Page 4 of Wicked Vow

“If I’m right,” she continues, “Viktor might be able to help me get my inheritance back. I’ll be able to rewardhimthen for his help–and what will you be?” Her smile turns sympathetic, almost condescending, and I grit my teeth, wishing she were close enough for me to throttle her. “You’ll be the person who almost robbed him of that, for a revenge that I had nothing to do with. You’ll be the person who hurt and tormented an innocent woman. I wonder how he’ll feel about that? I don’t know what kind of man Viktor Andreyev is, not really–but I’m willing to gamble on it. I know I’m not safe with you here now, not even with the fact that I’m having your baby. It might buy me nine months at best.”

The confusing well of emotions threatens to drag me down again at that, because she’s not entirely right. Sheshouldbe right. Everything I’ve shown her so far points to that, especially after what she’s done tonight. But every time I’m reminded that she’s about to be the mother of my child, it feels like every negative emotion I have, all the hate and rage and pain, start to drain out of me, and I have to scramble to keep that wall up.

“And what are you going to do?” I taunt. “Go to Viktor, ask him to help you get your family’s fortune back, and then–raise the baby alone? You should hope he kills me because if I have anything to say about it–”

“You won’t,” Natalia says sharply. “As for what happens with the baby, that’s my choice. I haven’t decided yet.”

The way she says it, I know that she knows what those words will do to me. Her lips twitch at the corners, and she takes another step back.

“I’m going to go get cleaned up,” she says decisively. “You can think about how you ended up where you’re at.”

She walks away, and it’s impossible for me not to think about how lovely she looks. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, and somehow the fact that she held me at gunpoint while stark naked, covered in someone else’s blood and hers, minutes after I finished fucking her, is the most arousing thing I’ve ever experienced.

It’s fucked up beyond belief, but it’s true.

My world feels like it hasn’t been the same since I met Natalia Obelensky.

When she comes out again, wrapped in a towel while she dries her hair with another, she gives me another of those small smiles. I open my mouth to snap something angry and biting at her, but she shakes her head, raising a finger in my direction.

“Don’t waste your breath,” she says coolly. “If you’re going to lie there and rage and curse at me, it doesn’t matter. If you’re going to tell me all the things you’re going to do to me–you won’t. So don’t bother.”

“You’re so sure.” I narrow my eyes at her. “After everything that’s happened to you here. How are you so sure?”

Natalia smiles, tossing the towel she was using on her hair aside as she leans against the foot of the bed. “You might have found my weakness with Ruby, but she’s safe now. I don’t need to worry about whether or not she’s going to be okay, and pretty soon, she’ll be headed to New York with us and a new life of her own. And now I know your weakness, too.”

Her hand brushes over the towel, just above her stomach. “You won’t hurt me while I’m carrying your child. I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t even fuck me hard, let alone cut me up or spank me with your belt or tie me up in your basement. And even after that–” She shakes her head. “You won’t take your child’s mother away. Not after what happened to your family.”

She looks at me then, her expression softening slightly. “I’m genuinely sorry for what happened, Mikhail. I had no idea about any of it, and I wish I could have done something. I had no part in my father’s dealings, not when it came to things like that. I hope you can believe that, at least.”

Her hand wraps around the bedpost, her lips pressing together as if she’s trying to think of what to say. “I would have tried to help if I’d known what he planned to do. The way I helped my sister–Sasha.”

“Why did you help her, when you didn’t even know her?”

The question comes out before I can stop it, startling me as much as I think it startles her. Her eyes widen slightly, and she swallows hard, pausing as if she’s thinking about whether to answer or not.

I shouldn’t care. Her past shouldn’t matter to me. Thewhyof anything that’s happened to her shouldn’t matter. All that should is that she’s the only child left of a family that destroyed mine, that she’s the only vessel left for my revenge. But I find myself wanting to know.

She’s like no one else I’ve ever met. I did my best to break her, and yet she’s standing at the end of the bed, the clear winner of this game–for now, at least. I can’t think of anyone else I’ve known who could have withstood what I did to her and not crumbled. She came close once or twice–I saw it. But she fought it off.

Natalia takes a slow breath. “It’s been a long time since I had any family I cared about,” she says finally. “A very, very long time. Since my mother and she died years ago. Sasha and I had that in common. Dead mothers, and a father who didn’t want us as we were. He wanted her dead and me subservient to him.” Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “It was very satisfying to make sure that he got neither of the things he wanted.”

“Why didn’t you go with her? Instead of coming back to Moscow?”

Natalia shrugs. “It was too dangerous. We needed to stay apart in case anyone was looking for her or me. And anyway–” she hesitates, swallowing hard, and her eyes flick towards me, something almost haunted in them. I can see her trying to decide how much more to say to me, if she wants to confide whatever it is that’s running through her head at this moment.

“I didn’t want to burden her with me, either,” she says finally. “She was younger than me–happier, in a lot of ways. She had the love of her life, her freedom, and a whole future. I would have dragged her down. It was better if I figured my own way out of it.”

That startles me more than anything else she could have said. What’s stranger still is that I believe her. It could so easily be a ploy for sympathy, but I can hear the sincerity in her voice. I’ve heard her when she fights back, when she plays games with me, trying to manipulate me in the same ways I’ve manipulated her. All I hear now is sadness and resignation in her voice.

“She was my sister,” Natalia says finally, simply. “So I had to try to save her. She didn’t deserve what our father had planned for her, just because she existed. None of it was her fault. So, you see, I do understand. It’s not pity, Mikhail. I might have done worse than I did to save her. I can’t know. So I can’t judge you on your actions, either.”

She drops the towel then, as carelessly as if she weren’t naked beneath it. My entire body tightens at the sight of her pale and smooth and clean again, her body such absolute perfection that it makes my mouth dry and my cock instantly hard at the sight of her.

Natalia’s eyes flick to my erection, jerking upwards the moment she drops the towel, and her mouth twitches in a laugh. “Poor Mikhail,” she croons, her voice changing, the sincerity all gone now. “So hard, and nothing that you can do about it. I’mrighthere.”

She climbs onto the bed, inches from me, stretching out on her back. Her small breasts tremble with the movement, her nipples stiff in the cool air of the room, and the apex of her thighs is smoothly shaved. Every inch of her is lovely, and I feel a stab of sudden, unexpected regret for the thin red lines marring her flesh where I’d cut her earlier.

I have the urge to apologize to her, suddenly. To say I was wrong. The thought that I could have hurt her more severely when she’s carrying my child, cuts me to the bone. I’d come close to making an even worse mistake than any I’ve made before.

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