Page 90 of The Beast of Moscow

“Better,” he lied. “It’s a bit better.”

She wrapped the towel around her body and took a step further into the room after she shut off the light to the bathroom. “Didn’t you have business—wasn’t that why you were coming to Paris?”

“Don’t worry about that. Worry about getting some sleep. We’re still flying out at ten tomorrow.”

Or earlier.

It depended on how he felt.

Vera hesitated where she stood, not moving for the bed or even for the doorway to go to the room she’d been using during their stay. She gave him a second look, lingering on his bare feet and the slacks he’d left unzipped at his waist. “Aren’t you coming to bed?”

“No, but you should.”

Not that he would tell her, but she looked like she could use a few hours of sleep, or a lot more. The darkness under her eyes was prominent, and she’d stifled two yawns since she came out of the bathroom.

He bet she was exhausted.

After the night, and then him ...

Well, who wouldn’t be?

“Get some sleep,” he told her, turning for the doorway. “That bed is open, if you don’t want to walk down the hall.”

“Would you stay if I wasn’t in here?”

Vaslav was a lot of things—bluntly honest was just one of them. People often mistook that as him being cruel or mean because he was fine with pointing out how stupid he thought others were when they overlooked the obvious to feed their insecurities. Or rather, when he said it like he saw it.

Pausing in his step, he palmed his jaw as he rocked on the spot and considered whether he wanted to say something. She was lucky he even did that because no one else in his life was afforded that luxury.

“You do that a lot, no?” he asked.

Surprise brightened her face. “Do what?”

“He won’t fuck me or sleep with me,” Vaslav said, his mocking tone too high pitch for his own standards, but it was what it was. “You’re a lot less interesting when you’re swinging back and forth inside your irrational insecurities. The kind of men who like women that play those silly games wouldn’t be standing here with an erection, Vera. Again. To a man like that, you’d have proved your worth the second your robe dropped to the ground.”

She checked to see if he was lying, and he wasn’t. He still would fuck her; still wanted to. And while he couldn’t say whether he’d crawl in bed with her and fall asleep, he offered the only bed he’d been sleeping in, and he didn’t have time to sleep.

Not that she was owed the knowledge of those things.

What more did she want?

Her mouth and jaws moved like she was chewing on words before she settled on saying, “That was mean.”

“Or was it true?”

“They can be the same thing.”

“Then maybe I don’t care that it hurts when things are true,” he returned flatly, “because I bet the next time I have to refuse you something, you won’t look inside yourself for the reason why first. Not everything is about you.”

Turning on his bare heels again to head for the door, he muttered under his breath, “You’d think a woman in your position wouldn’t need to be spoon fed fucking self-respect and a backbone. Jesus Christ, you practically grew up on a stage.”

He hadn’t said it low enough because Vera’s sharp gasp proved she’d heard the cruelty he so easily leveled upon her because she was naive. He couldn’t pretend anything different; she barely knew him, had been sweet and kind even when he was not, had twenty years of living left to do to see the world through a perspective that might understand his, and none of that was her fault.

She’d not pursued him.

At the end of the day, Vera was there because he’d wanted her to be. She didn’t understand that this was who he had no choice but to be. In pain, quick to snap with a mean insult just to end a conversation with a woman he hadn’t even gotten to fuck because he didn’t want her to blame herself for the way this had turned out.

Vas could feel—practically taste—how bitter his words were. Still, even seconds later, they remained heavy on his tongue. The second he’d said it ... for the first time ever, he wished that he hadn’t said it at all.