She drained her wine and smacked her lips. “So tell me what else you want me to do. How to behave? Should we plan a time I confront you at a gentlemen’s club and scream at you for not touching me? So we can call your vengeance one-and-done because, from where I’m sitting, I’m not the one suffering, but you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“The smudges under your eyes,” she said. “You know why, don’t you?”
I chuckled derisively. “This I gotta hear.”
“Because I was committed to fulfilling our bargain, but you had to fuck it up with your unfounded quest for revenge. Sure, Kolya went to jail, but he could have been out in a few months if you’d entered that video into evidence as soon as Margo handed it to you.” She leaned forward. “It’s your guilt, Kirill, that’s eating at you for having to do that to your friend who’s like a brother, and there was no other person to blame except me.”
“You should go into psychiatry,” I muttered.
“I don’t have to. In dealing with scandals, I’ve seen all kinds of blame go around. If only people sucked it up and admitted their faults, there would be fewer scandals to fix.”
This woman. In another life, I would have liked Lucy.
“So where does that leave us?” I asked.
“What do you mean? We’re doing fine.”
I gritted my teeth. She was; I was not. “I would like to spend time with my wife without her biting my head off.”
“Funny you’re speaking about me in third person,” Lucy said. “But as long as you’re not being an ass, I can tolerate you.”
Tolerate? Is that what I’d been reduced to in her eyes? Someone she tolerated? “I’m tired of fighting.”
“Same here. This truce is nice,” she murmured. “But all I ask is that you stop pretending to be a caring husband as manipulation.” When I was about to argue, she added, “I can see you genuinely don’t want to see me not eating. I can understand that because my brother is the same way.”
My brows cinched together. “What do you mean? You go on hunger strikes?”
She laughed. “No. I have unhealthy eating habits. I’m fond of empty calories.”
I made a mental note to check with the housekeeper regarding my wife’s dietary needs.
I was thankful when Irina and my sister walked in because I was afraid I was going to overcompensate in being a“normal husband” to my wife and ruin whatever truce we had established.
“What are you two doing in here?” my mother exclaimed, but there was a pleased look on her face.
“The sight of Kolya is ruining my wife’s appetite,” I drawled.
“Stop making things up.” Lucy punched my shoulder playfully.
Aralina looked puzzled, and I smirked at my sister.See, I can be a nice husband, my look told her.
Afterward, we rejoined our guests, and I kept a reasonable distance from Lucy, not crowding her. I didn’t want her to find anything untrustworthy in my actions. I quite enjoyed being in her company. Maybe she was right. I was the dumbass who was suffering when I could be spending time with my brilliant and beautiful wife.
I was brooding on our way back to the house. Coming to grips with a few home truths.
My desire for revenge was making me miserable, not my wife. Lucy pointed that out so clearly.
But I still didn’t know what to do with this epiphany.
I had to stop lying. If anything, Lucy would learn to trust my intentions more, and maybe even if it was too late to salvage this marriage, I would sleep better. And we could be friends.
Friends?
I glanced surreptitiously at my wife, who had fallen asleep. Her head lolled from side to side. It gave me the opportunity to ogle her. She was wearing a V-neck top and a tight skirt that hugged her legs. She wasn’t wrong that my eyes had bypassed the stains of the wine and gone to her tits. No, we couldn’t be friends, because I very much wanted to taste her cunt directly from the source, not from my fingers.
We’d exchanged kisses for show over the past few months. Sometimes, depending on how pissed I was with her, I wouldkiss her hard. She didn’t respond. Even when I shoved my tongue inside her mouth to elicit a response, she remained unmoved. I was surprised she hadn’t bitten me yet.
