Vik by Belle Aurora

10

Nastasia

Present

Sleep was veryimportant to me. If I didn’t get enough of it, I wasn’t the easiest person to be around. And as I woke in two-hour intervals throughout the night, the woman sitting on the edge of my bed smiling serenely at my dozing form was the stuff of nightmares.

My heart hadn’t stopped racing since she first made an appearance two days ago.

And now, as I waltzed into the small café I frequented, wearing black yoga pants, an oversized sweater, and casual sneakers, my hair up in a messy ponytail, and my face covered with oversized sunglasses, I hoped no one would notice just how much of a mess I was.

I was tired. I was restless. I was irritated.

The trifecta of bitchiness.

So, when I saw him sitting at a table by himself, I stilled midstep, and my annoyance grew.

Seriously?

Why, God?

How dare he look so good when I could barely find matching shoes this morning.

He brought his espresso up to his lips as he read from the newspaper he held in his hands. I didn’t know why that got to me. Maybe because he looked so effortlessly relaxed, and my fragmented mind was being split in a flurry of puzzle pieces, none of which fit back into their original spaces.

My body rigid, my feet started moving, and they didn’t stop until I stood in front of him with a cold expression that could’ve set off the next big freeze. Before he even looked up at me, I hissed quietly, “This is my spot.”

Vik simply peered up at me with a furrowed brow. “No, it isn’t.”

Uh, excuse me?“Yes, it is. This is my spot. My café. You go get your own.”

And his grin had my heart racing with anger. “Firstly, I brought you here, so if we’re getting technical, you wouldn’t even know about this place if it weren’t for me.”

My neck flushed.

Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that.

Feeling stupid, I huffed out a short breath, threw up my hands, and said, “Fine. I’ll leave.”

As I turned to walk away, Vik’s hand shot out and gently but firmly circled my wrist. I twisted back to find his gaze had darkened some, and he uttered, “Stay.”

It wasn’t a plea nor a demand. I might’ve been delusional, but to my ears, it sounded like a wish.

My rigid stance loosened mildly.

Only one word out of his mouth, but I felt the caress of it all over.

I peered down at that hand. It held me firmly as his obsidian gaze locked me in. “I heard you’ve been spending time at Laredo’s. I know you’re smarter than to try to get the attention of a particular Frenchman, so I won’t warn you against it.” Those eyes sliced over the length of me. “You know better, don’t you, baby?”

Every fiber of my being screamed to sit and stay, but the insecure part of me told me to leave before we hurt each other. Against my better judgement, I sat opposite him, and because I often had trouble keeping my mouth shut, I said smugly, “Sounds like you might be jealous.”

The hand on my wrist flexed, and Vik held me down with his glacial gaze. “Wanna test that theory?”

My chest squeezed.

My ego was a petty bitch and hooted loudly, all for it. My heart thought nothing would be more romantic. But my brain, on the other hand, knew what Vik plus jealousy was capable of. And it wasn’t pretty.

Don’t get me wrong. I was never the target of his anger when he got like that. The men standing in his warpath, however, usually ended up with a split lip, a broken nose, or a concussion, or all three. And after it was all done and dusted, Vik would then take me home, take my mouth, and then take me roughly against the nearest surface, all while maintaining eye contact.

Ugh. It was so fucking hot.

The memory had my knees snapping together under that table, trying in vain to ignore the thrumming warmth that suddenly lit in my core.

Hmmm. Maybe we should test that theory after all.

No.

But—

Not a good idea.

My inner self pouted and called me a prude.

Not so smug anymore, I cleared my throat and asked, “What do you want from me, Vik?”

Refusing to let go, his thumb gently caressed the sensitive spot at my inner wrist, and without hesitation, he responded one word that shattered my resolve.

“Everything.”

The way he said it, with zero hesitation, had my heart aching. I wanted that too. If only the stakes were even. If only he had as much to lose as I did. My heart was on the line. I wasn’t sure if Vik even knew how to access his.

Placing my hand on the cool surface of the table, he released me. As if he only just noticed something, his brows lowered. “You look tired.”

I was. So tired. The bottoms of my feet hurt too.

What am I doing here?

“Thanks,” I scoffed, because… what an ass.

But his brow furrowed. “Take off your glasses.”

