7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Anastasia
A drien leaves me tied to the bed for hours, to the point where I’m bursting to pee. I scream for him to come back. I know he’s still at home. I can hear him walking around.
“Adrien! Adrien! Adrien!”
“What?” he snaps, coming back into the room.
“I have to pee. Unless you want me peeing on your incredibly expensive mattress, let me out.”
He sighs and unties me. “You’ve been here long enough anyway. Go.”
I rush to the ensuite bathroom and shut the door behind me, then do my business. Once I’m done, I decide to take a bath.
“What are you doing in there?” Adrien asks through the door. “You’re taking too long.”
“What, so you can tie me up again? I don’t think so. I’m taking a bath.” I turn the bathtub faucet on.
“I don’t trust you to not run away again. So come out of there.”
“You want a smelly wife? I don’t think so. Let me take my bath and then you can tie me back up.” An idea hits me and it’s one I want but I need to be careful about. “Or…”
“Or?”
“Or you can… join me and not tie me up after.”
The door immediately opens and Adrien stares at me with a dark, lustful expression that makes me shiver. “You really want me to join you in that bath?”
“Unless you have work you need to get to.”
“What game are you playing?” He approaches me and grabs my chin.
“Do you not trust me?”
“No.”
I huff. “I just don’t want to be tied up again. I’ll do whatever.”
“You’ll do something you don’t want to do just to not be tied up again?
” He lets me go and steps back. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to give me your body just so you can avoid punishment.
” He sighs with a shake of his head. “If you can promise me you won’t run away again, I won’t tie you up. ”
“You’re really not going to get in the tub with me?”
“Are you asking because you really want me to get in with you or are you asking because you don’t want to be tied up again?”
A little bit of both but I don’t know how to tell him that.
Adrien nods like he understands what I’m thinking. “I only want you to give your body to me if you’re truly willing. Not under duress.”
“I’m shocked you don’t want to take a bath with me.”
“Oh trust me, Anastasia. I want nothing more than to take a bath with you. But I want you to ask me because you truly want it. Not because you’re trying to get out of a punishment. I have more work I need to attend to anyway. Don’t run away again. Or I’ll do worse than tie you to the bed.”
I shiver. I have no idea what that means but I know it can’t be good.
Once Adrien leaves and I slip into the bath, it dawns on me that I wasn’t bored once in all this time. Like it or not, this has been an adventure.
I know Adrien told me I couldn’t leave but that doesn’t mean I want to stay cooped up in this house forever. I want to see my family again. I was desperate to get away from them for some excitement but now that I am away from them, I miss them so much, I could cry.
Even in all the years my uncle Denis held me captive, I still had my mom with me, even if I was stuck in my room by myself most of the time.
I miss her but a phone call won’t be enough and there is no way Adrien will allow my family to come visit when we’re still technically on our honeymoon.
So, I’ll just have to go to them.
Adrien is busy inside his office so that gives me time to sneak out the backdoor and run around the side of the house to the woodsy area again.
Once more, I sneak past the guard out front and run down the street and get an Uber.
When the car arrives, I triple check to make sure it’s the right car and hop in.
“To the airport,” I tell the driver.
It won’t take long for Adrien to find out I’m gone but he can deal. He promised I wasn’t a prisoner so I’m going to take him up on it and go back home. I’ll return to Paris eventually. Maybe when Adrien starts treating me with more respect.
When I get to the airport, I hurry into the line to buy a ticket for New York. Thankfully I packed my passport with me before I left home. I’ve never needed to use it before in my life.
I quickly get the ticket and head for the security line when I see him. Adrien. He’s storming inside the airport with two of his guards behind him.
I turn around so he can’t see me and make my way through the security line. Once I’ve done that, I rush to the nearest women’s bathroom and hunker inside. Surely Adrien will not find me in here.
But how in the world did he figure out I was coming here?
Unless… did he have eyes on me? Guards watching my every move? I shudder at the thought.
I have a few hours to kill before my flight so I decide to just wait in the bathroom. I check my phone to see that Adrien has tried calling me multiple times now.
Realistically, I know I’m being mean. Adrien doesn’t want me to die and he does have enemies that might want to hurt me. I’ve been used before by my family’s enemies. I know that I need to be careful.
But I just can’t help but rebel against Adrien for tying me to the bed and telling me what to do and tricking me into saying yes to a marriage when he didn’t give me the full information of who he is.
