, simple as that.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I’m waiting for one of you to knock on your door and … and take what you paid for," I snapped back, my words coming out sharper than I intended. I knew there was no point in being this harsh with him, that he would likely make me pay for speaking to him like that, but I didn’t care. Fuck it. Better to just be honest than play nice and simpering, like this wasn’t a completely fucked-up situation to be in.
He frowned.
"I told you," he reminded me. "We’re not going to hurt you."
"Sure you’re not," I fired back. "But you didn’t pay that much money just to have me living in your apartment, did you? You … You’re just waiting."
"That’s what you think?" Maxim asked. He sounded almost angry, angry that I would level that kind of accusation at him. I nodded. I wasn’t going to let him convince me of anything other than the obvious.
"Of course that’s what you want," I replied. My voice felt taut, pulled tight, like it was going to crack at any moment.
"No, it isn’t," he fired back. "You think I wait to take what I want? If I wanted you, I would have already had you."
I stared at him, not breaking his gaze for a moment. He was lying, right? If he wanted me, he would have … He would have taken me already. I felt something begin to unfurl inside of me, something that had been wrapped so tight around itself I hadn’t even noticed till now.
"You mean that?" I asked him. I didn’t know why I thought for a moment that I could trust him, after everything that had happened, given the way that my own father had betrayed me just a matter of days ago, but maybe … Maybe I needed to give in to the possibility that he didn’t want to use me and hurt me. Maybe there was a chance that he actually meant it when he said that he didn’t want to harm me.
Maybe.
"Yes, I mean it," he replied, his voice firm, leaving no room for discussion or debate. "I want to help you, Mina. We both do, me and Damyan."
Silence fell between us for a moment. I didn’t know if I trusted it, what he was saying to me right now, but … But what choice did I have? It wasn’t as though I had any way out of this mess. I couldn’t run; I knew they would have found me, and even if I did, where would I have run to? My father? After what he had done? There was no way.
"Okay," I murmured. I wasn’t going to believe this, not right off the bat, but at least I could take him at his word until he proved that I shouldn’t trust him. Surely, I could manage that, couldn’t I?
"But we need to know what happened to you to get you into that position in the first place," he continued. "That’s the only way we can help you, Mina."
I pressed my lips together. I wasn’t going to make myself more vulnerable to them than I already had. I shook my head.
"I already talked to Damyan about it," I told him. "That’s all you need to know. Okay?"
He frowned but seemed to accept that he wasn’t going to get anything else out of me anytime soon. He sighed and nodded to the fridge.
"You should get something more substantial to eat," he told me. "You need it."
And, with that, he walked out of the kitchen and left me alone once more. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have made it out of that interaction without anything heavier happening. And, sure, he might have talked a good game about not wanting to hurt me, not wanting to do anything to push me, but I didn’t know if I could trust him. I didn’t know if there was any way I could trust men like that.
But I guessed I was going to find out, one way or another. Whether I liked it or not. I slumped back against the counter and closed my eyes, biting my lip. I had no idea what happened now, but I got the feeling it wasn’t going to be simple …
Chapter Eight – Maxim
As I made my way to the gym in the building next door, I gritted my teeth and stared at myself in the reflective walls around me.
Come on, Maxim, I warned myself. You can deal with this. She’s just a girl. A girl who needs your help …
But, if I was being honest with myself, it was getting harder and harder for me to deny just how attracted I was to Mina. And running into her in the kitchen like that, when she had all but told me she expected me to fuck her already, was making it hard for me to keep my head straight.
Because, yeah, she was beautiful. Fucking gorgeous, if I had to put it into words. I saw plenty of women come and go in The Flood downstairs every night, but it was nothing compared to the way she made me feel. There was something about those clear blue eyes that seemed to cut right through me, practically glowing against her pale, freckled skin, her long blonde hair tumbling around her face. Those full, soft lips, curled down into a frown most of the time, but I wanted to see her smile so badly …
Fuck. I was starting to develop feelings for her. Well, maybe not feelings, plural, but one feeling in particular—desire, pure and total desire. A want that made everything else just fall away. It was a deep need to protect her, especially after finding out what she had told Damyan about how she had ended up in this situation in the first place, that there must have been someone in her life before this who had seen her beauty and her innocence and decided they wanted to do everything they could to exploit and make use of it in any way they could.
The thought of it infuriated me. Not that it would have been any better if she had been drawn into this of her own accord because she had been using drugs or whatever else, but knowing that she had been thrown into this nightmare because of someone close to her, someone she trusted—it made me want to protect her even more intently than I had before, made me want to take care of her in any way I could.
