Conquering His Cold Heart

233 Permission

After getting permission from Caspian, Everard turned to face Anastasia with a genuine smile on his face. He elegantly held out his hand towards Anastasia and then asked, “Anna, may I have this dance with you?”

Although Caspian had already given permission to Everard to dance with her, Anastasia looked at her husband with a questioning glance.

Caspian gave a reassuring smile to her and approvingly nodded his head. Since a lot of people from around the world were currently watching them, Caspian trusted Everard to stay within his boundaries.

Anastasia finally looked at Everard after getting approval from her husband. She took his hand and said politely, “Yes. I would love to dance with you.”

Everard pulled Anastasia’s hand closer to him and then gently leaned down to kiss her on her knuckles.

Caspian tightened his fists as he watched that ‘filthy’ mouth of Everard kissing his wife’s hand. It was taking a great deal of willpower for him to stop himself from pushing Everard away from Anastasia.

‘It’s just for five minutes,’ he stepped aside from the dance floor and kept on repeating to himself while Everard and Anastasia began to move their feet to the beat.

At first, Anastasia was stiffly placing her hands on Everard’s palm and on his shoulder. She found it difficult and awkward to dance with Everard although she considered him a friend.

Maybe it was because of the way he was looking at her with a smile plastered on his face, or because he kept on trying to pull her close no matter how much she kept on maintaining the gap between them, this particular dance was making her feel very uncomfortable.

.....

And in order to make things somewhat bearable, Anastasia finally expressed her condolences. She looked at his face and said, “Everard, I am really sorry about your father. It greatly pained me when I heard about his demise.”

Everard, who had completely forgotten about everything else after he started to dance with Anastasia, was suddenly reminded of one the worst things that had happened to him. He slowed down the pace of their dance. And the smile on his face was replaced by a sullen look.

“How are you holding up, Everard? I hope you are coping well with the grief.” Anastasia was genuinely trying to know if Everard was doing okay.

Everard looked into Anastasia’s emerald green eyes and then replied to her in a gloomy voice, “Thank you... for worrying about me. So far, I have been trying to keep my acts together, but I am failing miserably at it.”

“I’m really sorry,” Anastasia replied sadly.

Everard cleared his throat and kept on tapping and moving along with the escalating rhythm of the music.

When his eyes fell on the vampire who was glaring at him from the side, Everard finally remembered that he was thinking of questioning Anastasia.

He wanted to get honest answers from her. So, he made Anastasia twirl to the music and took her a bit further away from Caspian. And when he felt that Caspian wouldn’t be able to hear him whisper, he said to Anastasia, “Anna, I have been dying to ask you a few questions.”

While dancing, he turned back in the direction where Caspian was, and then asked Anastasia in a whisper, “How are you? Really?”

Anastasia slightly drew her brows close when she heard that question because it made her wonder if Everard somehow knew about her illness. She wondered if her brother had told Everard about it. So, she asked, “What do you mean by that?”

When Anastasia didn’t immediately answer, Everard thought that Anastasia was indeed hiding how she truly felt about having to live under the same roof with a monster. So, he rephrased his question, “Are you okay living with him?”

“Oh!” Anastasia gave a smile when it was clear that he wasn’t asking about her illness. She tilted a little to catch a glimpse of her husband and then looked back at Everard to answer with a genuine smile on her face, “He is my husband, Everard. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

Everard was determined to uncover the truth. So, he hinted to Anastasia that he knew what kind of creature Caspian was. “Anna, trust me when I say that I know what he is.”

The smile from Anastasia’s face suddenly vanished when Everard mentioned that.

Everard leaned a little closer to Anastasia and softly whispered to her, “I don’t think he can hear us from there if we talk to each other in whispers. I brought you quite far from where he is. So, you can be honest with me.”

He restlessly looked into her eyes again and then shot her with several questions, “How does he treat you? Does he threaten you? Does he physically hurt you? Is he keeping you there like a hostage? Is that why you never replied to my letter? Or did you even get my letter?”

“Wait!” Anastasia frowned when she heard such accusations about her husband. She had no idea what or how much Everard knew about Caspian. But she was sure that he knew something for him to question her like that. And she was determined to clear all the negative things that he was saying about her husband.

She looked into his curious eyes and answered him honestly, “Eve, I don’t know what you heard about my husband, but I can assure you that the rumors about him aren’t true. He is a very loving husband. He never...”

Everard heard the first sentence that Anastasia said to him. But after that, his mind was suddenly taken over by some kind of overwhelming emotion.

He suddenly felt as though something was tugging at his heartstring with great force. His feet started to dwindle and miss the beat. His breathing was getting heavier by the second. And his irises... his irises began to flicker amber in color.

Since Anastasia was looking at his eyes, she didn’t miss that flickering glow. At first, she thought that she was hallucinating things because of fatigue. But his eyes kept on doing that even when she blinked a couple of times.

“Eve?” She looked at him worriedly when he stopped dancing altogether and started to look around as if he was looking for something. And she asked with a confused look on her face, “Your eyes... What’s happening to you?”