Only Pretend (24 page)

Celeste had done something to me... and even if I still felt pangs of unease...

I knew I was better for it all.

Clicking the knife shut, I dropped it in my pocket. Long legs carried me absently around my home, took in the high ceilings and ancient wood. I'd had it upgraded over time, fixed up from when it first stood over the tiny town below.

It had been an inn, once. So far back, before anyone in my family had bought the land and mines to start the business that grew us from poverty to riches. At what point the tradition of matchmaking the women in the town had shifted to something more wide spread, I didn't know.

My father had been born in Moscow. It was his father's brother who had focused on the mining, tried to coerce the family into expanding. I had heard little from my own father about the mess. But, eventually, I knew he'd moved back to the building in Estonia and taken residence.

He'd told me he started helping the town early on. Jobs, food, women; he wanted the place to blossom. There weren't
enough
women, though. He started using the money from the mines to expand further, and soon, he started bringing lost girls into his home.

At one time, he'd filled the place. Every room, holding women who hungered for a man to marry and keep them safe.

It was a trip to America, a meeting with an overseas buyer, that put the idea into motion to match couples from different countries. And oh, the money he received the first time I found himself a sweet little blonde thing.

He was hooked.

Pausing at the railing, I gazed down onto the floors below. I tried to imagine the home full of people. After he'd found my mother, married her on the spot and juggled traveling to Estonia with visiting her, he slowed the process down. When I was born, he had me stay and learn English, gain citizenship.

Moving here, so far away from the world I had known, had been awful. I'd hated the house, hated everything.

With time, I adjusted.

After all, I still had my mother at my side. She was kind, gentle. She sang with me, told me stories and never once was cruel.

Even when my father hurt her, she never cried.

It had all seemed so perfect. So normal.

I'd never questioned it until Celeste.

Turning, I marched across the solid wood. My heels spoke my mood, clipped and brisk. Passing the room where I'd bathed her, where she'd asked me about that song I'd been absently singing, I slowed.

She asked me about my parents—my mother.
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Love or obsession. Brain washing.
Was it possible my father had done that to my mother?

It put a pallid tone over my childhood. Everything I had seen, done, helped with... I'd believed in it to my core. Tradition! Family! It was what mattered. I'd seen the women my father took in. All of them, sad and broken and with awful stories. None of them had had happy homes.

Not like mine.

So how could it be wrong?

Gritting my jaw, I hurried down the stairs. I didn't know where I was going, just that I had to move. Fleeing my thoughts was useless, though. Everything was a nest of angry wasps, stinging over and over.

My father had taught me everything I knew. The man had kept me at his side, all to show me how to run the business, since I was ten. Between managing the mining companies, and learning the intricacies of how to pick out a woman who needed saving...

I'd been an apt pupil.

When I was seventeen, he'd let me break my first one on my own.

Ira.
She'd been easy. I'd picked her out after seeing her in the market of London, her face bruised, eyes downcast. Following her showed me her home, how the people inside beat her and abused her.

I'd told my father, and he'd told me what to do.

Luring Ira out wasn't even a challenge. I talked to her, found out the people who hurt her weren't her family. She'd been sold to them.

Sold. Real slavery.

Though my father warned me to not be so blunt, I offered her a chance to escape. Ira had looked back, only once, before following me to my car.

Like Ira, most women didn't fight. Many wanted out of their lives already.

American girls, my father had instructed me, were another matter—different, but still broken girls that needed saving.

Celeste was more different than all of them.

The night I'd accused her of being just like all the others... it still stabbed me, that memory. Everything about Celeste drew me in, all while fueling me with hate. She stood against everything I had grown to believe.

She was a woman who had nothing.

But she would fight for the choice to keep it.

Fighting for choice. Fighting for death.
My mother's face, drawn in and cracking, all while she faded away in her bed. I could do nothing to reach her.

I couldn't save her.

Gripping the edge of the doorway, I leaned on the wall. Too many ghosts in my head. They wanted to steal what was left of my heart.

I don't want death.
My eyes lifted, flashed.
I just want her.

She was standing in the kitchen, wrists deep in dough. Sun beams shimmered on her hair, lit up the brunette color that was almost to her ears. I'd found her, weeks after Vitaly had come, trying to bleach her roots.

That day, I'd poured out the chemicals.

She didn't need to pretend with me.

“Leonide,” she said, somehow feeling me behind her. Wiping her forehead, flour stuck above her eyebrow. “There you are! Are you ready for breakfast?”

Pulling her from the mess, I held her wrists, kissed her soft lips. She was dazed, gaping up at me and my helpless smirk. Fuck, she made me want to make her laugh and see her gasping, all at once. “I'd rather eat you.”
I just want you.

