Page 121 of Deceitful Vows

As I hit the button to call the elevator to our floor, Nikita folds her arms over her chest and murmurs, “I’ll wait for you here.”

I enter the elevator, calling out her bluff with the confidence only a best friend can have. “Okay. But if my hand ends up down a billionaire’s pants, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”

It dawns on me that I was a little light with the information I shared with Aleena while ruminating on our plan when she shouts, “You put your hand down Maksim Ivanov’s pants?”

“No,” Nikita denies, her voice barely a whisper. “He put my hand down there.”

“Get in.Now!”

Aleena doesn’t give her a chance to back out again. She pulls her into the elevator by the strap of her bikini bottoms, cracking the air with as much energy as the surge racing through my veins.

A bikini competition is a great way to force Maksim to stop playing games, but I’d be a liar if I said I haven’t wondered if it will coerce the same response from another hot-blooded Russian.

Nikita chickened out of the bikini competition, but Aleena has more than enough excitement to keep up the hype. I forget stuff like this isn’t the norm for her. That having fun with your girlfriends, drinking like a sailor on shore leave, and being seen as an object of desire for reasons beyond your fertility status weren’t meant to be a part of any stage of our lives.

We were raised to act a certain way. Told how to behave, speak, and eat. Etiquette classes never included prancing around in a two-piece string bikini.

The remembrance sees me wolf whistling like I work on a construction crew when Aleena and Shevi work the stage like they were destined for stardom.

If Aleena’s husband-to-be thinks he’s getting a demure wife, he’s about to be taught a hard lesson.

Demure will no longer be associated with Sakharoff women. Aleena’s strut assures this, and my upcoming prance will seal the deal.

After high-fiving Aleena on the way by, I burst onto the stage with more gall than I had only two nights ago. The crowd goes crazy, and I eat up the attention. Their catcalls and whistles pull my confidence out of the trench it’s been milling in the past few days, surging it to an almost unmanageable level.

I’m having so much fun it takes several prolonged beats to recognize one of the many faces reflecting at me from the crowd. I can’t blame alcohol for the sluggish response. My veins are vodka-free. It is the fact that I’ve sat across from him only once before. Our exchange lasted as long as it took for me to drive him to the other side of town. It was also six years ago. Right around Aleena’s sixteenth birthday.

Does Aleena know Bayli is here?

Is he the cause of the extra spring in her step when she leaped off the stage?

Bayli’s expression doesn’t give anything away. He looks more confused than pleased. But unlike hundreds of men in the audience, his eyes aren’t fixated on my chest. He’s staring at the curtains Aleena raced through only a minute ago, wide-eyed and baffled.

I’m so eager to learn if Aleena saw her ex in the crowd that I don’t realize the hurricane zooming in on me until it is too late. Faster than I can blink, my elbow is seized in a firm grip a second after my foot leaves the stage, and I’m walked out of the backstage area filled with competitors.

I don’t need to look up to know whose ugly green head has reared. The zap his meekest touch surged through my body is all the indication I need to know who is accosting me, so I won’t mention his numerous mutterings about my body count never reaching six.

Only one clear line of verbiage makes it through the gibberish. “Cover me until I get back.” Andrik’s grip tightens on my arm before he shouts, “I don’t give a fuck what Maksim wants. Cover for me.”

After he removes a bead-like device from his ear and crushes it under his polished boot, he stares down at me. His haughty expression displays that Maksim’s orders will never triumph his wish to punish me.

I wasn’t with a man, but my bikini leaves nothing to the imagination. To a man as dominant and possessive as Andrik, that’s practically the same thing.

That doesn’t mean I’ll let him boss me around, though.

“Let me go. You’re hurting me,” I lie.

His firm grip on my arm isn’t painful. It incites lust so potent that I get drunk off it, and it seems I am not the only one noticing this.

Andrik’s nostrils flare as his pace increases.

“I swear to God, Andrik, if you don’t let me go this instant, the first place I’ll visit when I return to Myasnikov is your overcompensating country estate.”

One second I’m being pulled into a poolside cabana.

The next I’m being bent over a double sun lounger and spanked.

“I swear to fucking God,???????,” Andrik parrots, mimicking my threat, “I don’t care if I have an entire kingdom coming after me—if you ever walk around how you are now, I will kill every man stupid enough to look.”

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