Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Like all he feels for me now is pity.
Teeth clenched, I step out of the stall and duck to avoid the towel coming toward me. “I’ll air dry,” I say tightly. “Better for my skin that way.”
And it’s not like I have long hair dripping everywhere. Or that needs to be washed beyond a quick shampooing. A buzzcut is fucking amazing that way. I never knew what I was missing by having that long, heavy hair weighing me down all the time.
Frowning, Alexei steps back and hangs the unused towel. “Are you feeling okay?” His deep voice is laced with concern. “Any nausea or headache?”
Shockingly, no. Or maybe yes, but I’m too mad to notice. Instead of a reply, I march over to the sink, squirt out half a tube of toothpaste onto an electric toothbrush, and shove it into my mouth, using the loud buzzing to muffle the roaring anger inside me.
Anger that, deep down, I know he doesn’t deserve. Not today. Not after the way he’s been during my treatment. But I can’t help it.
There’s a caged beast inside me, and it’s clawing to get free.
Frown deepening, Alexei comes up behind me as I spit out the glob of toothpaste burning my mouth with its extreme mintiness.
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
Like me, he’s lost some weight in the past few weeks, and his sharply cut jaw and cheekbones look even more defined, his masculine features even more beautifully, cruelly chiseled. His dark eyes are slightly sunken, circled with shadows of lingering exhaustion. Even on the king-sized bed in the clinic, he didn’t sleep well. Or eat well when he was awake.
I know all that, and guilt is a bitter-tasting foam on the bubbling rage inside me. I have no right to feel so angry when Alexei has been nothing but kind during these awful weeks. A model husband by any measure… if one ignores our history, of course.
“What’s going on?” he asks, laying his hands on my shoulders and squeezing gently. Oh-so-fucking gently, like I’ll break if he applies more pressure. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I set the toothbrush on its charger with a sharp motion. “What could possibly be wrong?”
Other than the fact that I’m standing here buck naked and dripping wet in front of him, and he doesn’t give a flying fuck. I might as well be a stick figure for all the sexual interest he’s showing in me.
Keeping his touch maddeningly gentle, he turns me around to face him. His gaze is penetrating, deeply searching. “What is it, Alinyonok?”
Nothing. Everything. I want to scream that at him, but he’ll think me insane. Fuck, I feel insane, completely out of control. I’m actually shaking from the effort it takes to contain the explosive emotions inside me.
I can’t let them loose.
I don’t know what will happen if I do.
“You can tell me,” he urges softly. “I’m here for you. You know that.”
“Are you?” The words burst out of me. Immediately, I want to take them back, but it’s too late because more are coming on their heels. “Why would you be, when you don’t want me anymore? When I’m now this”—I jerk out of his hold to gesture down at myself—“this sick, damaged thing?”
Even without a mirror, I can see my post-treatment body as he must: the protruding hipbones and knobby knees, the unmanicured toes and the fading rash on my calves from one of the medications. My breasts are smaller, my ass has all but disappeared, and my face hasn’t seen makeup in so long I’ve forgotten what lipstick looks like.
And that’s before I even think about the scars and the almost-buzzcut on my head.
Why on earth did I imagine he would want this version of me?
At my words, his eyebrows snap together. “What the fuck are you talking about?” His voice is low and dangerous. “You think I don’t want you?” Face darkening, he advances on me, and I instinctively back away until my back presses against the glass wall of the shower stall as he continues through gritted teeth. “You think that all this time, I haven’t been holding back with the greatest fucking effort?” His palms slap against the glass on either side of my head, pinning me in place. “That it hasn’t taken every bit of my willpower to avoid taking what I want from this ‘sick, damaged thing?’” He grinds his hips against my stomach, and I gasp as I feel the massive bulge in his jeans.
An erection that wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want me.
My heart pounds as I stare up at him. He looks… savage. Feral. His teeth are so tightly clenched a muscle pulses by his ear, and his mouth is a brutal slash above his too-sharp jawline. Even his hair, a couple of inches too long due to a missed haircut or two, seems to have given up on any pretense of civilization, tousled black locks falling haphazardly over his eyebrows and tempting my hand to brush them back.