Monster match, p.4
Monster Match, page 4
It was going to be glorious.
That’s when a tentative knock on her door startled a surprised squeak out of her throat. She took a few deep breaths, telling herself to calm the fuck down. It’s not like Viktor was going to knock the door down, toss her on the bed, and fuck her until she couldn’t walk the next day.
The specificity of her musings did give her a moment’s pause.
Ultimately, she decided that if Viktor had any bad intentions, he could’ve hurt her a million different ways by now. But he’d been nothing but respectful so far. That’s what made her open the door to him.
What she saw on the other side of her bedroom door gave her all kinds of thoughts—and not one of them was respectful.
Viktor stood in her doorway with his hands braced on the frame like he was fighting to hold himself back. The muscles in his chest and arms threatened to shred the thin white T-shirt he was wearing.
And his loose gray sweatpants…
It should be illegal for a man as hot as Viktor to wear gray sweatpants. It just wasn’t fair to a woman who hadn’t had good sex in…Christ, how long had it been? She couldn’t even remember.
Viktor cleared his throat, dragging her attention away from what looked like an incredibly impressive sweatpants-wrapped package. He ran a hand through his already rumpled hair and a little frown line knit his brow. “I just wanted…”
Oh, boy. The list of things she’d give him if he asked right now was embarrassing.
“…to make sure you’re comfortable?”
Something about his grumbly tone and the tension in his jaw told her that wasn’t all he wanted. But she didn’t know him well enough to make that assumption, and she couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than reading the situation wrong, jumping him, and having him reject her. So, she took a tiny step forward and mimicked his posture, resting her hands on her side of the doorframe. His quick intake of breath at her nearness did great things for her self-esteem. “I’m very comfortable. Are you?”
They were so close that all it’d take was one deep breath and her nipples would touch his chest. His eyes dropped there immediately, as if he’d heard her think the word nipples.
With what appeared to be great effort, he lifted his gaze from her chest to her mouth, let it linger there long enough that her lips tingled in anticipation of a kiss that might not even happen, then met her gaze. “I’m…I actually don’t know,” he murmured.
The heat in his eyes was intense enough to give her a sunburn. This was not going to be a platonic marriage. Lucy now knew that for certain.
She was going to ride this man like Seabiscuit.
It was inevitable. There was simply too much zing between them to remain in the friendzone for very long.
Riding him would have to wait, though, because he clearly had an internal struggle going on. His inner beast (the one that wanted to fuck her every bit as much as she wanted to fuck him) was warring with the man’s need to be a gentleman and not scare or rush her. She truly liked and respected the man.
But she suddenly really wanted the beast.
She’d been told her whole life that she was too much. Too forward, too loud, too quirky, too demanding. So, she didn’t want to rush this. She could be patient enough to let him make the first move.
Couldn’t she?
Well, not poking him with her nipples would be a good start, she thought. Lucy leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, what can we do to make you more comfortable? Want to come in and talk?”
His eyes moved to the bed, then back to her, and…wow. He had absolutely no poker face. He wanted to do dirty, dirty things to her, and it was written all over his face.
She fucking loved it.
There went the hand through the hair again. “What if we went to the library to talk? I could make us a drink.”
“Sounds great. Let’s go.”
He gestured to her pajamas. “Would you like to borrow a robe?”
Inwardly, she grinned. She wanted to make him more comfortable, but no way was she going to make it that easy on him. Outwardly, she blinked innocently. “No. I’m fine.”
His mumbled reply was so quiet she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he said, “I know. That’s the problem.”
His beast, the darkness he kept contained, smothered under polite manners and ruthless control, was threatening to break free.
Viktor felt it warring within him, slamming against the bars of its cage, straining to get out.
To get to her.
For some reason, the darkest parts of his soul were crying out for her, demanding he claim her for his own. He knew if he stopped fighting for control, if he let the beast have its way, he’d scare her away forever.
And it wouldn’t matter, because the beast would never let her go, and she’d grow to hate him.
He wanted her to stay because she wanted to stay, damn it. Because she wanted him. Not because of fear or lack of options. Their arrangement was mutually beneficial right now, but one day, he hoped it would be love that kept her by his side.
So, he had no choice but to bide his time. Keep his darkness safely tucked away where she couldn’t coax it forward. He had to win her heart—not claim her body like a rutting animal.
Which was very hard to remember when she was next to him on the settee, her body turned toward his while they talked and drank the finest whiskey in his collection—all while she was barely clothed.
Miles of smooth, pale skin dusted with cinnamon freckles was on display, and he wanted to touch—and taste—every inch of it. But with Herculean effort, he held himself in check.
If he made it through their wedding without tossing her over his shoulder like a Neanderthal and dragging her off to his bed, it’d be a miracle.
Part of the problem was that she was just so damned lovable. He was quickly finding out that no matter which way the conversation turned, she had an opinion that was well thought-out, and utterly fascinating. Politics, religion, history, popular culture…she could talk about anything intelligently and keep him completely engaged.
