Alexandre is not that man.He’d given me permission to touch myself in the bath, and he’d ordered me to as a punishment, but he’s never touched me with desire. In fact, today, it wasveryclear just how strictly he intends tonottouch me sexually. He’d had a raging, throbbing erection for most of the time that he’d been in that study with me, yet, he’d studiously ignored it—all the way up until he’d gone to bed, alone, and relieved that need—also alone.
I should be grateful, but I just feel hollow. I close my eyes, almost wishing for the drugged tea, if only so it would be easier to fall asleep.He owns you,I tell myself firmly, rolling onto my side and curling into a ball.You can’t fall for a man who owns you. You just can’t.
But as I try to breathe evenly, wanting desperately to fall asleep and get some much-needed rest after the events of the day, I can feel in the depths of my soul that it’s becoming a losing battle.
I should forget any romantic ideas of the broken parts of him being drawn to the broken parts of me, or that my relationship is anything to him but something somewhat better than a slave’s to their master and, at the moment, somewhat worse than a lapdog’s to its owner.If he paid a hundred million dollars for me, a number I can’t even imagine, then it must have been for a reason. Arealreason. And if it’s not sex, then it’s something else.
No one pays a hundred million dollars to have a crippled maid clean their apartment. There’s some other reason I’m here.
And instead of longing for Alexandre, I should be trying to uncover it.
I should be trying to get free before something terrible happens.
Instead, I feel like a frightened rabbit, cowering in corners, scurrying from place to place.
And worse yet—I’m a rabbit beginning to fall in love with the very trap that holds me in its teeth.