Page 48 of Doctored Vows

“They’re pretty much the same thing.”

She laughs, taking my comment as intended—playfully—before she’s lost to the magic of a gifted pair of hands.

I use the unexpected silence I rarely get in Zoya’s presence well. I read about the social and political aspects of the development of neurosurgery in the late nineteenth century and how meningioma terminology was the subject of nationalistic pride.

It is an interesting piece, but I’ve barely given it an ounce of attention the past twenty minutes. I’ve spent more time glancing longingly at the wall that separates my suite from Maksim’s than my Kindle.

Although I shouldn’t be able to hear anything over the clink of champagne glasses and the laughter a few glasses of bubbly instigate, I’m reasonably sure Maksim returned to his suite twenty minutes ago. A door creaked, and then, barely a minute later, running water trickled through the wallpapered divider between us.

Understandably, I’ve been in an inferno ever since.

Images of Maksim in the shower at Myasnikov Private are rolling through my head on repeat, so you can imagine how tense the situation between my legs became when I recalled his confession on how he used my face as inspiration while masturbating the past two weeks.

Add those two points to the euphoria I was experiencing in the cabana, and the tiny snippets of memories breaking through the fog in my head, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster.

I’ve been straying my eyes to Zoya’s gift too often to brush it off as curiosity.

I’m horny—extremely—and fighting not to march into Maksim’s suite and pretend his request for us to share the same bed each night includes sexual activities.

“Nikita?”

I snap my eyes away from the wall dividing my suite from Maksim’s before straying them to the entryway of my room. Zoya has her shoulder propped on the doorjamb. She looks relaxed but sexually frustrated.

I’m not going to lie. I’m glad it is finally on her face instead of mine.

That doesn’t mean I won’t try to act like I’m not a harlot lusting over a man I’ve only just met, though.

“It’s not nice to be teased, is it?”

She groans before slowly pacing into my room. “I swear I was this close”—she holds her thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart—“but I just couldn’t quite get over the line.”

“Orgasming with an audience is hard.”

She looks at me as if I lost my marbles. “It wasn’t that. I just…”

When she goes quiet, I’m confident I do not know the woman across from me. Zoya doesn’t shy away from anything, much less something as unthreatening as controversy.

My heart thuds in my ears when a reason for her peculiar response smacks into me. “You have feelings for the guy you duped!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never fall for a guy like that.” She holds back her truth for two whole seconds. “His son, though… I wish he wasn’t so damn sexy. He would be a lot easier to forget if he were butt ugly.” When she flops onto my bed, the study snacks I downed like a piggy crinkle beneath her.

I cringe when she pulls out the multiple wrappers I was hiding under a thick duvet.

“You didn’t eat all of these, right?”

I snatch them from her hands and stuff them back under the bedding. “We’re not discussing my poor eating habits while studying. We’re discussing you and the unbelievable notion that you may have developed feelings for someone.”

“But those aren’t normal chocolates?—”

“No buts. Tell me about this guy and why you thought running with his daddy’s money was better than seeing if he feels the same way?”

My back molars crunch when the first reason she smacks me with is highly valid. “He’s married or soon-to-be married. Something like that.”

“Z—”

“I didn’t know that when we started messing around.” She rolls over and props herself on her elbows. “He says that they’re not sexually involved.”

“They all say that.”

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