Part of the issue is that after our first time, Peter hasn’t hurt me. Not physically, at least. I feel the violence within him, but when he touches me, he’s careful to control himself, to stop the darkness from spilling out. It helps that I can’t fight him outright; with his kidnapping threat hanging over my head, I have no choice but to comply with his demands—or so I tell myself.
It’s the only way I can justify what’s happening, how I’m beginning to need the man I hate.
If all he wanted from me was sex, it would be easy, but Peter seems determined to take care of me as well. From the romantic home-cooked meals to the nightly cuddling, I’m showered with attention, pampered and even groomed at times. We don’t go out on dates—I assume because he doesn’t want to show his face in public—but with the way he treats me, I could easily be his highly spoiled girlfriend.
“Why do you like doing this?” I ask when he’s brushing my hair after washing me in the shower. “Is this some kind of weird kink of yours?”
He shoots me an amused look in the mirror. “Maybe. With you, it seems to be, for sure.”
“No, but seriously, what do you get out of this? You know I’m not a child, right?”
Peter’s mouth tightens, and I realize I inadvertently hit a nerve. We don’t speak about his family much, but I know that his son was only a toddler when he was killed. Could it be that in some twisted way, I’m a substitute for his dead family? That he fixated on me because he needed to care for someone… anyone?
Could my Russian killer need love so much he’d settle for its perversion?
It’s a tantalizing thought, especially since by the end of the second week, I find myself growing addicted to the comfort and pleasure Peter provides. At the end of a long shift, I physically crave the neck and foot rubs he often gives me, and it’s a struggle not to salivate each time I pull into the garage and smell the delicious aromas from the kitchen.
I’m not only becoming used to my stalker’s presence in my life; I’m starting to enjoy it.
Or at least some parts of it. I’m still far from enthusiastic about the bodyguards who follow me wherever I go. I almost never see them, but I can sense them watching me, and it both unsettles and irritates me.
“I’m not going to run, you know,” I tell Peter when we lie in bed one night. “You can call off your watchdogs.”
“They’re there for your protection,” he says, and I know it’s something he has no intention of compromising on. For whatever reason, he’s convinced that I’m in some kind of danger, something that he, of all people, needs to protect me from.
“What are you afraid of?” I ask, tracing the hard ridges of his abs with my finger. “Do you think some madman might invade my home? Maybe waterboard me and kill my husband?”
I glance up to find him grinning, as though I said something funny.
“What?” I say, goaded. “You think this is a joke?”
His expression turns serious. “No, ptichka. I don’t think that at all. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for hurting you that time. I should’ve found another way.”
“Right. Another way to kill George.”
Feeling sick, I push away from him and escape into the bathroom—the only place my tormentor lets me be alone. Sometimes, I almost forget how everything began, my mind conveniently skipping over the horrors of our early relationship.
It’s as if something inside me wants me to fall in line with Peter’s fantasy, to pretend that all of this is real.
* * *
“So you never told me what happened between you and George,” Peter says as we’re having a leisurely Sunday brunch some three weeks after his return. “Why weren’t you the perfect couple everyone thought you were? You didn’t know what he really did, so what went wrong?”
The piece of poached egg I’m chewing sticks in my throat, and I have to gulp down most of my coffee to wash it down. “What makes you think something went wrong?” My voice is too high, but Peter caught me totally off-guard. Usually, he tends to avoid the topic of my dead husband—probably to foster the illusion of a normal relationship.
“Because that’s what you told me,” he answers calmly. “While you were on the drug I gave you.”
I gape at him, unable to believe he went there again. Ever since our conversation about the bodyguards last week—and my subsequent crying in the bathroom—we’ve been tiptoeing around the topic of what he did to me, neither one willing to poke at that raw wound.
“That’s…” Suppressing my shock, I compose myself. “That’s none of your business.”
“Did he beat you?” Peter leans in, his metallic eyes darkening. “Hurt you in some way?”