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“He’s tired of her, anyway. He didn’t fuck her last night, did he?”
They all knew, of course. I hadn’t really had any illusions on that score: in a house like this one, all the servants knew everything. Still, the fact of it, the way the girl had just casually said it as if it couldn’t be more obvious, sent a blade of ice into my chest. I stared down at my hands, at the redness of them in the hot water as I used the steel wool to try to get dried egg off a sauté pan.
The second girl didn’t let it go. I could hear in her voice the kind of reluctant and embarrassing, but also inescapable, fascination I knew so well from my own involuntary thoughts and feelings. Every bit of compassion I might have had for her was driven away, though, by her words, as the two walked away toward the door to the dining room.
“I think Pyotr will whip her and fuck her tonight. You saw his face when he told Anya to be strict. Do you think he’ll make us watch?”
* * *
He did make them watch when, at the end of the day, he fulfilled the server’s prediction.
I had managed to stay out of the butler’s way for most of the day, sometimes hiding in my room, sometimes helping the maids tidy a room, conveying to them with gestures that despite my enforced nudity and my lack of Russian I could help with the dusting. One of the nicer ones even brought me two rolls to eat, sneaking them to me under her apron.
Before supper, though, Pyotr found me just as I was slipping out of my bedroom door to go to the kitchen in hope of quietly making my way to the sink again.
“Whore,” he said in his loathsome English, “Anya tells me you did a bad job. You will be whipped in the dining room after supper. You will be displayed during the meal.”
I wanted to remain stoic and to give him no satisfaction at all, but I knew my remaining hope of fulfilling my mission lay in appeasing Pyotr. I couldn’t truly please him, I felt certain. At any rate, though, I had to give him the twisted enjoyment of dominating me in his loathsome way. If I could persuade him that his version of the true mastery Ivan knew how to exercise represented real control, I might have the chance to get close enough to my owner at least to take the slim hope of a way out, a last, too-risky resort—not killing Ivan, because I knew I couldn’t do that, but somehow kidnapping him and calling the Guard to come get us.
All of that involved giving Pyotr what he wanted, so that I had at least the possibility of seeing Ivan again. I told myself, as I let my face pucker into a sob, that I was pretending—acting the part of the terrified bed girl for the butler’s benefit. Really, I felt precisely what the horrible man clearly hoped I would: fear, humiliation, and helpless need.
“Displayed?” I asked in a pitiful voice, genuinely mystified as to what the butler meant.
“You will see,” he replied coldly, and pointed down the hall toward the dining hall.
I hadn’t ever noticed the bench in the corner of the big, high-ceilinged room where Ivan’s henchmen usually had their meals, and where Ivan presided over a supper once a month. I had spent very little time there, because I usually ate alone in the kitchen or in Ivan’s private dining room. As two men carried the thing to the center of the room, amidst the long tables that formed a large square, though, I understood just as Pyotr had said I would.
It had a padded leather top, and it was graced with straps that had the very clear purpose of binding a woman in place with legs spread and backside raised, restrained at wrists, knees, and waist. They placed the bench so that the men at the head table, where of course the butler himself sat, would have the most intimate possible view of me as they ate.
“There,” Pyotr said simply, pointing to the horrid thing. “You blush so prettily, whore, but you have no real shame, do you? Let us see if we can teach you some.”
CHAPTER16
Ivan
I had no intention of intervening in Pyotr’s fun. I had come back from an extremely unpleasant meeting with Boris Belkonov, the head of my energy business. To my dismay and disgust, I had had to threaten the greedy asshole’s life.
Putting a gun to Boris’ temple had saddened me as much as angered me, but I hadn’t seen another way. I detested the man despite the appearance to the world at large that he was a trusted lieutenant. I hadn’t reallymindedscaring him to ensure he would keep the power on for the families in the Eastern district who needed help with their electric bills. Having to make that kind of threat, though, while my bodyguard did the usual and held Boris upside down by his ankles, had reminded me of everything I didn’t want to think about.
Namely, the huge distance between what my life had become and what I had wanted it to be.
And, since she represented the most important and most urgent symbol of that distance, Heather Foster.
The fuck toy I had fallen in love with. Despite everything, including the wand that gave me such complete control over her that she couldn’t possibly feel the same way I did.
I sat in my study, willing myself not to turn on the video feed from the dining room. That frankly seemed like the easy part. The hard part was not thinking about Heather—not the sex, not the way her submission fed my dominant hunger to a fever pitch I had never experienced before. Rather her smile, and the way she looked when dressed in evening wear, and how her face lit up when she talked about helping the people in my district.
Fuck, I thought,I wouldn’t have held a gun to Belkonov’s head if Heather hadn’t made me realize how much I want to take care of the families whose lives I hold in my hand.
How much I want to take care ofher, for trying to bring out something in me other than the iron-fisted warlord.
I couldn’t relax that iron fist, though. The men who ‘helped’ me run my little empire had none of the higher ideals Heather had so astonishingly uncovered in me. I had risen to this position because I had had no choice, really: Viktor Chemin, my predecessor, had given his minions two options—rise or die.
I had risen. Until Heather had come into my life, I hadn’t even realized why. I had risen, it seemed entirely obvious to me now, because of my empathy. I had had the uncanny ability to know precisely what Chemin wanted, almost before he wanted it. Because, over and over, what Chemin wanted put me in situations where I had to kill or be killed, I gained the reputation for violence that had perversely endeared me to my boss.
I couldn’t escape, and because I couldn’t escape I couldn’t fall in love with any girl, no matter how enchanting, submissive, or lovely she might be. Worse—much worse—in getting rid of her I had to deliver Heather visibly into the clutches of others. I had to show anyone looking that they couldn’t get to me through the American girl I had seemed to find too bewitching.
Giving her to Pyotr, as much of an ordeal as it would be for her, would at least spare her the dangerous cruelty of one of my other henchmen. The butler liked to show his power in the palace, but he knew I wouldn’t tolerate it if any actual harm should come to Heather.
