I clench my fingers into the material of my coat and Adrian stares at me with utter amusement, no doubt finding fun in cornering me.
Jeremy gives me a disapproving glance. “Lying is bad, Mommy.”
“I wasn’t lying, Jer.” I soften my tone even as I glare at Adrian.
“Okay,” he agrees readily like the little angel he is. “Teach Mommy how to do my war zone, Papa.”
“Hmm.” Adrian’s head tilts to the side in my direction. “I think I will.”
I purse my lips at him, but he merely reaches to wrap the scarf around my neck before he gets to work. He literally finishes building the entire war zone in under fifteen minutes.
I try not to be impressed, but I am.
“Yay, Papa!” Jeremy kisses his father on the cheek, joy sparkling in his wide eyes.
Adrian faces me. “I think your mom should show appreciation, too, shouldn’t she, Malysh?”
“Yes, Mommy! Kiss Papa.”
I glare at Adrian for the way he’s manipulating a kid, but I don’t make a problem out of it as I lean in and press my lips to the stubble on his cheek.
For a fraction of a second, it feels normal, like we’re actually a family who are out in the garden, doing family things.
I’m about to pull away when my gaze shifts upward. I don’t know why I look in the direction of the guest house at a moment like this. I don’t know why my eyes immediately go up.
All I know is that I shouldn’t have. I really, really shouldn’t have.
A figure stares at me from the window. Her face is as pale as her nightgown, but her eyes are a raging blue as she stares at me.
My eyes.
The ghost Jeremy mentioned is staring at me and she looks ready to kill me.
21
Winter
“Lift your arms.”
I follow Adrian’s command so he can slide the silky nightgown over my body. It feels soft, soothing, but it’s still too much against my sensitive skin.
We’ve just finished another session of punishment. This time it was three successive orgasms for talking back to him three times today.
The number has been shortening over the past week. Maybe one day, it’ll be zero and I’ll be able to get my reward, but that doesn’t seem like it will happen anytime soon.
It’s been two weeks since I came into Adrian’s house, and he always, without fail, finds something to punish me for. I guess I’m not being careful enough either, but he’s not tolerant at all.
If I say ‘okay,’ it’s one.
If I ask why, it’s two.
If I don’t look at him while he’s fucking me with his fingers or with his mouth, it’s three.
If he calls me Lia and I don’t answer immediately, it’s four.
There’s no winning with him, because he laid out all the circumstances, so they’d work in his favor.
Every evening, after Jeremy goes to sleep, I come to this bedroom with my heart in my throat in anticipation of what he’ll do next. Sometimes, he doesn’t wait until then and calls me to his office so he can extract his punishment. Then he’ll restart the count to make sure his hands are busy during the night.
Hands that are currently buttoning the top of my nightgown. Big veiny hands with long, lean fingers that I couldn’t stop staring at even if I wanted to.
Hands that can bring pleasure or pain—or both—depending on their owner’s mood.
My eyes are droopy and I’m exhausted from the number of orgasms he gave me in one go, but I remain seated in front of the dresser while Adrian is kneeling before me.
He’s fucking kneeling, and yet the movement doesn’t deter anything from his power. From the hold he has on me—physically, at least.
Only physically.
He’s just finished showering me. Since that day in his office, he’s been open about caring for me. He lathered my whole body with soap and even washed my hair. At one point, my legs couldn’t carry me and I sat on the floor of the shower. Adrian knelt behind me and finished with my hair. His hands were all over me—on my shoulders, my back, between my legs, and running over the birth scar.
It was too much. It still is. I don’t want him to care for me that way. I don’t like being cared for. It makes me feel weak—weaker than the situation I’ve been thrown in. And I sure as hell don’t want Adrian to do it. Because he’s not genuine. Or maybe he is, but not toward me.
It’s toward his wife.
He’s now in black sweatpants and no shirt. I study the hard ridges of his abdomen and the fine hairs on his masculine chest. I wonder why he doesn’t have tattoos there.
His arms and hands are fully inked, but even as I watch them, I can’t tell the meaning behind most of his tattoos. There’s a compass on his forearm, but I don’t think it indicates direction. There are birds escaping at the top of his shoulders. A bloody flower is inked in the middle of an intricate map that doesn’t seem like one of the world. Maybe it’s a map of Russia. I wonder what he was thinking when he got them.
But why would I wonder? I’m nothing to this man. Only a replacement.
I try engraving those words to memory so I don’t get caught up in his gentle touch, in the way his fingers brush against the swell of my breasts every now and then.
He doesn’t see you, Winter. He sees Lia.
My mind drifts back to the figure I saw at the windows that day when I was kissing his cheek.
The pale woman with raging eyes, who looked just like me.
When I blinked, she disappeared.
Either I was imagining things or Lia’s ghost was actually there. I chose to go with the first option because the second one terrified me.
Whenever Jeremy and I play in the gazebo, I keep staring at that same window in case she reappears.
She never has.
I would probably have a better chance figuring out if my hallucinations are true or not if I go there, but Adrian’s guards are keeping an eye on the garden—or us—all day long. Not to mention that the man himself is always watching us like a hawk from his office window.
Yan is constantly there, too.
The only time I would be able to go into the guest house unnoticed is during the night. And that scares the shit out of me.
This house scares the shit out of me.
The man in front of me terrifies me more because he’s the reason I feel like I’m crawling into some fucked-up territory.
Adrian stands up once he’s finished and positions himself behind me, grabbing the blow-dryer. The slow humming of the machine fills the room as he removes the towel from around my head and dries my hair.
I shiver for a reason completely different from my wet hair meeting my neck. I keep my eyes downcast because I don’t want to look in the mirror to see him caring for me and blow-drying my hair. I don’t want to get caught up in these moments that aren’t meant for me.
Lia was one lucky woman. Or maybe it was the opposite, considering the savage ways he touches me—her.
I wonder how it felt to have a man as hard as Adrian care for her like this, as if she was his world. Was she tingling like me, or did she consider it suffocating as I should?
I wonder if he also made her wait before he fucked her. I internally shake my head. Why the hell am I thinking about him fucking her? Or me?