Chapter 19 Sima
SIMA
Petyr insists on taking me shopping to replace everything I lost. And by “shopping,” he doesn’t seem to mean Walmart.
My jaw nearly falls when he drags me to a high-end boutique with an unpronounceable Italian name.
Glass cases. Sparkling marble floors. Salespeople in headsets who keep glancing at me like I might steal their furniture.
“I really don’t need designer labels,” I whisper as we’re shown into a private showroom and served chilled champagne.
He doesn’t even blink. “You need options.”
“I need jeans and a T-shirt.”
“You’ll get those, too.” He looks around, as if trying to assure himself they don’t carry anything of the kind here. “After we get you something that doesn’t make you look like you’re headed to clean someone else’s house.”
“You’re so fucking rude, you know that?”
“Yes,” he says. “And you’re my wife. Which means you’ll have to dress the part.”
I end up in a changing room with a dozen hangers and a full-length mirror.
The first dress is silk. Actual, real-life silk, the kind that feels like running water on your skin. Just touching it with my working-class fingers makes me feel like I’m bringing down the market value fifty percent.
The second dress has a slit that goes up to my hip. I twirl several times in front of the mirror, trying to see how likely a peek-a-boo situation is.
Answer: pretty damn likely.
The third dress is some kind of blazer-dress hybrid that makes me look like a hot corporate assassin. I pretend to shoot guns in the mirror, making pew-pew noises that leave the shopping attendant perplexed and my husband gritting his teeth.
The fourth is a napkin disguised as a dress. There’s no other way to describe it. I have to choose whether to cover up my boobs or my ass, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to do both. Design flaw? Design feature? I’m way too confused to guess.
Meanwhile, Petyr gives commentary from the couch outside the fitting room like he’s judging a fashion show.
“Too short.”
“Too long.”
“Too tight.”
“Too sheer.”
I roll my eyes every time. “Yes, Mom.”
Eventually, we compromise. I get four dresses, five pencil skirts, a few pairs of jeans, half a dozen blouses, three sleek pantsuits, and enough lingerie to make me blush every time I open the bag.
“You know,” I point out as he hands me one last napkin-esque dress to try on, “for a guy who’s not interested in being married, you’re really into dressing your wife.”
“If I have to look at you every day, I want it to be a pleasant sight.”
Charming. Real Shakespeare, this one.
Later, while I’m fighting with the zipper of this ridiculously short cocktail dress, I yell out, “A little help here?”
The door opens.
I’m expecting the shopping assistant. The very professional, very female assistant.
I am not expecting my husband to walk in on me half-naked and lock the door behind himself.
“Dude!” I gesture at my general state of undress. “Ever heard of knocking?”
His gaze roves over me like I’m the one for sale. Suddenly, the air feels ten degrees hotter.
If he makes a joke about “knocking” me up, I swear to God, I’m getting my tubes tied.
But Petyr doesn’t look in the mood for jokes.
Every half-smile I ever managed to crack out of him was through painstaking improv work, but right now, I’m not sure there’s much room for that.
Actually, I’m not sure there’s much room for anything.
This twirling cubicle was clearly not designed with two people in mind.
“You can stop eating me with your eyes,” I say. “I am never going to wear this. I’ve got nowhere to go dressed like this!”
His gaze grows darker. Hotter, if that’s even possible. “You will wear whatever I tell you to wear.”
“Wow. You should say that in front of Gloria Steinem. Really win that ‘Feminist Ally of the Year’ award.”
Despite my wisecrackery, my mouth is as dry as the desert. I follow Petyr’s gaze down my body, his incandescent gold-brown irises lingering on every curve. This dress hides nothing, and he doesn’t seem to mind that. At all.
Before I can change my mind, I do something. Something a little bold and a little stupid. Okay, a lot stupid.
I stop fighting with the zipper and let the dress pool at my feet.
If Petyr’s pupils were wide before, there’s nothing left around them now.
The mirror returns me a visual of what he’s seeing: myself, in a pair of feet-killing heels and all my quasi-naked glory, with only a flimsy set of black, lacy lingerie to cover me up.
“Blyat’.” He licks his lips. “Come here.”
My feet start moving on their own. One step, then two—all the room there was between us.
When his hand grabs the back of my neck, I already know what’s going to happen, but it scorches me anyway.
Petyr’s kiss is liquid fire. It pours down my throat, licks into my mouth, leaves me no escape. I find myself moaning in it, forgetting all about the shopping attendant just outside.
“Turn around,” he commands.
I obey without thinking. I don’t know how he does it. Something about that husky voice of his, maybe. When Petyr speaks, it’s hard to give him anything short of exactly what he wants.