Oh crap. “I don’t want to.”

“Nas.” A warning.

I could do two things here. I could take off my damn glasses and show the dark bags under my eyes, or I could leave. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be close to him. So, I slowly removed my glasses and peered down at the table.

“What the fuck?” Alarmed, he shuffled closer to me. Like it was nothing at all, he put gentle finger to my chin and propped my head up, looking further alarmed when he took in the state of me.

My voice turned whisper-soft, and I didn’t miss the way it trembled. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

There must have been something about the way I said it, because immediately, he stilled.

His tone was gentle, but he didn’t hesitate to ask, “Is she back?”

I played dumb, looking anywhere but directly at him. “Who?”

A weary sigh left him. He released my face, and I felt the loss immediately. “I knew it was getting close to that time, but….” He drifted off.

All I could do was shrug.

“It’s been years, Nas.” I knew that. “Why is she back? Why now?”

I blamed what I said on the exhaustion. Refusing to look at him, I tapped a light fingernail onto the tabletop and shared miserably, “I think it’s because I’m lonely.”

Desolation.

It was the only word I could use to describe Vik’s expression. Funnily enough, my appearance matched his own. And as we sat across from each other, so close together yet feeling so distant, my chest ached with the realization of what I just admitted to.

And my mother’s laughter echoed throughout my head.

Fool.

I was a fool.

This man was lying to me. Hiding things from me.

Why the hell hadn’t he told me he moved?

Why was it a secret?

Why?

I was so confused.

Standing so fast my head spun, my heel stung wildly as I picked up my sunglasses with shaking hands and slipped them back onto my face. “I just realized I’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Nas, wait.” He stood, calling out after me as I made a hasty retreat.

The smile I wore was nothing but a mechanical stretching of my face. No warmth. No emotion. “See you at work.”

But not if I could help it.

* * *

I wasn’t safe anywhere.No matter where I turned or where I tried to hide, there she was. I went into my closet, and she stared back at me in the mirror. If I fled down the stairs, she was there waiting for me, blocking the front door. I asked her to go away. Begged her to leave me alone. But nothing worked. And now, as I sat sobbing with my back inched into a bare corner of my room, knowing she couldn’t sneak up behind me, I kept my blurry vision on her as she sat smiling at me. But the decay had begun.

Her face was no longer as pretty as it once was. Her eyes had dulled, a white haze within them. The color of her flesh was now a blueish-gray. Bits of her hair had fallen out.

And still, she smiled.

The torn hole in her cheek revealed her rotting teeth.

Yet she smiled.

I sobbed and rocked and pleaded for mercy.

Her smile remained unchanged, the very face of evil.

“Why are you doing this to me?” My quavering whisper seemed loud in the dark. “I was your favorite.”

Mother’s voice had deepened some, taking on an ethereal echo behind it. “I’m here because you missed me, dearest.”

I shook my head rapidly, closing my eyes, repeating over and over again, “I don’t miss you. I don’t miss you. I don’t miss you. I don’t miss you anymore.”

Time seemed to work differently when she taunted me. I wasn’t sure what hour it was, only that it was dark when I heard my front door open, then close. My eyes flittered over to the open doorway of my bedroom, and Mother’s movement mirrored my own.

The shadow in the doorway loomed, and I sank in on myself, my breathing turning choppy.

What if there were more of them?

The shadow began to move, came closer, and my breathing hitched when it stood directly in front of me and crouched.

But then I heard him, and the gentleness in his clearly concerned tone was more than I could bear. “I called. You didn’t answer. I texted. You didn’t respond. I got worried.” I couldn’t see very well, but I knew Vik was taking in my pathetic form. “Jesus, baby.” Then his hand came out to cup my cheek. “What is she doing to you?”

She’s torturing me.

With one swift motion, I was hefted up into his arms, and when he walked me toward the bed, closer to the rotting corpse that sat there, my breathing hitched as I let out a frightened, “Not there!” I shifted in his hold, shaking harder than I ever had before, and clutched at him with fisted hands, refusing to let go of his shoulders. I pushed my face into the side of his neck and let out a whispered, “Not there. Not there. Not there.”

