Читать книгу The Platinum Collection: A Convenient Proposal: His Diamond of Convenience / The Highest Price to Pay / His Ring Is Not Enough - Maisey Yates - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTHERE WAS NO ONE else out on the hotel balcony; there was nothing else save one table set for two, crisp linen laid over the surface. Two chairs were placed opposite each other, a low flickering candle in the center. It was designed to be the perfect romantic dinner. Too bad Victoria wanted no part of romance where Dmitri was concerned, and very much too bad that she had to play as though she did anyway. But they could not afford to break character, not even here, not even for one moment.
Of course that meant sharing a room while they were in New Orleans, but fortunately she had been able to book them in a suite that was large enough they might as well be staying down the hall from each other. He hadn’t come up to the room during her shower, and as long as he maintained his distance she would be fine.
This—this dinner set out here in the ever-darkening evening—for whatever reason, felt even more intimate than the shared suite. Perhaps because they were on display, which should make it seem less intimate, but given the nature of their arrangement, it did not.
It was starting to get dark outside, the gas lamps that lined the streets of the quarter flickering on, casting an orange glow on everything beneath him. Where they sat she could hear the noise beginning to pick up on Bourbon Street just around the corner. If they rounded to the other side of the hotel they would be able to get a view of the revelers, and Victoria had to admit that part of her was curious. New Orleans had a reputation for being a city that stripped you of inhibition, and since Victoria had been firmly attached to her inhibitions since that great, final humiliation, she found she was slightly interested in what the city might look like now. Something like wanting to observe a foreign culture and gain an understanding.
That was it. It had nothing to do with the man who was currently crossing the balcony and moving to the romantically laid out table. Nothing to do with the fact she was intrigued by what it might mean to lose her inhibitions with Dmitri.
No, she was not considering that.
He held her chair out for her, and she smiled in a fashion that she was certain was exceedingly gracious and sat down.
Dmitri took his place at the table across from her. “The meal will be served soon. It’s prix fixe, so I hope there is nothing you are exceptionally unfond of.”
“I can’t imagine anything served at a place like this wouldn’t be wonderful.”
“The city does have a great food reputation.”
“And I am very excited to partake of it.” She looked around at the empty balcony. “I would also like that drink.” Something to take the edge off being so near to the man.
As if on cue, hotel waitstaff appeared, one brandishing a bottle of wine and the other with a plate of appetizers. The first employee set about pouring the wine while the second laid the plates in front of them laden with a salad with softshell crab, and set about explaining the dishes that they would be eating that evening.
Then they both bowed out quickly, leaving Victoria alone with Dmitri again.
“You are satisfied with how things for the event are shaping up?” Dmitri asked, lifting his glass of wine to his lips.
Victoria wrapped her hands around her own glass, running her fingers over the smooth, cool surface. “Yes, I’m quite happy. Things are coming together much more smoothly than I could’ve anticipated. Especially given the time frame. I’m particularly surprised with how things are coming together in New York and London.”
“Pleasantly, I hope.”
“Very. Not only that, it appears that the press is deciding that you are changing, after all. Your commitment to me solidifying that you are indeed going in a new direction.”
“I gather they will be terribly disappointed when our engagement ends.”
“No, they won’t,” she said, lifting her glass. “They will be thrilled because they have something new to report on. Happiness gets stale after a while. They really don’t like that.”
“For someone whose past has been so alarmingly free of scandal, you seem to know the inner workings of the press quite well.”
“Because I pay attention, because I am aware that there are certain things I need to avoid. It has always been my aim and intention to keep my reputation as spotless as possible.” Which was true enough, cutting out the period in history where she hadn’t thought much of it at all. When she hadn’t thought about much of anything beyond herself.
“I imagine having grown up in the spotlight is a different experience to having come into it later.”
“Yes, I cultivated in awareness fairly early.” She had no illusions that she had escaped the iron fist of the press by mere luck. It was fortunate that her father had had no desire to uncover her, that Nathan, for all his sins, had simply wanted London Diva and not to humiliate her or crow about the methods by which he had won his victory.
Though sometimes she thought that the lack of crowing, the lack of open cruelty...the pity he’d looked at her with when she’d bared her body to him...was much worse than disdain.
She shook off the memories, the encroaching shame. None of it mattered now. That part of her didn’t matter.