Blushing, she looked away. “You still need food.”

I didn't let her go, saw the scar inside her forearm. It was a cruel reminder of what had been between us. But what were we now? Without a plan, what was I supposed to do?

“Leonide?” she asked nervously. “What's wrong?”

It was simple, forcing her against my chest. Hands curled in her hair, the dark strands turning to gold at the bottom. It was a metaphor for her, this insane girl who had masqueraded as one thing, then transformed—
No. Celeste never changed.

It was me.

She breathed out from my crushing embrace. “You're mine now, do you understand that?”

“I—of course.” She stopped struggling, cheek to my shoulder. “I'm yours.”

“So then what am I to do with you?”

Celest stiffened. “Leonide...”

“All these years, all this striving.” My heart swam in my toxic blood. “Was it all pointless? Was I wrong about my father, what we did? If all those girls were happy when they left—and you're the only one who wasn't—what does it mean?”

Through her breathing, I sensed her agitation. “If you think what you do is right, does it make it right?”

I held her away so I could see the turmoil in her blues. “What?”

“I just—I don't know. Even if you were right about all the others, it doesn't make it right for me.”

A cold wave inched up my spine. “Then none of this is right for you. I trained you to be this perfect woman, an amazing wife, and here you are. You hated all of it, but you remain.”

Digging her fingers into my jaw, she pulled herself up to tangle our lips. My hands remained at my sides; I was trying to understand. Gazing up at me, she judged my expression, compassion blooming in her own. “I'm remaining because of
you
. The rest doesn't matter to me.”

Welling with desire and the taint of distrust, I grabbed her shoulders. “Even if it continues?” My nails cut in, made her flinch. “If I do to you everything you say you hated, will you still really want to stay with me?”
Even if I'm a demon?

Celeste steeled her lips into a line. “The truest hypocrite is the one who doesn't think that they are. Fuck—Leonide, we've been through this! I don't want to fight, it's hard and it makes me miserable. I... god.” Her whole face went beet red. “You've been the stupid one all along. I
love
you!”

I stopped breathing. When I'd met Celeste in Vegas, I'd teased her in my bed as she went numb. I'd called her strange sluggishness 'love' knowing fully well it was nothing more than drugs and alcohol.

Now, she was throwing the word in my face.

Can I call this messed up brutality love?

I didn't deserve it.

But I fucking wanted it.

There was flour on both of us, I bent her over the counter that hard. This wonderful, monstrous girl was either a fool or as ruined as I was. I was fine with either.

The result was the same.

Against her throat, a place I'd left so many bruises, I whispered the truth. “I love you too, sweet girl.”

Under my touch, Celeste thrilled. She was as alive as she'd ever been, and in her glory, her passion, I felt myself flying. Never had something been so fulfilling, so terrible, as realizing I wanted this woman.

Not until now.

It was a fear worth embracing. Worth tearing men to pieces over.

I loved Celeste Barstow...

And god help anyone who tried to get in my way.

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THE END

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A
USA Today Bestselling Author, Nora Flite loves to write new adult romance (especially the dramatic, gritty kind!) Inspired by the complicated events and wild experiences of her own life, she wants to share those stories with her audience.

Born in the tiniest state, coming from what was essentially dirt, she's learned to embrace and appreciate every opportunity the world gives her.

She's also, possibly, addicted to coffee and sushi.

Not at the same time, of course.

Check out her blog,
noraflite.blogspot.com
, also email her at [email protected] if you want to say hello! Hearing from fans is the best!

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-N
ora Flite

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F
rom USA Today Bestselling Author Nora Flite

She thought she was stepping into fame:

Meeting Drezden Halifax should have been a dream. But dreams are supposed to be sweet, fragile things that whisk you away. Not monsters crafted from hard fingers, gritty vocal cords and a voice so powerful it could tear my guts right out.

Maybe my heart, too.

Becoming the guitarist for Four and a Half Headstones was everything I needed.

Too bad the band's lead singer is doing his best to ruin everything I am.

He thought she would solve his troubles:

Lola Cooper, god damn Lola Cooper. She was the perfect guitarist, fingers that could summon a sweet song or punch a chord. She's supposed to save my band, make us come out of this tour in one piece...

But I just want to tear HER to pieces.

No one should make me feel this way. One look at her, one smell, and I knew I'd have to have her. She does things to me that scare the shit out of me. Make me want to slam her on a wall and listen to her cries: eager or fearful, it doesn't matter.

I'm a monster...

And I don't even care.