Chapter 15 Cartier
CARTIER
My head feels like I used it to hammer nails into wood all night.
I swallow and get a dry clicking sound in the back of my throat.
I can’t remember if I snoozed my alarm earlier, or if this is my day off.
I crack open an eyelid, and try to gauge the time by the level of daylight in the room, and my heart plummets through the mattress when I don’t recognize where I am.
I sit up way too fast, and the room lurches sideways.
I swallow bile.
Start counting to ten but only make it to four.
Where the fuck am I?
The room is huge. I didn’t get a chance to explore Andrej’s apartment, but I know this isn’t it.
For starters, I’m in the kind of bed that I would associate with a movie about Marie Antoinette or Queen Elizabeth I.
It’s huge. High. With four posts and an embroidered canopy, and a comforter that belongs in an art gallery. Or a castle.
The walls are covered in ivory silk. The paintings remind me of a famous artist whose name I can’t remember because my head is playing a bass drum with my brain cells right now.
The furniture is antique. There’s a dresser draped with ivory lace.
Ornaments decorated with gold and jewel-colored enamel.
A floor-standing vase that must be nearly as tall as me. And the curtains…
I stand up, shivering as the cool air brushes my bare arms.
I’m wearing a nightdress that isn’t mine.
It’s white, heavy, with frilled brocade around the bodice and neckline, the kind of garment women would’ve worn to bed in the nineteenth century.
My feet are bare. My toenails are still painted scarlet, but everything else that I’m seeing right now is yelling at me to close my eyes and wake the fuck up from this scarily real dream.
Because the three-hundred-year-old nightdress isn’t the only thing that’s freaking me out. It’s the snowflakes tumbling down outside the window that are making my pulse race and sending shivers up and down my spine.
I stagger to the window, the room still sliding out from under me like I’m on a moving boat in the middle of the ocean, and peer outside.
White. I’ve woken up in Narnia. The only difference is that I’m not wearing a fur coat.
A door opens somewhere behind me, and I turn around to find Andrej carrying a silver tray loaded with a cafetiere, a porcelain cup, and a silver dome covering a plate filled with food.
“You’re awake.” He closes the door behind him with his foot, crosses the room, and sets the tray down on the nightstand. “I’m sorry. I wanted to be here when you woke up.”
“That’s what you’re sorry for?” Goosebumps pop on my arms, and I rub them to warm them up, my toes curling away from the icy floor.
Andrej grabs a robe from the end of the bed and wraps it around my arms. It feels light as a feather, but the injection of warmth against my skin is luxurious.
Still…
“Where the fuck are we, Andrej?”
“We’re in Russia. This is my family—”
“Russia!” I cut him off, my voice squeaking. “No…”
I shake my head and back away from him, pacing the floor until my toes feel like blocks of ice. I quickly hop onto a rug to save my feet from certain death by hypothermia.
“How? I mean, how did we get here? I was on a bus. I was traveling to North Carolina.”
It all comes flooding back. The bus screeching to a halt on the Interstate. Andrej pleading with me to get off the bus and hear him out. Sitting on his lap in the back of the car.
Then nothing. Until now.
“Did you drug me?”
“I promised to keep you safe, Cartier. This was the only way.”
“Drugging me and bringing me to Russia? You couldn’t take me back to the shelter and pay some bodyguards to keep me safe?”
My voice is rising out of control. If I keep going, it’ll become one of those high-pitched whistles that only dogs can hear. It’ll shatter glass. And I’ll still be in fucking Russia with a psychopath who thinks it’s okay to drug women and abduct them halfway around the world.
“You don’t understand.”
“Too fucking right, I don’t understand. Take me home.” I stomp my foot like a petulant child.
“I will take you home, but not like this. Not until I can guarantee your safety.”
“How are you going to do that then?” I glare at him, and he watches me, unfazed.
“I asked you to trust me, Cartier.”