“I confess that when I was thrust into the spotlight I had very little awareness for how the media could impact my life and what I wanted to do with it. In fact, until recently I hadn’t given it much thought, because it had never prevented me from achieving an aim. I’ve never cared what people thought of me, never minded that I was seen in a negative light based on how I had come into my fortune, based on the number of women that I’m seen with. Until now.”
“I suppose that has to do with several fundamental differences between the two of us.”
“Such as?”
She took a sip of her wine. “Well—” she set the glass back down on the table, smoothing the wrinkles of the cloth down around it “—for a start, I’m from a wealthy background. Second-generation money and all. I’m not exactly self-made.”
“And the other difference?”
“I’m a woman. So while your reputation might have always been bad, it was in that way people like men to be bad. It’s considered rather rakish and charming when you’re male, isn’t it?”
“Until you want to run a charity for children. Then you’re suddenly a monster of some kind not fit for polite society.”
“Oh no, once you get children involved they trump all. Think of the children.”
“You are quite cynical, Victoria. For someone who has had a life as charmed as yours.”
His words made her chest tighten. She ran her fingertips over her arm, feeling the moisture left behind by the heavy air. “I have had a privileged upbringing, I won’t deny that. But I also learned a very valuable lesson early on about human nature. Having my blinders ripped off so effectively made me look at things differently. It made me look at people and their motives differently. I have never been able to take people at face value, not since that happened.”
“And now I’m intrigued. What exactly did happen?”
Bugger. She thought about lying to him, and truly, she would be justified. Because it wasn’t his business, and it had nothing to do with their agreement. Nothing at all to do with their interaction, or her relationship—if you could call it that—with him. But she’d never been the type who lied well on her feet—she excelled in being blunt and straightforward, and putting people on the back foot with that method. Subterfuge wasn’t in her bag of tricks. Sadly.
“When I was sixteen my father introduced me to a friend. A business associate of his. He was incredibly handsome, in his early thirties and I developed a massive crush on him from the first moment I laid eyes on him.”
“This is not starting where I imagined it might,” he said, and she could see that the muscles in his body had started to tense.
Yes, well, if he thought it was going to be difficult for him to hear, he had no idea how difficult it would be for her to say.
“I don’t imagine it is. However, this is where it begins. I developed an instant attraction for him. It was nothing like I’d ever felt before. I had always felt like boys my age were rather silly and it had been easy to ignore them in favor of my studies. This was different.” She looked up and met Dmitri’s gaze, refusing to look down, refusing to look as ashamed as she felt. “Nathan was different. At least, I thought he was. I think he knew how I felt, too, immediately. I think, perhaps, I was terribly obvious. Either way, he found ways to get in touch with me. Excuses to drop by and discuss business with my father when my father wasn’t there. And over the course of that time we were able to talk quite a bit. I fell for him, hard. You can’t imagine how hard. I thought he loved me, and I certainly loved him. And when the line of questioning changed to my father’s business affairs I didn’t think anything of it, because he worked with my father on various projects and seemed to be his friend. And I trusted him. But I let slip some very crucial information about a new fashion line, and Nathan gave the information to a competing company. They stole our ideas out from under us, launched their products first and sent London Diva’s stocks into a spiral. From there, Nathan purchased the majority of the shares and ousted my father. Because of me. So you can see, it’s my responsibility to get it back. And you can see where I learned to start questioning the motives of others.”
She looked back up at Dmitri’s face. The expression there could only be described as murderous. He opened his mouth as though he was about to say something when the hotel staff returned with different plates of food. They waited while their entrées were placed in front of them, and she watched Dmitri as he watched the staff leave.
Then he turned back to face her, his dark eyes fierce. “Any man that age who takes advantage of a sixteen-year-old girl is no man.”
She huffed. “Oh, you get no argument from me, but the fact remains I was instrumental in the loss of my family business. Nathan acted badly, but I was a fool. It’s my responsibility to rectify that mistake. And I am doing so.”
“I don’t see how it’s your responsibility to atone for the sins of others.”
“Because I’m the only one who cares to atone for them. You don’t see Nathan hanging around groveling, offering to return London Diva to the Calder family.”
“Well, in part because he can’t. Because I bought it out from underneath him.”
Victoria couldn’t conceal the smirk that curved the right-hand corner of her mouth upward. “So you did. I knew I liked something about you.”
“It does not surprise me that you like the rather more cutthroat part of me.”
