ANA
The next few days are a strange sort of blurred routine, one that I don’t love but that gives me something to cling to anyway. If obedience is what will earn me back some measure of happiness here, if that will earn me back Alexandre’s affection, then that’s what I’m determined to do. I’ve always done well with goals if I set my mind to something, and while this is something so much smaller than what my life used to be, just having something to focus on helps me quiet the noise in my mind.
I wake up each morning telling myself that this is what my life is now. It doesn’t matter if I was once a ballerina, if I was once a free woman, if I once had an entirely different future stretching out in front of me. That’s all changed now, in a series of steps that have built on each other—Franco destroying my feet, my collapse into depression, Alexei kidnapping me, Alexandre purchasing me.It could be worse,I tell myself and silence the voice in my head that wants to remind me that it also, once upon a time, had been so much better.
I get up, kneel on the floor before Alexandre tells me to, eat my breakfast quickly and silently from the plate that he puts down for me, stand up to be dressed in the maid’s outfit. I ignore Yvette’s jibes and the way she likes to make more work for me right after I’ve finished cleaning something, forcing myself not to think about how much I hate having her watching me while Alexandre is out for the day. I clean the apartment, I stay away from the two rooms I’m not allowed in, eat my dinner on the floor while he and Yvette share their evening meal—she’s over almost every night now—and then go to my room for my bath.
And then, every night, I allow myself my one small disobedience, my reward for doing everything Alexandre wants of me, no matter how much I hate eating off of a plate on the floor or being around Yvette so much.
Every night, I pretend to drink the tea, slip out of bed, and crouch behind the door watching him. Every night, we come together while he looks at the photos on his bed, and he doesn’t know it. I can’t even imagine what he would do if he did know. It’s the strangest sexual relationship I’ve ever had—completely one-sided and entirely secret from one-half of it. Yet, it’s erotic and taboo in a way that I’ve never experienced before. Those orgasms, with my fingers pressed feverishly against my clit while I watch Alexandre strain towards his own release and listen to the sounds of his groans shivering over my skin, are some of the best I’ve ever had.
I also notice how ritualistic it is for him the nights I watch him. I manage to get there earlier and earlier every night, seeing how he takes off his clothes and folds them into the hamper in the same way, the order in which he does it all, the way he always refuses to touch himself until the photos are prepared and he’s already fully erect, as if the anticipation is part of it. And it makes it better for me too, watching his arousal grow, waiting with my breath catching in my throat for that moment when he’ll finally wrap his hand around his cock, and I can slip my hand between my own legs, and we can start the race to orgasm together.
My commitment to obeying Alexandre works, too. A week passes, and one morning when I walk down the hall with him, I see that Yvette isn’t waiting in the living room. “Are you not going out today?” I ask him curiously, and he glances at me sideways.
“No, I am. You’ll clean as usual.”
That’s the end of it. I don’t dare ask where Yvette is, as if just saying her name might summon her like some awful she-demon, but she doesn’t appear anyway. Nor does she show up the next day or the next, and I realize that slowly, I’m earning some of Alexandre’s trust back.
“Don’t get up,” he says the next morning when he brings me breakfast, and my heart leaps in my chest a little as I realize that he’s going to allow me to eat it in bed, like he used to.
That tiny voice whispers that it’s ridiculous that I should be so pleased that I’m going to be allowed to eat in bed and not on the floor like a dog, but it gets quieter and quieter every day, easier to ignore. What’s the point of entertaining it, anyway? Being dissatisfied with what I have here will only make my life miserable. There’s no escape, no way out, and with every day that passes, I wonder more and more if there’s any reason to wish for one.
What did I have back in New York, anyway? A best friend, but other than that? I don’t doubt that Sofia would always love me and do her best to find time for me, but she has a new life now, a husband, and a baby on the way. That’s even if she got away from Alexei before he sold her. I can only hope she escaped, that Luca found her. I had nothing other than that. Nothing but a bland apartment and depression, no boyfriend or hope of dating again or future career.
I’d had a glimmer of hope in Russia when I’d met Liam, but that had been foolish. That wasn’t real.
At least this is a better reality than some others I’ve lived through now.
