Fractured Ties by Bethany-Kris Page 0,27
he wanted—and he wanted for her to be treated well and happy. Didn’t that include having nice things?
“Okay,” Maya said
Kolya nodded.
“And just how much does she need?” the sale’s woman asked.
Kolya saw the flash of hurt in Maya’s gaze and readied to snap at the woman simply because she’d offered her words with an air of arrogance. A person couldn’t miss that—he knew when someone felt better than him just by their tone of voice.
Maya saved him the trouble when she turned to the woman, and her ice-blue eyes seemed colder as all of her pleasant joy seemed to bleed out of her expression and tone in a blink. Especially when she said, “My measurements are thirty-two, twenty-two, thirty-two. Size six shoe.”
“I’m sure—”
“And what’s your name?” Maya asked.
“Trisha.”
Trisha.
That was it.
Kolya reminded himself to tell Viktoria to give the woman hell the next time she came around.
“And Trisha,” Maya added, her tone twisting the woman’s name with a false saccharine sweetness, “anything but black; we don’t all need to look like we’re going to a funeral.”
Kolya smirked.
Trisha was in black.
Head to toe.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kolya saw the woman glance at him again, but when he didn’t even bother to look her way, she quickly nodded and headed off. Maya’s tense shoulders loosened a little bit, and when she turned to stare at him, he was already looking at her.
“I really won’t need very much,” she said.
“I don’t like that,” he told her.
Maya frowned. “What?”
“When you do that—you’re happy and smiling, and then you snarl at a woman for dismissing you, but then you go back to this …” Kolya waved at her with one inked hand, and shrugged, saying, “Shell of who you occasionally let come out to play. That’s the reason I noticed you, Maya. At the bar, no? You sounded so bubbly. It was strange and interesting to me.”
For a long while, the two continued staring at each other in silence. Kolya wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the buzzing of his phone in his pocket broke their daze. Likely the vet giving an update on Sumerki—Kolya’s demand.
Still, he didn’t reach for the phone.
He had other things to do right now.
Maya cleared her throat. “So, if I stay like this—”
“Quiet, timid, and meek.”
“Yes, that—then what would happen? Would you lose interest and send me on my way?”
Kolya barely had to think about it and his answer was already on the tip of his tongue as he shook his head. “No, I would just see how much pushing and bending and prodding it would take to break you of it. I’m told that I am good at that—breaking people, I mean.”
He didn’t miss the widening of her eyes.
The way her throat clenched.
Her parting lips.
None of it.
He saw it all.
“And what does that mean?” Maya asked.
“Probably nothing good.” Kolya chuckled, adding, “Who’s to say it wouldn’t be different for you, no?”
“I—”
“Let’s go find you beautiful things, Maya. You deserve beautiful things.”
Kolya didn’t give her a chance to argue or asking something else. Instead, he pressed his hand to her lower back, and moved her further into the store. He didn’t miss the warmth from her body soaking into his palm, or the shiver that worked its way up her spine.
Oh, she did well to hide it.
But he knew, too.
Kolya wasn’t going to have to force this woman to do anything—certainly not to get her into his bed. She was going to come there willingly once she got her feelings all sorted out about this strange situation of theirs.
It was almost comical how settled he was in what he had done to Maya—taking her like he had, and still without regret. He was fine with waiting on her, too. He didn’t mind letting her come to the same conclusion he already knew even if it was only brought on by nothing more than his spark of interest, and the fact he took her with him without giving her a choice.
She was his.
And he was going to enjoy every second he had to wait for her to figure it out, too.
It was what she did with it that might make all the difference.
• • •
Konstantin stepped into the townhouse a week later, not looking any worse for wear considering his last conversation with Kolya had been his brother bitching at him. Then again, maybe Konstantin was used to that, considering how most of their conversations ended up going.
Who was he to say?
“You handled that issue, then?” Kolya