Page 109 of Charmingly Obsessed
“Is something wrong?” I ask softly, trying not to spook her.
She finally lifts her eyes to me. For a moment they’re cloudy and opaque, but then she gives her head a sharp shake. “No,” she says, her voice flat and emotionless. “Everything’s fine.”
She seems to fall back into her usual composed manner, but I can’t shake the unsettling feeling that reality is tearing at the seams. Something here is very wrong.
She’s upset to her core. She’s slammed the invisible shutters closed again, leaving me out in the cold.
As Malasenco reluctantly sits, I give him a curt, almost imperceptible nod. He returns it with one just as brief and cold.
“We could sit here,” Diana suggests, her voice still strangely lifeless. “At the café. Outside.”
Yes, we could. And I would have to sit there and watch this unsettling, silent play unfold.
“No,” I say, my voice firm and decisive as I pull her close. She doesn’t react. She’s like a beautiful, terrifyingly still porcelain doll in my arms. “Sunshine, come on. Let’s go back to the room.”
I can’t tell if she nods or simply sways, the movement is so slight. She moves as if in a trance, and I feel myself helplessly sinking into that same disorienting dream with her.
At the base of the grand marble staircase, I walk backward to keep my eyes on her pale, empty face. Somewhere inside that body is my Diana—my sunshine, my sharp and witty thief—but I can’t reach her.
Getting back to our suite feels like walking through an eternity of cold, silent hallways. I can barely track my own ragged breathing.
A sharp horror pierces me at the suite door: Diana has an insane, supernatural hold on me. I am dangerously dependent on her, living in a goddamn trance where every cell in my body strains to realign with hers.
I pour her a glass of water from the crystal carafe as if to comfort her, but she’s perfectly calm—quiet and a million miles away.
She’s already in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed and meticulously smoothing the gold-embroidered coverlet. The gleam of the golden stitching matches the grotesque, writhing dragons on the silk wallpaper.
I pause in the doorway, choosing my next words with surgical care. “Do you need anything else?” I ask, rolling up my shirtsleeves just to give my clumsy, useless hands something to do.
She shakes her head slowly and stares blankly past the balcony shutters at the gray Parisian day.
When Diana finally speaks, I freeze. A grounding heaviness settles deep in my bones.Focus. Control. Now.I lean against the antique writing table opposite the bed, hoping I look casual.
“You know Malasenco, don’t you, Mykola?” Her voice is a soft, toneless whisper.
“I’m more surprised thatyouknow him, Diana.”
She gives a small, jerky nod that repeats, as if she can’t stop. Her gaze remains fixed on the balcony window.
I’m no titan or god. I’m just a man, hopelessly in love and using every last shred of his dissolving self-control not to drown in her fragile, terrifying beauty. I shift my weight and clasp my hands tight, a useless anchor.
“I do,” she says finally. “I know him. My father… my father used to work for him. For… for your old holding company. InkorMet.”
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Chapter 44 Mykola
The revelation detonates in my mind like a bomb.What? That’s how it is?A violent, uncontrollable tremor starts to build in her slender body.
I take an instinctive step toward the bed, but she scrambles away from me into a sea of pillows.
My mouth goes dry.
A sickening understanding crackles at the tips of my hair. I try to move closer again, just to comfort her, but she pulls away.
“Diana,” I say, my voice a pleading whisper. “Diana, give me your hand.”
I sweep my gaze over her, disbelieving. My emotions are so tangled and violent I almost laugh.
