Page 59 of Poisoned Vows

We’ve been together for two days. He’s already getting under my skin.I feel a sharp bolt of panic, and it only intensifies when Nikolai smirks, his blue-grey eyes looking especially blue and mischievous as he reaches down and scoops out a handful of snow, packing it into his hands and flinging it at me before I can think to react.

It startles me so much that I don’t move for a second after the loosely-packed snowball hits me, striking my shoulder and spattering over my clothes. And when I do react, it’s not what I think I should have done.

Almost without realizing what I’m doing at first, I lean down and scoop up a handful of my own snow, squeezing it into a ball before I fling it at Nikolai. He stares at me for a brief second, as if he can’t quite believe I actually did that.

I expect him to snap at me. To punish me. It can’t possibly be alright that I slapped the Vasilev heir on the arm and then threw a snowball at him.

But instead, helaughs. And throws another snowball.

I don’t entirely know what happens. For a few minutes, I forget that I’m supposed to hate him, that Idohate him. That a moment ago, I had horrific suspicions about him. That I don’t want to be here. I’ve never really had fun with someone. I’ve never played around for the sheer enjoyment of it. But for a brief moment, I have a snowball fight with Nikolai Vasilev, and it’sfun.

And then I stop, out of breath and startled at what’s happening, and Nikolai is very close to me.

“You look like you enjoyed that,krolik,” he murmurs, reaching up to brush a thumb over my cheekbone. His gaze drops to my lips and then flicks back up to look me in the eye. There’s something softer in his gaze than has been there before, and it startles me. “Don’t say you didn’t,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to hear it.”

The thing is—I wasn’t going to say I didn’t enjoy it. For the first time, I don’t feel like lying to him and claiming that it wasn’t fun, and that scares the shit out of me.

Nothing was supposed to change. And I remember the loose plan I’d tried to form, before we started the hike up here.

“Let’s just keep going,” I tell him, pulling back before he can kiss me. “I want to be in that tree stand, out of the wind.” I want some space from him, but I know I’m not going to get it yet. More than anything, I want this entire strange, fucked-up day to be over.

“And closer to me?” Nikolai grins. “Are you sure I’m not going to eat you?”

“Let’s just go?” I push past him, back the way we came.

“Do you know where you’re going?” he calls after me, and I keep stubbornly going forward, refusing to look back at him

“I’ll follow your huge, obvious footprints,” I snap, and I hear him laugh behind me.

“You know what they say about huge feet—but it doesn’t matter. You’ve already seen it.”

Does he ever stop? I keep trudging forward, through the snow, all the way back to the tree stand. I’m fucking exhausted and hungry and more than a little pissed off, and I wonder how long this is going to take before we can go back to the cabin and eat. I wonder if he packed a lunch.

I wonder if there’s the faintest possibility that I might still be able to pull off my plan.

What if I don’t want to? What if—

Shut up. Stop it. You want to get out of here. You don’t actually want to be married to Nikolai Vasilev. A snowball fight and a cute moment doesn’t change that. Get your fucking head on straight.

I march up to the ladder and start to climb before realizing that going first means he’s going to get the view of watching me. It’s onlysecondsbefore I hear his voice behind me, and I don’t have to see the smirk on his face to know it’s there.

“I like the view,krolik,” he says from the bottom of the ladder, and I climb faster, hoping he’s not going to try to grope me. “I should let you climb up everything first.”

“Am I going to be climbing up a lot of things?” I snipe back at him, hoisting myself into the tree stand. “I hadn’t planned on it, so let me know.”

Nikolai is right behind me, and he slings the rifles off of his shoulder, reaching for me. I realize he must have grabbed the one that I tossed aside, too, as he followed me back. “Come here,krolik,” he murmurs, and I try to pull away.

“Aren’t we supposed to be watching for something for you to shoot?” His hands are sliding under my jacket, and I have a feeling that this is going to progress to a place that I don’t want it to.

“I already have my little rabbit trapped right here.” His hand comes up to capture my jaw, holding me there as he leans in to kiss me.

“Are you going to try to shoot me if I run off?” I snap, but the words don’t come out as angry as I’d meant for them to. His mouth is warm and soft, and the brush of it against mine sends a pleasant tingle over my skin that I know I should ignore. You thought he was going to kill you twenty minutes ago, and now him teasing you about it is turning you on because he’s using it to talk dirty? Are you insane?

“You’d have to get away first.” His voice is a low, rumbling purr, and it should terrify me. If he hadn’t had such a blatantly disbelieving reaction to what I’d thought earlier, it would. But even now, I know it shouldn’t have the effect on me that it does. Even with the immediate threat gone, it shouldn’t make me feel hot and flushed to hear him murmur that as his hands squeeze my waist.

He spills me back onto the wooden floor, his hands roving underneath my sweater. His hands are cold to the touch, and I gasp, trying to twist away, but Nikolai is no easy man to get away from.

“I like it when you squirm,krolik,” he murmurs against my ear. “Feeling you rub against me like that—god, it gets me so fucking hard.” He shifts his hips, pressing into me, and I can feel that he’s telling the truth. He’s rock-hard, pressed against my thigh, and I feel a jolt of arousal at the sensation.

---