I wait an entire hour in the bathroom before I risk leaving it. At first, I don’t see anyone… but then I spy Adrien over by one of the gates, looking around. For me. He obviously bought a ticket just to come after me. He knows I’m returning to New York. Where else would I go?
There’s no point in trying to get on the plane. I know he’ll find me.
With a sigh, I walk over to him and when he sees me, his eyes turn dark. But not in the dark way when he looked at me with lust. No, in a purely angry way.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hisses, coming over to me.
“I just wanted to see my family again.”
“You were the one who wanted an adventure. To get away from them.”
“I know. But now I miss them and you’re the one keeping me locked away. You’re the one keeping me from an adventure.”
He grabs my arm. “Let’s go home and talk about this.”
“Talk?” I wrench away from him. “What is there to talk about? You never want to talk. You don’t want to share what you’re feeling. You don’t want to let me in. That’s the problem. Just let me in, Adrien. If you did, I wouldn’t want to get away from you.”
“You’re causing a scene.”
“Then I’ll cause a scene!” I scream, drawing more eyes onto us.
A security guard comes over and asks us if everything is all right.
“Everything is fine,” Adrien tells him. “My wife and I are just having an argument.”
“Are you all right?” the guard asks me.
I could tell him that I need help. That Adrien is keeping me hostage.
But if I do that, I’ll return home to be kept locked away in Mikhail’s house for the rest of my life. It was foolish of me to think I could return home.
I decided to live my life with Adrien. I made my bed and now I need to lie in it.
“Yes,” I say. “Everything is all right. Let’s go.”
Adrien walks right beside me, not giving me any chance to run away if I wanted to, as we leave the airport.
His guard drives us home. It’s tense between me and Adrien in the back seat. Both of us are radiating anger. Why can’t we get on the same page? We’re not even in the same book.
When we return home, Adrien doesn’t even look at me as he heads into his office and slams the door behind him.
But there’s one thing I need to know. I storm into his office. “How did you know where I was? You found me fast.”
“I have cameras installed around the perimeter of the house to keep out my enemies. I caught you leaving. Again. I was curious where you were going so I followed you. Saw you get into some stranger’s car and then saw you get dropped off at the airport.”
“It was an Uber.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was still a stranger’s car.”
I cross my arms. “Adrien, do you care for me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you don’t want me to get hurt. Do you care for me because of me? Or do you care for me because you don’t want to ruin your precious alliance with my brothers-in-law?”
“Can it be both?”
“Is it both?”
He sighs and drops into his seat. “You confuse me. I don’t want to risk my alliance with them.
Yes. I will do everything in my power to protect that.
But do I want to see you get tortured and killed by my enemies?
No. Of course not. I don’t want to see you get hurt just because you annoy the shit out of me. ”
His admission makes me drop my arms and stand up straighter. “Oh.”
“You sound surprised by that.”
“I just thought you only wanted me for sex.”
“I do want to have sex. But I don’t want to see you die, Anastasia. I’m not completely heartless.”
“You just don’t believe in love.”
He averts his gaze. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
I slam my hands onto his desk. “Then tell me.”
His eyes find mine and they slowly soften. For a moment, I think he’s going to tell me everything… until his expression closes off again and he turns away from me. “Because of your impromptu trip to the airport, I’m behind on work. You should go. And don’t leave again. It’s not safe out there.”
“I’m tired of being –,”
“A prisoner. I know. But for now, you have to be one until things are safe.”
“Will things ever be safe?”
He hesitates and that tells me everything I need to know.
“So, I’ve traded one gilded cage for another.” I storm out of his office and can feel his eyes on me the entire way out.
I am going to get an adventure for myself, sooner or later. Even if it kills me.
Adrien
God, Anastasia is a wild woman. Stubborn and reckless but also passionate. I can see it in the way she talks. If I let myself, I could give her my heart. But if I did that and then lost her…
My phone buzzes. A text from one of my men. He tells me that Remy sent him pictures and he’s sending them to me now.
The pictures show up on my phone. They’re of me and… Anastasia. At the airport together. A caption underneath the pictures reads: I know who your wife is now .
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Remy knows who Anastasia is. That is going to put her in even more danger, meaning she really won’t be allowed to leave the house anytime soon.
This just complicated things further.