CHAPTER SEVEN
ALEXEI IS WATCHING me put on earrings.
He’s still in bed, propped against the headboard, tablet in hand, looking like the cover of a magazine that hasn’t been invented yet because no publication could afford the printing costs of his cheekbones, and he’s watching me in the vanity mirror with a focus that most people reserve for important documents.
“You’re staring,” I stammer.
“Yes.”
No denial. No embarrassment. Just a simple acknowledgment, as if being caught staring at his wife while she puts on earrings is a perfectly reasonable use of a prince’s time.
“Don’t you have a multinational preter corporation to run?”
“It can wait.”
I try to fight the smile. I lose. It spreads across my face like sunrise, and I watch it happen in the mirror, and I barely recognize the woman looking back at me because she looks.
..happy. Not performing-happy. Not convincing-herself-happy.
Just happy, in the quiet, unshowy way that doesn’t need an audience.
A week ago I couldn’t find my toothbrush on the first morning and nearly had a meltdown in the bathroom because I didn’t know which drawers were mine and I was afraid to open the wrong one in case it contained irreplaceable personal items and I accidentally disrespected an Atlantean heirloom.
I stood there in his shirt, hair a disaster, mouth tasting like sleep, and when I finally opened a drawer at random, there was a toothbrush. New. Still in the packaging. My brand.
He’d bought it before the wedding.
He’d thought about my teeth before I’d thought about my teeth, and that’s the detail that would sound absurd if I told anyone but is actually the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me.
From the kitchen, I can hear Mariano hissing.
Mariano is the fortress espresso machine.
Chrome-and-steel, Italian, personally temperamental.
I discovered him on our second morning and a relationship formed immediately, because apparently I can’t coexist with a coffee machine without naming it and developing an emotional bond.
Back at Beans 4 U it was Barbara, the espresso machine I used to plead with every morning.
“Come on, Barbara, I know you can do better than this. I believe in you.” And when she finally cooperated, I’d thank her, genuinely, like she’d done me a personal favor.
Mariano is the same, except louder and more dramatic, because he’s Italian.
Every morning I stand in the kitchen in bare feet and one of Alexei’s shirts and have a conversation with Mariano that involves a lot of gentle encouragement and occasional begging.
“Please, Mariano. I pressed the button. I did everything right. Why are you doing this to me?” And when he finally produces coffee, I thank him profusely and tell him I never doubted him, which is a lie, but he doesn’t need to know that.
Alexei watches this every morning. He leans against the doorframe and watches me negotiate with the espresso machine with a look on his face that I can’t quite read but that makes my stomach flip.
I finish with the earrings and stand up, and Alexei sets his tablet down and gets out of bed, and the sight of him, barefoot, in sleep pants, his hair still messy, his chest bare, makes my brain short-circuit for a second because some part of me still can’t process that this is real.
That I get to see this. The private Alexei.
The one without the suit and the composure and the layers of aristocratic armor.
The one who reads airport thrillers at 2 a.m. because he can see in the dark and has a weakness for plot twists.
He crosses the room and stops in front of me, and his fingers find my collar. He adjusts it. A small movement, straightening the fabric, smoothing a fold I didn’t even notice, and it’s such a domestic, husbandly thing to do that my chest aches.
“There,” he says quietly.
I rise on my toes and kiss the corner of his jaw, because I can.
Because I’m his wife and I’m allowed to kiss him whenever I want, and that privilege, the intoxicating, still-surreal privilege of being able to touch the Prince of Atlantis like he’s just a man, is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.
He catches me before I can pull away. His hand curves around the back of my neck, and he kisses me properly, slow, thorough, a morning kiss that tastes like coffee and intention, and when he lets go, I’m breathless and my earrings were definitely a waste of time because my hair is now a lost cause.
“We’re going to be late,” I say against his mouth.
“I own the building.”
“That’s not...you can’t just...”
He kisses me again. This time I stop protesting.
We’re late.
Ruby says nothing when we arrive. Her silence is eloquent.
The car ride to work is something I never expected to love, but I do.
It’s twenty minutes of contained, private space where the world outside the tinted windows doesn’t exist and the man driving has his hand on my knee.
