Page 15 of Vienna Bliss

Alena flinched.

“You asked me, that first night, after I used you. After I treated you like a sex toy instead of a person.” Alexander pushed to his feet.

“We don’t need to talk about this,” Alena said quietly.

“We do.”

“Half the time you won’t give more than one word answers but this you want to talk about?”

Alexander pressed on, masochistically forcing a conversation that he knew would hurt. “You asked if there was anything you could have said to stop me, and I didn’t answer you.”

“Because you were angry with me. Understandably.”

“The fact that you think that justifies my behavior proves my point.”

“And what is your point, Alexander?” Her words cracked out, echoing off the water. When she blinked, a tear fell. “That I’m a sick and twisted masochist? Yes, fine, I admit that.”

“My point is you don’t really love me, or trust me.”

“Fuck you for trying to tell me how I feel.”

“I fucked you, Alena. Not just physically. Mentally. I broke you and now—”

“Yesterday you insisted I broke you.”

“—you think you feel something for me, but it’s not real. Some part of you is still thinking of me as your Dom. As your Master.”

Alena slapped him. He saw it coming but didn’t try to stop it. His cheek stung, and the sound bounced off the water, echoing back at him like a laugh.

“There’s your proof that everything you just said is bullshit,” Alena snarled.

He sighed and rolled his head on his shoulders as if that would ease the weight of the resignation he felt.

“Alena…why haven’t you asked me to unlock the collar?”

She recoiled as if he’d hit her. She reached up and pressed one hand against the leather…protectively?

Alexander reached into his pocket.

“Alexander,” she countered, “why haven’t you removed it?”

He took the key from his pocket and tossed it down onto the blanket.

Then he turned and walked away without answering her question. It wasn’t that he didn’t know the answer. He did.

He hadn’t taken off the collar because he liked seeing it on her. The crude leather was unbecoming. She needed something intricate and beautiful, befitting a captured queen.

He hadn’t taken off the collar because what he’d realized in Vienna was true. He was in love with her. Even when he’d been so angry he feared what he would do to her, he’d known that some part of him still loved her, despite the betrayal.

The truth had only made him love her more. After all, what sort of mad, fearless, wonderful woman would concoct this sort of plan? He’d been able to repress the truth of his love for her when there had been a possibility she was a spy or terrorist. Now the tables had turned, and though she’d used him and stolen from him, she was on the side of the angels. She was the good guy, and he was the monster who kidnapped her, isolated her, beaten her, and finally had sex with her, even after promising them both he wouldn’t.

Given time and space, Alena would snap out of it. Her feelings were a byproduct of BDSM and her status as his captive—a submissive with Stockholm syndrome.

Once she left here, she would no longer love him.

But Alexander feared that he would love her until the day he died.

Chapter 4