Page 30 of Wicked Vow

I want her to know that I can protect her. That she’s safe with me.

How can I ever make her feel that now?

I close my eyes, breathing hard as I slowly stand up, the mess I’ve made of Natalia’s panties wadded in my hand. I walk to the bathroom, tossing them into the sink as I strip off my clothes, knowing I’m in need of a shower. My mind is still full of thoughts of her, of where she is right now, curled up in that huge bed as she sleeps without any knowledge that I’m half a city away, craving her like the hit of a drug I never knew I could need this badly.

I’m not going to be able to rest until I make her mine again.

Until shewantsto be mine.

Natalia

Idon’t leave the house for two days after finding the rose left for me on the table at the strip club.

Ruby got the job–no surprise there. Viktor was thrilled with her dancing and told her that she could work as many shifts as she liked and that he wanted her to be one of the primary dancers on the weekend. She was floating on cloud nine from the moment he told her, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the rose. I didn’t want to upset her.

It had to be Mikhail.Who else could it be? Even if the stalker he’d killed had an accomplice, or accomplices, we’re far from where they could reach me, especially for something so personal as that.

The thought that it’s him terrifies and frustrates me all at once. If it is him–and I can’t see how it could be anyone else–he’s back to his old tricks, or rather, trying some new ones with what can only be the same purpose…to lure me in and get me back in his grasp. The worst part of it is that if he’d only tried to reach me in a more…normal way, I might actually want to hear him out.

I’ve dreamt about him every night since I walked out of that room with Viktor. I want him,misshim, in a way that makes no sense, and yet I can’t pretend that it’s not happening. If there was a way for us to find some common ground, to try to understand who the other person is without all the other misunderstandings and noise that had caused the chaos of before, I can’t help but wonder–

I know Ruby would kill me herself if she knew I was even thinking about Mikhail like that. But I keep going back to what Caterina told me–that Viktor wasn’t always a good man. That he was violent and demanding, possessive and dangerous, that at one point, she hadn’t known if he could ever be the kind of man that she could be with out of anything other than duty.

I don’thaveto be with Mikhail at all. But I find myself wondering who he is, without that driving need for vengeance that blocked everything else out. I keep remembering him the night he killed my stalker, the way he grabbed me, held me, and told me that he’d protect me. The look on his face that had told me how he felt, even if he couldn’t say it. Even if it had disappeared hours later.

A knock comes at my door, and I jump, getting up from the bed to open it. As I do, I see something else out of the corner of my eye–something that makes my stomach turn.

There’s an envelope pushed under the door leading from the balcony into my room.

“Just a minute!” I call out, feeling my stomach turn over. For a moment, I think I’m going to be sick. All of the fear comes flooding back, everything I’d felt in Moscow, and I feel like I want to run screaming out of the room, as far away as I can possibly get.

But where would I go?

If this is Mikhail, I believe there’s nowhere I could go that he wouldn’t find me. I’m safest here, where Viktor and his considerable security measures can protect me.

I pick up the envelope. It’s light, and I half expect to find a letter inside of it like the ones I’d gotten before in Moscow, with the glued-on letters forming words, even though Mikhail hadn’t sent those.

But what’s inside doesn’t seem like anything Mikhail would send, either.

The rose had made sense. He wants me, desires me, is obsessed with me. A rose is seduction, a fairy tale with thorns, Beauty and her Beast. But when I reach into the envelope and feel something dried and crunchy under my fingertips, then pour it out into my palm, nothing about this makes sense at all.

Dead flower petals pour into my hand–and mixed in with them, dead bugs. Ladybugs, flies, roaches, spiders. I nearly shriek at the last, leaping backward as I drop the envelope and its contents onto the floor, shuddering from the top of my head to my toes as I look down at the mess, trying to think of how I’m going to explain it without making anyone panic.

“Natalia? Are you alright?” Ruby’s voice comes through the door. “Natalia?”

“Yes–I–come in. It’s fine.” I can’t move. I feel frozen to the spot, nausea roiling in my stomach as I stare down at the carpet.

“Natalia?” The door opens, and I hear Ruby’s confused voice. “What’s going on? What’s that–oh.”

She stops next to me, and I can see her staring down too out of the corner of my eye. “What the fuck?” she breathes.

“I don’t know.” My voice is shaking, and I feel horribly as if I’m on the verge of tears. “I don’t know, I don’t know–”

“It’s Mikhail, isn’t it?” Ruby’s voice is brittle as ice. “That fucker is never going to leave you alone–Viktor should have fucking killed him–”

“It’s not.” I shake my head. “It’s not. I know it isn’t.”

“How can you say that? Who else could it be?” Ruby reaches out, grasping my shoulders and turning me to face her. “Natalia, come on. Who else in New York would do something like this? Who else is obsessed with you to the point that he’d send you dead insects mixed with flowers as a threat? Maybe the guy who kept you fucking captive in his basement?”

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