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Chapter 14
He lets me luxuriate in the uncomfortable reality of being his doll. For the most part, it’s rather boring, no different from my life with Robert. In short, I’m left alone to rot in a room I can’t explore, utterly at his mercy.
Are physical limitations so different from mental ones?
I’m not brave enough to decide on an answer, and approaching footsteps draw my attention, giving me a small reprieve.
Vanya enters the room, carrying a tray between his hands. Another bowl of soup and a thin slice of bread. After perching himself on the end of my side of the bed, he feeds me slowly. All without a word.
Even though there’s something he wants to say.
I can practically see the words straining in his throat, fighting to lurch off the end of his tongue. In the end, he pats the blankets covering me and leaves.
As he fades into the shadow beyond the doorway, I know exactly what he left unsaid. He wanted to warn me.
Of all of his whispered insights into Mischa, one rings the loudest in my memory.“If he thinks you’re worth having, he will never let you go.”
If only it were me he really wants. I’m an expert at selling myself. Molding myself. Suppressing myself. I’ve done it for years under the watchful possession of Robert. Hell, if my life was reversed, I might do it all over again. It’s easy to sacrifice that which you’ve never really had in the first place.
From the day I was born, I was always a burden, forced to hide. Pretend. Submit.
But Mischa… He wants something else. Something more than anyone has ever demanded of me before. Something raw and unguarded, found in the sleep he wrings from me. Something I can’t change, or morph, or control.
I think he wants my soul.
Not to keep, but to break—right between the rough, callused fingertips that graze my forehead, rousing me from a fitful sleep.
It’s darker in the room now. Not quite night, but close. My stomach rumbles, though not from hunger. Just an uneasy apprehension of the unknown.
He switches a light on. With his back to me, he starts to pace. Then he lifts his shirt over his head and tosses it onto the floor. I hear the zipper of his jeans come undone next.
And I’m breathless, gulping at the thinning air. It never ceases to amaze me just how beautiful he is—or what some might call him anyway. How rugged. He is scarred over and broken in so many places, I wonder if he remembers what the original flesh and bone look like. The marks of his brand gleam silver in the orange glow of a lamp. VII. They ripple with his every movement, proclaiming his place in the feud as he removes his pants one leg at a time and stands there only in a pair of gray boxers.
He waits as if to torment me, stretching out the seconds, ensuring I’m riveted for every torturous one. Eventually, he cocks his head, finding my position. It’s unfair how quickly he moves, denying me the chance to gather my senses or play my part by cowering. He’s lying beside me before I even remember to cringe beyond his reach. One of his hands grasps mine, forcing it to his chest.
At first, I think it’s a perverted mind game designed to test my reaction. But no. He wants me to feel. Ropey, jagged skin dips and curves beneath my fingertips. His wound from the day he delivered “Robert’s” ring.
“Your husband fought for you, Little Rose,” he tells me, his voice thicker than I’ve heard it. “He fought like hell for you. Enough to dirty his pretty little hands.” He grips mine roughly, unfolding every digit for his inspection. “Shall I tell you all of it? He offered to trade you for Briar—to give me better leverage with his father, you see. I didn’t think he was serious, but she was there…” He laughs brokenly, shaking his head. “But I refused. And he tried to kill me. We’ve met before, you know. I’ve baited him before. Taunted him before…” He trails off, lost in a thought I can’t stomach to consider.
Regardless, his words fester and stew within me. Robert fight for me? Never.
“He did,” Mischa challenges as if reading my mind. “That fucker was willing to die for his precious little wife. But I won, didn’t I, Little Rose? Even if I left his fucking life intact. I have you…”
My heart clenches before I even feel a telltale brush of warmth against my throat: his mouth, murmuring words there in a dangerous whisper. “I have you, don’t I? All of you. Even if you don’t want it.” He shifts, sliding one of his hands beneath my blankets, aiming for my inner thighs.
Weighed down by my cast, I can’t even move. I just stiffen as he finds me beneath my nightgown, inching higher with every strained breath I take.
“Even if you can’t admit it. I have you. I can keep you. Or I can kill you.”
Air wheezes from my lungs as he slides the ridge of his finger against me. Inside me. My heart churns uselessly as my chest tightens. The sensation of his touch works like an invisible vise, tightening. Smothering. Suffocating.
I pant. “M-Mischa—”
“He killed his father for you. Do you know that?”
My thoughts swim. My head feels heavy. Air becomes a scarcer commodity. Frantic, my fingers scrape at the blankets beside me. “Please—”
“The bastard never dared to stand against the old man before.” His voice is my only anchor as his touch grows bolder and my vision narrows. A gray haze shrouds everything but his face, half obscured against my breast, laughing at the dark irony. “I told him I strangled you,” he admits, sounding miles away.
