“Yvette is right,poupée.Go ahead and enjoy your coffee before it gets cold.”
I take a sip, forcing myself not to make a face. It’s stronger than any coffee I’ve ever drunk before—and I haven’t had coffee often. I’ve never been able to stomach black coffee, and flavored coffees and lattes weren’t exactly in a ballerina’s diet. Alexandre is clearly enjoying his, sipping delicately at it as he and Yvette begin to converse in French again.
I drink the coffee slowly, a dozen thoughts swirling around in my brain until Alexandre and Yvette stand up suddenly, the rest of the pastry forgotten as he motions for me to get up as well. My stomach rumbles as I look at it longingly. Still, I get up too, feeling like nothing so much as a dog called to heel as I start to follow Alexandre and Yvette back to the apartment.
The earlier feeling of lightness is gone, replaced with a deep-seated anxiety about this new woman, who is coming back to have dinner with us. My feet feel tight and painful, my chest equally as much so. I don’t say a word as we go up to the apartment, feeling wound tighter and tighter by the moment as we step inside.
Before Alexandre can say anything to me, I turn to go down the hall to my room, only to hear his voice cut through the air behind me, sharp and commanding.
“Anastasia.”
I freeze in place, my heart leaping into my throat.
“Yvette, wait for me in the kitchen.” Alexandre’s accent thickens, his voice wrapping around me like the edge of a knife, smooth and sharp.
She makes an irritated noise, but I hear her disappearing, a moment before I feel the heat of Alexandre’s body behind me, his hand gripping my arm tightly as he spins me so that my back is against the wall.
“You are not to disrespect me in front of Yvette.” His voice is low and dark, wrapping around me like smoke—smoke that could choke me, hold me down, kill me. My heart is racing in my chest, leaping into my throat as his hands grip both of my arms, holding me against the wall as he looks down at me with those piercing, angry blue eyes.
“Who is she?” I whisper. “Who is she to you?”
Alexandre’s mouth tightens, a muscle in his jaw leaping. “A friend,” he says shortly. “But you have no right to ask me questions like that.”
Inexplicably, I feel tears spring to my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I—”
He lets go of one of my arms, his hand reaching up to stroke my jaw. “Shh,petit,” he murmurs. “You must remember your place here, or I will start to think I’ve been too gentle with you.”
I can feel myself starting to tremble, but at the same time, I’m suddenly, intensely aware of how close he is, of the lithe, muscled lines of his body looming over mine, the tension of his hand on my arm. He could take anything he wanted from me right now, force anything he desired, and a part of me suddenly wants him to.Get it over with, so I can stop dreading when it will happen,I think, but it’s not that, not exactly.
I shouldn’t want a man like him. But there’s something in him that calls to something in me. Maybe it’s just that he’s been kinder to me than almost anyone else has in a long time, but a part of me doesn’t want him to stop touching me—doesn’t want him to step away.
But of course, he does.
“Come into the living room,” he says sternly. “And mind your manners. I know your feet hurt, and you should rest, but Yvette will have you kneeling on the floor instead of sitting on the couch if you don’t.”
Who is this woman who can make decisions like that in his house?I want to say it aloud, but I know better than that now. He said she was a friend, but I feel as if she’s more than that.
The thought sends another burst of jealousy through me, hot and bitter, and though I know I shouldn’t feel it, I can’t help myself.
I follow Alexandre mutely out to the living room, taking a seat on the couch where he motions for me to sit. “I’ll be in the kitchen with Yvette,” he says. “Stay here.”
I feel like a dog ordered to stay, but I have a sinking feeling that’s what I’m meant to feel. Yvette had called me a pet, and something tells me that she hadn’t been joking when she’d suggested the collar and leash.
Just the thought makes my skin crawl with a claustrophobic sort of panic all over again.
Mind your manners.
A part of me instantly, hotly rebels against that. There was a time, wasn’t there, when I would never have let a man speak to me like that?Wasn’t there?It feels so long ago that I can’t really recall it. Everything before Franco had come and snatched me from my new apartment, the one I’d leased after Sofia had moved out of the apartment we’d lived in together, feels like a life that belonged to another person. When I try to think of that girl, I feel like she died. Like her body is somewhere in the warehouse where Franco had chained me to the ceiling, like she’d suffocated in the smells of burning flesh and tears.
All I can hear in my head anymore are the voices of the men who have hurt me.If you don’t talk, little girl, I’ll make sure you never walk again. Forget dancing. You’ll never even stand up.
Maybe I could find the kind of man who likes girls who can’t run away to buy you. But you’re too damaged for anything else.
What are these fits? Mind your manners.
Mind your manners.
Mind your manners.