Yvette doesn’t come to the apartment that night. Instead, Alexandre comes home with an armful of bags full of fresh food, and I come into the kitchen to smell the rich scents of butter and herbs and frying onions. When Alexandre serves up a dinner of a whole roast chicken on a slightly chipped porcelain platter, bowls of potatoes and fresh vegetables, and a sliced baguette, he stops me before I can sink to my knees on the rug and await my plate.
“None of that,” he says calmly. “Go change, and then eat at the table with me.”
Inexplicably, tears spring to my eyes, though I’m careful not to let him see. I hurry down the hall, undressing and dressing myself for the first time since I’ve been here. I pick the blue silk wrap dress again, wanting to remind him of that lovely sunny afternoon when we walked through Paris together.
He’s waiting at the table when I walk back in, glasses of red wine poured for us both, and after so many days of eating off of a plate on the floor, kneeling until my knees ached, silently paying the penance for sneaking into his study, being able to sit at the table is almost overwhelming.
“Is the food to your liking?” Alexandre asks crisply when I take the first bite, and I nod, blinking back tears again at howgoodit all is.
“It’s incredible,” I whisper, and I mean it. I sip the wine slowly—I haven’t drank alcohol in so long now that I don’t want to get drunk and embarrass myself—but it’s amazing too, rich and dry and paired perfectly with the crispy, buttery, herbed roast chicken.
I eat every bit of the food Alexandre serves me. He’s quiet throughout the meal, asking me occasionally about tidbits of my day, which doesn’t exactly offer up much in the way of conversation, considering the fact that it was spent cleaning. But I do ask him about some of the items in the house, venturing to ask about the statues in the entryway and some of the art and where he acquired them. He actually tells me, regaling me with a story about a trip to Italy to meet with a particularly intransigent art dealer who had a few pieces that Alexandre was determined to acquire, however difficult the dealer made the transaction. There’s no way to know really how much of what he tells me is true and how much is exaggerated—and I’ve long since gotten the impression that Alexandre is a man who might be prone to exaggeration, but it doesn’t really matter.
It’s the conversation that matters, the sound of his laugh as knives and forks clink against plates, the way he refills my wine glass without asking, the way he doesn’t stop me when I serve myself more chicken and crusty bread, enjoying being able to eat as much as I want for the first time in my life. It feels like we’re—I’m not entirely sure what. More intimate than friends, not quite a couple, but just the sudden freedom to sit at the table with him and talk and laugh and eat and drink feels so heady that I don’t even need the wine to feel tipsy.
We clean up afterward, side by side, Alexandre carrying dishes into the kitchen while I fill the farmer’s-style stone sink with hot water and suds that smell like lemon peel and sunshine. The twilight is starting to gather outside. The birds are still chirping outside the open window where Alexandre’s herb pots are budding. It feels sweet and simple and calm, and as he brings me the dishes, it’s easy to imagine this being our every night, easy to picture us growing closer, slipping into the familiar routine of a couple, living together, falling in love.
Easy to forget the power he has over me, that he could take this all away at any time.
I expect him to tell me to go to my room after, for my bath and the tea that I’ll pretend to drink. Instead, he looks at me when the last of the dishes are dried, an expression on his face that I haven’t seen there before.
“Let’s go up to the library,” he says, and I’m so startled that I don’t even think to question it—not that I would have, anyway.
I follow him up the spiral staircase to the upstairs, trying not to think of all the nights I’ve crept up here in the darkness to spy on him, how I know every spot that creaks now and how to avoid it, all the planks in the floor that I shouldn’t step on. He leads the way to the library, pushing open the heavy old door and walking straight to the fireplace.
“I know it’s getting a bit warm for a fire,” Alexandre says. I can’t help but notice the flex of his forearms as he picks up a few pieces of wood, the fine smattering of dark hair there, his white shirt rolled crisply up to his elbows. “But there’s a certain ambiance to it that just can’t be beaten, don’t you think?”
I nod speechlessly, unable to think of what to say. I sink onto one of the velvet armchairs in front of the fireplace as he builds it and then walks to the gilded bar cart on the other side of the room, pouring two more tiny glasses of some sort of wine and returning to sit in the leather armchair opposite me.