Page 43 of Deceitful Vows

Their conquests were years ago, so I should be able to let it go, but I can’t. I want them dead as much as I plan to kill the man my mother struck. Then I’ll stop imagining their mocking grins when it dawns on them that they had her before me.

Their time is limited. They shouldn’t see that as a godsend. A delay in proceedings only awards me more time to work out exactly how painful their exits will be.

With my mood already injurious, I deepen my annoyance. “Have you ever had unprotected sex?”

“No,” Zoya answers after a beat, her tone a mix of confusion and deceit.

“Do I need to take you over my knee,??????”

I’ve never wanted to punish someone as much as I do now. My hands are itching to redden her ass with the same fiery burn racing through my veins.

Jealousy is hotter than hell. It is burning me from the inside out, making the small confines of the elevator scorchingly unbearable.

“I haven’t. I just…” The fiery hellion I wrangled at the start of our exchange is back bigger, stronger, and angrier than ever. “Did you not use protection because you had a lapse in judgment or because you knew it was pointless for someone like me?” She air quotes her last three words like she struggled as much as I did earlier to find the right word for her fertility issues. “Because condoms aren’t solely to lessen the chance of an unwanted pregnancy. They’re just as important for protecting theplayerswho should have been benched from unwanted STIs.”

She isn’t angry at me.

She’s pissed at how quickly she caved when I fell to my knees.

“Don’t be mad,?????. You will never win inanygame that has you slated against me.”

Zoya yanks her hand out of my grasp before fanning it across her cocked hip. “Why? Because you will annihilate my smarts with your stupidly perfect hair, sculptured face, and wickedly gifted mouth?” She whacks me on the chest two times, hardening me in an instant. “I’m not a lust-fueled idiot. I have a brain.”

“I know th?—”

“Then why do you assume you’ll always win?”

Her attitude slips back to manageable when I reply, “Because you will never be on a team opposite me long enough to consider defeat, much less experience it. Even if I’m playing in hell, I’ll drag you to the fiery depths right alongside me.”

Her mouth gapes as her brows stitch.

That was not what she expected me to say.

I use her distraction to my advantage. “But, in saying that, we need to play this game with the tenacity it demands.” She’s more subdued when confused, so I pile on terms I haven’t had time to properly assess. “We need to be discreet. We can’t?—”

“Fuck in an elevator with dozens of cameras and microphones only feet away?”

I clench and release my fists, fighting not to wash out her filthy mouth with my cum, before I jerk up my chin.

“Why?” she snaps out before I can utter a syllable.

A mask slips over my face. It is two seconds too late for a woman as shrewd as Zoya to miss. She learns the same brutal truth Mikhail is seconds from learning when the elevator arrives at the penthouse level.

I’m a liar in every meaning of the word.

“Mikhail said you were leaving your wife. That you had filed for an annulment.”

“I did.” Her relief is as short-lived as mine when I thought I could end an agreement with a sternly worded email. “But I withdrew the request an hour ago.”

Her slap shoots my head to the side and sends a crack rumbling through the elevator.

It also makes me as hard as stone, but since we’re being eyeballed by the very man I threatened to kill if he saw an inch of the skin hidden beneath her teeny-tiny skirt, I lick up the droplet of blood her strike caused to my top lip instead of smearing it across her scrumptious mouth.

It’s a fucking hard feat, one I only achieve when I realize Mikhail isn’t the only Dokovic watching the farce.

Our father is here as well.

Fuck it.

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