ANA
Despite the sedative, my dreams are still thick and confusing, filling my head with images that make very little sense when lumped all together. The horrible, violent images of the warehouse and Alexei’s chalet are gone. They’re replaced with flickers of that day in the garden, of lying in the bath, of Liam’s smile and Alexandre’s eyes, his hands and Liam’s, blending into each other until I’m unsure who it is that I’m dreaming of, who it is that I truly want.
When I wake up, I bury my face instantly in the pillow, the memories of the night before flooding back along with the dreams. Liam’s presence in them was the most unsettling, mostly because of how pointless it seems. My attraction to Alexandre might seem unusual, even crazy, but he’s here, with me. I’m here, in a situation that I desperately need to make the best of, so that I can survive it.
Liam is on another continent, in a place so inaccessible to me now that he might as well be on the moon, and for all I know, he’s forgotten me. Even if I still hear his voice, calling out desperately as Alexei dragged me away that he’d find me, it doesn’t mean he remembers it. It doesn’t mean that he hasn’t given me up as lost, a regretful casualty of Alexei’s betrayal.
I can’t depend on Liam. I shouldn’t even fantasize about him. I should never have—Liam was always beyond me, something that I couldn’t dare to hope for, the kind of thing that I’d only torture myself with if I let myself linger on it.
But still, I can’t entirely get him out of my head.
When Alexandre comes in with my breakfast, I have a hard time looking him in the eye. He doesn’t mention last night, though, or what he’d said about Alexei. He just leaves the tray on the bed and tells me he’ll be back, leaving the room without another word.
I can’t help but wonder if he’s upset at me, and it makes my stomach clench with anxiety.Does he regret last night? Has it made him feel differently about me? Is it Yvette? Did he tell her what we—whatIdid?
Those are all ridiculous thoughts to have. Alexandre owns me; I’m ultimately a pet to him—why would he regret being entertained by his pet? Why should I be jealous of Yvette? I’m not his girlfriend or his lover, and the anxious knots in my stomach that feel like the kind of anxiety I used to get in the early days of dating someone I liked can only lead down a road that will hurt me emotionally or worse.
Alexandre is unpredictable and mercurial, and he’s never going to be more than what he is—a man who ultimately has absolute power over me. I shouldn’t get lost in thinking of him as anything else—but I can feel myself faltering, hovering on the edge of being willing to let myself fall, if it means some pleasure and happiness in a world that feels determined to take it away from me.
When Alexandre comes back to collect my breakfast tray, he has a clean maid’s outfit with him, the same style I wore yesterday. He lays it on the bed and peels back the blankets, finally looking at me as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.
“Are your feet well enough to clean again today?” he asks, glancing down at them, and I swallow hard before nodding.
“Yeah—I think so. They don’t hurt much.”
“Well, rest if they start to hurt. You did a good job yesterday, but I abhor dust of any kind, so I’d prefer if the apartment were dusted and vacuumed daily. I’ll be out for some time today, so there’s no need to rush. You can take your time.” He pauses, stepping back, and I realize he’s waiting for me to get out of bed so that he can dress me.
After last night, though his touch isn’t any different, it feels foreign to me. He still gets me out of my pajamas with the same swift efficiency, stripping me bare and then holding out the frilly maid’s panties for me to step into without so much as a lustful glance at my pussy. But I feel shivery as he touches me, trembling with anticipation as if at any moment, his touch might change, even though I know it won’t.How can he not be thinking about last night?I can’t help but think as he buttons up the back of the dress, his fingers brushing against my spine, as I try desperately not to let him see that I’m almost quivering from his touch.
Deep down, I know what it is. It’s a mixture of desperation for any form of pleasure or kindness, mixed with the desire for the unknown, the forbidden and taboo that Alexandre clearly represents. Ishouldn’twant him, so I know I’ve fixated on him, craving something that could give me a burst of serotonin when I’ve lost every other source of it.
But I want to believe it’s more than that. That there’s nothing strange or unusual about his treatment of me, that it’s as altruistic as it could be in the best of circumstances, that he happened across me at Alexei’s party and rescued me, a rich benefactor who swept me away to his eccentric Paris apartment, a Cinderella story.
Alexandre, the near-hermit prince, and me, the princess.
It’s ridiculous, and I know it. Only a certain kind of person would have been invited to Alexei’s party at all. Only a certain type of person would have known him well enough, or knownsomeonewell enough to be there. Alexandre’s presence there alone means that he’s not the man I want to believe he is. And yet—
In a short time, my world has turned so horrible that I feel like I could overlook it. If he wanted me to. If he wantedme.
His fingers through my hair feel like a caress; the nimble way he pins it up feels like a comfort, as he slips the last of the bobby pins into my hair and pins the maid’s cap over the top of it.
If he’s not paying me,I think as I look at myself in the mirror,does that make me any better than a slave?
He’s paying you in food and a place to stay,the other small voice in my head argues, as I look at his calm, handsome face in the mirror behind me.Is that so wrong?
It is when there’s absolutely no way you could leave.
It’s foolish to argue with myself like this, and I know it. Alexandre doesn’t seem to catch on to my internal turmoil. He just smiles pleasantly at me, tying my apron on as he looks at me in the mirror.
“You look quite lovely like this,” he says, but there’s no warmth to his tone, no intimacy. It’s an observation, the same way someone might say that a statue or a painting is beautiful, if they had no emotional connection to it.
“Thank you,” I whisper, but he’s already pulling away, picking up the breakfast tray and heading for the door with the obvious assumption that I’ll follow him.
He leaves shortly after that with a quick farewell, without saying a word about where he’s going or what he’ll be doing. I don’t know why it surprises me—it’s not as if I’m someone to him that would require an explanation. But it stings anyway—which is just another reminder of why I shouldn’t let my imagination run away with me. For all I know, he’s going to see Yvette, which leaves a knot in my stomach that I can’t shake as I walk into the kitchen and start to do the dishes from breakfast.
No matter how hard I try, as I move around the apartment, take care of the various chores, and do my best to rest in between, I can’t shake the memory of last night. I can feel his eyes on me as I touched myself, watching me like I was something beautiful, like he’d never seen anything like me. Even without looking at his face, I’d imagined that I was able to feel the reverence in his gaze—that he was looking at me the same way he touches me, as if I were something to be handled delicately. Something precious.
Alexandre paid too much for you.I can hear Yvette’s voice in my head, smooth and rich like melted chocolate, saying it so matter-of-factly.