Page 7 of Deceitful Vows

It has been issued many false pledges the past two years. Almost every one of them involved sex.

I don’t bother knocking when I reach Dr. Hemway’s examination room. His last patient of the day is the very essence of a man, so there’s no way he’d be in a room devised solely to remind women why we will always be the superior race.

If we can survive missed medical advancements for hundreds of decades, we can survive anything.

My breath catches in my throat when my intuition leads me astray. It isn’t solely the rarity of my misassumption leaving me breathless, but also the brochure the mysterious stranger is perusing. He’s stopped at page thirty-three, and his head is as angled as the modified doggy-style position the cartoon characters have adapted.

Since I skipped the examination every woman loathes when visiting her gynecologist, my mood is playful. “It’s all about modifying the incline of entry,” I murmur, startling him. “Well, that was my take on the position the first time I took it in.”

His angered expression slackens when he realizes who is approaching him unannounced, altering to magnetism. I’ve never met a man with so much natural arrogance. It should suffocate in the examination room’s sterile confines. All it entices is excitement, however.

After a second rake of my body, as lengthy as the first, Andrik asks, “Have you tried it?”

His voice makes the hairs on my arms stand to attention and is so thick I’m convinced he is a born and bred Russian. I don’t hear a hint of another accent.

I’m saved from being baked under the intensity of his watch when his snarled top lip reminds me that he asked a question.

I shake my head, too enamored by my body’s reaction to his voice to formulate a better response. It is like hot chocolate sauce drizzled over a generous helping of whipped cream—too sinfully delicious to warrant only one taste.

Andrik seems pleased about my nonchalant reply of my pitiful sex life, so it is only fair that I rile him. “More because I’m having a hard time moving past page seventeen’s suggested position.”

It takes several abated breaths for him to remove his eyes from mine so he can flick through the extensive brochure at a slow, leisurely pace.

I can tell the exact moment he reaches page seventeen. Not only do his nostrils flare, but so does the crease in his trousers.

After working his jaw from side to side, he returns his eyes to mine. Their sheer authority would usually raise my hackles. Today, they achieve the impossible.

They make me horny.

“I would congratulate your husband…???? ?? ? ?????, ?? ???? ???? ??, ??? ???? ?????.” He returns to English when my expression announces that I struggle to decipher Russian. “He isn’t, though, is he?” My heart thuds in my ears when he steps closer. Barely two feet of air is wedged between us, but his slow, prowling steps make it seem much more. “Or you wouldn’t look at me how you are.”

“How am I looking at you?” I know how. I can feel the lust doubling the thickness of my veins, feel it slicking my skin with sweat. I’ve just always believed in playing hard to get.

I’m also not sure he is a man I should mess with.

He’s standing in an office predominantly designed for women, yet oozing enough testosterone to make hormone therapy unnecessary.

Andrik’s arrogance feeds off the tension bristling between us. It bubbles it to the point of no return before he says with a smirk, “Like you know no man will ever fuck you as well as I will.”

Sweet lord, his mouth is as filthy as his words make my panties, and although I’d usually give as good as I get, their unexpected dampening has me failing to come up with a single retort.

My silence doubles his egotism. “Even if you try to tell me I’m wrong, I’ll know you’re lying,?????.”

“Darling?” I roll my eyes. “Please. You knownothingabout m-me?—”

I choke on my last word when he interrupts. “I know you wouldn’t need a brochure to tell you what feels good if you were my wife.” He stands so close that I can’t suck in a full breath without my nipples grazing his chest. “You’d only ever need me.”

Goose bumps trek over my skin at the image he paints. He has the confidence to pull off his claim, and the looks, but we’re interrupted by a familiar voice before he’s given the chance.

“Is everything okay?”

Andrik’s eyes shoot to Dr. Hemway for the quickest second before he trains them back on me. His gaze is darker now, more morose, conveying the misery in his tone when he replies, “Why wouldn’t it be? Did you not hear the news? My life is only just beginning.”

He doesn’t wait for either Dr. Hemway or me to reply. He stalks through the door separating Dr. Hemway’s consulting room from his examination room, immediately dispelling a hunger strong enough to break through the fear I’ve been hiding behind the past two years.

2

ANDRIK

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