No.
I’ll sleep here. On the couch in my office. It’s safer that way.
Safer for both of us.
Because the really fucked up thing (the thing that’s keeping me awake and drinking at two in the morning) isn’t that I hate her.
It’s that I’m not sure I do.
And that confusion, that uncertainty, is more dangerous than any enemy I’ve ever faced.
5
VERA
I wake up alone.
The realization hits me before I even open my eyes. The bed is too cold and the space beside me is untouched. At some point during the night, I’d reached out in my sleep (some unconscious hope that maybe he’d come back? I don’t know) but my hand found only empty sheets.
Of course he didn’t come back. Why would he?
I lie there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, and I try not to think about last night and remember the way my body responded to him, the sounds I made, the way I cried out his name like?—
Stop it.
But I can’t stop it. The memories assault me in vivid, mortifying detail. The heat of his skin against mine. The way his hands caressed my body. The intensity in those gray eyes when he commanded me to look at him. And worst of all—the pleasure.The overwhelming, consuming pleasure that had torn through me like nothing I’d ever experienced.
Alexei always made sure I was comfortable and that I felt cherished. Our lovemaking had been about connection, about tenderness, about two people who cared for each other expressing that through touch.
Last night was nothing like that.
Last night waspossession. Dominance. Dimitri taking what was his by law, marking me, claiming me in a way that should have been the worst thing ever and nothing else.
But it wasn’t just that and that’s what makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. Because some twisted, traitorous part of me had wanted it and responded to the roughness and the command in his voice. My body had betrayed me in the worst possible way, coming apart so completely that I’d lost myself entirely.
I betrayedAlexei.
The thought hurts so badly it feels like someone has stabbed me. Alexei, who loved me. Alexei, who made me laugh. Who talked about our future together with such hope in his beautiful blue eyes. Alexei, whose body is barely cold in the ground, whose baby is growing inside me right now.
And I let his brother fuck me. I let Dimitri touch me, take me, and Ienjoyedit.
I’m a terrible person. The worst kind of person.
Hot tears spill down my temples and into my hair, but I don’t make a sound. I just lie there in that massive bed, in thisstranger’s house, and I hate myself with a viciousness that takes my breath away.
My hand moves to my stomach, pressing against the flat plane. Thank God there’s no sign yet that there’s a baby, butI know. I know there’s a tiny life growing there. Alexei’s child. Our miracle. The last piece of him that exists in this world.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the baby who can’t hear me yet. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to?—”
But what does it matter what I meant or wanted? It happened. And now I have to live with the knowledge that less than two weeks after losing Alexei, I was in another man’s bed. Hisbrother’sbed. Crying out in pleasure while pregnant with Alexei’s baby.
The guilt wraps around my throat like hands, squeezing, making it hard to breathe. I curl onto my side, pulling my knees up to my chest, and I let the tears come silently. My whole body shakes with sobs I can’t voice, grief and shame and self-loathing pouring out of me in waves.
How could I? How could my body respond like that to a man who hates me? Who married me for revenge? Who only touched me to establish ownership?
And the worst part (the part that makes me want to disappear entirely) is that some small, horrible part of me wants it to happen again. I want to feel that intensity, that loss of control, that overwhelming pleasure that made me forget everything else for just a few moments.
I’m disgusting. A terrible girlfriend. A terrible person. Alexei deserved so much better than me.