He’d learned a lot about her already, and the more whiskey she drank, the more freely she offered information about herself and her past. He was hanging on every word.
They’d already covered her childhood (her parents were selfish and just left of neglectful), her favorite television show (Supernatural), her favorite music (80’s rock), favorite food (Mexican), and religion (she wholly believed in a higher power and had been raised Lutheran, but didn’t currently subscribe to any organized religion). She’d been shocked to learn he didn’t watch television (he didn’t see the point) and wasn’t familiar with 80’s rock (he quit paying attention to music sometime back in the late 1800s).
He couldn’t say Mexican food was his favorite, either. Since he didn’t dine out often and didn’t have a chef, he typically prepared traditional Croatian dishes for himself. Lucy said she didn’t enjoy cooking, so he made a mental note to find some recipes for Mexican food so he could prepare her favorites. If he had his way, she’d never have to cook a day in her life unless she chose to.
Viktor had intentionally kept the tone of the conversation fairly light up to that point, but he knew he couldn’t do that forever. So, he bit the bullet and asked, “Are you able to talk more about your most recent relationship?”
Lucy downed her whiskey in one last, great gulp. “There’s not much to say. I already told you he cheated, and I called him out on it. He blamed me, of course. He had…issues with our sex life and thought I’d let myself go a little over the past few years.”
She said it so lightly. As if this pathetic excuse for a man hadn’t taken purposeful shots at her self-esteem to manipulate her into forgiving his betrayal. But Viktor could tell the asshole’s words had wounded her on some level.
I could kill him for you.
Viktor quickly smothered the wayward thought. It wasn’t normal to want to kill a total stranger. Monsters reacted that way. And he wanted Lucy to see him as a man, not a thoughtless, reactionary monster. “He’s a fool,” he said through gritted teeth.
Lucy shrugged. “In a way, yes. Obviously, it wasn’t my fault he cheated. But I stayed with him for years even though I knew on some level he wasn’t the one for me. I should’ve left before he cheated.”
“Real men don’t cheat,” he grumbled.
Her smile was a heady thing, more potent than the whiskey they were drinking. “That might be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The beast rattled the cage until the bars damn near bent in half. He needed to change the subject, but he had more he wanted to know. “I don’t think you ever told me why you were the one kicked out of your home if he was cheating?”
She tucked one long, bare leg underneath her. “He wanted me to forgive him. To forget he’d been balls-deep in another woman. When I refused, he kicked me out. The lease agreement was in his name. I was going to contact the police and see if they’d force him to at least let me get my laptop and clothes. But then I went to a Monster Match and…” she trailed off with another grin.
So many feelings. He wasn’t used to all of them. He was intrigued and turned on and experiencing murderous rage all at the same time. This Jonathan asshole needed to be strung up by the testicles and branded a cheater for all the world to see. And that thought was warring with another thought—the thought of how Lucy’s smooth, bare legs would feel wrapped around his back while he pinned her to the library door with his weight and fucked her until she was so spent and sated, he had to carry her back to her room.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and took a few deep breaths. “We’ll get your things tomorrow,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “The police won’t be necessary.”
The look in her eyes said she wanted to believe him, but couldn’t quite manage it. He understood. She barely knew him, and the only thing she’d ever experienced with men was disappointment and betrayal.
He’d prove to her those days were behind her.
As long as she was his, he’d do anything to keep her mind, heart, and body safe.
Even if what she needed to be saved from the most was him.
CHAPTER 7
They talked for hours. About everything. About nothing. About serious topics and silly ones. But even though she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, she did still have a few questions she wanted answered. She just wasn’t sure how to bring them up tactfully.
Tact. Never really her thing. She’d always been more a honesty-now-soothe-hurt-feelings-later kind of gal.
Viktor offered her a crooked half smile that did things to her libido. Naughty, porn-y things. “I can tell you have questions. You might as well just ask.”
She bit her lower lip. “You can tell, huh?”
“Your facial expressions are not mysterious.”
Fair enough. “There are…rumors. In town. About…you.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, not sounding offended. Thank God. “Rumors. The small-town tradition of making up lore when none is available.”
Lucy snorted. “Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing. So, I already figured out you don’t sacrifice goats or drink the blood of virgins here.”
He raised a brow at her. “Have you, though?”
“Oh, he has jokes! Great timing.”
His chuckle was so damn sexy she suddenly felt the need to press her thighs together. Hard. “You’re right. I like animals more than people, so ritualistic sacrifices are out. And virgins are…overrated.”
Good thing, because she hadn’t been a virgin in a long, long time. And since his eyes were clearly telling her a virgin would never survive what he planned to do to her, she’d never been so thankful that she’d let Graham Potter pop her cherry on prom night in the back of his dad’s 1968 Impala.
Was it sad that her fondest memory of that night was the car?
She cleared her throat. Not the point! “Can I ask personal questions?”
“You can ask me anything, moja ljubav.”
