My knees and calves are burning, on the verge of cramping, my feet are aching. Kneeling on the floor for so long was painful, but I push it out of my head because I can’t stop myself from craving comfort from him. He’s all I have, the only chance I have for affection, and he’s proven he won’t withhold it from me forever.
As long as I’m a good girl.
If only that weren’t so hard to do.
Alexandre sets me down carefully in the middle of the floor, and it’s a struggle to stay on my feet, but I manage. He undresses me swiftly and efficiently, leaving me bare and shivering, and disappears into the bathroom. When he appears a moment later, it’s with two damp cloths in his hand. He stands in front of me, cleaning my face and hands with one. Then with an equally businesslike motion, my pussy and inner thighs with the other, wiping all traces of my transgressions earlier away.
He tosses them aside in the hamper and I stand there motionless as he gets me into my pajamas, buttoning up the front and lifting me into the bed. I could cry with relief to be lying down. I’m exhausted from the emotions of the day, but something stops me when he hands me the tea that I know is laced with a sedative—probably a heavier one than usual tonight. He won’t want to be woken up by my nightmares or worry about me wandering around the house before he’s up and prepared to instruct me tomorrow on how my day will go.
But I can’t get the image of him earlier out of my head, tense on the couch, or standing by my head, his rigid cock inches away. He hadn’t touched it. Hadn’t done anything to give himself the release I know he must have desperately needed. Sneaking a glance now, I don’t see any evidence of it. Had he taken care of it earlier while I was eating?
The thought of him in his room, fist wrapped around his aching cock, sends a hot wave of desire through me all over again. I want to see it. I want to see him naked. I want to see as much of him as he’s seen of me.
When he gives me the tea, I drink it. But I don’t swallow. I relax my mouth, holding the tea there, and look up at him innocently as he watches me.
“Goodnight,petit,” Alexandre says finally, his mouth tight as he turns to switch off the lamp, taking the teacup from my hand.
I don’t answer, but he won’t think that’s odd. Sometimes I’m already falling asleep by the time he leaves, and tonight he’ll just think I’m angry with him. Which I’m not, exactly. I’m frustrated, confused, and exhausted—and curious.
The minute I hear his footsteps recede down the hall, far enough that I know he’s not coming back, I slip out of bed and spit the tea into one of the houseplants, my jaw aching. I slide back under the covers quickly, my tongue tingling from the sedative, and wait until I know he’s done with whatever nighttime rounds he makes in the apartment. Until he should be in his bedroom, the one other place I’m not allowed to go.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
He didn’t hurt me earlier. He’s shown a clear reluctance to be cruel, even when he’s angry with me. Is it really going to be so much worse if he catches me sneaking near his bedroom?
Maybe. I’ll just have to be more careful this time so I don’t get caught.
I should stay in bed, but the curiosity is too much. I slip out and down the hall, pausing every few feet to make sure I don’t hear him still downstairs or coming back down from his room. My heart is racing in my chest as I put one foot on the bottom of the spiral staircase, holding my breath as I hope that it doesn’t creak. If he hears me—
It feels like it takes me forever to make it up to the second floor, one careful footstep at a time. That’s excruciating, too, because once I’m about halfway up, there’s no way to explain this if he should come out of his room for some reason and see me.I didn’t drink the tea, sorry. I know I was supposed to, that I was disobedient again, but I just—
Just what? There’s no logical reason for being on the steps leading upstairs at this time of night, the apartment dark and quiet all around me.I wanted to read a book in the library. Yes, at this hour. No, I’m not lying. Why would you even think such a thing?
It’s not an exciting kind of danger. I’ve been at the mercy of too many men to find sneaking around and risking Alexandre’s anger thrilling. My stomach is in knots at the thought of the risk, but there’s another feeling there too, that quivering, trembling, skin-prickling desire. Not because of the danger, but because of what I might see. Because on the other side of the door, only a few feet away from me now, Alexandre is in the other forbidden room, and I don’t know what I’ll find there, what he’s doing. The curiosity fills me, and it’s a feeling almost like the one you get when you first start dating someone youreallylike, when you feel almost obsessed with knowing every little detail about them, even the smallest and least consequential things.
When one day, you go from not even knowing them to wanting to knoweverysingle thing, like what their routine is in the morning even if it’s the most boring thing ever, just toasting breakfast strudels and sleepily making coffee and scrolling through their phone. Even if they take the same route to work every day, even if their nighttime involves reheating leftovers and watching Netflix, it all becomes fascinating, mysterious, all pieces that make up this person who has suddenly infiltrated your heart and bones and blood and certainly your better sense.
That’s how Alexandre makes me feel. Not like I want to watch Netflix with him or sit while he scrolls through his phone—I haven’t seen a television in the apartment. I’m not sure Alexandre owns a cell phone, or if he does, he must use it strictly for emergencies.
But something as simple as what he might be doing before bed—brushing his teeth or reading a book or, I don’t know, doing shirtless pushups in the middle of the room—seems suddenly fascinating. Part of it is how eccentric and distant he often is; it humanizes him in a way, to think of him doing something as simple as flossing or trying to pick out a book to read in bed.
After what happened today, I’ll take anything that makes Alexandre seem more human, more ordinary, and less like a terrifying billionaire who I’ve realized quite clearly I don’t understand in the slightest.
But Iwantto. That’s the part that I know makes even less sense than anything else, but I want to understand him. I want—I want so many things.
The broken parts of me all respond to him, aching to be wanted back, to be loved, to be cared for and protected. And that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? Something beautiful and damaged.
I could be that for him.
I realize, as I step up gingerly onto the second floor, holding my breath as I try not to make any noise, that his door is partially open.He must have really thought I wouldn’t sneak up here.
That flicker of guilt stirs in my stomach again, like when I’d realized the study wasn’t locked. But of course, he wouldn’t have thought I’d come up—he’d given me the drugged tea and hadn’t realized that I hadn’t drank it.
As far as he knows, he’s alone in a silent house, with no one to bother him until sometime tomorrow morning.
My heart skips a beat in my chest at the thought of that kind of freedom—and at the idea of what he might be doing with it.
The light from his room is streaming out over the hardwood floor and the long rug that runs the length of the hallway next to it. As I stand frozen in place, trying to decide how to move forward without being heard, I hear a rustling from his room and then a strange, slick, heavy sound. I hear something else, something almost like a deep male groan, and something hot and primal flutters in my chest at the sound of it, a reaction that’s almost purely instinctual.