“It shouldn’t. I admire it because I had to change after I made that mistake. I knew I had to fix the way that I saw the world and the way that I acted within it. I had always been a good daughter, and I had never done anything wrong, but it didn’t matter because I made a mistake that cost my family greatly. I might as well have been rebellious for all of my life. A couple of piercings and tattoos would’ve been a lot less costly.”
Dmitri stretched his arm out across the table, pushing his white shirtsleeve up past his elbow, revealing the intricate tattoo on his forearm, the leather cuff that bisected it. “The right kind of tattoo is fairly costly.”
She looked down at his arm and tried to ignore just how dry her throat had got. But there was something about the web of artistry over his tanned, muscled arm that caused a visceral reaction in her.
Who was she kidding? There was something about him that caused a reaction in her. All of her. And all of him.
So different in many ways from that thwarted love affair from years ago, when she’d thought to give Nathan her body because of an intense emotional longing.
This feeling was no less longing, but it had nothing to do with emotion. And it was just as undesirable.
“Still not as expensive as losing an entire chain of clothing stores, I fear. Then, you should know since you bought an entire chain of clothing stores.”
“I have bought several of them,” he said, his tone light.
“And I only care about the one.”
“And I see why now.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Were you not curious about it before?”
He drew his hand back and pushed his shirtsleeve back down. Then he lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug. “A little. But then, I figure we all have our secrets. And since I am not the sort of man who likes to share his, I don’t expect other people to, either.”
“Except, then you asked me to.”
“My patience has its limits,” he said, his lips curving upward into what could only be described as a deadly smile.
Something about that smile made her stomach tighten further. Suddenly, the sound of raucous cheering broke through the tension, and Victoria breathed a sigh of relief. She really needed a break from whatever intensity was building between the two of them.
This whole acknowledging that she found him attractive thing was supposed to alleviate the issue. Sadly, it was not.
“I wonder what’s going on down there.”
“Probably a hen night or bachelorette party of some kind. This is a very popular location for them.”
“I’ve never really understood the appeal of them.”
“Of a bachelorette party?”
“Yes. They’re...not really the sort of thing I can see enjoying.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“What? You’d like a stag party? Strippers and booze and lots of people standing around leering?”
He chuckled. “No. I like strippers just fine, but a private room is more my style.”
She didn’t know why, but the idea that he enjoyed strippers disappointed her. It shouldn’t, because she shouldn’t be surprised and she shouldn’t care at all. But she did.
“Well. That’s something at least,” she said.
“Oh, Victoria, you need to learn to let out a breath,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his arm slung indolently over the back, his leg stretched beside the table, rather than being shoved beneath.
“What does that mean? That I’m uptight? If you have a question as to why, I refer you to the personal tête-á-tête we had only moments ago.”
“One mistake and you have to change who you are forever?”
“One life-altering mistake that ruined things for my family. That destroyed the relationship I had with my father and lost him the respect of his peers.”
“Do you suppose Nathan changed because of you?”
The question hit her in the face like a cold, wet rag. “No,” she said, feeling her insides constrict, tightening into a ball. “I don’t suppose he did. Well, his life changed on some score since he obviously got a chain he was very invested in acquiring so I changed his...life for the best. Oh, that utter bastard.”
“Time does not heal every wound.”
“No,” she said, her tone fierce. “I’m hoping an engagement arrangement resulting in my getting London Diva back will cure my more serious wounds, though.”
“It’s a good plan.”
The servers returned and whisked their plates away, replacing them with the very famous beignets, topped with a mountain of powdered sugar and served with café au lait.
“Lovely,” she said, reaching for the small white mug.
“Before we indulge,” he said, the word sounding far more wicked than she would like, “I say we go and see the happy partiers of Bourbon Street.”
She was curious. Whether she should be or not.
“All right. When in Rome...observe the Romans I suppose.”
“But don’t step into the arena?”
“As we are not citizens of Rome, I suppose that might be our fate.” She picked up her mug and raised it high. “Those who are about to die salute you.” She took a sip, then placed it back onto the table before standing and smoothing down her pants. “Now, let’s go gawk at some revelry.”
She followed him around the curving balcony to the side of the hotel that provided a view of Bourbon Street, the hub of debauchery in New Orleans. At least, the hub of open debauchery. She imagined private debauchery took place any number of locations.
