16. Katya
CHAPTER 16
KATYA
He brings me into a spacious bathroom with light tiles. It’s exactly the place you’d put a guest if you were wealthy and didn’t really want them in the part of the house you use.
“This is nice. I would have liked to use it earlier.”
“Don’t be mouthy.” I didn’t think I was, but clearly, he’s sensitive.
The image of us in the mirror is reflected for me for one moment before he places me down on the toilet, and I realize how stupid I was to think he would want to fuck me. He’s a god compared to me, and I’m too broken to even get to the bathroom to piss.
So what if he’s older? He probably fucks supermodels, not broken, worn-out ballerinas that he just found out won’t be able to dance en pointe again. I wish more than anything I didn’t see that comparison between us as he bends to help me pull down my underwear.
Underwear?
It’s then I realize that when he left me in this room the first night, I was wearing that god-awful baby doll dress. I’ve been so comfortable and out of it, I didn’t even consider, but I know for sure I didn’t arrive here with panties or a T-shirt.
I’ve already got my hands around the elastic to slide them down, but now I’m unsure of everything.
“Did you change me?” Please God, say it wasn’t his housekeeper. If she put panties on me, her whorehouse comment takes on a whole new meaning.
I wait for him to move so his face isn’t so close to my crotch, but he doesn’t, and I don’t have it in me to hold it for another minute. Once the fabric is out of the way, I relieve myself right in front of him. While I prefer he’d move, it doesn’t feel the same as with Scott or the woman who checked my virginity. He’s staring at my face rather than my pussy anyway.
“You should have said something sooner.” His tone is soft now that we’re alone, and I decide to press my luck.
“Did you change me?”
“Yes,” he finally answers. “After you fell asleep, that shit didn’t look comfortable.”
I laugh a broken rhythm. “It really wasn’t.”
“Did you like what you saw?” I ask him a slight mutation of what he asked me that night as I observed him in the car.
From this distance, and with the light of the bathroom, I can see his features much more clearly than I ever have. Deep circles sit beneath his eyes, and the lines mapping his skin speak of a sad life rather than a happy one, but he’s so handsome still.
“You should have said something sooner,” he repeats, ignoring what I’d really like to know, but I sigh and let him take the lead. What other choice do I have?
“What would I have said?” I finally meet his impossibly black eyes. I can barely tell the pupil from the iris, and for some reason, that’s frightening and sexy at once.
“I’m supposed to be in a wheelchair.”
He makes it sound so simple.
“Would you have listened?”
His jaw flexes. “Possibly.”
“You don’t give a shit. No one does.”
He doesn’t answer or move, and I’m forced to grab a piece of paper and dry myself with his face six inches from my crotch. I grunt as I put weight on my feet to lift my hips and pull my underwear back up.
“If I didn’t give a shit, I could have left you on that stage.” He says it like a deep omission, not something meant to comfort me, and because of that, it actually does. When I’m finished, he carries me back to the bed and the waiting doctor, who’s staring at my sweat stain in the sheet with too much interest.
“Alright Miss Stepanova, are you feeling better now?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” My head spins. I’m not sure if I’m dizzy or just too tired to keep my neck up, but I collapse against the mattress.
“What’s wrong with her?” Fyodor asks, gesturing roughly toward me, and while I feel like absolute shit, I don’t know what I’m specifically doing to concern him. Lying down? People lie down all the time.
“Did your surgical wounds heal well?” the doctor asks.
“Did what?” I repeat, my tongue feeling soft, but understanding hits me a half second later.
“Kotyonok,” Fyodor’s stern voice cautions me, but I’m not playing any games this time. I’m slipping in and out of consciousness.
“Both the operation site and the points of insertion for the stabilizers?” the doctor clarifies, patiently waiting for my answer. “Did they heal well?”
“I-I don’t know. I don’t like looking at them,” I admit. What I don’t admit is that I’ve ignored them, left them untreated, and not cared enough about my own survival to bother with something like that. The energy rolling off Fyodor darkens a shade, and rather than face it, I close my eyes.
“Have you kept up on her painkillers?”
“I… didn’t know she needed them.”
“Okay,” he says, like I’ve agreed to something, and this is an entirely normal examination. “Let’s get these off and see what you have going on under there.”
