Page 7 of Conquer
Craving silence, I steal into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea.
I’ve barely taken a sip before my opponent appears across from me, dressed in a shirt and slacks that look as though he just tugged them on without any forethought. As he claims the seat at the end of the table, I sense the war horns being blown.
Another round is about to take place—because our battle isn’t over.
“Look at me,” he demands.
Because my gaze is on the window apparently, watching dawn claw across the horizon. When I risk sneaking a glance in his direction, I gasp, struck dumb by his expression. Gone is the icy rage from last night. He’s too calm now.
Disarming in his persistence. He’s brought weapons to this fight, I realize—a stack of documents that he places on the table and shoves toward me.
I glance at them, my heart racing. Sure enough, my worst fears are confirmed as I read the topmost line of the first page.Petition to adopt…
“Vadim—”
“I heard your concerns,” he says, in a tone like thunder, though alarmingly quiet so as not to disturb anyone beyond this room. “Now, you hear mine. My daughter… You think I would offer her guardianship to you on a whim? That I would entrust her to anyone else? I’ve stood in the background of her life for too damn long, never would I jeopardize her safety or her trust. Never.”
I set my tea aside, overwhelmed, and clutch my head in my hands, desperate to keep my thoughts focused. “Vadim, this is—”
“And I don’t extend an offer of marriage lightly,” he adds, easily cutting over me. “Do you know how many women have tried to seduce me? Fool me? Deceive me? I have seen through them all. Outsmarted them all.” He’s proud of that, I realize. Prideful, and defensive. “I knew from the second you approached me at that bar that you were different. Why? I wasn’t your first choice,” he says as if seeing right into my thoughts. My very soul. “I wasn’t even your second or third. You approached me with no preconceived notions or deception, though I wanted to deny it. I did deny it. You approached me as a game,” he says, his brow furrowing, eyes blazing. “To see if I could give you the fun you sought. Or not. You didn’t care. If I failed, you would easily seek your fortune with someone else. It was so damneasyfor you to find someone else.”
His tone turns feral, and I picture him recalling all those men I’d taunted him with. Nearly run off to bed with. He’s right, I’d treated it as a game—but only because he kept pushing me away. He hurt me, each time he did so.
“I had to fight to keep you entertained,” he adds, gritting his teeth at the thought. Him, fight? As though he never has. Never sought a relationship with someone else before me—or maybe hedid, I realize with growing horror…
Only for that person to reject him. Spurn him so badly he preferred to live his life closed-off, expecting only the worst from those who dared approach him. And the second he does let down his guard, that past rejection makes him spiral into paranoia.
Who was the culprit? Irina? Maxim? In this moment, I don’t even think it matters who. They aren’t the object of his focus now. His ire. His rage.
“I’ve plied you,” he adds through gritted teeth. “Tempted you. Bought you. Fucked you. Tasted you. And yet it feels as if it’s never enough. Like I’m always a heartbeat from losing you. You are still playing your game—”
“No!” I cringe at the woman he’s describing and push back from the table. “I never manipulated you,” I point out, shaking my head. “I never hurt you or tried to play mind games at your expense.”
“Correct.” He nods, his eyes are so dark I swear I can see myself reflected in them—a small, fragile woman on the verge of something both horrific and lifechanging. A realization. A mental breakdown. Who the hell knows?
“You just tease,” he growls, palming the table with a quiet thud that sends my heart racing. “You give me a taste of everything I fucking never knew, and you threaten, every minute, to take it all away.”
“Vadim…” I can’t look at him anymore. I break, forfeiting the round to stare down at my hands. They’re shaking. “What do you want from me?”
“I want everything.” He sounds so hollow. So cold. A man denied warmth for so damn long he doesn’t even remember what it feels like. Just that he craves it above all else. Jealously, he craves it. “Your body.” But his tone implies something else. Something that makes me stiffen, desperate to head him off.
“Don’t—”
“Your touch.”
“Stop it—”
“Your taste. Your love—”
“Vadim!” I lurch to my feet, scrambling for the terrace door. My eyes are burning, vision blurring. Putting distance between us now is my only hope for escape. “I’m going for a walk.”
“So you run,” he snarls. “As is the case with everyone else, I am never enough to keep you.”
I stagger, so wounded I nearly collapse right then and there. There’s so much pain in his voice. Such awful, unending pain…
And a terrifying threat.
“Is this about whatever happened with Irina?” I say, deploying my own secret weapon. “Just tell me what she said—”
