Page 82 of The Beast of Moscow

“Vera,” he murmured.

“Yes?”

“I’d have fucked you tonight. If you would have asked me under the tower, I would have made sure you could still see the crowd when I fucked you bent over the closest thing I could find. And here you are, concerned about my mood when I’m just in pain. Do you understand how silly I think that is?”

Those long, dark lashes of hers swept downward. She even nibbled a bit on her bottom lip, and that was enough to get his cock thickening where it had been resting against his inner thigh.

“It’s not silly to me,” she returned.

So be it.

“Go to bed,” he told her.

She still didn’t move.

Heat traveled down his gut, dropping lower into his balls when her hand shifted a bit on his upper thigh. She didn’t look down to see the outline of his erection growing under the towel, but could she feel it?

Did she sense it?

“I could stay,” Vera whispered after seconds ticked by and neither of them moved an inch. “I helped earlier when you were in the shower. I don’t mind doing that again if you—”

“I don’t want pity.”

“Why would I pity you?”

Why wouldn’t she?

Maybe it was his own foolish pride that kept him from saying the words he wanted to: yes, please stay. Vaslav wasn’t accustomed to something like shame—a lot of that had been stripped from him in prison, but he felt it, then. A deep sense of humiliation at the fact he so desperately wanted this woman to crawl into bed with him, stroke him to sleep with those soft hands of hers, and let him use her like he believed she would.

He wanted that.

More than anything.

Except he couldn’t make himself say it.

“Go to bed,” he ordered one last time.

Let me drown myself in vodka, beautiful girl.

Vera lingered only a second longer. Long enough to meet his gaze one more time, and find a blank coldness staring back. He said nothing as she stood, fixed her robe with a bit of pink color flushing her cheeks, and then turned to leave.

At the doorway, she stopped again.

“What?” he asked in a whooshed exhale.

The dull pain flared in the base of his skull again. If she noticed his sudden scowl from the pain, or if she took it for her, he didn’t know. She had a knack for seeing the shit he was typically good at hiding from others, though. Who could say?

“You never said what would happen if I asked you,” she said.

“Asked me for what?”

“For you. If I asked for you.”

“To fuck you?”

Vera lifted one shoulder. “You never said.”

“Vera—”