The streets below were packed full of people, holding up traffic at cross streets. They were carrying open glasses of alcohol and weaving back and forth.
Women in lingerie were standing in front of shops beckoning passersby to come in, and group of men lingered in front of a club wearing next to nothing, calling out to people, too. And then she saw them, a group of women in black, waving up to the balconies, and one lone woman in white, a tulle veil covering her hair.
“That would be the hen do,” she said.
“I imagine so.”
She crept closer to the edge of the balcony, using the bride’s bright white ensemble as her focal point. “They are...”
“Very drunk.”
“To say the least.”
She wondered what it would be like to be down there, soaking in the light from the neon and the gas lanterns, right in the middle of the party instead of hovering so far above it. She was always above it. And that was really how she liked it. But still...she wondered.
She felt Dmitri move in closer to her, felt his heat as he closed the distance between them.
Her breath caught in her throat, the sultry night air thick and somehow sensual now, where before, with the sunlight shining through, it had been a bit overbearing. Now somehow it seemed erotic.
And she had no clue what she was doing applying that description to anything. She was not the sort of woman to think of things in those terms. But then, she wasn’t the sort of woman to get dry mouth at the sight of a tattoo and a little bit of forearm muscle. And yet, with Dmitri she seemed to be.
Suddenly, she ached. Ached for all the things she hadn’t had. For the normal everyday desires that had been stolen from her when she was sixteen, ripped away from her along with her father’s company and her trust. In other people. In herself.
Replaced instead with shame—shame about her feelings, her body, her judgment.
If not for that, she might have been down there, too. Maybe had a group of girlfriends she could relate to, and she could drink with and trust that they would lead her back to the hotel unharmed. She might have had a man waiting to marry her the following weekend. One she might have loved. One who might have even loved her back.
One who would take her to bed and give her pleasure. Hold her all night.
Yes, for some reason the sight of all of that normalcy below made her very acutely aware of just how abnormal she was. Just how separate.
But she wasn’t all alone, not as she usually was. Dmitri was here. So close she could feel the heat from his body. And a voice deep inside of her spoke clearly enough and loudly enough that she could understand. She wanted to touch the heat. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to be cold. Here where everything was so warm, why shouldn’t she be?
As though he had read her thoughts, he placed a hand on her waist, leaning in, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “And what do you think of the party?”
“I’ve never been a part of anything like that. I mean, at university I saw parties like that, but I never took part in them.”
He moved his thumb up and down, smoothing it over the indent of her waist and leaving a trail of fire in its wake. “You never let yourself play, do you? Are you always so good?”
“The way I see it,” she said, her voice, her breathing so obviously labored, “we get a certain amount of mistakes allotted to us in the beginning. If we overplay our hand we might lose everything. I overplayed my hand. My mistake amounted to a whole lot and I’ve never seen the point in taking a risk since. I feel I was lucky not being disowned entirely after putting my father’s livelihood and reputation at risk the way that I did. You know, Nathan was married.” The reason he had never touched her, which had become clear later. While Nathan had seen no issue with luring her into an emotional affair, he clearly hadn’t seen it as being unfaithful so long as he didn’t reciprocate and so long as he didn’t touch her.
They had kissed but nothing more. Not for a lack of trying on her part. That last night together, before she’d found out the truth, she’d met him in her room, naked. And he’d...he’d covered her with a blanket. As though she were a child. Not a woman. As though there was nothing remotely arousing or sexual about her.
Sometimes, after she had discovered the truth about him, she’d lain awake at night imagining him going over the game plan with his wife. Imagining him gaining permission to kiss her and touch her over her shirt. To tell her that he loved her, as long as he never entered her body, as long as he never really meant what he said.
She imagined them laughing at how easy a conquest she would be. Imagined him telling his wife what a pale, gangly creature she’d been and how her naked body hadn’t even been an enticement.
And that she hated almost more than anything else. That she had been so easily tricked by her emotions, by her passions. And that those passions had been so easily discarded.
Though, in this moment what she hated more was that she had allowed Nathan to have them.
She’d never looked at it quite the way Dmitri had presented it to her before. Certainly Nathan’s interaction with her hadn’t changed him one bit. It had changed his circumstances, but she was sure it hadn’t changed him emotionally.
While she had contorted and rearranged everything she was because of him. In response to anger, in response to heartbreak and disgust, but nevertheless because of him.
