Not just someone. Him.
Do I want him to be good in bed? That is actually the key question. Not whether or not he is. But do I want to derive any pleasure from the union at all?
My disinterest in the topic won’t help me. Because he’s intent on having children with me.
“Are you all right?” Allison asks me.
“I have been significantly better,” I respond.
“Should I choose the dress for you?”
While I end up adding several pieces in green and blue to my wardrobe, the dress that she chooses for the night of the wedding party is gold. It makes my skin look warm, my hair look more like honey, rather than a dull dishwater sort of color. And after that, I sit down with the stylist, who enhances all that gold, and eliminates the dishwater altogether.
I receive facial treatments that make me glow, and when I try everything on at the end, complete with makeup—left subtle at my request—I hardly recognize the woman in the mirror.
“Beauty,” Allison says, looking at me, “is often a reflection of effort. And money.”
“I was too poor to be beautiful before,” I quip.
“You were always beautiful,” she says. We’re friends now; I’m not quite sure how that happened. “This just makes it clear to everyone, before you had the kind of beauty that someone has to look for. I don’t mean that as a backhanded compliment. I just mean that people are always looking for something flashy. And that definitely wasn’t you. But it can be. You’re shimmering now.”
I’m completely uncomfortable with both the statement and with my appearance. And when she dresses me in a pair of extremely expensive jeans, and a white cashmere sweater, a simple gold bracelet and a necklace with a single string of diamonds all the way around, I am discomfited by how much I like what I see. Because it looks so simple, effortless. And yet I know how much effort went into it. Even the ponytail my hair is styled in is artful in a way that I’m not sure I could ever replicate.
Except, I don’t have to, because I can have my hair done every day if I want to. But I still can’t go to university. That’s an extremely strange realization.
“The king wishes to see you in your quarters.”
I turn and face the king’s aide, who is standing in the doorway, unable to hide the shock on his face when he sees me. Okay. I do look much improved.
It’s so strange to feel a small amount of pleasure in that, when I never cared before.
“All right,” I say, and I allow him to lead me from the room. I say goodbye to Allison, who I know I will see again, because I have no intention of ever choosing clothing again without her expertise.
A strange feeling of worry begins to chew its way through my stomach. Is this going to change me?
There’s already so much for me to grapple with that adding that to my list of concerns is something I really don’t want to do.
“We can take the elevator,” he says.
I laugh, but I don’t tell him why. Of course, Lucian seems opposed to the elevator.
Or at least, he doesn’t want me to be able to use it.
He’s such a strange man.
That’s a funny thought. But he is strange. He doesn’t behave like any other human being I’ve ever met. He also doesn’t behave quite like the monster I expected him to be. He is a creature entirely apart from any behavior I’ve ever witnessed before.
He is beautiful. Allison is right about that. It’s almost otherworldly, though. And yet, he touched me last night.
The response it created in my body was wholly foreign to me. I’ve experienced desire before, yes, or rather I would say I’ve experienced arousal. In the most basic, physiological sense. Always and only theoretical, and in the confines of fantasies that I am utterly in control of.
Men, I can solve like a puzzle. Men who make sense, like science.
Lucian is not like that.
When he put his hand on me I was so aware of how little control I have with him. The idea sends a shiver of dread down my spine. I tell myself that it’s dread. Because if it’s something else than…
No. I refuse to think about it.
