I wipe the steam from the mirror in the bathroom, hesitant to see the girl staring back at me. My face is puffy from crying. The whites of my eyes bloodshot. My skin is red from the scalding water of the bath and the subsequent scrubbing of the towel. It falls from my hand, and I stare at my naked form in the reflection.
The therapist Nikolai hired to fix me told me I should find something I love about myself every time I look in the mirror. But tonight, there is only hate. I hate every filthy thing about me. My hips are too big. The stomach that used to be concave is flat and squishy, and my ribs are suffocated beneath a layer of flesh that wasn’t there before. I’m soft in too many places, and I want to punish myself for allowing him to control me this way.
He made me ugly, so he wouldn’t want me, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting him. Mischa was right. There’s something wrong with me. There must be to want someone who is so bad for me. Someone who would throw me to the wolves without a second thought.
I did not think I had another tear to shed, but still they streak down my face. I have never cried so much in my life. My father would never have allowed me to be so weak. But I can feel it happening, and it’s out of my control. I’m splintering. Shattering. Fracturing. He’s taken away my power and left me only with pain.
I lock my hands into fists and yank on my hair. The hurt sometimes helps, but not this time. It only reminds me that I’m alive, and I am defenseless.
I walk from the bathroom, still naked, and listen for the sounds downstairs. I can’t hear anything, but I can imagine it well enough. The dinner party lives on, and Nikolai sits beside his soon-to-be beloved fiancée while I suffer in silence.
Fatigue seeps into my bones, and the divide in my heart grows with every passing day. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of hoping for a brighter future when there is none to be found. He can have his Russian wife. And when he tires of this game, I can finally have the only peace this world has to offer me.
Death.
Without bothering to dress, I open the bedroom door and walk down the hall to his office. This is the only place to find the cure for what ails me now. A bottle of cognac beckons from his desk. Probably expensive.
I swipe it and drift back to my room like an apparition. Unnoticed and unfelt. Laughter floats up from down below, and I cannot mistake that timbre. Nikolai is enjoying himself, and I think I should enjoy myself too.
The cognac opens with a satisfying pop, and I drink straight from the bottle. It burns my throat and eyes, and eventually my stomach too. But it’s a good burn. A burn that makes everything else fade away.
My party is cut disappointingly short when the door opens, and Mischa is standing there. His eyes move to the bottle in my hand, and then over my naked body.
In the back of my mind, there’s a small distant voice that tells me I should care. I’m supposed to be a good girl. I’m supposed to be proper and modest and reserved at all times. But tonight, Nikolai decided to make me filthy instead.
“Nakya.” Mischa frowns. “Don’t you know you should never drink alone?”
I collapse back against the pillows, the alcohol flooding my brain and my system. I don’t care anymore. And that’s what I tell him when I cross my legs and make a flippant gesture with my hand.
“Are you here to take me?”
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and sighs. “If not me, then someone else will. It has been ordered, and it must be done.”
“Because of my father,” I say.
“Because of your father,” he agrees.
He isn’t the worst looking guy in the world. In fact, right now, he is superior to Nikolai in every way. Because he is here, and Nikolai is not. Even if he doesn’t have the same imposing build or the electric blue eyes, he is a man. And I suppose if I’m to be ruined, I should be able to choose which man will do the job.
Anyone but Nikolai.
Anyone but the traitor downstairs.
“I want you to do it,” I tell Mischa. “I’m ready now.”
He sighs as though he’s already tired of this game but comes to sit beside me on the bed regardless. Admittedly, I feel like I’m going to throw up all over again. But maybe if I close my eyes, it will be over quickly, and I will have the last word.
The bottle is still clutched in my hands when I implore him to do it. Mischa’s eyes rake over me, and I think that he wants to. But for some reason, he still hesitates.
“I should speak to Nikolai first.”
“I don’t care what Nikolai says,” I insist. “I want you to do it.”
Mischa is still conflicted, but he disrobes anyway. He pries the cognac from my fingers, and my heart pulses in my throat. I have nothing else to do with my hands when he kneels on the bed before me.
He’s naked, and I can’t bring myself to really look at him.
“I’m just going to rest my eyes,” I whisper. “But it’s okay. I want you to do it.”
