Chapter 8
Two Days Later
I have to stop looking at my reflection in every mirror that I pass. I know I don’t look different. Logically. Yet I keep stopping to admire myself. My fingertips keep brushing against my lips as if it might somehow show on the outside how suddenly different I feel on the inside.
Nikolai came home yesterday. In the middle of the night. Woke me out of a dead sleep by his bulk sliding into bed beside me, then crawling on top of me. For a wild, delusional moment I thought that the extra bulk was somehow Alek.
He is not nearly as large as my husband but for a moment, I had hoped that the man joining me was the one chained by the neck and wrists in the basement. When my husband kissed me, I compared the two. Just for a moment. No longer than a heartbeat… but the guilt of it all was going to eat me alive.
I have no idea if he’s been down to see Alek or not.
Nikolai mentioned nothing at breakfast this morning. He didn’t comment on the fact that his prisoner was still alive and that obviously meant that I had defied his orders yet again by going down there and feeding him. There’s no way that Nikolai hasn’t put two and two together, just like there’s no way that he’s not pissed as hell about it too.
The waiting for him to punish me is going to drive me mad.
I’ve been sitting around this miserable mansion for days just slowly slipping into madness. If he’s not going to let me out, then I’m just going to have to make him. One way or another. I can’t even go down to see Alek while he’s here. Better not poke the bear. But not seeing him is also grating on me more than I care to admit to myself.
Nikolai told me that he and Horus were going to be working all morning and to leave him alone.
Before he slipped out of bed this morning for coffee, he told me that tonight we would spend time together. He kissed me on the forehead and thanked me for being patient. Like a damned dog. He has to know that. He has to.
The distrust just keeps growing.
Maybe that’s what prompts me to spy on my own husband. It’s not like I can really be banned from doing what I please inside my own home, can I?
The door to Nikolai’s office is closed this time when I approach.
My heart is beating like crazy. I press a hand to my chest as if that’s somehow going to make it better. But of course it doesn’t. I lean my back against the small strip of wall just beside the wooden door and strain my ears to listen to the conversation on the other side of the wall.
Nikolai speaks to Horus with a low tone of voice. I can just imagine him sitting with his fingers steepled in front of his face like he so often does, speaking authoritatively to his recently promoted right hand man. Horus’ stoic face is the same neutral mask that it always is when he’s in business mode. He’s almost always in business mode.
The only exception is when he eats. The man is a closeted foodie.
“It’s a trap,” Horus says flatly to Nikolai.
“You think that I don’t know that?” Nikolai snaps back at him.
Horus is one of the few who never seem bothered in the slightest by Nikolai’s temper or its sudden and frequent flare ups.
“Are you considering going for the offer anyway?”
“Why not?” Nikolai answers. I can hear the creak of his chair. He’s likely leaning back, turning to look out the window to gaze out over the pool and lawns. “I don’t have anything to lose in the bargain.”
“You cannot know what sort of men Mr. Colombo has amassed to guard Ms. Helena. Even though she claims that she will come alone, it is highly unlikely,” Horus rationalizes.
“She’s said that she is willing to trade herself for Alek. A stupid bargain made of love for a bastard who certainly doesn’t deserve it.” Nikolai’s smiling, I can hear it in his voice. “She just wasn’t smart enough to say that he still had to be alive when I trade him.”
The silence that follows his words does nothing to quell the sudden roaring in my ears.
“Very good sir.” Horus answers finally.
It’s suddenly hard to breathe. I can’t seem to fill my lungs properly. The room feels like it’s tilting on its axis.
“It feels like a win-win for me, doesn’t it?” Nikolai chuckles. “I’m not afraid of Colombo. He doesn’t have nearly enough men in his employ to make a dent in our forces. If he’s stupid enough to try to back Helena on her martyr mission, then I will have all the reason that I need to exterminate them entirely. More territory for us.”
My feet are in motion before I can stop them. I run down the stairs and through the house. My slipper covered feet nearly slipping on the polished floors at least a dozen times as I hurtle myself to the basement. I don’t have a plan. I know that I’m going to be caught but maybe it will be worth it. I have to try.
What Alek is supposed to do while chained in my basement I don’t know.
Maybe he will have some ideas.
He will never let Helena offer herself up, no matter what the reason behind it might be or if she has some elaborate plan or not. He would rather die, I’m sure of it. And that is the outcome that I cannot live with. I can’t let Nikolai do it.
I skitter into the basement and type in the code to his door with violently trembling hands.
Nikolai did come here last night before coming to bed.