“Yeah, I remember. But that was before you drugged me without my permission and brought me to Russia.”
“I would never hurt you.” I open my mouth to protest, and he shuts me down. “Do you believe me?”
I raise a hand to my head that’s still reeling from the skittles it bowled over while I was unconscious. “My head hurts.”
He smiles, and my traitorous heart skips like a lamb frolicking in a daisy-covered meadow. “Come and sit down, and I’ll pour your coffee.”
I allow him to lead me back to the bed and perch on the edge, watching him fill the porcelain cup with steaming black liquid and add a dash of cream. He offers it to me with a couple of Tylenol.
“This will help with the headache. I made breakfast too.” He raises the silver dome to reveal pancakes drizzled with streaky bacon and maple syrup.
“They have maple syrup in Russia?” I want to stay angry with him, but I’m suddenly ravenous.
“Cartier, when will you learn that I’ll get you anything you want, anywhere in the world?”
“But you won’t take me back to Chicago.” I swallow the pills with coffee and wait for the caffeine to hit.
“Gianna and Mika know that you’re here.” He sits beside me, his thigh touching mine and sending sparks straight through to my sex.
“They do?” I think about Gianna and her beautiful baby girls, and Mika coping at the shelter without me, taking all the night shifts. Then I remember Yuri Asimov. “Are they safe?”
He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “They’re safe. Leonid will take care of things in Chicago.”
“Things?” The anxious squeak is back.
“Nothing for you to worry about, baby. Eat, and I’ll show you around.”
I don’t know how, but Andrej has filled a free-standing gilt-trimmed wardrobe with warm clothes that fit me.
Thick woolen sweaters and fleece-lined sweatpants.
My brain is still taking its goddamned sweet time getting back to full working capacity, so I follow him around the house like a child on my first trip to Disneyworld, soaking up the sights, open-mouthed with wonder.
Every cavernous room on the ground level has a fire crackling in the hearth.
The rooms are sumptuous; the interior designer was clearly instructed to check out minimalistic trends and do the exact opposite.
They’re stuffed full of plump squashy sofas, antique dressers and bureaus, and low glass coffee tables.
The rugs are vibrant. The artwork is classy.
The cushions and chandeliers are decadent.
I wander from room to room, stroking statues and paintings and tasseled throws. It’s so far away from Andrej’s classy apartment that I stop in one of the living rooms and turn my back to the hearth, warming my legs and ass on the hissing flames.
“Did you live here when you were a child?”
Andrej shakes his head. “I spent vacations here with my grandparents when they were still alive. It’s my favorite place in the world.”
I believe him. His eyes gleam whenever he points out something that he thinks I’ll appreciate.
I’m still angry with him for bringing me here against my will, but now that I know Mika and Gianna are aware of what’s going on, I’m determined to explore and enjoy the extravagant comfort of Andrej’s family home.
“I wish I could’ve met them.” I want to climb inside the minds of the people who built this place and find out what fairy tales they read when they were kids.
He smiles. “They’d have loved you. You’d have been their printzessa.”
The butterflies inside my chest have a party when they hear this. It’s impossible to stay mad with him for long. We’re in a winter wonderland, trapped in a blizzard, with roaring fires and cozy blankets, and my pussy is already aching with anticipation for tonight.
What better way to keep warm?
At least that’s the excuse I put forward when I catch myself staring at his scar and licking my lips. Way to go, Cartier. You were unconscious when he carried you upstairs to that gigantic four-poster bed, and you’re still drooling about riding his cock.
“Come with me.” He offers me his hand, and I reluctantly step away from the flames. “There’s something else I want to show you.”
Excitement gurgles inside my chest when our hands touch.
Wandering along the wide hallways, crystal chandeliers sparkling overhead, I try to anticipate what room he will show me next.
But nothing could prepare me for what I find when he nudges open a heavy door and pulls me inside.
