Page 40 of Wicked Vow

The flirtation comes easily enough. I’m used to it after years of casually doing exactly that. It comes back like riding a bike, but my heart isn’t in it. It’s all empty, but he doesn’t seem to notice. If anything, he eats it up as we make small talk on the drive into the city, accepting it all at face value. It makes for easy enough conversation, but it feelstooeasy. I can’t help comparing everything to Mikhail, to the challenge and excitement of him. In comparison, this feels bland and pointless.

“I didn’t expect you to drive,” I tell him as we get closer to the city. “Most men like you would have a driver.”

“Well, I do have one. But I gave him the night off.” Erik grins. “Maybe I wanted to show off a little. I feel like you’re hard to impress.”

“That remains to be seen. Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” His hand drifts over the center of the car, brushing against my thigh. “You’ll enjoy it.”

Where he’s taking me turns out to be a Michelin-starred restaurant where we’re whisked away by the hostess to a table with a view of the kitchen on one side and the city on the other, with no one else there. “I made sure that the dinner would be private, just for us,” Erik tells me as he slides my chair out. “Chef’s tasting menu, wine pairings, all of it.”

“Impressive,” I tell him cheekily, but it’s hard to sound as if I’m really impressed. Itisnice, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before–nothing I couldn’t have done for myself in my old life, for that matter. It feels trite, like he’d looked uphow to wine and dine a girland gone with the most expensive option.

What did you want him to do, Natalia? Take you home and tie you to a chair?

The voice in my head is starting to sound a lot like Ruby, and I’m not sure I like it. I feel as if there’s something wrong with me as I force a smile and answer his questions, all the usual first date things–questions about my time as a ballerina, questions about what I like to do for fun, about how I’m enjoying New York, where I might want to live when I leave Viktor’s house. It’s nothing particularly prying or uncomfortable, and there’s nothing to make me think that he’s anything but a man who’s taken an interest in me and wants to get to know me better.

But there are nosparks. There’s nothing that makes my heart beat faster, nothing that makes me look at him and think ahead to the rest of the night, if he’ll kiss me, if he’ll try to take me home. If I’m being honest, I don’t even really want him to touch me.

Is this going to be the rest of my life? Wanting Mikhail and having to settle for less?

“What do you do?” I ask him as I delicately slice off a bit of sous vide scallop, and he pours himself more wine. I’ve been sipping at the half of a glass I let him pour me, hoping that he wouldn’t comment on it. I still feel uncomfortable telling him that I’m pregnant, though I’m not sure why, exactly. It feels too intimate to talk about, I suppose, and it opens up a line of questioning about Mikhail that I’m not prepared to answer.

“I’m an investor.” Erik smiles, his fork sinking into the side of his own scallop. “I’ve invested in some of Viktor’s ventures, and I expect that they’re going to yield impressive returns. It’s early, of course, but he’s quite the businessman. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.”

“Which businesses?”

Erik shrugs. “Property, a couple of his clubs. All boring business details, nothing that I’m sure you’d want to hear about.”

For the first time, I feel a little irritated with him. “Maybe I enjoy talking business.”

Erik laughs. “Well, I don’t, especially on a first date.” He takes the last bite of his scallop, glancing towards the kitchen. “We have somewhere else to go after this. I wanted to give you a real New York experience for our first date.”

“This is quite the experience.” I smile at him. It’s easier to pretend that this is a novelty, although he can’t possibly think I’ve never done this before. “There’s a lot of things that I miss about being a ballerina, but the restrictions on what I can eat definitely isn’t one of them.”

“Have you thought about dancing again?” He looks at me curiously. “Here in New York, I mean.”

“I don’t know if that would work.” I can feel my smile falter a little. “It’s not as easy as you might think.”

“Surely you have connections, though, and with Viktor–”

“I don’t think it’s a possibility. But I have other ideas.” The words come out sharper than I mean for them to, and I force a smile back onto my face, trying to soften them. “Like I said, I only just moved here. I’m not in any rush.”

“Of course.”

We walk back out to his car after dessert, his hand drifting to the small of my back, and I can’t stop myself from thinking about Mikhail, about his hand on my back after our first date, about the kiss he’d stolen in the alley, about how even then I’d known I was in trouble.

I don’t feel like Erik is trouble. I don’t feel like he’s much of anything at all.

I shouldn’t crave the violence of what there was between Mikhail and me. I shouldn’t miss it. It should never have excited me at all.

A memory of the night before creeps back into my mind as I slide into the car, of me standing in front of the window, my hand slipping between my legs. I’d thought of Mikhail while I touched myself, imagining him watching me, imagining him doing the same. I know I should be ashamed of it, and I am. I can feel my cheeks heat, even just remembering it, sitting in the passenger seat of Erik’s car.

I’m not surprised when he takes me to the ballet. We have box seats, and I let him put his hand on my leg as we watch, enjoying the expectation to be silent as much as anything else. It’s hard to watch ballet without dissecting it, but I play along, not wanting him to think I haven’t enjoyed the date.

And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, not really. It was pleasant–but that’s not enough anymore. It might have been, once upon a time. I would have been happy to have a prospective partner that I didn’t completely hate. But now there’s no expectation that I have to have a husband at all–and the one man I can’t get out of my head is someone that no one else can seem to measure up to.

At least when it comes to how he made me feel.

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