If not for him, where would she be? The answer to that question had terrified her before, but now she was torn. If he hadn’t made her feel ashamed of her bare skin and everything beneath it, who would she be now?
There was something strange about this city that turned everything she thought and believed in on its head. There was something strange about this man who made her clothes feel too tight and made her heart feel too big for her chest.
Who could shrink her entire world down to the sensation of his thumb moving over the slick fabric of her top, his heat seeping through to her skin.
“You wish you were down there, don’t you, Victoria?” His breath was hot on her neck, sending a shiver down her spine.
“No, I don’t.” And when she spoke the words she realized how true they were. She didn’t want to be down there with them; she wanted to be right up here, so long as she was with him.
“What were you like before him?” The words were rough, sliding over her skin like a patch of velvet being rubbed the wrong way.
“I barely remember.”
“Try.” He tilted his head, and she felt the firm press of his mouth on the side of her neck. She stiffened, shock immobilizing her. Dimly, she thought that she should move away from him. That she should stop this madness before it progressed any further. But she didn’t. She stayed rooted to the spot, held captive by her curiosity, by the desire to find out what he might do next.
“I was—” her voice was unsteady “—normal, I suppose. I wanted the same thing every teenager wants. To experience love and desire, to be wanted. I thought I found it, so I didn’t examine it too closely. I was impetuous, and I led with my heart. And that I don’t wish I could have back.”
“What is it you wish you could have back?”
The word reverberated deep inside her, echoed in the empty chambers where it had once been. “Passion.”
Somehow, just by saying it she felt as though she’d opened the door. As though she had broken locks that had been firmly closed for years.
He shifted their position slightly, tightening his hold on her, sliding his hand around to rest firmly on her stomach as he moved them both into the shadows of the balcony, so that she could just barely see the revelers through the twisting, twining ivy on the wrought-iron railings.
“I do not think you lost any of it. I think perhaps you might simply be sleeping.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know how to wake you up.”
All of the air rushed from her lungs. “How?”
“The only way to wake an enchanted princesses is with a kiss.”
She should say no. She should tell him that he had taken the ruse too far, that she would never go back to being the girl she was, because she had learned far too much since then, and that girl was stupid. That he should understand because he knew that sometimes it was necessary to leave behind the old things. To let the old foolish self stay dead.
But she didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she stood motionless as he swept his hand around to cup her cheek, his fingertips tracing lightly along the line of her jaw as he gently angled her head to face to the side.
As he bent down slowly—achingly so—his mouth now a whisper from hers.
She had plenty of time to turn away, plenty of time to tell him to stop. But she didn’t.
Because for the first time in twelve years Victoria Calder was lost in passion, and she didn’t want to be found.
The image of Nathan as he turned away from what she offered was blotted out by her need for Dmitri.
Instead of embracing her fear, her hard lessons learned, she tilted her chin upward and closed the distance between them, their mouths meeting abruptly. It was like touching a match to an oil slick, an inferno igniting between them that she never could’ve anticipated.
She had not kissed a man since Nathan. The closest she had come was Stavros a few years back, but it had felt nothing like this. The prelude hadn’t held this much intensity, and she knew for a fact the kiss would never have been this explosive.
Dmitri groaned, deep and rough, the sound so wild it should’ve been unsettling. It wasn’t. If anything, it added fuel to the flame, urging her on.
She raised her arm, resting her hand on the back of his neck, curling her fingers around his skin and holding him fast, parting her lips and deepening the kiss, letting her tongue slide against his.
Desire shot through her like an arrow, hitting its target straight and true between her thighs, sending an ache reverberating through her body.
Need, want, passion. Her mind was blank of anything else. She wanted nothing more than to continue to exist in this moment, nothing more at all. In this moment there were no department stores, there was no sin to be atoned for. There was only new sin to find and explore.
And she wanted to explore it all with him.
His fingertips slid up her stomach, teasing the underside of her breast before cupping it in his palm, squeezing her gently as though he was testing the weight of her. She wrenched her mouth away from his, a harsh groan on her lips. He released his hold on her face, lowering his hand to grip her hip, to pull her body back hard against his.
He was hot against her back, and she could feel his arousal hardening against her. She could not remember ever being so acutely aware of a man in this way, certainly not when she had kissed Nathan all those years ago. What she had done then had all been conducted with a girl’s desire. She had wanted, but it’d been nebulous and vague. But right now she was a twenty-eight-year-old woman and she knew very well what she wanted. There was no misty veil drawn over her idea of sensuality and sex. No, Victoria was well aware of what went on between men and women. She had just never imagined she might want it, not like this.