It’s a library. Not just any old library, it’s the library from Beauty and the Beast, complete with a domed glass roof covered in snow, bookcases so tall that I crane my neck to see the top of them, rolling staircases, and more squashy sofas piled high with thick, fluffy throws.
I stand in the center of the room and turn three-sixty, cheeks aching from smiling so widely. There are smaller cases strategically placed around the room. Special books perhaps?
“Name a classic book,” Andrej says.
I blink. “Pride and Prejudice.”
He goes to a shelf filled with leather-bound books, slides one out, and hands it to me.
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” I say next.
He adds another book to the one in my hands.
“The Time Machine.”
Yep, he finds that one too.
He takes the books and leaves them on a vast, leather-topped desk, then pulls me to another wall where my stomach goes all gooey at the pastel-colored spines facing me.
“There’s a romance section?”
His grin is filled with pride. “If you can’t find a book, let me know, and I’ll get it shipped in.”
“This is a dream come true,” I mutter without thinking.
My cheeks grow hot when he pulls me against him, his arms wrapped around my waist, his breath warm on my face. “I knew you would fall in love with it.”
I plant a brief kiss on his lips and bat his chest playfully with my fist.
“You’re still not forgiven.”
“I’m not done with you yet.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so excited to hear this given that I woke up in Russia instead of North Carolina, but my heart and my pussy are following their own rules right now, and I’m too achy to keep fighting them.
Along another hallway, we stop inside a room filled with heavy fur coats—Narnia, eat your heart out—and thick-soled, fur-lined boots.
Andrej holds a coat open while I slide my arms into it, then pulls a burgundy fur hat onto my head, and helps me into a pair of boots that would look at home on the moon.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Outside, the snow is still falling, thick fluffy flakes that settle on our coats and faces. I tilt my head towards the sky and catch one on my tongue.
“I’ve never seen the sky so white before.”
Andrej follows my gaze. “The snow is here to stay for a while.”
The land surrounding the mansion is a blanket of pristine virgin snow. It seems a shame to spoil it with footprints, but Andrej has no such qualms. He takes my hand and leads me through the garden, our boots sinking ankle-deep.
My cheeks sting with the cold. Flakes collect on my eyelashes. But the coat is warm and snuggly, and with my hand in Andrej’s, I realize that I feel warm and safe.
I spot a small building up ahead, but with the snowdrifts smothering the walls, I can’t make out what it is. Until Andrej opens the door and ushers me inside, flicking on the lights.
We’re standing in a small auditorium, rows of red-velvet cushioned seats facing a stage adorned with heavy emerald-green curtains.
Gilt boxes are raised above our heads with perfect views of the stage.
The crystal lamps hanging from the ceiling are as tall as me.
And there’s even a section between the seats and the raised platform for a small band.
I gasp. “It’s beautiful.”
“My grandma had it built. She always dreamed of being a movie star.”
I face him, wide-eyed. “She was an actress?”
“When she was younger. Then she met my grandfather.”
I sense that there’s a story behind this admission, but I don’t press him for it.
“I used to love coming out here to watch plays when I was a child. My grandma would invite friends and neighbors, and there would be ice cream, and sodas. This was where I fell in love with Shakespeare.”
I study his profile while he gazes at the stage curtains, reliving plays from his past.
“Romeo and Juliet still chokes me.”
On tiptoes, I cup his face in my hands and kiss him. It all feels so surreal, the snow, the private theater, the library. But the constant, the reason why I’m not freaking out and frantically trying to find a flight back to Chicago, is Andrej.
No one will find us here.
Even if they did, I know that he will keep me safe.
So, why fight it when I have him all to myself in our own personal winter wonderland?
Walking back to the mansion, our shoulders and hips bumping beneath the heavy fur coats, I’m excited to go back to the library, bury myself underneath a blanket, and spend the rest of the day reading, my toes touching Andrej’s as we sit at opposite ends of the sofa.
But then I spot a face I recognize behind a downstairs window.
Ivana.
“What is she doing here?”