Chapter 8 #2
Something inside my chest folds in on itself as I read the terms a second time, slower now, letting the reality of this poor woman’s future settle into my bones.
This is what marriage means in this world.
Not love or partnership but transactions conducted between consenting adults who have decided that loneliness is worse than selling pieces of themselves to the highest bidder.
My stomach turns as I read through the provisions for dissolution, the clauses about discretion, the addendum specifying that romantic attachment is neither expected nor desired by either party.
Is a version of this what Rafael has planned for me? Am I just another column in another contract, my value measured in the heir I can produce and the leverage my last name provides?
I close the files with trembling fingers and leave his office with the taste of ash coating the back of my throat, because the girl I used to be still believes in love stories, and that girl is getting harder to protect with every contract I uncover in this beautiful, cold empire.
I press my palm against my churning stomach. I always knew that marriage in my world was more transaction than romance, but seeing it laid out in black and white, reduced to bullet points and signature lines, makes something inside me crack.
I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved. To love someone in return. Stupid, childish dreams that have no place in the life I was born into.
By the afternoon the walls are closing in. The sun calls to me through the windows, and I escape the office before I can find anything else that breaks my heart.
I find a swimsuit in the closet, a sleek black one-piece that does nothing to cover my scars, but the pool man isn’t due yet nor is the maid. I look at the clock. If they stick to their schedule, I have an hour all to myself.
The summer sun is warm against my skin as I settle onto a lounger on the private terrace.
The terrace wraps around the south side of the building, complete with an infinity pool that seems to pour directly into the sky and enough greenery to make you forget you are thirty-two stories above the city.
The Chicago summer heat soaks into my skin and feels like forgiveness, like something soft and unearned pressing against the tension I have been carrying since the night my father sold me.
I close my eyes and let the warmth do what it will and for the first time in two weeks my shoulders drop from where they have been living near my ears.
I could leave. The thought surfaces like it does every afternoon, quiet and persistent and entirely without a plan.
I could wait for the elevator when the security rotation shifts, walk through the lobby, and disappear into the city.
I know how to slip through cracks. I have been mapping exits my entire life.
But Magnus is out there, and men like Magnus do not accept losing what they believe is theirs. My father would hand me back the moment I surfaced. I have no money, no resources, no allies who are not attached to someone else’s agenda.
I am not staying because I cannot leave.
I am staying because the devil I am sleeping next to is the safest option I have.
And maybe because in the darkest hours of the night when he wraps himself around me and breathes my name into my hair, I feel something I have not felt in as long as I can remember.
Wanted. Not for what I can give. Just wanted.
Maybe Rafael is as lonely as I am.
The poolman and the maid come and go. I skip dinner because my stomach has been living on anxiety for so long that hunger has become background noise.
I shower again to wash away the chlorine from the small pool and the sweat from the sun, then dress in a light robe and curl up on the couch with a book I can't focus on.
The words blur together as the afternoon fades into evening, and eventually I give up and go to bed, my body heavy with an exhaustion that has nothing to do with physical exertion.
By the time I climb into bed, the penthouse is so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
I'm drifting in the space between sleep and waking when I feel the mattress dip beside me.
Rafael's scent reaches me first—cedar and smoke and something clean, like he's freshly showered.
His arm slides around my waist, pulling me back against his chest with a familiarity that makes my breath catch, and I feel the hard length of him pressing against my ass through the thin silk of my nightgown.
Two weeks of this. Two weeks of being held and wanted and utterly untouched.
I try to turn in his arms, desperate to see his face, to understand what's happening between us, but his grip tightens and his lips brush against my ear.
His arm tightens. “Give me one more night of holding you like this.” His voice is a low rasp against my ear, rough with something that sounds like it hurts. “Just one more night.”
“Okay,” I whisper. The request is so unexpected, so unlike the commanding man who crashed my wedding and claimed me as his prize, that I find myself nodding before I can think better of it.
His nose traces the line of my neck and he inhales deeply. “You smell of sunbeams and light,” he murmurs, and the words are so tender from a man whose hands have held guns and signed death warrants that my eyes sting with tears I refuse to let fall.
The last thing I feel before sleep takes me is the brush of his lips against my shoulder and the pressure of his arm holding me like he is afraid I will disappear.
When I wake, the bed is empty. But on the nightstand there is a single red rose and a note in angular, confident handwriting. I sit up and reach for the paper with fingers that tremble despite my best efforts to remain unmoved.
I will be home late this evening. I owe you a conversation.
Beside the note sits a velvet box and a sleek new cell phone. I open the box first and find a pair of diamond earrings that probably cost more than my college education. I move them this way and that, the stones catching the morning light and throwing tiny rainbows across the sheets.
I set them aside without putting them on and pick up the phone instead.
There's only one number programmed into the contacts, and I don't need to guess who it belongs to. My thumb hovers over the call button for a long moment before I press it, bringing the phone to my ear as it rings once, twice...
He picks up on the third ring. “Good morning, little dove.”
“Thank you for the rose.”
A warm pause. “A gift for a gift.”
“Ah. So there are strings attached. Okay. What do you want in return for the rose?”
“A picture. Something to carry me through this tedious day.”
Heat creeps up my neck. “What kind of picture?”
“You, right now, in my bed.” His voice drops to something lower, more intimate.
The request sends heat flooding through my body, pooling low in my belly where it has no business being. I should refuse. I should hang up and throw the phone across the room and demand to be treated like a person instead of a possession.
“I want to see what I'm missing while I'm stuck in meetings all day.”
I lean back against the pillows and before I can talk myself out of it, I reach up and trace the tips of my fingers over the swell of my breasts through the thin silk.
My nipples tighten under my touch, responding to the memory of Rafael's heated gaze tracking over my body in his office two weeks ago, and I roll the sensitive peaks between my fingers until they are stiff and visible through the nightgown.
I angle the camera, capture the mess of violet hair across white pillows and the evidence of my arousal straining against silk, and hit send.
Thirty seconds pass. Then a text.
Good girl.
I stare at the screen, heat crawling up my neck and spreading across my cheeks.
Those two words shouldn't affect me like this.
They shouldn't make my thighs clench together or my heart race or my breath come faster.
But they do, and I don't know what that says about me or what I'm becoming in this man's orbit.
I shower and dress, telling myself that if I’m quick I can step outside for some fresh air.
The clothes he left for me are beautiful—a flowing skirt in soft cream, a summery blouse that leaves my arms bare, sandals that probably cost more than my first car.
I grab one of his shirts, roll the sleeves and tie it at the waist. It’s a cute summer fit that leave me feeling less exposed.
I braid my violet hair and apply minimal makeup, trying to look like a woman who has her life together instead of one who's slowly losing her mind in a penthouse prison.
I'm done being held in some tower like my life is on hold, waiting for someone else to decide what to do with it.
My fingers fly across the phone screen before I can stop myself, typing out a message that's equal parts frustration and desperation.
I can't keep living like this. I need answers. I need to know what happens next.
His response comes faster than I expect.
We'll speak tonight.
You said that three nights ago.
A pause. Then:
I granted a wish. Your wish stated you would do anything. If my payment is you in my penthouse until I say, then so be it.