Just resting there. Warm and possessive, making me feel claimed and cherished in equal measure.
This morning he’s driving. He does this sometimes, dismissing Gerry with a nod and taking the wheel himself, and there’s something about watching him drive, the casual competence, how his hands look on the steering wheel, the focused ease of it, that makes me understand on a visceral level why the internet has an entire subgenre of content dedicated to men driving with one hand.
His phone buzzes in the cupholder. He glances at it. “Ruby moved the three o’clock.”
My phone buzzes too.
I glance at it. Unknown number.
My thumb swipes the notification away before I’ve consciously decided to, and I lock the screen and set the phone back in my lap face-down.
The movement takes less than a second. It’s practiced now.
Automatic. I’ve been doing it for a week, swiping away messages from numbers I don’t recognize but know the source of, blocking them, deleting them, pretending they don’t exist.
Alexei’s eyes are on the road.
He didn’t see.
Good.
The office is different now, my relationship to it shifting in ways that still catch me off guard.
I’m no longer the quiet girl on the fourteenth floor who eats onigiri at her desk.
I’m the Prince of Atlantis’s wife, which means doors are held and greetings are warmer and the colleagues who once whispered about “the human on the design team” now smile at me with a brightness that I’m choosing to believe is genuine.
Kirsten treats me exactly the same, which I love her for.
Trish texts me seventeen times before noon, which I also love her for.
Trish: Did he do the collar thing again this morning
Me: How do you know about the collar thing
Trish: You told me about it on Tuesday and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The man adjusts your COLLAR Zia. That’s peak husband behavior. My man sends me anonymous bento boxes which is also very romantic but he has never adjusted my collar and now I need him to
Me: I’m sure if you asked...
Trish: You can’t ASK someone to adjust your collar. It has to be ORGANIC
And then, between Trish’s collar analysis and a notification from the design team Slack channel, a text from Maryah:
Maryah: Quick question. Does Alexei do the thing where he stands in a doorway and just watches you for an uncomfortable amount of time without saying anything?
Me: ...yes?
Maryah: Nicolo does it too. I think it’s an alpha male preter thing. They just stand there and OBSERVE you like you’re a nature documentary. You get used to it. Kind of.
I’m smiling at my screen when a notification slides down from the top.
Different number. Same area code.
I know you’re blocking me. I understand. But please, Zia. Just one conversation. That’s all I’m asking.
The smile fades.
I block the number. I delete the message. I go back to Trish’s texts and type something about collar etiquette that makes her send back a string of capital letters.
The shadow passes.
At 11:45 my phone lights up with a name that still makes my heart flip, even after a week of seeing it: Alexei.
Just seeing it there, his name, on my phone, calling me, is surreal in a way I don’t think will ever fully normalize.
Seven weeks ago this man was a cryptid sighting.
Four glimpses in three months. A chest-flip I shut down so hard I gave myself emotional whiplash.
And now his name is on my phone and he’s calling to ask what I want for lunch.
“Hi,” I say, and my voice does that embarrassing soft thing it does when I answer his calls, the one Trish has described as “disgusting and I need you to do it louder so I can record it.”
“Come upstairs.”
Two words. Low. The particular register of his voice that I’m learning means he’s not asking about lunch.
I go upstairs.
His study door closes behind me, and his hands are on my waist before I’ve finished saying hello, and he lifts me onto the edge of his desk with a fluidity that should not be possible but is, and the sound I make when his mouth finds my neck is not appropriate for a professional environment.
“We’re at work,” I whisper.
“I own the building.”
“You can’t keep using that as an excuse for...”
His mouth moves to my collarbone, and I forget what I was objecting to.
His hands slide up my thighs, and my fingers are in his hair, and the desk is cold beneath me but his body is warm against me, and somewhere between his lips on my skin and his whispered “Zia” against my shoulder, the world outside this room ceases to exist.
After, when my blouse is retucked and my hair is re-pinned and I’m fairly certain the flush on my cheeks is going to announce to the entire fourteenth floor exactly what happened on the executive level, he holds the study door open for me and says, with composure that borders on offensive: “I’ll have Ruby send lunch down. ”
Like the last twenty minutes were a meeting that went well.