Chapter 13
Anya
Ishouldn’t be surprised.
That’s the thought that keeps cycling over and over in my mind as I lay here, waiting for the sensation to properly return to my legs. I had rug burn on my knees before, but I”m sure I have it on my hips and elbow now from falling like this. I can hear water turning on somewhere in the apartment, rushing through the pipes in the walls. Nikolai obviously went to take a shower, and I should do the same. I can still feel him, both inside and on my thighs.
I’m a walking bruise but every ache and pain turns me on. What a fucked-up reaction. Each muscle twinge or moment of tenderness sends a jolt of memory to my core, and I’m wet all over again. The hell is happening to me? I want to cup my sore sex, used in such a different manner than I’m accustomed to, and yet, my traitorous body is begging for him to come back and use me again. Every nerve ending is on fire, alive and burning for his touch, while I want to cry.
My heart is still hammering against my ribs, running feral with the notion that I should go and find him, that I should join him in the shower and give him a piece of my mind. I’m not somebody to be dropped on the floor and discarded just because he’s done playing with me.
Better yet, I should get up and start going through every inch of this office while he’s occupied. I have no idea how long his showers normally last but I should be taking this moment to try to free myself. There might be a phone in here somewhere. There might be papers that I can use as leverage or perhaps even a weapon that I can use to protect myself. Hell, I could stab him with a letter opener, that would certainly be better than nothing.
My mind is sending signals to my arms that it’s time to push me up now. It’s telling my legs to get up, that I’m not so weak that I can’t stand. Still, my limbs feel heavy and warm, like they want me to lay down right here and sleep.
My head falls to the scratchy carpet and I allow my eyes to close.
How pathetic would that be? To lay in the clump of woman that he left me in like discarded refuse.
I think I lay here like this for a while. I can’t be sure. I think the shower is still running when I finally manage to press my knuckles into the carpet and push myself up onto one knee. I slide my hands out of my skirt and leave it on the floor. No point in being modest now, I guess. My arms threaten to buckle, I’m so tired all of a sudden. I force myself to stand and I glance over my shoulder to the desk where Nikolai was sitting when I had arrived.
It’s probably locked, but I have to try.
My body is pushing his cum from inside of meas I take a few steps toward the desk; when I sit in his chair, he”ll know what I was doing. Then again, if he was stupid enough to leave things lying around where anyone could find them, that was his problem.
Nothing is on the desk. I attempt to open one of the drawers, but it is locked. I feel around the edges for a hidden release or trigger button, a gun hidden under the desk, or something, but I find nothing. I stumble to the bookshelf, using the desk for support, but there is so little here to give me any real insight into him, or how much he has on my father, what it is that my father did in the first place. I’m lost.
The only thing that I do find is a bottle of imported vodka. I’ve never been a fan of straight liquor, but I’ve already done so many new things today that it certainly can’t hurt. I’m taking it. If nothing else, I won’t be able to feel the tenderness in my body when I’m done drinking it.
I open the top and take a long drink, only to cough and sputter and nearly throw it right back up. It tastes like it could strip the varnish off of furniture. So strong that it feels like it could sterilize my insides. Maybe that’s exactly what I needed it to do.
In my bedroom, aka my cell, I spend a good amount of time in the shower. I scrubbed away all traces of Nikolai from my skin. I keep expecting him to come into the room at any moment, or for Ivan to show up and lock me inside or something. I saw the bodyguard on the way back to the room, but he did not make eye contact, nor did he say anything to me. I’m hungry, exhausted, and now more than a little tipsy. I’m sitting on the warm tiles of the shower, letting the scalding hot water run down my hair and back, soothing all of the tension knots while I think.
This must be what Stockholm syndrome feels like. I saw a movie about it once. Something about how a captive starts to surrender to their captor. They start to look for humanizing elements to them, something to make the terrible things that are happening okay. Some sort of mental safe space to where it’s almost romantic. I’m not in love with Nikolai so maybe it’s not quite Stockholm. Would I even know if it was? I still want to be free. But... he did just give me the best sex of my life. The look that he gave me when I pushed him, when I teased him... he pushed back. He hurt me, but he hasn’t hurt me.
I’m just a means to an end. Probably not the best sex that he’s ever had, if I have to judge things based on the way he literally dumped me on the ground. I’m just a toy. A warm hole for him to stick his dick whenever he feels like it. He’s made that clear. I will not allow myself to spin this into something that it’s not and somehow convince myself that this is some twisted romance.
I take another drink.
I’m leverage. I’m here, and available to him. He is using me to spite my father. These are the facts. Rationally, I need to focus on that, and only that.
The liquor in my system plays devil’s advocate. “Yeah right,” I say to myself. I take another drink. There’s no way to know if my father even knows that I’m missing yet. On the off chance that Nikolai was telling the truth in the club, and he’s somehow managed to snake at least one of my father’s properties out from underneath him, there is no reason for my father to make me a priority. It”s not like he is even going to try to check in with me for another week or so. Nikolai has likely destroyed my phone. I’m his captive, and that’s all there is to it.
