Chapter Nine

 

Day two…

SERGEI

Willow sits in the living room, staring at the enormous sparkling ring on her finger. She doesn’t have the look that a normal newly engaged woman does – the look of joy and excitement.

She’s got the look of an angry condemned prisoner.

That’s okay. We’re not a normal couple. I am a man who doesn’t ask, he takes. I am dealing out good instead of evil for the first time in my life, but some things don’t change. I was born to conquer, and Willow is the sweetest prize of all.

Willow is fighting this every step of the way, and I expected her to. I love her inner fire. She makes herself into a battle worth winning.

She’ll come around, the way she always does. She’s still hurt, still angry, and it will take a while for her to be able to trust me, but I know that she loves me. And I know that no other man would ever satisfy her, love her or protect her like I will.

So what if she thinks she doesn’t want to marry me? I don’t care at all. I’m giving her what she needs, not what she wants.

This morning, before breakfast, when I presented her with the engagement ring, I didn’t say, “Will you marry me”? Because I knew what the answer would be. Instead, I gave her a different choice.

I told her that she would either be wearing a ring on her finger, or she’d be wearing one on her pussy. I would have her strapped down, legs spread out, and her clitoral hood pierced, if she ever took my ring off. And I gave her five seconds to get that ring on her finger.

The look she gave me would have burned the skin off a lesser man. I just stood there, basking in the warmth of her rage, and after she put the ring on her finger, I bent her over the dining room table and knelt down behind her. I tortured her with my tongue and my fingers, taking her to the brink and then pulling back, until she cried and begged me to take her.

Her sweet pleas are my oxygen. My meat and drink. How can she be foolish enough to think I could ever live without them?

When she’d begged enough, I fucked her so hard that the vases on the table fell over, and she screamed my name, pleading with me to go even harder.

After breakfast, I bring in a makeup artist and hairdresser, and I have her styled like a Vogue model and dressed in a floor-length Baliencega gown. Her eyes are smoky, her lips pink and glossy, and her hair is styled in shining waves.

I put on a tuxedo and march her into the drawing room, where a photographer is waiting to take our engagement pictures.

“Got anything to say, sweetheart?” I taunt her, and she stabs me with a murderous gaze.

“I’ll just let you do all the talking, since you know everything,” she says, through gritted teeth.

We spend half an hour posing for pictures. I have one of my men take some pictures with a cell phone so we’ll have them right away. After the photographer leaves, I take Willow into the drawing room, hand her my cell phone, and make her send the pictures to her aunt and, for good measure, to Darya and Ludmilla.

Since she was a good girl, aside from pouting and glaring when she thought I wasn’t looking, I let her call Darya, although I’m standing behind her chair and hovering over her the whole time.

I listen to her silly gossip for a few minutes as the two of them chat about St. Petersburg, about Darya’s new apartment, about how Darya loves her new job and feels like she’s finally doing something worthwhile with her life. Darya is now a paid intern, being trained in multi-media journalism, creating video presentations for Reforma’s website. In a year they’ll put her on staff. I’m financing it.

Willow, ever the sweetheart, begs Darya to send a text to her car mechanic friend, even if it’s just to let him down gently. Darya promises to think about it. So much sweetness between these two women, it could rot my teeth. All this caring about feelings. It’s moments like this that remind me that I’ll never really know what it is to be human. Being with Willow is as close as I get to experiencing normal human emotions.

As Willow talks, I drop my hands to her shoulders and begin massaging them. Then I bend down and bite her neck, making her gasp.

“Oh, it’s nothing!” she cries out to Darya. “I just spilled my drink on my lap.” She tries to stand up, but I press down on her shoulders, holding her down, and I bend down again, nibbling her ear. Willow quickly says goodbye to Darya.

When Willow hangs up, I smile at her. “See what a nice guy I am? Helping out your friends like that?”

She twists around and singes me with a look. “Your dictionary must have a different definition of the word ‘nice’ than mine does.” Her beautiful face is set in an angry mask. “I’m happy Darya is doing well. I’m happy for her that she gets to choose what she wants to do with her life. I wish I had that for myself.”

I reply with a cool smile. “Oh, ouch. Your words hurt me so deeply. In fact, I’ve changed my mind, you’re free to go.”

“Really,” she says, not taking the bait.

“Well, you’re free to go change back into your regular clothes. I’ve got some work to do.”

She’s muttering rebelliously as she walks away, but I just smile and let her have that. Let her think that she’s got some control over her own destiny. I’ll have so much fun proving her wrong.

