ANA
When I wake up the next morning, it’s to the scent of brewing coffee and a breakfast tray on a side table next to me. I open my eyes slowly, only to jolt awake when I see that Alexandre is sitting in the wing chair, waiting for me to wake up.
“Were you watching me sleep?” I ask defensively before I can stop myself, pushing myself slightly upright in bed. That, coupled with the drugged tea last night, has me on edge, but he clearly didn’t drug me in order to do anything to hurt me. My clothes are all still on just as he left me, and I’m unhurt so far as I can tell. It seems like he just wanted me to get a good night’s sleep, which somehow feels stranger than if he’d actually violated or harmed me.
“I was waiting for you to wake up,” Alexandre says smoothly, as if that answers the question. “Go on, Ana, eat. It’s still warm.”
Groggily, I reach for the breakfast tray, uncovering the plate. It’s the same as yesterday—the herbed and scrambled eggs with goat cheese, the thin crepes, and my stomach growls with anticipation.
Seemingly satisfied that I’m going to eat, Alexandre stands up gracefully and crosses to the wardrobe, where he flips through several hangers with clothes that I can’t quite make out. I eat with a bit more gusto than yesterday as he does—I feel like I’m starving. My stomach seems to have settled enough to actually have a real appetite. Despite the fact that Alexandre is hardly someone I can trust, my body at least seems to feel as if it’s safe enough to have normal physical reactions again.
I’d been so depressed at home in New York that I’d barely eaten in months, leaving me skinny and frail. I don’t think my mental health has hugely improved in the last two days since I wassold, but somehow being a world away from New York seems to have made the fears and trauma that I’d experienced there feel less—immediate somehow.Maybe it’s just the change in scenery,I think as I dig into the food.
As long as I’m able to eat, I know I should. There’s no telling when I’ll lose my appetite again, when the sudden uprooting won’t be enough to trick my brain and body into wanting to care for itself, or when Alexandre will turn cruel. I know better than to let myself relax and feel safe here when I barely know this man who now owns me.
As I finish eating, Alexandre lays something out on the bed, and I blink at it, unable to fully believe what I’m seeing at first.
It’s clothes—but not really. It’s a maid’s outfit, and my first reaction is for my heart to plummet as I shrink backward.Here we go,I think, my pulse speeding up.This is his fetish. He’s going to cram me into this maid’s outfit and have me—what, exactly? Dust the chandeliers while he fucks me?
But then I look at it more closely, and it becomes somehow even more confusing.
It’s not a maid’s outfit in the sexual sense at all. In fact, it is so far as I can tell, a very historically accurate Victorian-style maid’s outfit, which while possibly appealing to a certain subset of men—perhaps ones who have the letters p, h, and d after their names and work in an office with tenure, isn’t exactly fetish-wear.
Does he really want me to just—clean his apartment?
I guess if he didn’t pay much for me, maybe he just wanted a maid. It would not be the most outlandish thing if he’d seen a girl in a bad situation and paid for her so that he could have her work in his home.Like a rescued puppy.I’m hard-pressed to believe he’s that altruistic, though. And it doesn’t explain some of the other things, like the way he calls medollin French and handles me like one, or how he’s brushed my hair and watched me sleep.
Not to mention the fact that it’s a bit odd in the first place to put me in a costume to clean the apartment.
“Here,” Alexandre holds out a pair of flats, interrupting my train of thought. “I thought that being on your feet cleaning might hurt them after a while. Please sit whenever you need to, but in the meantime, these may help.”
I blink at him, startled as I take the shoes. It takes me a moment to realize what’s different about them, but I realize that they’re padded with some kind of thick, special insole that should help cushion my feet. I still won’t be able to stay on them for long periods of time, but it won’t be painful to walk at all.
“Thank you,” I say, glancing up. “Um—what do you want me to do, exactly?”
Alexandre shrugs. “Just clean while I’m out. I’ll show you around once you’re dressed. Dust, vacuum, mop the floors, that sort of thing. Nothing too terribly strenuous, and please, as I said, rest whenever you feel the need.”
He motions for me to stand up then, and I do, feeling a bit dizzy all over again as if I’m in a dream. Nothing feels like it makes sense. I’m too dazed to protest when Alexandre starts to undo the buttons on my pajama top. Once again, he doesn’t touch me inappropriately. He undresses me like a mannequin in a storefront window—or a doll—laying the silk pajamas neatly aside on the bed as he reaches for the maid uniform.
I’m viscerally aware that I’m naked as he steps away from me. Not just partially nude, but entirely bare, from my toes to the top of my head. Alexei had demanded I shave myself completely bare just as he’d ordered the others to before the party, but the stubble is beginning to grow back, and I wonder if Alexandre will want me shaved. He doesn’t seem to be taking any sexual interest in me, but still—
I swallow hard as he holds up a pair of black satin panties with a frilled waist that seems to match the maid’s uniform, and he has me step into them as he pulls them up over my hips. It’s as matter-of-fact as everything else, and he does the same with the maid’s uniform, letting me step into it and then buttoning it up the back, tying on the apron, and then reaching for a silver-backed hairbrush on the vanity. Alexandre runs it through my hair before carefully pinning it up in a bun and fixing the maid’s cap atop it, setting the shoes on the floor last of all for me to step into.
When I look in the mirror, I don’t look sexy. I look pretty enough, I guess, if you’re into very pale, too skinny blonde girls in historical wear. Still, I look as if I’m off to some reenactment, or maybe a community play.The Crucible,perhaps.
I definitely don’t look like anything remotely approaching anyone’s fetish, which should be a relief. And it is, in a way. I’d have had a complete, spiraling panic attack if Alexandre had put me in lingerie with the intent to force me to fuck him. As it is, it’s hard to tamp down the rising feeling of panic because it still doesn’t make sense.
And it’s all still very strange.
Alexandre waves me towards the door, opening it for me. “Ladies first,” he says politely, following me out as I step into the hall and see the rest of the apartment for the first time.
It both is and isn’t what I’d expected. It’s clearly very old, if well-kept. The walls are wood-paneled, with knots and whorls telling me it’s real wood. The floors are hardwood planks as well, with thick and well-worn rugs along them that I don’t doubt are Turkish and Persian, probably worth as much as several months’ rent in Manhattan, if not more. There’s another bathroom in the hall, which ends in an expansive living room with a huge stone fireplace on one side, bookcases lining the walls, and art hanging from them in nearly every available space, along with more rugs covering the hardwood floors.
Alexandre is the furthest thing from a minimalist I’ve ever encountered. There’s not a speck of available wall, floor, or table space that doesn’t have some rug, book, antique, art, or doily covering it. Nevertheless, it somehow all comes together in a sort of art-history, eccentric collector’s aesthetic rather than looking like an episode ofHoarders.It’s all clearly authentic and expensive, too, likely the result of years and years of collecting.
“Just through there is the dining room and the kitchen,” Alexei says, pointing towards the north end of the living room. “And to the left there, is my study. It, and my bedroom, are the only rooms you are not permitted to go into. Do you understand me?”
I nod, swallowing hard at the sudden, harsher change in his tone. “Of course,” I say quietly. “Ah—where is your bedroom?”