The smell of the room - the sheer amount of blood alone is enough to make me almost lose my lunch on the spot.
“What are you doing here?” Alek groans. “Get the fuck out of here!”
I know he’s warning me to keep me safe. He’s trying his best to keep anything from happening to me. That’s why I can’t leave. That’s why I can’t let anything else happen to him.
For a moment, my worry consumes me.
His hands are lifted out to either side of his body, sagging in his chains, how he’s likely been left all night long. No rest. No reprieve. His shoulders must be numb or on the verge of dislocation. I can’t leave him like this. My hands hover just over his chest, his shoulders, the side of his face, never quite touching as if somehow I can magically undo all of the pain that Nikolai caused by force of will alone.
How could the hands that touched me so softly last night, the hands of the man that I thought I loved, who I thought loved me… how could they be capable of this? I feel sick knowing that Nikolai’s hands had done this to Alek just moments before waking me up in bed. Those same hands had touched me… he had fucked me…kissed me…
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
Alek didn’t deserve this.
He’s never told me what Nikolai thinks that he’s done, but I don’t care anymore.
“I mean it, Anya, get the hell out of here right now,” Alek yells at me as I fumble with the chains futilely.
“I can’t!” I breathe, panic edging into my voice. I don’t have a plan, but I just know that I have to do something. “I can’t leave you like this!”
“It’s not worth it, Anya, I’m not worth it.” Alek protests.
Just as a hulking shadow fills the open doorway.
“Finally, something that we can both agree on.” Nikolai says in a voice like thunder. Cold and dangerous, it sends a shudder of fear right up my spine.
Alek’s eyes widen in genuine fear as Nikolai comes up behind me. I don’t dare look away from him as Nikolai’s hand closes around my wrist and yanks me away from Alek.
Nothing like the firm, steady but comforting pressure that Alek used on me.
No, this is controlling. This is meant to bruise and hurt. This is a man forcing obedience from something that he no longer sees as human, a possession. His pretty little doll to be locked away in his pretty little house.
“Let her go!” Alek yells as I lose my footing. Nikolai hauls me out of the room with a smirk. “Nikolai!”
His scream for me is severed by the thick door to his cell being slammed shut.
“Let me go. Nikolai. Let go of me!” I claw at my husband’s hands as his grip on my wrist tightens so much that I fear he’s going to somehow bruise my very bones.
He drags me into the cell directly beside Alek’s and my heart drops into my ass. What is he doing? Is he going to keep me here?
“I warned you what would happen if you disobeyed me again,” is all Nikolai offers as explanation.
I thrash against him as my insides turn to jelly. The vice grip that he has on me doesn’t change, doesn’t falter, as he pulls a chain from the ceiling, and locks it around my wrist. I try to kick and scream at him, but it’s to no avail. Nikolai captures my other wrist and handcuffs it. I’m lifted until my toes barely touch the ground and my weight is supported by my arms. It hurts. More than a little. The fear doesn’t help anything.
“You wanted to be down here so badly…” Nikolai trails off as he pulls a knife from his pocket and flips it open. “Perhaps I should leave you down here.”
Nikolai has always been good at blurring the line between pain and pleasure - terror and play.
I don’t know if he is threatening me, or if this is just another one of his games.
The knife goes to my shirt and he pauses.
He pulls a small remote from his pocket and aims it at the single screen mounted above the only door in the room. A camera in the corner flicks on, the red light recording, and I can see the image of myself reflected in the screen above the door. Satisfied with the feed and recording, Nikolai sticks the remote back into his pocket.
“I suppose that I’m just going to have to teach you in a way that I’m sure you will remember this time, love.” Nikolai circles me predatorily. He grips my hip in his large hand and sets me spinning so that he can watch me struggle to orient myself. I can feel his eyes on me like a caress, trying to figure out where he wants to start… what to do with me.
When he stops me, he grabs me by the chin and kisses me harshly.
“You remember our rules?”
I nod, relief flooding through me when I realize this must just be another one of our games. I’ve crossed a line. I will be punished. That’s how this works. This is what I signed up for. Our dynamic might not make sense to everyone… but it does to us.
The tip of his knife drags down my chest without drawing blood, and then slices through my shirt, exposing my breasts to him. Another couple quick cuts of his knife and I’m naked as the day that I was born. My breasts lift high from my stretched arms. Nikolai slides his belt from his pants, holding the two ends in one hand as he watches me.
I know the familiar sting before it lands.