His fingers are like ice as he peels off the first strap, and the tearing sound fills the room. My legs shiver and twitch with the cold air as he removes the many layers of velcro and straps, revealing the damp medical wrapping underneath.
I don’t need to look to know what they’re seeing—the splashes of crusty dried blood and the yellowing from the sweat-stained into the old bandages. I feel rather than see the disapproval all around me. I should have been performing some level of wound care on myself, but I haven’t.
People die of infections all the time, Katya . The doctor had told me as if that was a good reason to make sure I cared for myself, but it just seemed like one more chance to be with Pietro.
The last of the bandages fall away from my skin, and the stinging as it pulls away from my skin overwhelms me.
“This is infected,” he says grimly, confirming what I hoped for all along. The cool air of the room aches profoundly on my sensitive skin. There’s a hot throb around each of the eight puncture wounds. This was a lot easier to ignore when it was all wrapped up and just felt like general pain. Now, I can appreciate the details.
“Can someone fucking kill me?” My speech wobbles as my tongue hits the bottom of my mouth too hard. I’m so fucking tired. I moan through the pain as my stomach roils. Shit, I forgot about sleeping outside. He doesn’t like my mouth.
“Absolutely not,” Fyodor answers.
“She needs painkillers and antibiotics.”
“Are you feeling nauseous?” the doctor asks.
I moan in agreement.
“Kotyonok.” A sharp reprimand from Fyodor.
“Just tired,” I answer the doctor, ignoring the threat. Falling back asleep seems like the perfect option. Neither of them can bother me in my dreams except for Fyodor’s cock, but I’ll ignore it.
I recognize the delirious quality of my thoughts, and my legs hurt so badly I could scream. Instead, I lie very still, hoping it will all just end.
Would one of you just fucking kill me already?
“Absolutely no one is going to fucking kill you, Katya,” Fyodor seethes as he stands over me, giant shadow blocking the light.
“Huh, I didn’t realize I said that out loud.”
He grabs my face in his hands, and I assume he’s going to squeeze me again.
“If you’re going to hurt me, might as well make it count this time.”
He doesn’t hurt me but forces me to look at him. The edges of his face seem a little blurry, though.
“You’ve got a fucking fever,” he growls. “You’re burning up because your legs are infected, Katya. Do you understand infected ?”
“Are you going to squeeze me again if I don’t? I get it. You can hurt me.”
You’re headed for the kennel , a snarky voice that sounds like me pipes in.
His touch stays gentle, but there’s a violent tremor in his hand like he wishes it wasn’t.
“You’re not sleeping in a fucking kennel. Does she need to go back to the hospital?”
Fear worse than I felt last night when he brought me here tears me apart. The hospital is the epitome of all the worst things that have ever happened to me. The smell, the lights… I’d rather die. The deliriousness from the fever steps back to make room for the terror.
“Please, please, no hospitals.” I’m breathing too hard, but I can’t pull any oxygen into my lungs. For the first time, I reach for him and grip him as tightly as possible. “Please don’t make me, Fyodor.” It’s the first time I’ve spoken his name, and I have no clue if he’d rather I call him Master, but it doesn’t matter.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” he answers without a hint of waver.
“I don’t think she needs the hospital if you’re willing to pay for me to set her up here. She needs IV antibiotics to start and some painkillers to make her comfortable.”
I hold my breath as I wait for his answer. Hell, he could just send me back to the ER and wash his hands of me. Leave me out on the street with even more debt than I had.
“Give her antibiotics. Sometimes pain teaches us necessary lessons.”
His words make sense, but the sentiment doesn’t. He wants me to suffer? Is he a sadist? Isn’t all this bad enough?
“Mr. Domalachago, she could go into shock. I really wouldn’t advise trying to teach her this particular lesson right now.”
I finally look at his face, and once again, I’m taken by how large he is and how he occupies the room. I beg him with my eyes; this room has been so comfortable for the short time I’ve been here. Please, just let me die. Don’t let me suffer anymore.
“Do what you have to,” he relents.
He drops my face, and I’m cold in his absence. He leaves the room, and it’s just me and the doctor. Why do I wish he’d turn around? Why do I wish I pleased him?