He presses me against the wall-mirror. My hands plant on the glass. I can see my breath mist it up, but not enough to cover everything happening in front of it.
Like Petyr slipping a hand into my panties.
I gasp. “P-Petyr…”
“You have no idea, do you?” He licks up my neck, nips my earlobe between his teeth. “No fucking clue what you do to me.”
His free hand cups my breast. The thin lace really isn’t doing me any favors. I try to swallow back my moans, but Petyr’s mouth keeps nipping at every sensitive place on my neck, and it’s really hard to stay quiet.
“Don’t do that,” he rumbles. “Let me hear you.”
“T-The people outside—”
“They won’t do shit.” He sucks a bruise into my pulse point, dragging more moans out of me. “They know who I am.”
His fingers start moving faster in my panties. I find myself hypnotized by it. Our reflections in the mirror hide nothing.
“Look.” He forces my head down. “Look how wet you are for me.”
Embarrassingly, he’s not wrong. These panties are ruined. But I find that I care less and less the more Petyr’s rough fingers slide into me.
I’m too far gone to care about anything.
“Petyr,” I gasp, mesmerized by the obscene movements in the mirror. “Please—”
“‘Please’ what?”
“Let me cum,” I whine.
His stubble brushes the shell of my ear. “You’ve cum every time we’ve been together. Me? Not once. You think that’s fair?”
“That’s your own fault!”
“Maybe,” he whispers as he kisses languidly up the side of my throat, “I think it’s time I stopped spoiling you so much, moya zhena.”
My wife. My hand flies to his arm, nails digging in.
He brings me right to the edge. I can taste it, can feel my muscles tighten with that sweet, sweet pressure before release. I roll my hips, push myself against his hand—
“Petyr…!”
—and he stops.
My eyes fly open. I stare at the spot where his hand used to be—where it isn’t anymore.
“You’re evil.” I rest my forehead on the mirror and exhale miserably. “Absolutely fucking evil.”
“And you’re greedy.” He brings his dirty fingers to his lips and licks them clean. “Maybe next time.”
I hate how much I want there to be a next time.
Petyr helps me into a dress. I don’t realize until it’s zipped up that it’s the same cocktail dress I just told him I was never going to wear.
“Asshole,” I mumble.
Next thing I know, the cursed dress is mine. Petyr pays for everything with a careless swipe of his black card, not even asking how much it all is. By the glances I stole at the price tags, I suspect he’s just paid the worth of a small European country.
“So,” I say once we’re back in the car. “Where to now?”
In my mind, I’m praying he says the bookstore. If we’re going to burn a hole into the Gubarev family finances, I’d rather it was the whole Ali Hazelwood box set.
Once again, Petyr shatters all my hopes and dreams. “We have a reservation.”
“A reservation?” I blink. “Like, for dinner?”
“That’s usually how reservations go.”
I roll my eyes. “Where?”
“Paganini’s.”
My jaw drops. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t know it?”
“I— Do I know it?” My eyes grow to the size of watermelons. “Yeah, sure, I might have heard of it. It’s only the most exclusive restaurant in the city.”
Petyr shrugs like I just told him the weather. “So?”
“So, what the hell are we going there for?!” I throw my hands up. “Honestly, I’m fine with bagels. Or falafels. Or a nice, greasy street kebab with extra hot sauce.”
“Too bad, because you’re getting Paganini’s.” He throws me an amused sideways glance. “You said you had nowhere to wear your dress. Now you do.”
Questions crowd my mind. Like, How did he even get a reservation that fast? The place is booked two years in advance.
And also, Why me?
“Petyr, c’mon.” I wring my hands in my lap, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m a jeans-and-coffee kind of girl. It takes very little to wow me. A good brew, two sugars, a sneaky splash of cream. You don’t have to pull all the stops just because I’m technically your wife.”
“You are my wife,” he corrects. “Technically or not, that’s what the world will see.”
“Right, but I’m not really your wife. So can we just grab a burger or—?”
“No.” He turns from the driver’s seat. “Tonight, you’re a heels-and-caviar kind of girl. That’s what being married to me is like, even for show, so get used to it. You won’t be getting anything less.”
Heat surges through my body. Not just for his because-I-said-so tone that always seems to weaken my knees, but for what it represents.
No one has ever wined-and-dined me, let alone taken me to a five star restaurant and said it’s “nothing less than what I deserve.”
It’s odd. It’s unnatural.
It’s…
Nice. It’s actually kind of nice.
Guess we’re going to Paganini’s.