I hope that if I keep repeating the lie, it will be easier. But it doesn’t get easier when he leans down and tries to kiss my neck.
His scent is all wrong. His body is all wrong. And I can’t keep pretending that I want this when I don’t. So I disconnect and try to go to another place.
Nothing can hurt me if I’m not present.
It seems to work for a while. I can’t feel Mischa. I can’t feel anything. But my mental sanctuary is not as impenetrable as I had hoped. The sudden commotion ruins everything, and when I blink, he’s there in my vision. The devil. A monster who thinks he can take Mischa away from me.
“Give him back!” I demand.
Nikolai turns, his eyes flaying me open. “What did you just say?”
“Give him back,” I repeat. “I want it to be him.”
His hands lock into fists at his sides, and his nostrils flare as he stalks toward me. A voice tells me to run. Maybe it’s Mischa. Maybe it’s my own sanity, unraveling. But I run. Around the bed and straight past Mischa, down the hall. Nikolai gives chase.
There are only two places for me to go. His bedroom, or his office. Fear, not logic, is dictating my direction, so I choose his office. Locking the door behind me, I dart beneath his desk and try to catch control of my breath.
The lock turns, and hope abandons me.
I’m curled into myself, gasping for breath when he bends down to meet my eyes. His are cold and possessive. Cruel and mocking.
“What now, zvezda? Where will you run to now?”
I don’t answer him, so he snatches me by the wrist and yanks me away from my hiding place.
“Please,” I whisper.
He drags me back down the hall without mercy. “Save your begging for all the men who will come after me.”
A sob heaves from my chest at the viciousness of his words. He can’t mean them. I don’t want to believe he means them. He is angry with me for choosing Mischa. I know that’s what it is.
“I never wanted him. I swear it. I just wanted to get it over with.”
“Tell him that,” Nikolai demands as he tosses me back onto the bed.
Mischa is almost fully dressed when he meets my gaze, and I implore him to forgive me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.”
He leaves the room, abandoning me to my monster and his rage. I try to curl into myself, but Nikolai is not done. He flips me onto my stomach and utilizes the restraints from the bed to secure my hands above my head.
I shake my head frantically, pleading into the pillow. “Please, not like this. I didn’t mean it.”
The metal clank of his belt buckle is all I hear, followed by the zipper of his jeans. He’s undressing. And I’m in this position because he’s going to take me face down, so he doesn’t have to look at me.
He moves behind me, prying my legs apart and pressing his fingers against my sex. Everything stills behind me, and the only sound in the room is that of his heavy breath.
“You aren’t wet,” he murmurs.
I strain my neck to look back at him, but his response is to push my hair into my face, obscuring my vision. His cock nudges against me, and I sob harder.
“Please,” I cry out. “Not like this, Nika.”
He freezes. I’ve never used such an intimate endearment with him, but I’m using it now. Time is suspended as I listen to his labored breaths, waiting to see what path he will take.
When his hands find the back of my thighs, they are unexpectedly soft and overwhelmingly large. He could easily pry me apart and never put me back together again, if he wanted to. But instead, his calloused thumbs press against my flesh in slow, shallow circles. A shiver charges up my spine, and Nikolai cups the globes of my ass in his hands, emitting a low, throaty groan.
“You are too obstinate for your own good,” he says. “You don’t deserve kindness from me.”
“I never wanted him,” I whisper again.
“So who then?” he demands. “If not Mischa. Or would you still insist on saving yourself for your precious Dante?”
When I don’t answer, his fingers move between my thighs, and there is no mistaking his effect on me. I am slick, and I am wanting. Wanting things I’ve never had. Things that are no good for me.
Nikolai slides over the moisture gathering between my parted thighs and dips a finger inside me, making me clamp around him.
“Answer me.” He squeezes my ass cheek with his other palm.
But I can’t. Because now his fingers are on my clit, massaging me in a slow, circular pattern. My hips are tilting back toward him, opening without shame. I want more.
I need more.
He grabs a fistful of my hair and tugs, inflicting pain while he gifts me pleasure. “I’m not going to ask you again, zvezda. Tell me now, or I will bury my cock inside you without consideration of your fragile virtue.”
