Page 41 of Essence of Fear

“Even if I—”

“If you ask me to stay, then I will stay,” he said quietly.

There were far too many parts of Viktoria that were screaming at her to listen to her instincts. The parts of her that were just scared because she was always fucking terrified of something or someone. And then the parts of her that had so many questions to ask … Something had to be wrong, right? Hadn’t he just gotten called away from a party with her brother because something happened at the Compound? Why was he here? And who had brought him here, anyway?

It was the other part of her …

The part that felt dead, but she’d learned was just sleeping. The part that was very much a young, sexual woman who’d thought she would never feel something like attraction or lust again, who had suddenly been woken up, who stepped back from the doorway and opened it wider.

Pavel nodded, and stepped inside after her.

Viktoria still didn’t turn her back to him.

He didn’t miss it.

“I have three knives on me,” he said, “would you like to take them?”

She stilled in the hallway and hesitated to close the door. Once she did that, he was in here. No one would hear her cry for help or see that something was happening. It would be just her and him, and way too much blind faith and trust.

“You don’t need a knife to hurt me,” she muttered.

Pavel lifted one shoulder. “But do you still want them?”

Why lie?

“Yes, I would.”

Unquestioningly, Pavel emptied his pockets of the three knives he’d been hiding. Viktoria took each of them, and while it didn’t make her feel safer to have the weapons in her hands, that wasn’t the point.

It might not make her feel safer.

It didn’t have to.

It was the fact that he did it at all that meant something. She felt a lot of things in those moments—the usual war of emotions that kept her head barely above water while she still felt like she was drowning at the same time.

The one thing she didn’t feel?

Regret.

Not about him.

“Why three?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“Three knives. You only have two hands.”

“Backup.”

He glanced her way and winked.

If Pav noticed that Viktoria made a conscious choice to trust him enough to walk ahead of him, then he didn’t say anything. It was unusual for her to let anyone walk at her back, but especially a man. He followed behind her silently as she headed for the kitchen to finish what she had been doing before he showed up.

Except now …

Well, now she didn’t have very much interest in the liquor she’d left sitting open on the counter. That’s where she went first, closing the bottle and opening the freezer to put the bottle back in its place. No doubt, there would be another night when she needed to pull it out and drink herself to sleep.

“Do you often drink alone?”