She had intended to marry; she certainly had never intended to remain a virgin all these years, much less the rest of her life. But that was just one reason Stavros had been such a perfect pick. Not only because he was a prince, but because she felt nothing for him. Because her attraction to him had been almost nonexistent and therefore unchallenging. This had nothing to do with logic; this had nothing to do with bettering her position. This was all about feeling, all about need. All about every little thing she had spent years shunning and reducing in importance.
But she couldn’t stop, not now. Even though the back of her mind was screaming that this was wrong, that she couldn’t give in, her body was screaming louder. Her entire body demanded more.
He squeezed her breast again, dragging his thumb across one sensitized nipple before pinching her lightly between his thumb and forefinger. She flexed her hips, pressing her body more firmly against his hardening erection. She knew what she was asking for. And all she could do was pray that he would give it to her.
“Dmitri,” she said, her voice husky, almost unrecognizable.
He responded, his words harsh, broken and in a foreign language. And though she couldn’t understand what he was saying, she could understand exactly what he was doing. His hands sliding over her curves, ramping up her arousal, pushing her to the brink without even touching her beneath her clothes.
“Look at them down there,” he said, pressing a kiss to her neck. “They think they are in the throes of ecstasy, that they are in the midst of the party. But they have no idea.” He shifted, his hand moving between her thighs, the heel of his palm pressing against the center of her need. “If they looked up here they might. Do you think they could see?” The idea should have shocked her, but it didn’t. Instead she found herself morbidly fascinated. Intrigued by the idea that the partiers could be watching her as she had watched them. That they might envy her, as she had once envied them. She did not now. Because Dmitri was holding her in his arms, so how could she wish to be anywhere else?
He applied gentle pressure between her thighs, sending a shot of pleasure straight to her core.
“If they could see you now,” he continued, “they would see the most passionate creature in existence.”
His words made her feel as if it might be true, that she wasn’t hollowed out, that her passion hadn’t been stolen from her. How could it have been? How could it have been when she was letting him hold her like this? When her entire body was crying out with need for him, with need for completion. Here on the balcony, out in the open, shrouded only by a few vines.
“But I’m glad they cannot see,” he said, kissing her neck again. “I’m glad you’re all mine. I’m glad this is only for me.” His words should anger her, because she wasn’t his. Instead, the roughly spoken claim in combination with the gentle rocking of his palm against the sensitized bundle of nerves was all it took to push her completely over the edge she hadn’t even realized she’d been on.
She felt as if she was falling, over the balcony and down to the street below. Lights, sounds, swirled in her head, her mind empty of anything but the searing pleasure burning through her.
And when it passed, she was being held steady, still in Dmitri’s arms. She hadn’t fallen at all, because he had held her fast.
Then suddenly, it was as if her vision cleared. And she saw herself clearly. Saw this clearly. She was standing in the open on a balcony, and she had just let Dmitri bring her to orgasm. Dmitri, whom she had a business deal with. Dmitri, whom her entire future rode on. This was the one thing she could not afford to throw into jeopardy, and she had done just that by bringing something so volatile and personal into it.
She hadn’t changed. She hadn’t changed at all. When things became important, essential, she failed in the end.
All of the sweet, fuzzy pleasure that had been buzzing through her turned to ash, curling at the edges, folding in tightly on itself and wrapping her up tightly with it.
She pulled away from him, needing to put as much distance between the two of them as possible. She looked back down at Bourbon Street, at the people below. The hen party was gone. And she felt as if she could suddenly see everything down there for what it was. Nothing more than drunken excess. Sad people trying very hard to trick themselves into believing they were having fun.
It was nothing to aspire to. It was nothing to covet.
And she was a fool.
“I think I’ll skip dessert.” She ran her hands over her hair, desperately trying to straighten it, desperately trying to erase the evidence of what had just occurred. She started to walk away, her entire body beginning to shake.
“I think you already had dessert, Victoria.”
She stopped, her body going stiff. “You bastard.” She didn’t turn around. She just kept walking.
And she vowed then and there that this wouldn’t happen again. He was right—she had changed because of Nathan. But it was a change that had been for the better.
One thing she would not be doing was changing herself for Dmitri Markin.