Well, she didn’t know what moja ljubav meant, but she sure as hell liked the way it sounded. “Will you tell me a little about your…birth?”
Thankfully, he didn’t seem put off by the question. The rumors in town about how Viktor came to be were wilder than anything she’d ever read in fiction—and she’d read some wild shit. Some people even thought he’d once been a regular human, but was now a mad scientist who replaced parts of himself as needed using the bodies of his murdered victims. Lucy knew that was bullshit. Viktor was a lot of things, but violent psychopath was not one of them.
But just because he wasn’t offended by her question, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, either. His shoulders tensed up and his Adam’s apple bobbed before he told her, “I was created in Croatia in 1784.”
Wow. She’d read plenty of age gap romances in her day, but the one between her and Viktor was pretty spectacular even by Twilight standards. No wonder he didn’t know what she was talking about when she told him about her favorite movies and music.
“The scientist who discovered how to reanimate dead flesh and create a new entity was named Petar Novak,” he went on. “He was a brilliant man. Kind, by all accounts. Principled. He…died before he could proceed to the final stage of his research. It was his daughter, Branka, who continued with her father’s work after his death and managed to reanimate four dead men to create me. She used the body of a ditch digger who died in a flood, and the faces of two aristocrats—one who lost half his face in a fire, and another who lost half of his in a carriage accident. The brain, my brain, came from Petar.”
Lucy’s mind was reeling. Branka used her own father’s brain to create Viktor? There was something totally skeevy about that. But she didn’t want to push Viktor for too many details at once. He was clearly not having any fun with this line of questioning, and she certainly didn’t want to make it worse for him. She reached out and laid a hand on his knee. “You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.”
A frown line creased his brow as his gaze dropped to her hand. “I don’t mind. It’s not exactly easy to talk about, but you have a right to know.”
“Was the reanimation process painful?”
“No. Not at all. But the period after reanimation was challenging. I had to learn everything—almost like a child.”
“What other…side effects do you have from the reanimation process? I mean, the gossip in town suggests you can explode into a thousand bats at will and bench press Buicks.”
His surprised snort made her smile. “Well, no bats or Buicks, I’m afraid. But I’m long-lived. Obviously. I’ve never been sick. I’d say I’m at least twice as strong as the average human male.” His expression went serious again. “I can’t father children.”
He was looking at her and obviously holding his breath, waiting for her to walk away. That little glimpse of insecurity in such a proud, strong man broke her heart. “I’m getting a little old to be thinking about babies, anyway,” she said gently. “I’m thirty-eight. I mean, I could technically still get pregnant, but I’d be considered a geriatric pregnancy, and that’s not really anything I want to deal with. I always thought that if I eventually wanted kids, I’d adopt. There’s lots of kids out there who need good homes, you know?”
His mismatched eyes bore into hers with an intensity that made her feel like he could see directly into her soul—and whatever he saw there made him very happy. “I do know.”
She had to glance away before she did anything stupid. Like lunging across the couch and kissing the crap out of him. “Any other side effects?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I often have…flashes of memories from those who died so that I might live.”
Now it was Lucy’s turn to frown. “You mean you remember the lives of the men who were”—gulp— “used to create you?”
He shook his head. “Not in full, no. Had I been immediately revived after Petar’s death, I most likely would’ve retained his memories in full. But he’d been dead for a full day before my birth. As for the others…it makes no logical sense why I’d have any memories of theirs. But I do have occasional glimpses into their lives. Almost like the echo of memories.”
Well, that was disturbing.
And judging by the look on his face, she could only guess that these glimpses weren’t pleasant. He was experiencing some real Sixth Sense shit. Now she felt like a complete asshole for making him talk about it. He’d been wrong. None of that was any of her business. She never should’ve let her curiosity override her manners. “I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through. But I can’t say I’m sorry it all happened. I mean, you’re here with me…so, there’s that.”
His smile started as nothing more than a twitch in his upper lip and grew until he was grinning at her. “There’s that,” he murmured.
That grin of his was practically flammable. If she stared directly at it for too long, it was going to scorch the clothes right off her body. She tucked her hands between her knees. “What about relationships? Any past girlfriends I should know about?”
He let out a sharp laugh. “No. Definitely no romantic relationships.”
“Well, I know you’re not commitment shy since you proposed to me immediately and all,” she teased. “So, why no relationships?”
He was obviously weighing his words carefully. It was a strange situation they were in. Yes, they were getting married. But they were strangers. He wanted to be honest with her, but he was also terrified of being too honest with her—the kind of honest that acted like a giant red flag with stay the fuck away printed all over in giant font. She totally understood because she felt exactly the same.
Eventually, he said, “For my early years, it was all I could do to learn how to be a person. Relationships require an advanced degree in…humaning that I just didn’t have. After that, I was very involved in my work and building my company to help as many charities as possible. I just didn’t have the time to devote to another person.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck nervously. “Plus, there’s my monster status. It doesn’t always attract relationship-minded partners.”
