The Lies Between Lovers (The Beast of Moscow Book 2)

by Bethany-Kris

  She shivered when he reached out with his other hand to tug away the quilt until it fell to the hardwood floor in a pile all around her. Her nipples had already hardened into peaks that he brushed calloused fingers over until he heard himself another one of her low moans.

  As naked as the day she’d been born, every dip and swell of her body’s curves was a canvas that he’d not wasted time exploring and learning. She let him, too, seemingly reveling in every small mark he left behind whether it was a burning handprint on her ass or a bruise from where he’d sucked on her throat for too long.

  Every time, she’d asked him for more.

  With a hand cupping her ass, he pulled her close enough that he could place a kiss on her thighs. One after another.

  And then a little nip after each kiss, too.

  Vera sighed a shaky, but sweet noise. Even her thighs rubbed together when he dragged his cheek across the side of her hip. Her trembling vibrated through to his body, waking his cock and thickening his length under soft cotton.

  “Open up.”

  The order came out husky, every word thick in his throat. He hadn’t lied when he said he was a man with no patience, and he didn’t hide the expectation in his demand. Her feet shifted further apart as soon as his fingers flexed around her inner thighs, and heaven parted there for him to take a taste.

  But he didn’t right away.

  He glanced up to find her wide doe-like blue eyes were glass staring back down at him. A sweeping blink of her lashes sent one glittering tear falling to her cheek. So small it barely even made a track before it disappeared.

  “What bothers you the most about your poor old neighbor and death is that you have an unfortunate understanding of your own mortality,” he explained to her because he bet she’d keep sulking over it, and he had better things to do. “An understanding that has followed you since you were just a girl. And as I imagine your biological mother’s death was a large part of your formative years, you’ve had a lot of time to think about it. But on the flip side of the same coin, you’re barely even a grown woman. Maybe a third of your life is lived, and believe or not, but you’re in the beginning of the best part. It’s not shocking that every time death is around, you know you could be looking at your own. Just admit it makes you uncomfortable, and that will go a long way in helping you to deal with it.”

  Some people shied from that part of being human while others became hopelessly devoted to some variant of faith to give their death a purpose.

  “You’ve got a while yet to go,” Vaslav added and wet the seam of his lips while he considered his final thoughts on the matter. Vera waited silently above him, still trembling like a pretty little leaf in his rough and bloody hands, but without a tear in sight now. He considered that a win. “It’s going to be a tragically bleak life for you if you can’t see past an end that hasn’t even come—you’ve got too much living yet to do.”

  The fascinating thing about Vera was that she had a habit of taking his frank view of the world as an attack on her. A juvenile trait, sure, but her unwavering stare didn’t flicker with what he expected.

  Maybe he hadn’t given her enough credit.

  “Probably just saved me thousands in therapy—when I finally got around to it,” she muttered above him, laughing into the same hand she then used to rub against her cheek.

  “No more tears?”

  Vera shook her head, dropping her hand into the short buzz of his black hair. Her fingers massaged down along where the gray had started to pepper more in his temples as she whispered, “No more.”

  “Good.”

  His hands flipped backwards with his sore side pressed tightly to her inner thighs. Using his thumbs, he stroked at the edge of her clitoral hood and blew a steady stream of air against the nub that barely peeked out.

  Her skin pebbled. He could practically taste the tart heat he’d find waiting between the folds of her silky, pink slit.

  “But it’s also pretty rich,” she said, drawing his gaze upward again where she challenged him with an arched eyebrow, “coming from a man who refuses to tell me if he’s dying.”

  Vaslav smirked, and blew another breath on her trembling sliver of sin only inches away from his face. “Frankly, Vera, dying doesn’t get my dick hard.”

  19.

  “Vas,” Vera said as she lingered in the crack between the double doors of his den. He didn’t look up from his desk or answer her call of his name while his long, strong fingers worked along the side of his skull at a pace that she thought was too fast to bring relief. “I can stay another day, if you—”

  “Things are figured out,” he muttered shortly like she would simply accept that. She didn’t exactly have a choice because he wasn’t offering any information as to why it was safe and fine for her to return to her villa, except that he expected her to. “I doubt you’ll have any trouble in Noble Row. Get a start setting order to your affairs while you have the chance. My offer about your father still stands as I first said it.”

  Right—tell her father she’d be married to Vaslav by winter, or Demyan was guaranteed no protection if he came to Russia.

  “Would you really do it?” Vera asked. “Kill my father if I didn’t agree to marry you?”

  “You’d be shocked by how good a motivator violence is, Vera. In the end, it always gets me what I want. Unfortunately, on your side of things, what I want just happens to be you.”

  His blatant threat—even if it wasn’t worded as such—had her wishing he would at least meet her eyes when he had the nerve to do that to her. To be cruel without a care. She bit back an equally mean remark that probably would have only earned her a laugh from his side of the room. She’d learned the night before that Vaslav in great pain who didn’t want help was far worse than one that would accept it. The memory of waking up at the very crack of dawn—still confused with sleep and more tender than she was willing to admit—to Vaslav rolling out of bed just in time for his vomit to find the floor filled her mind.

