Page 37 of Her Rustanov Husband (Ruthless Bullies #2)

Rough Conversation

LYDIA

There’s a thing our rescue dogs sometimes did when they caught a snake on the farm. They’d capture it, then come over to me with the thing hissing and twisting in their mouths.

They’d caught it, but didn’t know what to do with it after.

That was how I felt after straddling Yom Rustanov and telling him it was time for my version of a rough conversation.

To be honest, Plan B was so crazy I didn’t really believe I’d get past the part where I plunged a needle into his arm and chained him up so that he had to listen to me.

I expected Yom to protest. At least ask a question, like, Why are you doing this?

But instead, his face became that cold blank I’d gotten to know so well since being compelled into his mansion and a contract to give Bully a younger sibling.

Then he calmly said the last words I would have expected to come out of his mouth.“This is my fault.”

“Your…?” I blinked down at him, not understanding.

But then he coldly clarified, “I should have killed you that first night after I brought you here, while Dmitri was asleep. Snapped your neck and disposed of your body. This is my fault for holding myself back… practicing restraint. When I get out of these chains, I will correct my oversight. Expeditiously. Before my son’s return. ”

Okay, well, as it turned out Yom’s threat game was A++. Even though I was the one with the key to his chains, hanging around my neck, terror—true terror—swelled inside me.

But I pushed it down, and made myself follow the script I had mentally sketched out for this scenario.

“Do you remember the safe word?” I asked him.

A dead-eyed look. Then: “You will let me out of these chains.”

“I mean, I will,” I assured him. “And that letting-you-out part will come a lot faster if you just play along.”

He gave me a deadly look. “I do not play games off the ice.”

“Oh my god, you’re so good at this!” I had to exclaim. “I can barely get my lines out, and here you are tossing out these villain one-liners in that Russian accent. Seriously, how do you do it? I’m so jealous.”

He stared at me.

And I stared back at him—which was excruciating—but a plan was a plan.

Until he looked to the side and gritted his teeth. Somehow the word suitcase bit into the air without him appearing to move his mouth. The safe word.

“Okay, okay…” I breathed out, voice shaking. Because I really hadn’t been kidding about how hard it was to get out all my lines as mentally rehearsed. Especially this next one: “I’m going to take your dick and put it inside me now.”

His eyes flicked back to me. Like a snake. “You think you can sway my mind with sex.”

Not a question, but an observation. And a derisive one at that.

“This isn’t for you, it’s for me,” I confessed. “So I can have an easier time being vulnerable with you while we have this long-overdue conversation. If you want me to stop, just say the safe word.”

I knew this was the riskiest part. If he said the safe word, it wasn’t just that I’d have to find another way to have this conversation.

I’d know that he truly no longer wanted me like that.

But I made myself be brave, went through the motions of lifting my hips, and willed my hand not to tremble as I reached for him, waiting for Yom to say the word…

But he remained silent, and to my relief his length instantly swelled to life when I carefully wrapped my fingers around it.

It had been so long…

I notched him inside me with muscle memory from six years ago, then lowered myself back down.

My breath caught as my body stretched to take him, a sharp discomfort giving way to a rush of molten relief at how perfectly he still filled me.

I groaned when I was fully seated, pleasure swelling hot and heavy in my chest, the ache of long denial twisting into a dangerous kind of joy.

He just stared up at me, his eyes two blocks of the coldest ice. Meanwhile, heat spiraled low in my belly with each slow, sensual roll of my hips. I pressed a hand to his chest to anchor myself against the shivers of pleasure running through me.

Yes, yes, we’d always worked in bed. And suddenly talking to him got easier for me. “Do you remember the promise you made me make before our first rough conversation?”

“You did not keep that promise.” Yom gritted his jaw and looked away again.

But I continued to watch him, hips steadily rolling. “Mmm…that wasn’t the question, Volfie.”

Silence. Then: “I said if you are getting upset with anything I do, you must come to me so I can convince you not to leave.”

But his cold eyes returned to mine, hooded, to remind me, “And you are not keeping promise.”

