Page 53 of The Lies Between Lovers

“Well, I’m still here,” he murmured with a lift of his brow, “hmm?”

That shudder she’d been holding came out in her next breath. He pretended like he didn’t hear it because he respected that it took nerve for her to be honest. It couldn’t be easy to admit insecurity about a memory. After all, that’s really all Irina’s life was to him now.

And his brain didn’t do so well with those. Memories, that was.

“I have the world under my feet,” Vaslav told Vera, distracted with the way her micro expressions flitted so swiftly over her doll-like face. “From the outside looking in, I’m easy to figure out. A reclusive, insane man with violent tendencies that’s better off left on his own. Ask anyone. I think a psychologist even wrote that in the official report that was handed down the line eventually. More money than I could ever spend. A home that’s big and empty and safe. Power beyond my means to do anything I want whenever I want,” he finished with a dry laugh.

“And what?”

“And nothing at all,” he said, shrugging one tattooed shoulder. “In the end, it will mean nothing at all. All that money and the things that have made up my life will go to people who don’t deserve it. My presence will be scrubbed from every surface that I’ve touched until there’s nothing left. The rest of the world will forget about me, too. Just the same way I’ve forgotten most of it now. I don’t know if that end is in two months, two years, or twenty but I’ve decided that I don’t want to be at the end, and still be here alone. I didn’t agree to go crazy alone.”

His voice raised on that final note, and the smash of the side of his fist to the sink barely even earned a flinch from Vera.

Never once did he break her stare, though. Even as he let out a steadying exhale and said, “That’s not how this was supposed to happen. I wasn’t shown heaven just to spend the rest of my life in hell.”

15.

“Are you dying?”

Maybe he shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was at her bold question—especially not when she’d been doing it so frequently. Still, he didn’t expect her to pose it quite as frankly as she did. In a way that offered him little to no room to talk around it, or let her figure things out on her own.

Not without him being called on it, anyway.

“Well, are you?” she pressed.

Vaslav still tried to deflect. “Aren’t we all?”

He should have been enjoying the sight of her still trapped between him and the counter. He’d all but closed the distance between them so her soft curves were molded against his hard lines. She might act like she couldn’t get away, but all she really needed to do was slip under one of his arms barricading her on either side.

It wasn’t that hard.

She didn’t move an inch.

Vaslav knew, then.

Vera liked where she was.

Good.

So did he.

“Sooner than me?” she asked. “How about that, since you seem to like your word games so much. Are you dying sooner than me?”

That earned her a scoff. “I’m old enough to be your father—that’s a foolish question from such a smart young woman.”

“Why are you so difficult?”

“Being unwilling to discuss my possible death—early or otherwise—makes me difficult?” Vaslav laughed as he tilted his head to the side, saying only, “See, I would think there are a million other things that make me far more difficult than that one. Try one of those.”

“I bet there wouldn’t be a point.”

He chuckled. “You wouldn’t be wrong, either.”

Vera’s hand raised high enough that she was able to graze the pads of her fingertips along the ridge of his facial scar. From where it met the corner of his mouth and then straight across his cheek. He didn’t particularly like the scar to be touched, but as he couldn’t quite pull himself to look away from her while she studied his old injury up close and personal, he decided it was worth the slight discomfort. Her attention, gentle touch, and closeness was more than enough to soothe any of his lingering irritation.

“You’re just deflecting,” Vera said then. “And I won’t call you daddy. Even if you are old enough to be my father.”

The way her tone dipped to a silk cadence was enough to wrap his body—from toe to tip—in a warm rush of need that he hadn’t been expecting. Oh, his cock had been semi-hard from the moment she was near, but that wasn’t quite the same as the surge of lust he actually had to ignore to keep from acting on with her already easily accessible to use as he pleased.