  Whatever exhaustion he had managed to find fucking her to near sleep was gone the moment he cracked open his eyes, apparently. She couldn’t begin to imagine what pain like that felt like—never mind how someone could manage agony that came without warning or a promise to leave.

  Pride could be a terrible thing, and she wanted to blame that more than anything else for the way the morning had played out between the two of them after he woke up like he did. It couldn’t be easy; she tried to give him grace for that, at least.

  Not that he deserved much more.

  Gone was the man in Paris who let her rock him on a tiled floor when he was in his worst pain. The man who’d let her be oh, so close, to do anything that would help, didn’t exist here. Or he surely hadn’t when he woke her up that morning.

  That’s why she knew his meanness came from misguided pride, and the only reason she allowed him any grace at all.

  “Now get out,” came the dark utter from the man behind the desk. All without raising his head even once, he effectively dismissed her after everything.

  That stung the most.

  Vera stood unmoved.

  Still quiet.

  Her fingers wrapped tighter around the edge of the door, and she silently willed him one last time to remind her of the man she’d just spent days with. Anyone but the angry shell hiding at the shadowed end of his den using his viciousness as a way to keep everyone else away.

  And then he did.

  Vaslav chin lifted subtly, enough that he rested his chin on both thumbs while his face squinted in pain at the light from the hall sliding in through the crack between the double doors. Every other curtain in the large space had been yanked shut to keep out daylight. In her opinion, it made the space more closed off and uninviting.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he told her.

  Vera pursed her lips, considering that. “When?”

  Unsurprisingly, she didn’t get an answer.

  *

  “Don’t even look at him.”


  Vera’s attempt at hiding her surprise about the large black retriever sleeping at the edge of the front steps of the Federal Colonial hadn’t been very good considering Igor waited at the bottom with her bags already prepped for the trip to the city.

  It was the first time she’d seen the dog around despite hearing about him from nearly everyone. “It’s Marrow, right?”

  She eyed the dog from the side curious about the creature that was apparently as grumpy and unpredictable as his master. How could that be measured? Or maybe she was lucky not to know. Vera couldn’t say.

  “Should have been called The Bastard,” Igor said under his breath.

  “Why?”

  Asleep, the dog didn’t even look like he would hurt a fly. His ear twitched when she said his name, but otherwise, he didn’t stir from where he slept. Other than the cool September breeze easing the heat of the sun rustling along his large body, even his tail didn’t flick. Stretched out, he covered a good four feet or more in length across the edge of the steps, and his wavy coat of black hair shined from the bright sunlight beating down on him.

  “And definitely don’t pet him,” Igor added when Vera stepped around the dog to head down the stairs. “Not unless he makes you, anyway.”

  “What?”

  The dog might have appeared innocuous and unconcerned, but the second Vera took a step, she heard the growing rumble coming from the animal. He didn’t even open his eyes to growl, and other than the lift of his furry lip on the right side of his snout, she wouldn’t even be sure the noise had come from him.

  “I said don’t pet him,” Igor repeated as Vera picked up the pace coming down the steps.

  She still kept one eye on the moody dog even when she reached the bottom. By then, Igor had grabbed hold of her luggage—the rolling and matching carry-on duffel—and had started for the running SUV parked off to the side of the towering birch trees in the middle of the circular driveway.

  Igor pulled on the latch to open the rear door of the SUV, and as he packed her two pieces of luggage in, he told her, “You get used to him after a while—or you learn to stop meeting his eyes, yes?”

  “He can’t be that bad.”

  Although, Marrow did growl just because she passed him on the stairs. That probably wasn’t a point in the pup’s favor in regard to his aggression, but she wasn’t exactly a dog person, either, so it wasn’t like she’d know.

  Igor gave her a pensive stare. “Don’t pet him, okay? Don’t even try.”

  At that, he lifted one hand while he used his other to slam the rear door shut. She had a clear view of the scarring that looked like someone had done a piss poor job of keeping the stitches straight. That, or the injury hadn’t exactly allowed a clean stitch job.

  “It was as bad as it looks,” Igor filled when. “That’s one of a few. He’s taken a chunk out of every corner of me at one point or another. Sometimes because all I did was look at him.”

  Even though she hadn’t asked.

  Huh.

  Good to know.

  “He’ll seem nice,” the man added, “but then he switches.”

  The fast snap of his fingers made her jump. If Igor noticed the nervousness she felt, the man didn’t point it out. It wasn’t necessarily the dog or him that caused her extra anxiety, but rather, the man she had left behind in the house.

  “Kind of like Vaslav, then?”

  Igor failed to suppress the tilt of his lips upward that suggested he thought her comment was funny, but it quickly faded away when he replied, “You said it, not me.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

  Igor, who had been checking the shiny Rolex on his wrist, glanced up with a knot between his brows. “Who—Marrow? Why wouldn’t he be? I don’t know how Mira gets anything done when he’s in the house, but she does. I’m convinced she bribes him with something he likes to behave.”

  Vera took another peek at the sleeping dog. As interesting as the animal might be, that wasn’t what she’d been talking about. “No, I meant Vas.”

