Page 38 of Control: XXX Vadim 1
“Keeping people at arm’s length,” he murmurs, another amused smile tugging on his mouth. “Usually, I am the one left feeling as though I am on that…merry-go-round as you put it.”
“Oh?” I prop my chin on my hand and eye him more closely. His expression remains as neutral as ever, though, on second glance, I notice that his eyes are more hooded than usual. He’s recalling his past again. “Your brother?” I guess. “Family? Other businessmen? Frankly, I can’t imagine any woman with a functioning libido wanting to keep you at any length, even if you can be a total dick—”
“You asked about my upbringing?” he counters. Something inside me tingles, and I sit forward, suddenly rapt. He was vague about his past before for a reason. The fact that he’s bringing it up now makes me feel that something made him change his mind.
“The way my brother and I were raised could be described as a competition,” he explains. “Our every waking moment was spent being compared to each other. Who was faster? Stronger? Smarter? Over and over again. Such antics take their toll over time. In many, many ways, I did not measure up to Maxim.”
He’s so blunt about it, and yet this one fact explains so much about him.
“That’s why you hate when I praise you,” I say, awed at the realization. “You’re so used to being picked apart that your brain can’t fathom the concept of a harmless compliment.”
“I wouldn’t call your words harmless.” He shoots me a glance that makes me rush to take another sip of water.
“You mistrust anything that isn’t strictly transactional or negative,” I add, confident in my psychoanalysis. “The fact that I think you’re beautiful, sexy even, with the body of a God makes your brain explode.”
“Should an ex-Sunday school teacher speak such blasphemy?” he taunts.
I shrug him off. “Baby, I’ve decided to no longer be offended by your dickishness. I’m just going to train you as any decent woman would.”
His smirk grows, stretching across his pink, tempting mouth. “Train me?”
“Oh, yes!” I clap my hands together at the enormity of the task ahead. “You’ll soon come to enjoy my compliments. I think you might even start to crave them, you beautiful man.”
“Is that so?” He sits back in his chair and cocks his head to give me a thorough once over. “And these compliments will come without us having sex?”
A challenge, for sure, but one I’m still up for accepting. “Yes,” I say with a nod.
“What a shame…” He strokes his finger along his jaw, his gaze reflective. “I was so looking forward to discovering just how you wanted me to use my mouth.”
I nearly fall out of my chair. For a horrible second, my thoughts devolve to a frantic mantra ofunfair, unfair, unfair!When I finally regain my senses, our waitress has returned to set an entire spread of various dishes before us.
Vadim takes the time to name every dish in that drool-worthy accent.
“How did I know you would go for the cream first?” he muses as I grab a fork and shove it into a delicious looking white substance served with jam.
Everything tastes beyond amazing. I sample each dish, circling back to a few in particular, aware of him watching my every move. I’ve cleared my plate twice when I finally push back from the table in defeat.
“Now what?” I ask as he dabs his mouth with his napkin. Between the two of us, I’ve eaten seventy-five percent of the meal, but he’s barely touched what little items are on his plate. Before I can point out the discrepancy, he shifts his focus to something behind me.
“Now, my business meeting is here.” He reaches into his pocket while I glance over my shoulder and spot an older woman wearing a gray suit, her brunette hair pulled back into a severe bun. “What price would you put on having full access to my accounts for the evening?” Vadim questions, his tone suddenly serious.
“H-Huh?” My brain nearly crashes again at the thought of what I could buy if unleashed for several hours. More clothes. More shoes. Maybe I’d take him up on that threat to buy him a new wardrobe? Something tan, or navy, or red. Surprisingly that seems more appealing than the rest.
But then I finally notice the object he has trapped between two fingers and I recoil in alarm. It’s a wedding ring. So he wasn’t lying about the fake wife.
“Are you insane?”
“Whatever amount you think you could spend, double it,” he suggests, but he doesn’t extend the ring to me. I have to reach out and take it.
Which I won’t. I can’t. I…
“Mr. Gorgoshev?” A woman calls from paces away as I finally relent and lunge for the ring. It lands on my palm, and I slip it onto the finger that—until now—had been proudly bare.
Sweat slicks my neck as Vadim stands to greet the woman, and I race to copy him.
“Ms. Anderson, is it?” he says to her warmly. “This is Tiffany, my fiancée.”
“P-Pleased to meet you,” I stammer while shaking the woman’s hand.
