Page 39 of Deranged Imposter

“What?” He paints kisses on my hairline, devoid of time and impatience, and rests his lips on my temple.

“Why go for that field?”

A volatile presence in his gaze, Mikah’s impatience brews a wicked storm as ink drips into his darkening eyes. His soft lips break across his handsome face, but the perilous smile fades to a hazy reminder ofMikah.

Whether he wanted me to see that, in an uncharacteristically cruel instant, I stay quiet.

“My father has no say in what I do.”

I don’t understand.

“We argued when I told him I wasn’t going into medicine,” he divulges, a distant hiss lulling in this throat. “Being a doctor is out of the question, but I told him I would consider law.”

Mr. Masini is a businessman, so everything he does has beneficial strings attached. Family bonds mean very little when his father has high expectations for his company to be running within the family.

“With conditions,” I deduce, sympathetic.

“Two,” he reckons as he inches us to his old bed. “He is to never interfere with our lives, and I’m marrying you.”

The back of my knees nudge the bed, halting the shakiness, and he catches my fall. Mikah sits on the bed and hikes my thighs beside his as he adjusts my ass on his lap, my dress riding disturbingly high while an open-window breeze skims the hem.

“We shouldn’t,” I mutter bashfully.

Things are good, but not stable right now. Regardless of what captivating illusion my mind conjured up, uncertainty quashes the obsessive outlook of a future with him. Yet, my optimism reasons me to give it a leap and land on a four-leaf clover.

“Tell me why,” he whispers, his lips a minty breath away.

My lashes flutter as my face jerks away, but he’s faster when his hand locks around my jaw. He crushes my whimper with a stern glare.

“I—” I swallow uneasily, terrifying adrenaline feeding my true thoughts as they brace at the starting line of my tongue. “We’re friends.”

“What difference will it make between what we have now and a little more?”

There is too much at stake. When I comprise a list of flimsy excuses to not be lovers and insane justifications to pretend this didn’t happen, selfishness swings blows of manipulation and destruction at my resolve.

“You can’t predict the future.” I try and try again to look him in the eye, but the effortless determination guilt-trips my insecurities.

“Neither can you.” He drags my name on a tongue of salacious honey.

“What if we break up?”

He hovers over like the incarnation of a conniving, vicious, and obsessive god. Tracing the curve of my neck with honest and suffocating fingers, marking stealth flashes of fury, Mikah smiles charmingly.

Epilogue

Isabella

Everlasting Happiness

It turns out Mikah was offended when I had doubts about his studies.

With special treatment, because he’s a rich boy and a mouth of influence, the dean signs off on his request to allow online classes despite one of the university’s rules requiring students to have at least two in-person classes every semester.

He balances his studies, exams, and travel like a professional juggler. I worry about him and his need to prove me wrong.

He passes his first online exam while we are at Mt. Yoshino in Japan’s Nara Prefecture.

We were admiring the gorgeous fluffs of cherry blossom trees under the obsidian sky when he got the news of his grade.

---