Page 55 of Deception

“Well, I care for what is mine. I do everything in my power to protect it.”

“Until you find another girl that’s better than me. Isn’t that what you do?”

A scoff pushes from my lips at her words, but the sadness that shadows her eyes is impossible to ignore as Lucy stares down at my chest. With her head slightly bowed, I can’t see her face, but I can feel her pain. She’s so full of it that it makes my insides twist with anger.

“You will look at me when we’re talking because I won’t repeat myself.” She takes a moment, but eventually, her eyes find mine. The reddened whites lend a purple tinge to the blue that in the silvered light of the moon makes her look every bit the ethereal creature she is. “If I wanted other girls, you’d be dead already. Or maybe you’d be an oligarch’s fuck toy by now. As it is, you’re here, and I’m keeping you.”

It’s a good thing she doesn’t vocalise the argument narrowing her eyes because I’m in good mind to spank it out of her. The fight she possesses is enthralling, but when it’s tinged with her self-doubt, it’s ugly as fuck, and I don’t have the time for it.

“You’re better than whatever insecurity it is you’re feeling, so act like it.”

“Then why did you show me those photos? How can you expect me to believe you when you…?”

Ignoring her question, I guide us through the darkened woods. The atmosphere between us is heavy, and I know that until I give her an answer it won’t dissipate. Not even the view of the mountain valley below us that trails to the minuscule lights of the small town in the distance does anything to appease her.

“Because you needed to realise that you were born into the wrong world.” Nearing the edge of the mountainside, I grasp her hand a little tighter and tug her close before wrapping my arm around her shoulders. We stand in silence for a beat before she says, “It’s wrong.”

She’s right, but it’s what makes this thing between us alluring. There’s a genuine sense of languishing where the dark moments we’ve shared haunt every part of my existence. A longing so deep that it calls to the derelict void of my soul. I’ve never had that. No one has ever made me feel like this—as though I need them to be myself.

“What you do…the things you do…”

“It’s who I am. Who I’ve always been. Nothing will ever change that, and I don’t regret any of it.”

It’s obvious my remark bothers her, but she doesn’t move away from me. Sinking to the ground, I sit on with my legs dangling over the edge while she watches me with that intent gaze that cuts through me.

“Sit.”

“I’m not really a fan of heights.”

“Sit. Your. Ass. Down.”

“Are you going to push me off?”

“Depends on whether you piss me off.”

“Promising,” Lucy groans down at me with a roll of her eyes while she joins me on the ground.

“I used to come up here with my mom all the time. The thing about this life is that it gives you a lot of wealth and privilege but not much freedom.”

“Not just your life,” she mutters. “My father is the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and it’s all that my life has ever been about. Even when he wasn’t.”

“You hate it.”

“Do you hate any part of your life? Maybe you don’t regret any of the things you’ve done, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t hate…this or it or… I…”

“Malyshka…” I take in a deep breath so that she doesn’t assume I haven’t given her words thought. “What you’re looking for will not make the guilt go away.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“Liar.”

“Stop calling me a liar and answer my question. You want me to belong to you…to make peace with that?” Twisting slightly, she looks up at me with a beseeching look that I’ve never seen on her before. “I don’t know, Tomasz, give me something…anything…any part that I can have too. Everyone has regrets. Everyone has something they hate about their life.”

“I don’t do regrets. Life is too short.”

“Fine. No regrets.” She blows out a frustrated breath. With her hands trembling, she pulls the gloves off before cupping my cool skin with her warm touch. The heat permeates through me, top to toe, drawing me impossibly closer. “I hate that I trusted them to come for me. I hate that I believed them when they made me out to be something special. It’s pathetic that I bartered my entire life away on nothing but a half-cooked notion that I could be…better or more. I hate that I was desperate enough to fall for it all.” Blinking down between us, she drags in a shaky breath. When she looks back at me, a tear skitters down her face, marring the smile she’s trying to bolster her defences with. “So what do you hate?”

“I never had a choice.” The murmur sounds more like a scream that echoes into the distance rather than my almost whisper. “Now, I have to wait until my father decides that it’s my time. I’m thirty-two and I’m still taking orders from a man that has lost perspective on how the world actually works.”

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