Page 47 of Pageant

He opens his mouth and starts to speak, but then he looks away again. There was no reason for him to conceal that part. It wasn’t his baby, and he didn’t even like that I was pregnant. I knew he was jealous as soon as I told him I was expecting.

“I had a miscarriage,” I say, turning back to the other two, and before Kirill can mock me by asking if it was Elyah’s, I snap, “Yes, it was my husband’s.”

But Kirill’s expression is totally blank.

Konstantin studies me with his bright, shrewd gaze. “You lost your baby?”

Even now, the memory is sharp and painful. I can’t speak and so I nod, blinking rapidly. It’s lonely, losing a baby. There’s a wretched, empty loneliness inside you where there used to be love. Nothing made me happy in the months after I’d married Ivan, but the realization that I was carrying something made of love, even if the way it was conceived was wretched and loveless, warmed me from the inside out.

Elyah, I want my baby back.

The man I said those words to as I sobbed my grief out on his chest is sitting just feet away, sunk in silence, unable to look at me.

“It wasn’t there for very long. Just a few weeks, and then it was gone.”

Kirill gets to his feet and saunters over. He stands before me, and his brown eyes are deep and fathomless.

“I’ll give you a baby, Lilia Aranova.”

His words are so unexpected and preposterous that my mouth falls open. “What?”

He takes my face between his hands. “A child with my strength and your beauty. Can’t you just picture them?”

Of course that’s what he’d see me as, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Even if I wanted a child, which I absolutely don’t, I wouldn’t want one with him.

“When your friend is going to kill me? Even a mouth-breather like you should realize that throws a wrench in you plan. And I’m not having sex with you.”

Kirill laughs softly. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

“Are you a deep sleeper?”

I jerk my face out of his grip. “You monster.”

“You’re perfect when you’re fast asleep, those dark gold lashes against your cheeks. Every time I picture your eyes flying open and catching me balls deep in your pussy…” He sinks his teeth into his lower lip and moans. “I get hard.”

There’s a thick, twisting sensation low in my belly. What iswrongwith this man? Is he some kind of sleep demon who feeds off you when you’re at your most vulnerable? Slowly, his head dips toward mine, and those dark eyes flash with desire.

I turn my face away, my heart beating wildly.

Elyah is glowering at us from the far side of the room, his arms and jaw bunched in fury and his pale eyes filled with wrath. Kirill follows the direction of my gaze, and he runs his tongue over his top lip as he feels the tension crackling in the room.

Kirill’s mouth is just an inch from mine, and he whispers, “How angry with him are you? Angry enough to take a little…revenge?”

“I was never angry with Elyah. Just disappointed.”

“He was going to break your arms yesterday.”

“So were you. I hate you all equally. I was happily going about my life before you brought me here.”

“Happily?”

It’s not Kirill who has spoken, or Elyah. Kirill steps back and I can see Konstantin, relaxed in his chair like a king on his throne. His expression is unreadable but his eyes are alight with interest.

“Say it, Number Eleven. I was happy before Kirill snatched me from the street.”

I glare back at him, my lips tightly closed. Of course I wasn’t happy. A man like him knows that a woman in hiding from the Russian mafia lives in nothing but fear.

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