Vik’s arms were pillars of safety, and he would not let anything bad touch me. “All right. Not there. I got you. You’re coming with me.” He held me a moment, thinking of where to go from here, and when he began to move, I relaxed a little, knowing he had me. But when he removed one hand, a light turned on from somewhere around us, and he stopped moving.

He stopped moving for a long time, and when I lifted my watery gaze to find his rigid body taking in the destruction of my bathroom, all I could do was look at him and whisper a sorry sounding, “It was an accident.”

Vik’s jaw ticked, but when his eyes met mine, they held some form of understanding there. “It’s okay. It’s not that bad. I can fix this.”

He sighed with unease and set me down on the vanity, but my arms cinched around him. I was unable to let go, scared of what might happen if I did. Gently but firmly, he removed my arms from him, but I clutched at his forearms with rigid fingers, digging into his flesh.

“Hey,” he said, crouching down so his eyes lined up with my own. “I’m not going anywhere.” The certainty in his tone had me nodding, but more tears fell, and when he detached my fingers from his arms, he held my hands tightly within his own. “Let me clean this up, and then we’ll clean you up, okay?”

I nodded once more, but my vision hollowed out until all I saw was the light coming off the reflective surface of the chrome shower doorframe.

Vik worked at moving the glass around into one pile. He threw it all into the shower, and I shivered from my spot on the vanity. My mind was a mess. I wasn’t sure this was even happening until he crouched down to touch a spot on the floor, then another, and when he twisted back to look at me, he asked cautiously, “Baby, did you walk through this?”

My voice sounded hoarse. “I can’t remember.”

And then he was right there, lifting one foot, then the other, taking in the broken skin on the pad of my heel.

“When did this happen?”

It felt like I was stuck in a vacuum. His voice sounded so far away. “A few days ago.”

“And you didn’t call me?”

Was he angry at me? He sounded angry.

My voice was small. “I figured I lost that privilege.”

His face darkened. Opening a drawer to the left, he took out a pair of tweezers, rested my foot on his knee, and picked at the small, already closed wound. “You’re my family, Nas. You don’t get more privileged than that.”

A small pinch had my foot aching. He plucked something from my heel, lifted the tweezers, and set a small shard of blood-coated glass onto the countertop, then another. And when he was done, he scrutinized the area. “I think that’s all of it.” His heavy brow lowered as he settled his concerned stare on me, then he muttered a quiet, “What am I gonna do with you?”

If he figured it out, I hoped he’d let me know, because as defective as I felt right then, I was ready to dig myself a hole and await death.

Taking a small washcloth, he ran it under warm water, wrang it out, then proceeded to wipe away the sweat and tears dried into my cheeks. I closed my eyes as he cleansed my eyelids, my nose, my lips, my neck. And when he looked satisfied with his handywork, he threw the cloth into the sink and stood tall, peering at me with mild disquiet.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt hollow, like a tree that animals had made a home inside. However, demons rested in this hollow tree, their only job to tear me down from the inside out.

“C’mere,” my protector uttered, sweeping me up into his arms. I was too weak to protest, not that I was sure I would if I could.

Anxiety filled me as we entered my bedroom. I closed my eyes, not willing to look toward the bed. My heartbeat quickened, then slowed as Vik took me out of my room and said, “Hold on tight. It’s a lengthy fall down.”

Slowly but carefully, he walked me down the stairs and into the spare bedroom by the kitchen. He lowered my bottom to the bed, then went about sliding open the door of the closet, retrieving a pillow and spare blankets before setting up a pallet beside the bedframe. Confusion swept through me.

“What are you doing?” My voice didn’t sound like my own.

He punched the pillow a few times, allowing a straightforward, “Scaring away a ghost.”

And suddenly, I was coming back to myself, returning from the darkness. “You don’t have to do that.”

He spared me a glance before kicking off his shoes. “I know.”

I felt bad. “I’m sure you have better things to do than babysit me.” I ended on a laugh, but it was more embarrassed than humor-filled.

The thing was, when Vik decided he was going to do something, he did it. There was no arguing about it.

This man, the hero in my very own fairy tale, had come for me. He thought to slay my dragons. To rescue me. But I knew deep in my bones that there was only one thing that could save me. And it was the one thing Vik had never offered.

His heart.

