ANA
“What thefuckare you doing?”
He shouts it again, louder this time, and I feel real fear for the first time since he caught me in the study.
“I didn’tfuckingtell you you could touch those,Anastasia!” He screams this last, snatching the photos out of my hand and throwing them back into the drawer. I barely have time to react before his hand comes back around, striking me across the face so hard that it sends me flying off of the bed and sprawling across the rug on the hardwood floor.
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—” I don’t know if I’m sobbing it aloud or not, but every inch of me is shaking, curled naked on the rug as my face flames and throbs, and I’m crying, frozen, panicking. I hear the mattress creak as he gets up, and I cry out in fear, every inch of me shuddering with terror as I feel the heavy, warm weight of his body coming to kneel next to me on the rug. I wait for a fist in my hair or the crack of a belt or his hand again, more abuse, more pain, because this was always how it was going to end up. I was just stupid enough to pretend otherwise.
“Oh god,petit, petit poupée,I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”
Alexandre reaches for me, and I flinch away, trying to squirm, panicked, out of his grasp. But he doesn’t let me, and it takes me a moment to realize that he’s pulling me into his arms, onto his naked lap, petting my hair as he tries to soothe me.
“I’m sorry I struck you,petit, I’m sorry—”
I can’t stop myself. The back and forth is enough to give me whiplash. Still, I curl into his chest anyway, laying my cheek against his smooth skin as he strokes my hair, whispering my nickname over and over as he apologizes.
“Who are they?” I whisper. I know I shouldn’t ask, but it’s gone this far—too far. “Who are those girls.”
Alexandre’s hand goes very still on my hair. “That’s none of your business,petit,” he says, his voice stiff and angry, and I can feel him tensing, the fury starting to return as his hand tightens on the back of my neck. “You shouldn’t ask such questions—”
I don’t know where the courage comes from, really. I should know better by now. I should squirm out of his lap, grab my clothes and, run back to my room, go back to being his pet. I should forget that tonight ever happened, forget wanting more, forgeteverything, but I can’t.
I pull back instead, looking up at his heated blue eyes, and I try for once to speak to him as an equal. Not as the girl he owns, not the girl he paid ahundred million dollarsfor, not one of his pets, not his little doll.
As a girl who is falling for him, a girl who just fucked him, a girl who wants to knowwhy, as her heart breaks into a million pieces.
I remember him asking about my feet that first day when he bathed me and how angry he was when I wouldn’t answer. I remember, too, that he’s never asked again.
“I’ll tell you about my past,” I whisper, my voice hardly audible. “If you’ll be honest with me.”
Alexandre goes very still. I can see him thinking, deciding. And then, as if he’s made up his mind, he sweeps me up suddenly in his arms, standing gracefully as he holds me against his naked body, carrying me back to the bed as he pulls the duvet back and sets me on the mattress, crawling in next to me and pulling the blankets up so that he’s covered to his hips and I’m able to pull the sheet up around my breasts, covering me while he looks at me evenly.
“Very well,” he says quietly. “But you first.”
I lick my dry lips nervously. I’m not sure I like that arrangement—he could hear my story and then go back on the agreement to share, but I suppose he could be thinking the same thing about me. At any rate, I’m lucky I’ve gotten this far. I’m not exactly in a position to really negotiate with him. He’s allowing it.
“I was tortured,” I say softly. “My best friend was in trouble, and she was pregnant. The Russian Bratva wanted her, and she didn’t trust the man she’d married to escape them yet. I went undercover and slept with some of them, trying to get information to help her, to help her find a way out of her marriage and the city. Her husband’s underboss found out and tortured me without his knowledge or permission.” I take a breath, swallowing back the memory of the fear and panic and agonizing pain, the crackle of burning flesh, and the feeling of a knife slicing into the soles of my feet. “He cut my feet up and then burned them with a blowtorch. He said I’d never dance again, and he was right. My ballet career ended that day. As you know, it’s difficult to walk some days, from atrophy and scar tissue. I got very depressed and didn’t care for myself the way I was supposed to, either. My life—hasn’t been the same since.Ihaven’t been the same.”
I can see Alexandre’s expression darkening as I speak, his eyes narrowing and a look of pure, hateful rage filling them. “Where is this man?” he asks tightly when I go silent. “He ought to have the same done to him.Ishould do the same to him, for you—”
“He’s dead,” I say quietly. “My friend shot him. He’s been dead for some time now.”
Alexandre goes silent for a moment. When he speaks, at last, his tone is solemn and low, his eyes not quite meeting mine.
“I’ve been hurt too, Anastasia,” he says finally. “Perhaps not in the way that you have, not so—physically. But my father was a cruel man. I will go to my grave swearing that my mother died of his neglect. His second wife was a woman as cruel as he was, and he hurt me often, in many ways. She enjoyed my pain because I was a reminder that she was not the only woman he’d ever taken to bed or made his wife.”
He takes a deep, slow breath, his fingers twisting in the duvet. “I have, over the years, tried to rescue other broken things. Other broken girls, like my stepsister, who my father hurt so badly that she eventually died.” Slowly, Alexandre raises his gaze to mine, and I can see the depth of pain there, that he’s remembering something that he tries very hard not to think about often.
“Alexandre, I’m so sorry—”
“Just listen. I’ve never spoken of this to anyone, but—” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I try to find all the beautiful things in the world now that no one else will love because they are flawed in some way. My stepsister was flawed. She had a club foot that she was born with; she couldn’t walk right for all her beauty. My father hated her for it and claimed she would drain him for all her life, that no one would ever marry her. And yet—” Alexandre shakes his head, his face going very pale. “I know what you’re thinking when you saw those photos. After what we did here tonight—but I never touched any of them. I wanted them,godI wanted them, every single one, but I wouldn’t touch them. I thought if I kept my hands off of them, if I only ever fantasized, if I never touched them or made them touch me, they would stay with me. But they didn’t.”
To my horror, I can see tears starting to fill Alexandre’s blue eyes, his voice choked. “They all left me,” he says, his voice rasping and hoarse. “No matter what I did, no matter how well I cared for my little pets, they grew ill, or they ran away, or they killed themselves. I tried so hard to make their lives easy, beautiful, to feed and dress and care for them, to ensure that no one would hurt or use them ever again, but they all left anyway. And now that I have—” he gulps, his hands shaking in the blankets. “Now, you will leave me too, however you choose to achieve that.”
I stare at him, something dawning on me. “Alexandre,” I murmur softly, reaching out to touch his hand. “How long has it been since you’ve had sex with someone? Before tonight?”
He stares at me for a moment as if he doesn’t quite grasp the question, and then he looks away. “More years than I can count,” he admits finally.