  At the clarification, Igor took his chance to glance back at the looming house that suddenly seemed devoid of life given the stillness of the property. The gray brick, some of it swallowed in growing green vines, seemed cold without any particular reason.

  Or maybe she knew exactly the reason.

  “I’ve learned over time that it’s easier not to worry about Vaslav,” Igor said, “because any reason you have to worry will never match his reasons for doing whatever he wants and plans to do. And if you do worry—”

  “He’s sick, isn’t he?”

  Igor lifted one eyebrow high going right ahead with finishing his initial advice. “If you do worry, keep it to yourself. It’s less heartache, or so I hear.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  The man shrugged. “You don’t pay me to.”

  *

  Vera didn’t expect the deep yawn to crawl out of her lungs as Igor unloaded the rear of the SUV. Once her luggage sat on the sidewalk in front of her villa, the man gestured between her and the items.

  “You want any help?”

  “I think I’ve got it,” she replied.

  “All right—lady’s choice.”

  Igor slammed the rear door shut while Vera faced the Noble Row villas. Her gaze darted between the front stoop belonging to her home, and the one just a few feet away where she almost expected Mr. Anatoly to come out and stand. He’d probably ask something to suggest he was nosing into her business, but she’d know that he meant no harm.

  Except he didn’t come out.

  And his stoop remained lonely.

  “I’ll have to water his plants,” she told herself, eyeing the garden of shrubbery and drying flowers that had seen the better part of their season along the fence line at the front of the house. “The ones inside, too.”

  Igor cleared his throat. “Didn’t the old man have any family or—”

  “His wife died a while ago, and they didn’t have kids. I think he has family in the Ukraine, but I’ll have to find their contacts in his stuff.”

  Wherever it was.

  That would be the hardest part of the responsibility she had decided to take on. Despite being inside Mr. Anatoly’s home many times—the layout matched hers perfectly and other than decoration and perhaps some pain, there really wasn’t a significant difference between the row of attached villas—she was sure it wouldn’t be the same knowing he was gone and wouldn’t be coming back. After his wife died, she remembered Mr. Anatoly being particularly difficult about going through the woman’s belongings and getting rid of what he might not want. Apparently, he’d wanted all of it.

  How would he feel now?

  Vera couldn’t really bear to think about it.

  “You got keys for the old man’s place?” Igor asked. “If not, I can call a guy that’s good with a lock and a pick.”

  She gave him a look. “I have a spare for emergencies, but thanks.”

  Mr. Anatoly had one for hers, too, but—

  “It’s a complicated thing, da?” Igor asked, interrupting her thoughts.

  That was fine.

  She needed the distraction from her returning cycle of unapologetic grief. Especially when she couldn’t do anything to change what had already happened here.

  “What is?” Vera returned.

  Igor nodded toward the matching villas, and then tilted his head her way. Despite the vehicle still running on the side of the road, and the mid-day sun telling them half the day was over, he didn’t seem like he had anywhere better to be. Maybe she should ask him to haul the luggage up to her front door. To save her the energy if anything.

  “Everything,” Igor said, lifting one shoulder under the weight of his leather jacket. “The things that happen in your life because of whose presence you allow in—the questions you constantly seem to have for me, and anyone else you can ask them to. It’s like you expect things to be just black and white, Vera, but it’s all colored i
n shades of gray.”

  It took her a minute.

  “You mean Vaslav?”

  Igor sighed. “It’s not simple. Nothing about him is simple, and no one except him can give you clear cut answers. If you manage to get them out of him, I mean.”

  “Right, it’s complicated. I heard that bit.”

  “Exactly. Like when you ask me if he’s sick—Vera, you tell me. If I already had that answer, do you think I’d be standing here sharing it with you?”

  Would he?

  Because that was a good damn question.

  How much did Igor hide for Vas?

  “That actually doesn’t seem very complicated at all when it’s an easy yes or no answer,” she tried to argue although the exhaustion from the long morning was really catching up to her. “Either he is, or he isn’t. Either he’s dying, or—”

  “Who said anything about dying?” Igor asked, stopping her from saying anything more.

  His genuine confusion concerned her more than anything else did. Was it possible that the passing comments Vaslav made to her about his health were untrue—or did the man simply not offer the same information to other people in his life?

  “Well—”

  “Well, what?” Igor asked sharply.

  Vera twisted her fingers to ease her nerves. “It feels like he’s hiding something—that’s all.”

  Igor’s stare darted back to her, then, and he didn’t ask permission before grabbing hold of the waiting luggage. “Take that to him. I’m not interested in playing those games.”

  At that, he headed for the villa leaving Vera alone on the side of the street. All she could think was what games? And when did someone plan on letting her in on the rules?

  Clearly, she was losing.

  20.

  “There you are!”

  The loud exclamation that Vera wasn’t expecting had her jumping in the kitchen chair, and she slammed a hand on the table making the pile of papers in front of her flutter as she yelped her shock. The resounding laughter that echoed into the quiet kitchen of her neighbor’s villa soon alerted her to exactly where the voice had come from.