Page 59 of You Belong to Me
Without questioning why he wanted it, Vasili stepped forward to say, “I believe the choice of weapons is mine again, and I’ll take the wench’s whip.”
“What wench?” Pavel demanded, but his eyes sought out Alexandra even as he asked the question.
“You weren’t told it was taken from her last night?” Vasili countered.
The frown was there before Pavel’s suspicious gaze returned to Vasili. “Did you teach her how to use it, aristo?”
It was a toss-up between lying to benefit himself in the fight and lying to benefit his campaign against Alexandra. Vasili found the choice an easy one.
“Lucky for you,” he told the bandit, “I haven’t known the wench long enough to teach her anything—of importance.”
It was a dig for Alexandra alone. Vasili didn’t look at her again to see how she had received it, which was fortunate, because he might have made an ass of himself and apologized if he had.
To insinuate that what had passed between them was nothing significant was no more than Alexandra herself had done, yet to hear him say it struck her painfully, and her expression briefly revealed that emotion before she managed to conceal it beneath a mask of indifference.
Fortunately, no one else read anything intoVasili’s remark, and when he added, “Shall we get this over with?” Pavel was quick to comply.
Whips in hand, uncoiled and dragging on the rough floor, they circled each other, Vasili waiting to be shown the rudiments by example, Pavel waiting for the ideal opening so that his first strike would be an excruciating one.
Neither got what he was after.
When Pavel finally released his first snap, Vasili was too busy dodging to notice how it was done. The crack of that whip was demoralizing, though, even with its only striking air. And his own first swing was laughable. His coil was dropping to the floor before it even got close to Pavel.
Vasili didn’t know it, but he was holding his whip as if it were a sword, and also swinging it like a sword, which might have worked if his target had remained stationary. That wasn’t the case, however. Apparently the object was for him to hit, and for him to avoid getting hit in return. So far he was managing to do one, but not the other.
Alexandra was disgusted, watching them dance around each other. Pavel didn’t know much about wielding a whip, but he sure as hell knew more about it than Vasili, and it was only sheer luck and quick reflexes that had kept Vasili out of the whip’s path thus far.
And then he was hit. It wasn’t a solid hit. Pavel’s coil curved over Vasili’s back, around his side, and up his chest, where the worstdamage was inflicted by the tail, leaving a red, diagonal streak to mar his golden skin. He barely winced, but Alexandra hadn’t counted on what the sight of that mark would do to her.
The urge that came over her, nearly overwhelming her, was to snatch her whip from Vasili and make mincemeat out of the bandit. To do that would take her only a minute or two. She knew every place on the body that was most susceptible to pain, and her aim was unerring. Pavel would be writhing on the floor in seconds…
She literally had to stuff her hands in her coat pockets and concentrate on keeping them there. She had to spare some of that concentration to remain standing where she was. But she was too angry to keep quiet.
“The snap is in your wrist!” she shouted at Vasili. “Flick it!”
Vasili heard her. He couldn’t help but hear her. And it was galling to realize that if she were participating in this fight instead of him, it would probably be over already. Of all the weapons Pavel could have chosen, why did he have to pick her weapon, her sphere of expertise?
And Vasili had no idea what she was talking about.
The second strike snaked across his tender belly. He felt as if he’d been ripped open and his guts were about to spill out, but when he glanced down he saw no more than a red weltraised across his skin. Yet that was enough for him to put an end to this, more than enough.
He was about to tell Pavel just that when Alexandra shouted at him again. “That’s not a sword, dammit! Don’t use it like one!”
Vasili gritted his teeth and tried again. But his lash still did no more than brush teasingly against Pavel, like a worrisome gnat rather than a stinging bee. Pavel, of course, didn’t have that problem, and he got in another two flashing, burning hot strikes, the one on the back of Vasili’s shoulder drawing blood.
At that point, Alexandra yelled, “Give it up, Petroff—you can’t win!” And at that point, Vasili decided to prove her wrong.
Not with a whip, however. He couldn’t be expected to use the damn thing with any proficiency without the benefit of a few lessons first, and in the middle of a fight was no time to get them. So his whip coiled next to his feet and stayed there in supposed readiness, and when Pavel’s next swing came at him, Vasili didn’t try to dodge it. He caught it instead, gave it a hard jerk, dropped his own whip at the same time, and slammed his fist into Pavel’s face.
Pavel’s feet went up as he went down. His nose was definitely broken, but he wasn’t aware of it at the moment. He was out cold, and Vasili felt completely vindicated, having downed the man with only one punch—at least he felt that way until he recalled his own throbbing aches.
“If you were going to do that, Petroff, why the hell didn’t you do it sooner?”
Alexandra had come up behind him, and her tone was about as castigating as it could get. He didn’t turn around, was going to ignore her completely, but the words came out anyway when she appeared on his left side. “Shut up, Alex.”
Lazar came around his other side. “The shoulder isn’t bleeding bad, but you should have it cleaned and bandaged before we leave.”
Alexandra had retrieved her whip from where Vasili had dropped it, and he knew it was too much to hope that she would have heeded his advice.