I turn the water off when my fingers have started to wrinkle and take a final drink from my bottle before dumping the rest of the contents down the drain. I push a towel over my hair and wrap it around my body as I head to the closet full of stripper clothes. If I’m going to survive this, I need to find a way to compartmentalize all of my emotions regarding him. Sex needs to be sex. I will not allow myself to linger in the library wondering what sorts of books he likes to read, or wanting to get to know him because he is the enemy. I will make myself into his worst nightmare. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and annoy him so much that he lets me go.
I snort with laughter to myself as I grab a satin slip and force it onto my body, which is very difficult because my skin is still wet from the shower. The teal fabric clings to the curves that I don’t have as I fall heavily onto the bed. The softness envelopes me and in the span of a blink I pass out, still cradling the nearly empty vodka bottle.
I sleep through dinner uninterrupted. I sleep through breakfast the next morning. I’m only vaguely aware of a noise in my room. I start to stir from my dreamless deep sleep but then it’s gone. It isn’t until the sun is high in the sky that somebody comes inside, loud thundering steps crossing the room to the drapes and ripping them open. The sunlight assaults me, and I’m violently ripped from my contented sleeping state back into the land of the living.
Even as my body recoils, attempting to duck back under the covers to shield myself from the lights I’m forced to realize just how sore I am. I feel like I’ve run a marathon.
Doesn’t mean that I don’t already want… another marathon.
That might be the most problematic of my feelings so far, actually. Nikolai might infuriate me; he might be an arrogant asshole, but he did… feel amazing. It was the sort of sex that makes you crave more, and I am wholly and totally unaccustomed to such a thing. If only I could just forget that it happened, I might be a little bit better off. Just turn off that sex drive that suddenly seems awake and ready to go for the first time in my life.
Someone grabs the blanket I”m holding over my head. The being tugs firmly against the fabric, and I”m too sore or tired to fight it off right now, so it flies off of me and onto the floor. My legs curl inwards toward me. Warm and contentedly sleeping one minute, frozen and startled the next. I blink at the intruder, ready to tell Nikolai what I think of his heinous methods.
Even in my sleepy haze I can tell that it’s not Nikolai that is here with me now. It’s three large men that I don’t recognize. I blink again, my mind forcing itself awake despite the limbo hand that I was existing inside of. They aren’t the same ones from the club. One of them grabs for me, his ham hand wrapping around my ankle and yanking me down to the end of the bed. I scream. I scream and try to get away but another one grabs me by my calf and forces me down further. Who are they? What is happening? Where is Nikolai? Am I being kidnapped again?!
“Nikolai!” I scream, my voice rough from disuse as I try to fight them off. Another wraps me hard by my hip and lifts me up off of the bed and toward them. I dig my heels in and try to keep them from shoving me out of the room. I’m freezing and exhausted and confused.
“Where are you taking me?! Let me go!! Get off of me!” I thrash wildly in their arms, but it does nothing but bruise my already angry skin. I try to gain purchase to slow our progress, but my bare feet simply skip over the carpets.
They drag me over in the direction of the elevator and something in my stomach sours at the sight of it. Nikolai said that the only way that the elevator would open was with a voice command. Why is he not here? Was that a lie? Has something happened to him and now I’m being transferred from one person to the other? If these were my father’s men they would have said something to me by now, or at the very least they would have given me something to cover up with on. I’m practically naked in this slip.
One of the men turns his thick neck to speak into something hidden in his lapel that I cannot see, and the elevator doors ding. I try to sag in their hold but I’m not heavy enough. It’s not that I want to stay here, but the devil that you know is always better than the devil that you don’t.
They shove me into the elevator and form a wall with their bodies. The doors slide shut with a soft ding, and I can feel us moving upward. At least three stories from the following dings and I grab onto the metal bar at the back. The doors open to the outside and the sun pinpricks my vision all over again.
“No.” I say firmly. Wherever they are planning on taking me, I’m not going. I hold onto the metal bar with everything that I have, but the men grab at me, any way they can and pull.
I’m only able to hang on for a moment before the elevators are closing again in front of me and something that sounds like an engine starting up sounds from behind me. I whip around and see that we are standing on a helicopter pad.
Absolutely not. I’m not getting in that thing. I don’t do heights. Not even a little bit.
I start screaming again, making a mad dash to the elevator again despite knowing that it’s not going to open. The men catch me, but this time I’m able to punch one in the nose, knee another in the balls and shove my elbow into the third.
Which, naturally, only makes them even more angry.
It’s suddenly personal and they force my arms down to my sides and escort me like a high security prisoner to the helicopter. All the while, I’m screaming my head off. They force a headset onto my head and stuff me into the helicopter. They knot the seatbelt around me too tightly for me to even shift, let alone get myself free, and they tie my hands in front of my body.
The helicopter door slams shut and I hear one of the men start to curse under his breath and another one agrees. The pilot leans over to the man in the passenger seat and says something I can’t quite hear in the headset, but the passenger laughs. It’s only then that I see Nikolai turn around and lower his designer sunglasses at me. He laughs.
Of course.
Couldn’t be bothered to come down there and ask me to join him in a civilized way? He couldn’t come speak to me, no he had to have me brought to him like a delivery service. I scowl at him and sink lower into my chair. He could have at least let me eat first, or put shoes on. Doubt he plans on telling me where we’re going either.
Asshole.