* * *

Days three and four…

Willow moves stiffly through the house, refusing to meet my gaze, only speaking when spoken to. She does her best to avoid me; she goes into areas of the house where she thinks I won’t find her, like the kitchen, and hangs out there, reading, until I come get her.

She hasn’t looked at the stacks of wedding magazines I bought for her. Yes, when I take her to bed, she still comes for me. She more than comes. She cries, she begs for it, she crawls across the bed on command and takes my cock into her mouth. And afterwards, she lets me gather her in my arms and pull her to me, crushing her against my body. She falls asleep in my arms, her breaths deep and even.

But when we’re not having sex, she’s angry and sullen, and she’s so damn stubborn I can see her doing this right up to our wedding day. I could threaten to beat her ass, but we both know that’s more pleasure than punishment for her, unless I really hurt her, which I don’t want to do.

Finally, I offer to let her leave the house on one condition – she has to agree to have another GPS tracker put in.

And of course she can only leave with me, under armed guard. That last part is as much to keep her alive as it is to keep her from running.

She agrees, with a lot of muttered cursing and resentful looks.

On day five, once she’s had the tracker put in, we head out to the Brick Market to go shopping. It’s located at the former brick factory, which shuttered its doors ten years ago. When the brick factory went out of business, it threw Pevlovagrad’s economy into a tailspin, which is why it was so easy for slime like Willow’s father and uncle, and Cataha, to move in and start their trafficking businesses.

I offered to take her to a high-end department store, but she asked to go to the Brick Market instead. There are hundreds of little stalls there where people sell everything from dishware to vegetables to clothing. That’s just like her. She wants the money to go to the housewives who eke out a living selling scraps, and she’d rather buy used clothing from a little stall, even though she knows I’d fill her closet with designer clothing.

Before we leave I remind her not to try to run away. “I own this town,” I tell her. “There would be no point.”

She tries to punish me by ignoring my presence and staring out the car window as we drive. That’s fine; it gives me time to do some work on my laptop. I’m still running my legitimate business, including a shipping company and several construction companies, at the same time I’m working with the police chief to flush out and destroy Cataha.

It’s a weekend, and the market is bustling with bargain-hunters. There are booths selling electronics, dishware, books, sheets, furniture. There is a section dedicated to Soviet memorabilia.

First Willow buys sets of Matryoshka nesting dolls to send to Yuri and Helenka. Then we shop at a stall where they sell traditionally painted Khokloma jars and bowls and table-ware, red and black and gold.

Then Willow has to buy baby clothes for Jasha and Anastasia. After a couple of hours, my butler is laden down with shopping bags. We’re just like a normal wealthy couple shopping on a weekend. Except we’re anything but that.

But it seems as if this shopping trip is good for her. When she’s chatting with the vendors, in excellent Russian with barely a trace of an American accent, the anger and bitterness starts to fade. Her eyes are alight with happiness. I feel the tightness inside me uncoil a little. I want her to look like that all the time.

I am the one who painted that haunted expression on her beautiful face, and it is up to me, my new life’s mission, to take it away.

Wanting her to feel free, to be happier, I make the mistake of letting Willow do a little shopping on her own – with my guards trailing ten yards behind her for safety, of course.

Then a stall keeper sidles up to me. He tells me that Willow secretly offered him money to buy a cell phone. I shake my head in frustration.

This again? How the hell does she think having a phone would help her?

I grab her by the arm and march her towards our car, with our guards closing around us.

“Nice job trying to buy a cell phone,” I snap at her.

She doesn’t look the least bit abashed.

“Which time?” She meets my gaze defiantly.

Oh, no. My woman does not speak to me like this. She may be as stubborn as a team of mules, but she’s not unbreakable. No one is.

“I’ve been going much too easy on you. That ends now,” I snap at her.

I don’t even bother to lower my voice.

I’m seriously pissed off that she’s trying to escape after I warned her not to. Why is she being such a stubborn fool? Going behind my back like this just makes me look bad.

She is my fiancée, soon to be my wife, and I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior. When we get home, her punishment won’t end in orgasms. It will end in screams.

“So literally everybody in this town is in your pocket.” Her tone is disgusted as I shove her into the car.

I settle in next to her. “You see this marketplace, all the people here? That’s all because of me, which means I provide a living for hundreds of people. I paid to promote it, I took it from nothing to success in just a few months. People here are loyal to me because their livelihood depends on it.”

“You’re such a philanthropist. Really, I feel honored to know you.”

“Keep talking,” I growl at her. “You’re digging your own grave with your mouth.”