I moan into the pillow and thrash against him. This isn’t right. None of this is right. I hate him. His body has no right to take my virtue. He doesn’t have the right to bring me pleasure when he takes no value in the sanctity of what I’m giving him. But it would be weak to deny the truth when he can so clearly see, or feel, it for himself.
“It should have been you,” I say. “But you are a hedonistic coward who thinks only of himself.”
In the next breath, I’m flipped onto my back, Nikolai’s hand wrapped around my throat as he breathes into my face.
“Say it again,” he challenges. “Tell me to my face.”
“You are a coward,” I spit at him. “Go and marry your Russian bride and set me free. You have no need for me now.”
His eyes move back and forth between mine, and I am a fool for revealing the jealous undercurrent in my voice. I’m a fool to let him believe for a second that it bothers me. More importantly, I’m a fool for reacting the way I do when his lips crash down onto mine as if he owns me.
I breathe him in and part my lips for his, allowing his tongue to sweep through my protests and lay claim to my mouth. His body is naked and hard against my stomach, and his flesh is on fire.
My legs curl around him as he drinks from my lips, and I plead between breaths for freedom. His answer is to unleash my hands from the restraints and drag them over his body. I curl my fingers into his hair and twist, encouraging the pain I want him to feel. But it makes little difference. He is a thrusting, pulsing, grunting machine.
“Tell me you want me,” he demands.
“You disgust me.” My nails sink into his back while my words lay into his ego. “You don’t deserve to take me when this means nothing to you.”
He groans and shoves his throbbing cock against my wetness. “You are a little liar and a stuck-up bitch,” he answers. “And I will take pleasure in stripping you of your crown.”
“Then do it,” I challenge.
He kisses me to shut me up while he fingers me to make me pliable. I claw at him. I inhale him. We binge on each other, and I feel him everywhere. But mostly, I feel my willpower careening out of control as pressure builds deep inside me.
“Come on my fingers,” he coaxes. “Show me what a princess looks like when she has fallen from grace, zvezda.”
Explosions of light burst against my eyelids as white-hot lava melts between my legs. I unravel for him, spinning and spinning until I collapse, wrung out and useless. Everything comes back slowly. The awareness of him. The image of his face so close to mine. His ocean eyes are calm and serene, absent of the lies he likes to weave.
His honesty is brutal, even in silence. And the reverie on his face terrifies me more than any of his words ever have.
“Ruin me,” I whisper. “And never let anyone else touch me again.”
He closes his eyes and wrestles his cock against me. This trip is a one-way ticket, and there are no refunds or returns. He’s going to take my virginity. He’s going to ruin me for all other men. I don’t feel sorry for it. I only feel impatient.
He squeezes the head inside me as he did before, giving me tiny micro thrusts. His eyes fall shut, and he looks intoxicated before he’s even all the way in. It’s hard to fathom that it’s because of me.
I did that.
“Breathe, little doll,” he whispers.
And I do. His body collapses forward, and as he does, his cock takes root inside my body, fracturing my virginity and possibly my sanity too.
He shudders, and I shiver, and together, we breathe. It hurts, as I expected it to, but mostly, I just feel full. Full of Nikolai. And he is raw. There’s nothing between us, and I’ve never felt so exposed.
He buries his face in my hair, inhaling me. The muscles in his forearms shake. He’s holding back until I’m ready. And I have the suffocating realization that I need him. I need him on my side until I can find my way out. This is what I tell myself. This is what I try to focus on so that my heart remains caged.
“I’m ready,” I whisper.
His pelvis rolls back, and it drags his cock away, leaving me impoverished until it fills me all over again on the return. I touch his hair and smell his skin and watch his face while he fucks me. I watch the way his eyes open and close while he murmurs how good I feel around him.
He squeezes my face and kisses me again. He kisses my throat and my jaw and my hair.
“So sweet.” He hums. “Why must you be so sweet?”
It’s the last spoken thought before his body pulls tight and he buries himself deep, shuddering out his release. Bare. He is bare, and he’s filling me with his cum. His eyes are sated and heavy when he pets my face, his cock softening inside me.
“It does mean something to me,” he says. “This gift you have given means more than you could ever know.”