Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
It’s for the best. He’d be dead at my feet the instant he knotted his last stitch if he had attempted to force me from the room.
“Leave them. I will bring the dirty ones down in the morning.”
The housekeeper Anoushka sent up to change the bedding dips her chin in understanding before quietly backing out of my room.
The scent of Zoya’s blood seeping into my mattress is the reason I don’t want the sheets changed. I need the putrid scent to make it through the night unscathed as much as I need it as a reminder of how badly I fucked up.
When the mattress dips under my weight, Zoya groans before rolling onto the hip opposite her head wound, pulling the sheets away from her body. The doctor doesn’t believe she is concussed. She is merely sleeping off the sedation he gave her.
“She will wake when she is ready,” he said four hours ago.
I’m tempted to poke her, needing to see her eyes to know she is truly okay, but you can only be an ass every so often or it will become a permanent part of your personality.
I learned that the hard way too.
“Hush. I’m just making sure your wound doesn’t join your eyebrow to your hairline,” I tell Zoya when she protests to me pulling back the strand of hair draped across her forehead, needing something to distract me from her budded nipples. You would swear she can feel my beady watch for how erect they’ve become.
The doctor went with stitches instead of glue because a majority of the wound is covered by Zoya’s hair. To glue it together, he would have needed to shave her head. He changed his mind when I said I’d kill him if he altered her features even in the slightest.
An unexpected smirk curls my lips when Zoya murmurs, “You hush. I’m trying to sleep over here.” Her voice is groggy but sexy as fuck.
I should let her sleep, but as I said earlier, I’m desperate to see her eyes.
“Five hours not enough for you, милая?”
“Depends. Are we still talking about sleep?”
Her lips curve upward when I growl.
Then, two seconds later, I get the quickest peek of her baby blues.
“Hey,” I murmur like a soft cock, slipping lower down the mattress so she doesn’t have to strain to meet me eye to eye.
“Hey,” she parrots. After swishing her tongue around her mouth to loosen up her words, she asks, “What happened?”
I sigh in relief before asking, “You don’t remember?”
She shakes her head before whimpering in pain. “Ow.”
“Gentle.” I pull her hand down from her wound. “You’ve got a ton of stitches in your head.”
“Oh god.”
Confident her hands won’t be as stabby this time, I release them so she can check her wound. She measures its length with gentle probes before guessing its invisibility powers by dragging her hair forward to cover it.
“I guess it could be worse,” she whispers after checking her reflection in a freestanding mirror in the corner of the room. “I could have been forced to wear bangs.”
“Bangs would suit you.”
She rolls her eyes. “I think you’re willing to say anything to lessen your guilt. Bangs don’t suit anyone.”
When she sits up, exposing more of her luscious body, I say, “Where are you going?”
She forces another groan to rumble up my chest when she replies, “Back to my room.”
When she stands and almost fumbles, I shoot out of the bed and catch her before she hurts herself again. My hands send goose bumps racing across her skin. Don’t ask me what it does to the rest of her body, or you’ll admit me for a psych evaluation.
“You can stay here. I have fresh sheets, and—”
“No,” she murmurs, her voice announcing she is on the verge of being sick. “The memories will hurt less in my room.”
When our eyes align, shame almost folds me in two. Her memories are back, and they hurt her more than any knock to the head ever could.
“I fucked up—”
I’m saved from forcing my shame onto her by a rush of vomit she can’t hold back.
As vomit sprouts from her mouth, numerous assurances from a familiar voice outside my room shout that I’ve got this.
Mikhail doesn’t do vomit. He hasn’t since he didn’t realize his mother had used a cereal bowl as a vomit bucket. He thought it was porridge. His instincts have never led him so badly astray.
“Take her into the shower,” Mikhail shouts from outside my room. “It is easier to stomp down chunks”—gag—“than wipe them up.”
After warning him that he’ll be cleaning up his own mess if he sympathy vomits, I scoop Zoya into my arms like my sleep pants aren’t covered with spew and then walk her into the bathroom.
“No,” she whines on a groan when I enter the shower stall and switch on the faucet. “Not this shower. I can smell you in here.”