want sex?”
Was he deaf?
“No,” she assured him. Her back came up against the towel rail, which was horribly uncomfortable. She waved toward the door he was blocking. “You can go.”
He didn’t move, only folded his own arms and rocked back on his heels. “Explain this to me. And use small words, because I don’t understand what happened between the lounge and here.”
“Nothing happened.” She couldn’t stand that he was making her wallow in her inadequacy. “You... I mean, I thought I gave you what you wanted. If you thought—”
He didn’t even want her. Not really. He would decide if and when, she recalled.
Good luck with that, champ. Her body made that decision for everyone involved, no matter what her head said.
Do not cry. Oh, she hated her body right now. Her stupid, dumb body that had made her life go so far sideways she didn’t even understand how she was standing here having this awful conversation.
“Can you just go?” She glared at him for making this so hard for her, but her eyes stung. She bet they were red and pathetic looking. If he made her tell him, and he laughed— “Please?”
He stayed there one more long moment, searching her gaze, before slowly moving back, taking the door with him, closing it as he left. The click sounded horribly final.
Viveka stepped forward and turned the lock, not because she was afraid he’d come in looking for sex, but afraid he’d come in and catch her crying.
With a wrench of her hand, she started the shower.
* * *
Mikolas was sitting in the dark, nursing an ouzo, when he heard Viveka’s door open.
He’d closed it himself an hour ago, when he’d gone in to check on her and found her on the guest bed, hair wrapped in a towel, one of his monogramed robes swallowing her in black silk. She’d been fast asleep, her very excellent legs bare to midthigh, a crumpled tissue in her lax grip. Several more had been balled up around her.
Rather than easing his mind, rather than answering any of the million questions crowding his thoughts, the sight had caused the turmoil inside him to expand, spinning in fresh and awful directions. Was he such a bad judge of a woman’s needs? Why did he feel as though he’d taken advantage of her? She had pressed him into this very chair. She had opened his pants. She had gone down and told him to let go.
He’d been high as a kite when he had tracked her into her bathroom, certain he’d find her naked and waiting for him. Every red blood cell he possessed had been keening with anticipation.
It hadn’t gone that way at all.
She’d felt threatened.
He was a strong, dominant man. He knew that and tried to take his aggressive nature down a notch in the bedroom. He knew what it was like to be brutalized by someone bigger and more powerful. He would never do that to the smaller and weaker.
He kept having flashes of slender, delicate Viveka looking anxious as she noticed he was still hard. He thought about her fear of Grigor. A libido-killing dread had been tying his stomach in knots ever since.
He couldn’t bear the idea of her being abused that way. He’d punched Grigor tonight, but he wished he had killed him. There was still time, he kept thinking. He wasn’t so far removed from his bloodline that he didn’t know how to make a man disappear.
He listened to Viveka’s bare feet approach, thinking he couldn’t blame her for trying to sneak out on him.
She paused as she arrived at the end of the hall, obviously noticing his shadowed figure. She had changed into pajamas and clipped up her hair. She tucked a stray wisp behind her ear.
“I’m hungry. Do you want toast?” She didn’t wait for his response, charging past him through to the kitchen.
He unbent and slowly made his way into the kitchen behind her.
She had turned on the light over the stove and kept her back to him as she filled the kettle at the sink. After she set the switch to Boil, she went to the freezer and found a frozen loaf of sliced bread.
Still keeping her back to him, she broke off four slices and set them in the toaster.
“Viveka.”
Her slender back flinched at the sound of his voice.
So did he. The things he was thinking were piercing his heart. He’d been bleeding internally since the likeliest explanation had struck him hours ago. When someone reacted that defensively against sexual contact, the explanation seemed really obvious.
“When you said Grigor abused you...” He wasn’t a coward, but he didn’t want to speak it. Didn’t want to hear it. “Did he...?” His voice failed him.
* * *
Viveka really wished he hadn’t still been up. In her perfect world, she never would have had to face him again, but as the significance of his broken question struck her, she realized she couldn’t avoid telling him.
She buried her face in her hands. “No. That’s not it. Not at all.”
She really didn’t want to face him.
But she had to.
Shoulders sagging, she turned and wilted against the cupboards behind her. Her hands stayed against her stinging cheeks.
“Please don’t laugh.” That’s what the one other man she’d told had done. She’d felt so raw it was no wonder she hadn’t been able to go all the way with him, either.
She dared a peek at Mikolas. He’d closed a couple of buttons, but his shirt hung loose over his pants. His hair was ruffled, as though his fingers had gone through it a few times. His jaw was shadowed with stubble and he looked tired. Troubled.
“I won’t laugh.” He hadn’t slept, even though it was past two in the morning. For some reason that flipped her heart.
“I wasn’t a very happy teenager, obviously,” she began. “I did what a lot of disheartened young girls do. I looked for a boy to save me. There was a nice one who didn’t have much, but he had a kind heart. I can’t say I loved him, not even puppy love, but I liked him. We started seeing each other on the sly, behind Grigor’s back. After a while it seemed like the time to, you know, have sex.”
The toaster made a few pinging, crackling noises and the kettle was beginning to hiss. She chewed her lip, fully grown and many years past it, but still chagrined.
“I mean, fourteen is criminally young, I realize that. And not having any really passionate feelings for him... It’s not a wonder it didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work,” he repeated, like he was testing words he didn’t know.
She clenched her eyes shut. “He didn’t fit. It hurt too much and I made him stop. Please don’t laugh,” she rushed to add.
“I’m not laughing.”