Lifting the covers, he took my hand with patience and waited until my head hit the pillow before he pulled the comforter up to my neck. For a solid moment, he simply watched me, and when my lids grew heavy, he used the backs of his fingers to stroke my cheek tenderly before moving away.

And so, he settled in on his crude pallet, lying on his back with a folded arm under his head, and uttered a rough, “You are and always will be my first and only priority.”

My heart ached, because when he said things like that, it was easy to believe he loved me.

Luckily, I knew better.

With a full but heavy heart, my eyes drifted closed, and I floated away into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

Vik

I woketo the smell of coffee, a head on my chest, slender arms wrapped around me, and a leg firmly wedged between my own. And as I took it all in, I smiled to myself, because nothing had ever felt better.

Blinking down at the woman who felt the need to struggle in silence, I searched her sleeping face and breathed easy when I found zero sign of anguish.

Gently extracting her limbs from my own, I felt like the biggest asshole when my cock throbbed painfully. It wasn’t something I could help though. Nas just had that effect on me. She always did.

Knowing what plagued her, I felt comfortable to leave her to sleep on her own. Daylight was safer than the darkness, and in a few days, this would all be over.

Nas snuggled into our shared pillow. She must have slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and joined me on the floor. An intense protective streak hit me hard. I couldn’t help myself. Leaning in, I pressed my lips to her temple, silently hoping it would convey everything I felt for her and more.

No one was more important to me than Nastasia Leokov.

With one last look at her, I fought a yawn as I left the room and made my way to the kitchen just as Mina approached the back door, holding a plate. The shock on her face at seeing me half asleep in Nas’s kitchen had me grinning. You never had to guess what Mina was thinking. You could see it all right there, written in her expression.

The second I opened the door, she walked inside cautiously and drew out the sentence, “What are you doing here?”

Heavy emphasis on “you.”

Squinting into the sunlight streaming in through the windows, I went to retrieve a couple of mugs and filled them with coffee. “Nas needed me.”

Mina’s lips puckered as she took the proffered mug and sat on a stool at the breakfast bar. “What, she doesn’t have a vibrator?”

I rolled my eyes but softened it with a smile. “Not like that. She’s going through some shit.”

“Like what?” she asked quietly.

I wasn’t sure it was my place to say, but Mina may have been going through something similar with Lev, so I proceeded with caution. “Do you know what an anniversary reaction is?”

Mina shook her head, appearing a little confused.

“You remember when she told you about what was happening to Lev as a child? About how no one would ever have known about it if Nas hadn’t snuck into his bed and taken a beating meant for him?”

Her expression turned ice-cold. “I’m not likely to forget anytime soon.”

I explained it as best as I could. “Well, every year when it gets closer to the date of when all that shit went down, Nas gets… tightly strung.” Out of sheer curiosity, I asked, “Does that happen to Lev?”

Mina shrugged. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

Yeah. Lev wasn’t the type to wear his emotions openly. He was good at hiding himself.

“She, uh, has nightmares. Can’t sleep. Becomes exhausted and edgy. Irritable.” I was not about the tell Mina that Nas sometimes saw the rotting corpse of her mother. That wasn’t something she needed to know. “She struggles.”

Mina’s face softened. “And you’re looking after her.”

I sipped at my coffee, leaning my hip against the counter. “No place I’d rather be.”

Quite suddenly, Mina let out a perplexed, “Why aren’t you guys together?”

I asked myself that question at least ten times a day. I was lost without her. “Asking the wrong person, short stuff.”

And then she repeated, “And you’re here looking after her.”

What did she want from me? If that made me a putz, I guess I was a putz. “No greater honor than to stand behind a woman and guard her back. If she’d let me, I’d remain by her side forever and always.”

‘Til death do us part.

A comfortable quiet passed until finally, Mina spoke gently, “I’m glad she has you, Vik.”

And because I wasn’t always good with talking about my feelings, I jerked my chin toward the plate she brought in. “What you got there?”

She uncovered the loaf. “Ada’s walnut banana bread.”

A sound of pure delight escaped me. “Well, shit. Stop wasting my time and serve it up, wifey.”

Mina looked at me a moment, and I didn’t know what she saw in my face, but it was probably more than I intended. She stood, and a sad smile graced her lips. Her hand curled around my own, sparing me a quick squeeze as she passed me, and the misery I buried settled itself deep in my gut.