“I know I didn’t.” I stopped rocking, the regret in my chest tightening around the same heartbeat that had just been pulsing with desire. “And I knew I hurt you by not keeping my promise, like you hurt me by not keeping yours. I think…”

I hesitated. I’d had months of suffering under his cold front to think about how we ended up here. To replay all the arguments that had led to the Havermore Institute overseeing our baby-making efforts.

But it was hard to get the words out. “I think we both didn’t take the reasons we were asking for those promises seriously enough.”

“Hiding Dmitri from me is more than ‘not taking a promise seriously enough,’” he informed me with a sneer. My voice had softened but his remained coated in knife-sharp icicles.

“I’m aware of that,” I conceded with a sad smile. “When I hid him from you, I thought… I thought I was protecting him from the monster I met in that barn.”

This excuse made his cold eyes burn with rage. “I would never?—”

“I know, I know,” I said before he could. “I know that now. I’ve seen you with him. And it’s obvious that you’ll do anything to keep him happy and safe. Including giving me the opportunity to continue breathing under the same roof and make it up to you, even though you hated me.”

“And this is how you repay me for this chance?” Yom’s shoulders flexed and the chains rattled as he strained against his binds like he had when he first woke, before he decided to go the cold and deadly threat route.

“It is obvious I made wrong decision. You are not taking me seriously enough if you think you can do this,” he snarled. “When I get out of these chains, I will do same to you. Leave you chained to bed in tiny North Loop apartment, and torture you like you are torturing me.”

His words slashed across my chest, sharp and brutal. He meant for them to terrify me—and they did.

But I forced myself to stay in place as his muscular body bucked underneath me. Refusing to let him unseat me, I told myself, Just follow the plan. Shaky as it was.

“Or…” I swallowed, fighting to keep my voice from shaking. “Or we could talk. Talk like we should have after what happened in the barn.”

His lip curled into a sneer. “What could you possibly say that would change my mind about making you suffer greatly for your actions here today?”

Possibly nothing. But I had to…I had to try.

“I blame myself for my birth mom’s death.” The words came out raw, scraping against old wounds as they ejected themselves from the box I’d kept them in. “I’ve had years of therapy to work through the guilt, and I know—in my head—it’s a misbelief. But in my heart…”

I shook my head. “Everything I am now is rooted in me blaming myself for her death: my people-pleasing, my over-willingness to help others even to my own detriment.”

His gaze flattened again, giving me no indication of what he thought about what I was telling him. But I pressed on, throwing the words out as fast as I could before fear choked them back.

“Most people think I was born like this—that I’ve always been kind to a fault—but I wasn’t.

Before my mom died, I was just a little undiagnosed ADHD brat, always whining about how I was bored, how I wanted to do something, then throwing unbelievable tantrums when she was too tired to play after work.

And then suddenly… she wasn’t just too tired to play.

She was too tired to do anything but ask the Carringtons to adopt me because she was dying of cancer. ”

I blinked, fighting back tears. “And yeah, I was a kid. Yeah, I had a lot of undiagnosed stuff going on. But there’s no therapy in the world that can erase this guilt I feel.

That she died because parenting me was exhausting…

that I wore her out… and broke her. By being me.

The real me that the Carringtons hesitated to adopt until after a year of me proving I wasn’t the same brat who gave her mom such a hard time before she died. ”

I shook my head, voice trembling. “That’s why I default to kindness.

Why I bend myself into knots for people.

Why I’m such a people pleaser. Why I was so scared to let myself get involved with—to co-parent with a monster.

Because deep down inside I still wonder if I’m a monster too.

And the reason I chained you up was because there’s this question I’ve always suspected, but never had the nerve to ask. ”

By now, he’d gone utterly still. But he didn’t say anything to stop me talking, so I wiped away my tears and averted my eyes—there was no way I could look at him as I dared to ask, “What do you think you did? To make your mom abandon you like that?”

Silence greeted my question, thick as an animal waiting to tear me apart. And it went on for so long that I began to wonder if he had the emotional self-awareness to understand what I was asking.

But then his voice rumbled up from somewhere deep.

“I knew my father would not be coming that Christmas. He was always making her promises like this. Always breaking them.” His jaw clenched, his eyes flickering with old shadows.

“I was… eleven. Old enough to protect her. I should have not played the game his way, but taken charge of the match. So that she was not hurt that final time. Protected her so she had no reason to leave me.”