For all I know, he’ll either barricade the room to keep me in with him or take the door off the spare to be done with it.
As willing as I normally am to fight him, I’m not in the mood.
So, I follow him.
The master bedroom is dim, quiet, and far too intimate for me to contend with, but I keep my distance and grab one of his oversized shirts hanging over the back of the armchair nearby before continuing to the bathroom.
There, I take my time getting out of my dress and washing up, hoping he’ll fall asleep before I return.
But when I come out again, reluctantly heading over to the bed, I find Sergey still sitting up in bed, shirtless, with the sheets bunched over his waist. He looks at me immediately, eyes drifting over me briefly.
“Don’t say a word,” I mumble while climbing into bed on the far side.
He smirks subtly to himself, as if the offence he took from my words before is long forgotten. “I wasn’t going to.”
Letting go of a breath, I keep my remarks to myself while I settle beneath the lush blankets, grateful that the bed is as big as physically possible, lending me plenty of space to put between us.
After a moment, Sergey follows suit and reaches for the lamp at his side, flicking it off before getting more comfortable.
Risking a glance, I catch him lying there with an arm tucked behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. The tension between us remains even while we don’t utter a word, and I try not to think about it too hard.
But eventually, his voice breaks the silence quietly.
“Do you really think it was a mistake?”
The question seems like an oddly vulnerable one for him, and it surprises me. But I do the same, looking up instead of glancing his way. “Does it matter?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “It does to me.”
Sighing, well aware I can’t escape the question, I settle for honesty. “Then you shouldn’t have abducted me, Sergey. Maybe if you treated me like a person instead of property, we wouldn’t be here.”
I hear him shift beside me. “I never saw you as property. I still don’t.”
Something in me doesn’t want to be swayed by his words, but it moves something in me. Barely.
“You call me yours in a way that says otherwise.”
“Because you are mine.”
That silences me.
Not because I’m conceding to the fact, but because the sincerity with which he speaks startles me. He believes it, and I know it. That might be the scariest part of all.
I can’t bring myself to say anything else, and instead, I let those words settle between us for reasons I don’t understand yet.
His breaths even out after a while, but I know he isn’t asleep either. Neither of us can bring ourselves to succumb to it, and the space between us is overcome with everything we refuse to say.
It seems that no matter how much I try to resist him, Sergey is getting under my skin and making me question everything I thought I knew about myself.
Chapter 17 - Sergey
I don’t care how it makes me look at this point, but I’m losing my mind.
It’s been over a week. A full, torturous week of sleeping next to Kat every night without touching her. Without getting to feel the surprisingly comforting warmth of hers.
Regardless of the passion we shared before, she’s been cold and distant ever since. Not exactly cruel, but detached enough to make me feel like I have no choice but to float through each day, wondering if and when something might give.
Beyond that, I’m like an addict watching the fix he can’t have walk around in the softest-looking pajamas known to man with bare, untouchable legs.
