Page 91 of Deceitful Vows

Since I’m feeling hormonal and my ego is obliterated enough to demand privacy, I cut him off. “Goodbye, Mikhail.”

“Sunshine…”

I open the door like my heart isn’t breaking from the devastation in his tone before stepping back so he can exit without bumping into me.

He stops partway through the door. “If you didn’t want him to react, you wouldn’t have used me to rile him.” He brushes his lips against the corner of my mouth. “You know how to reach me when you need me.” He flashes a ghost-like grin, mouths,Happy birthday, then gallops down the stairs Vlad is still hogging.

Silence reigns supreme under the healthy roar of a high-powered motorcycle rumbling through my building.

“Is he your boyfr?—”

“Goodnight, Vlad.”

I close my apartment door before Vlad can voice all of his reply. I can still hear it since the walls are paper-thin. “Can I please get back the ticket to Vixens? If you’re not going to use it, I may as well give it to someone who wants it. They’re not easy to come by.”

I almost tell him to go to hell, but then I remember I’m no better than him.

I’m a cheater too.

He wobbles to his feet when I slide the ticket under the door’s lip. He gathers it up before locking his eyes with the peephole I’m peering through. “Would I be pushing my luck to get my leather jacket too?” My sigh is silent, but he must hear its ripples. “It was my pa’s, and I thought maybe I could hand it down to my eldest like he did me.” After another lengthy delay, his eyes turn pleading. “I swear it’ll be the last thing I ever ask of you.”

Hopeful he’s being honest for a change, I stomp to my room to grab the dust collector hiding in the back of my closet. I find Vlad’s jacket in under thirty seconds. It is next to the suit jacket that has a lusty scent as strong now as it was weeks ago.

I run my nose across the pricy material of Andrik’s business jacket before my head can demand my heart not to. It smells delicious, and our intermingled scents make me a mixture of angry and hot.

It should be impossible to miss a man you hardly know, but I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t missed Andrik today. His attention is so thrilling that I forget I’m not meant to crave it.

I’m also not meant to throw my friends under the bus with me to achieve it.

Mikhail was right.

I used him to force Andrik to respond.

Since I am mad at myself, I thrust Andrik’s jacket back into its spot with the same aggression I used weeks ago. This time, since my hearing isn’t affected from the ringing tires rolling over asphalt for twenty-four hours straight, I hear a crinkle I missed last time.

My throat works through a hard swallow when I discover two documents in the breast pocket. The first one is a plain sheet of white paper holding two tickets for the concert I mentioned earlier tonight. The other is an official-looking document. None of the details are filled in, but the terms in black and white for the world to see all point to the same thing.

Andrik’s wish for an heir.

As he’s hinted at numerous times, he doesn’t want his child to be produced the old-fashioned way. His marital contract states with the utmost certainty that the couple’s union is not about love. The child’s conception, fetal development, and delivery are clinically planned procedures.

Even the mother-to-be’s living arrangements form part of the agreement.

There isn’t an option for her to share a room with Andrik—nor a bed.

The knowledge makes me smile… until a date on the ledger registers as familiar.

Andrik’s reared-to-breed wife was scheduled for artificial insemination on the day I attended my interview.

He was fingering me in the driveway of his palatial home while his wife was being inseminated with his sperm, and it was inside her when he was in my bed, eating me for dessert.

The amount of disrespect is shocking, and it sends my emotions into a debilitating downward spiral.

Andrik isn’t demanding discreetness to respect my wish not to be portrayed as a homewrecking whore like my mother was for years. He’s rejecting me like every other man has when they realize the only thing I can offer them long-term is me.

That’s a slap to the face worse than any I’ve been given, and it dips my confidence to the lowest point it’s ever been.

“Fuck you, Andrik,” I lash out, shouting like he can hear me. “I am more than enough. If you’re too stupid to see that, that’s on you, not me. My fertility status doesn’t make me a woman. My body does. My strengths.” A fire roars inside me as my ego strives to break through the deluge swamping it. “My ability to do what I want, when I what, for exactly how long I want makes me more a woman than any name you could have placed at the top of your contract.”

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