Dangerous Games

28

I stand and face Tolya and Alek. My fingers shaking, I untie the sling around my neck, let the piece of fabric fall to the floor, and slip the dress off my shoulders. It pools around my waist. I have to push it over my hips, one at a time, then let it slide down my legs until it crumples into a puddle around my ankles. The entire process takes an eternity.

Then I stand there in my bra and panties, cradling my arms against my chest, miserable but resigned. The sooner this is over with, the better.

The room is utterly silent for a moment, until Dimitri says to Alek, “Should she take off her underwear, too? Would that make for a better fitting?”

It’s polite and deadly. The heat in my cheeks flames hotter. It becomes impossible to breathe.

A supreme professional, Alek shakes his head. “For the fit, it’s best if she wears the undergarments she’ll be wearing the day of the ceremony.”

Oh, thank God. Not complete humiliation, then.

Except I’ve forgotten who I’m dealing with.

Adjusting his cuff links, Dimitri says casually, “In that case, she should take off everything. She’ll be nude under her gown on our wedding day.” He looks at me, his eyes glittering, a smile dancing around the edges of his mouth.

I feel sorry for Tolya, who looks mortified. He’s probably a good boy. Goes to church. Loves his mother. Alek is too smart to show his reaction one way or another, and merely waits. Stefan waits, too, his face blank, the earlier flash of anger controlled.

The other guard is grinning.

“You two.” I jerk my chin at Stefan and the grinning guard. “Get out.”

Stefan is smart. He doesn’t obey my instruction, but looks to Dimitri instead.

I say to Dimitri, “It’s up to you, of course, but it doesn’t seem wise to let them stay.” I turn my head and meet his gaze. “Unless you think they’ll keep their hands to themselves when you’re not around.”

“Perhaps I gave them permission,” he drawls.

He’s poking at me with a stick, trying to get a reaction. I won’t give him one. “You’d let the help have s*x with your wife?”

“You’re not my wife yet.”

“But I will be soon. And then all your men can say they work for a cuckold. Doesn’t seem as if that would engender the utmost respect.”

Thrust. Parry. Feint. Around and around we go, until infinity.

Unfortunately, his rapier is always sharper than mine.

Gazing at me steadily, he says, “If you’re not naked within the next ten seconds, I’ll call in the entire staff and beat you bloody in front of them all, and then I’ll f**k you in front of them all, and they’ll have much more to talk about than me being a cuckold. Your choice.”

His smile is angelic.

Everyone in the room holds their breath.

My cheeks burning, I reach behind my back and unhook my bra.

ELEVEN

EVA

I keep telling myself I’ve suffered far worse things, but with every new male guard, houseboy, and cook who wanders past the drawing room as I’m being measured in the nude, my shame grows.

Along with it grows my fury.

Naz would never have allowed something like this. He’d die to protect my honor. If another man dared to look at me undressed, he’d make sure it would be a long time before he could look at anything else again.

But of course this isn’t love. This is ownership. This is a show of power, so that everyone knows I’m a piece of property. