Page 1 of Wicked Vow

Natalia

“You’ll do as I say,” I tell him slowly, “Whether I’m willing to shoot you or not. And I’ll tell you why.”

My finger curls around the trigger, a definitive threat.

“You won’t hurt me again. Because I’m pregnant.”

The stunned look on his face is the most satisfying thing I think I might have ever seen. I’d been fairly certain that I was right, that the gamble would pay off. It had been the only chance I was going to get. I don’t know if he was planning to kill me a few moments ago, but I know for sure that I’d set off his temper in a dangerous way.

The blood from the shallow cuts he left is still trickling down my skin. I feel savage, feral, as I hold the gun against his temple, standing there naked and covered in the old blood of my stalker and my own fresh blood.

Outside, on the lawn, the body of the man Mikhail killed is still lying there. The man who’s been stalking me for months now, whose identity I still don’t know. If he worked for my father, it’s no one I’ve ever seen before or recognize.

The obvious answer is that it’s someone from the club, someone who saw me dance–which feels like a lifetime ago. I don’t even feel like the same girl I was before Mikhail kidnapped me, the woman who styled herself ‘Athena’ and danced for men at theCat’s Meowin the seediest part of Moscow.

I certainly don’t feel like Natalia Obelensky, heiress to the Obelensky fortune and prima ballerina of the Moscow Ballet. But that’s who I am. Who I’ve been.

Who Mikhail wanted to hurt.

“You’re lying,” he manages, his gaze running over my face again and again. Everything I’m used to seeing in his eyes–anger, obsession, lust–none of it is there right now. There’s only shock and suspicion. Both of which I can understand. I’ve been trying to come to terms with it myself. Waiting for the right time to use it. I hadn’t been sure if Mikhail would care.

When I’d found the picture in his wallet, the photo of the blonde woman and the laughing little boy, I’d thought it might matter. That it might remind him of something he’d lost. But I hadn’t been sure until he told me who they were. Not a wife and child, as I’d thought, but a sister and nephew. His family, all the same.

Brutally tortured and murdered by my father.

His desire for revenge makes sense. It’s understandable, even. I can reconcile the things he’s done to me, considering what my father did to those he loved.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow him to continue doing it.

It’s time for me to make some of the decisions around here.

“Fine.” I shrug, the gun still leveled at his head. “If you don’t believe me, that’s no problem. We’ll go in the bathroom, and I’ll show you the test. I saved it. I’ll take another one right in front of you. I don’t care.”

I shove the gun a little harder against his temple, my teeth gritting as I stare him down. “I’m pregnant, Mikhail. I fucking hate that it’s yours, but it’s the truth, and that’s all there is to it.”

He sneers at me, his gaze raking lewdly up and down my body in a way that’s almost comforting, because it’s far more like him than the shell-shocked stare he was giving me a moment ago. This, at least, I know what to do with.

“How do you know it’s mine?” he spits out. “I’ve seen how you behave with me, filthy littlekotenok. The things you crave. How do you know it’s not some other man who’s had his cock in you before I got there? You were no fucking virgin, that’s for sure.”

The urge to pistol whip him into silence is strong, but I keep my composure by a thread. “No, I wasn’t,” I tell him evenly. “Which you more than enjoyed. I don’t think you’d have had half as much fun with an innocent, shrinking violet. But I wasn’t with anyone for long enough before you to be sure. Adrian was the last man I was with before you, and I know it isn’t his–although I sure fucking wish it was. I’d rather go back to him than have anything to do with you.”

It’s not strictly true–I have no desire to go back to Adrian and wouldn’t relish the idea of telling him I was pregnant with his baby–but it has the desired effect. One mention of the handsome green-eyed Greek man I spent a few weeks with in Santorini before returning to Moscow to hide. Mikhail’s face twists in a jealous rage that makes me almost want to flinch back with the violence of it.

“Don’t fucking say hisfuckingname!” Mikhail snarls, lunging at me, and I take a step back, pushing the muzzle of the gun against his head again as I urge him back.

“Why?” I taunt. “Because you hate the thought of his mouth and cock where yours have been? That’s it, isn’t it? You hate the idea of his tongue on my pussy, making me scream his name.Oh god, Adrian–”

I heighten my voice in a sing-song imitation, and Mikhail’s lip curls as he glares angrily at me. I can’t help but laugh.

“He made me scream so loudly the whole villa heard. Especially when he fucked me with that big, thick cock of his.” I run my tongue over my lower lip, grinning viciously at Mikhail. “He tasted so good, too. I loved swallowing his cum for him. He fucked me everywhere, better than I’d ever been fucked–well, almost everywhere. He wanted to fuck me in the ass, but I wouldn’t let him. I should have, though. Then there would have been nothing left for you.”

It’s hard to repress the shudder of desire that goes through me at that memory–the memory of Mikhail pinning me down as he forced his cock in my ass for the first time, the way he made me come, the brutal pleasure of it. I’d never experienced anything like it.

Nothingwith Mikhail has ever been like anything I’ve experienced. Even now, I can’t help the way my pulse beats faster at the memories of it all–even just a short while ago in bed, both of us covered in the blood of the violence outside. My thighs are still sticky with his cum.

“That’s not the way it went, though, is it?” Mikhail sneers, his ice-blue gaze hateful as he stares me down. “I made you scream for me when I fucked your ass the first time. You fucking loved it. And it wasmine. The first man who ever got to do that to you. You can’t change that,suka.”

“No, I can’t,” I tell him evenly. “But I could shoot you right now, and it wouldn’t matter, would it? I could shoot you, clean up, put on a nice dress, and find some other handsome man to fuck me so well that I’d never think about you again.Everywhere. It wouldn’t even matter anymore if I let him come in me. But I think I’d let him come in my ass, just out of spite. Just so you’d roll over in your shallow fucking grave.”

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