Torment | 18+ ✓

08

Her perfume is too fucking strong to bear. I clench my jaw as I step out of her touch. She frowns as she turns to Luca, who snaps to her defence a little too late.

“Aw, babe,” he says, “you know he didn’t mean that.”

“I meant it.”

Luca flashes me a pointed look before patting Barbie’s ass. “Go check out the view, I’ll be there soon.”

Then he turns to me. “You for real?”

I shrug. “The girl was throwing herself at me. If she had a choice she would’ve fucked me right here.”

Luca sighs, running a hand over his face. “Can you at least act like you’re enjoying yourself? It’s your engagement and you look like something crawled up your fuckin’—”

A commotion starts up in the gathering crowd behind me, and I turn to see what it’s about.

The Morozovs. About time.

Yuri isn’t one for glamorous shows, but he’s dressed smart today— in a well fitted suit with his grey hair buzzed. At his side, Greta plays the part of the archetypal wife, in a chaste bottle green dress with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

I turn back to my cousin. “Didn’t know you had a kink for pensioners.” 

“Firstly,” Luca quips, “Don’t kink shame. And secondly, I’m not looking at them, asshole. I’m looking at her.”

The object of his attention comes into view. And I can’t believe my fucking eyes. Because in the light, Freya Morozov is unrecognizable. Her fox brown hair is loose, falling in waves down to her back. She’s wearing some sort of makeup that makes her eyes bigger and brighter, and a cream fur coat is draped around her shoulders as she argues with her mother.

Greta’s face is doused with disapproval as her words carry from a distance. “I thought I told you to wear the sequined dress.”

Freya grimaces. “It was too flashy.”

Greta’s face twists with displeasure. “You are getting engaged. You need to stand out. Look at your sister! So bright and lovely.”

Behind them, Anastasia appears. She’s objectively attractive, in a bright-yellow dress that flares at the waist and shows considerable cleavage.

Freya groans.

“And this coat?” Greta shakes her head. “I didn’t agree to let you wear black so you could walk around kak monakhinya v monastyre! Take off the coat!”

Knowing what little I do of this girl, of her temperament, I know she’ll fight her mother back.

But she doesn’t. She listens.

Frustrated, Freya slips off the fur coat.

My blood heats.

The dress is short. Black. She’s always in shades of black. But unlike the other times, this dress fits to the shape of her body. A lot more skin is bared, too. Her collarbones are bare, and her neckline plunges, baring some cleavage. There’s a cut-out of her back and her arms. I can see everything — the outline of her tits, the curve of her ass. Fuck. A bitter girl with the sweetest ass.

Anastasia is wearing bright yellow. But ironically, it’s Freya, not Anastasia that I keep finding in the crowd of people. Freya, in that pitch black, tight fitting fucking dress.

I don’t miss the taunting click of her black heels as she nears me. And instead of walking over, the little Morozov walks straight past me. The scent of her lingers, sweet wine and raspberry. She’s avoiding me. Amusing, since I’m the one putting a ring on her by the end of this. Still, I’ve never been so blatantly ignored, and it annoys the fuck out of me.