First a smack across the breasts to warm the skin. He will cover my thighs and ass in red welts before he takes me. That’s normally how this goes. He warms my skin with welts until the pain is nearly too much, torturing my clit all the while before he takes me - fucking me so hard that I cry when I cum for him. Sex has always been an easy thing for us. I arch my ass out for him, ready to be punished, anything to get this over with… but he flips the script.
“Why would you run to him?” Nikolai asks in a low voice.
My eyes snap open, but before I can answer his belt lands across my thighs. Hard. I cry out in pain. Something evil flashes in his eyes.
Game, or not?
“Perhaps you’re having a crisis of faith, my love.” Nikolai continues.
Again, he hits me. Hits me. Not a smack. Nothing in my realm of pleasure. He’s never hurt me before, not that way. Never left a mark that might hurt.
“You belong to me, and me alone.” Nikolai seethes in my ear before stepping back and hitting me again. The strap lands across my ass and wraps around my hip… and I scream.
“Tell me who you belong to!” Nikolai demands, something wild in his voice.
So help me, I do. The blows come. Again, and again, and again.
My body blurs the lines of memory and what’s happening. Confused, as pain has been trained into me to be something good. Something that I like… have come to crave and fuck if the fear of the man whipping me doesn’t turn me on in its own sick, perverted way. I can feel it sliding down my thighs. The belt that hits my breasts, my hard nipples as I grab hold of my chains and hold on for everything that I’m worth.
“I’m yours! Nikolai! I belong to you! My body belongs to you!” I scream it until my throat burns and tears track hot around my face and drip down onto the raised red welts on my chest.
Nikolai circles me, his eyes locked on that camera in the corner of the room, onto the red glowing light with determination. I see it in the monitor. The possessive, feral beast that is going to claim me, to mark me in every way that he needs to, to know that I am his and his alone.
“You will not see that man alive again.” Nikolai speaks in a low tone of warning as his hand dips between my thighs, feeling the wetness there. “Isn’t that right my love? Because you want me to spare him, don’t you? Your soft, healers heart wants to help everybody… even the monsters.”
My legs tremble and shake as he slides two fingers into me, giving me pleasure for all of the pain that I’ve endured, like the good girl that I am. I feel my mind sliding down into that safe, warm place inside of my mind - the peaceful place that Nikolai’s touch always coaxes me to. Nobody before him ever made that blissful place come.
He pinches my clit - hard.
“I asked you a question, bitch.” Nikolai repeats.
Bitch?
He’s never called me that before.
My lips part to protest, but he slaps my breast again, his fingers resuming their motions on my clit - blurring that line between pain and pleasure.
“Promise me. On his life. That you will never see him again.” Nikolai purrs in my ear.
“I promise.” Exhaustion is warring with the over stimulation running like lighting under my skin. I can’t tell him no. Even if I wanted to, there is no option but the one that Nikolai gives. If I want Alek to live, this is what I must give him. I can do it. That’s worth it.
“Tell me who you belong to.” Nikolai asks, his voice like velvet in my ear.
“You, I belong to you.” I breathe, the words soft on my lips as I barrel toward my orgasm - but I should have known better.
Close, too close, he removes his hand. The belt returns.
“Open your legs.” Nikolai demands.
I start to respond and realize what he means to do. I shake my head no. I don’t want that.
“Excuse me?” Nikolai’s head tilts to the side, the belt hanging loose in his hand as his eyes darken.
Fear grips me tight, and I open my legs, standing as far apart as I can manage. The first blow makes me see stars. The belt slick with my own fluids as it hits the inside of my thigh, then the other, and up higher until I’m sobbing, hanging in the chains, but even then, he doesn’t stop. Each thwack of the belt to my sex brings me higher, my pussy abused and raw and somehow, he knows it, knows the limits that he’s pushing and how close I am to cumming despite the pain.
I don’t know how many lashes he gives me, they blur together.
I don’t know when they stop, my skin screaming and angry.
I don’t think my mind is even fully conscious when he moves forward and lifts my thighs in his hands. My head falls back as he fucks me, the pain and pleasure swirling together until I’m cumming. I can’t stop, even as I scream, even as my body can take no more, can go no higher and hurt no more than it already does.
Nikolai uses me, fills me deep until he’s spilling down my thighs.
Only as he tucks himself away into his slacks does he curl a soft, loving knuckle down the side of my face. I can’t move. I can’t stop shaking. “This hurts me more than it hurts you, my love… I do hope that you’ve learned your lesson this time.”
Nikolai kisses my forehead tenderly… and leaves me in the cell.