Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
That gets me half a smirk but regretfully another denial. “We can’t. We’ve only ever… fucked.” She almost chokes on her last word. “And your busted leg won’t allow you to achieve the pace needed for that.”
Her eyes snap to mine when I murmur, “Then we’ll make love.”
I almost have her. She is right there with one leg straddled over the fence. Then she slips off my bed, leaving me with a raging hard-on and muscles too sore to stroke one out.
“You better be gathering supplies for a sponge bath,” I mutter when she heads for the door.
She smiles and winks, then drinks in the bulge in my pants for half a second. It’s nowhere near long enough to convince her I’m not fighting the urge to crawl into a ball and die.
My injuries aren’t killing me.
Her rejection is.
“Where’s the gratitude?” I mumble into the pillow I’m using to suffocate my shame. Being denied in general sucks, but when it’s from a girl you’d die for, it is ten times worse. “I risk my life, then get left hanging because of some minor bruising. Damn copout.”
My dick springs back to life when Polina’s stern tone snaps through the pillow a minute later. “Are you going to quit whining, or do I need to gag you?”
Somehow between her short walk to the door and my sulk in my pillow, she switched out her clothing. Her dress has been slung off, leaving nothing but the lingerie I stole from her apartment and a belt she’s holding out as if it is a whip.
Hot. Fucking. Damn.
Broken leg or not, if she asks me to crawl to her, I’m getting on my fucking knees and crawling like a baby.
I nod like I have an undiagnosed tic when Polina says, “My pace.”
“Whatever you want.”
“My rules.”
“As if it hasn’t always been that way.”
It dawns on me just how smart she is when she adds one final demand to our negotiations. “My choice on whether or not I continue searching for my father.”
I don’t get a second to think of a reply, much less announce it. Kliment races into my room with a laptop balancing on his hand and his ears covered with big, bulky headphones. “You need to see this.” He stops, swallows, then takes on a bug-eyed expression when he spots Polina scampering for her dress. “Should I go?” He answers his own question. “Yes.” But then he retracts it. “No. You need to see this.”
“Klim!”
“I’m not looking, I swear to God.” His hand shoots up to cover his eyes as he marches for my bed. A cuss word leaves his mouth in a hurry when he smacks into one of those rolling bed tray tables you usually find in hospitals. It is positioned at the end of my bed and proves he can’t see shit since his eyes are both covered by his hand and clamped shut. He dumps his laptop on the rolling bed tray table, then instructs, “There’s a video on the screen. Press the space bar to play it,” he demands while spinning on his heels and exiting the room, slamming my door shut behind him.
I wait for Polina to cover up her delectable body before pressing play on the video I’m confident she’ll want to watch since the headline screams:
Minister Leon Cabanow and second eldest son in fatal accident.
With Polina’s breaths too shallow to register, we watch the news footage of a black sedan with the tags blurred being pulled out of a lake a couple of clicks west of the warehouse I fought in Saturday night. The cameraman keeps his angles perfect, allowing the audience to clearly see the cufflinks of the man pinned in the back seat. A portion of his scaly skin exposes he’s been underwater for quite some hours.
“They’re Cabanow cufflinks,” Polina says, her words muffled by the hand she clamps over her mouth. “And that’s the town car Vasily’s father sent to collect us.” It is clear she missed the headline when she adds, “Leon walked Vasily out. Do you think they left in the same car?” When I drag my finger along the headline at the bottom of the screen, she plonks onto the mattress before her legs give out on her. “Oh my god.”
Her chest rises and falls as she struggles to breathe. Although I don’t believe Vasily deserves a moment of her grief, it would be heartless of Polina not to respond in some way that resembles remorse.
She is only called heartless by the people who don’t know her.
After taking a moment to settle her breathing, a reason for her bewilderment is unearthed. “My father followed them out. He literally walked out alongside them.” As her tear-glossed eyes bounce between mine, she asks, “Do you think he…?” She either can’t speak badly of her father or doesn’t want to believe he is capable of murder, because she leaves her question hanging open.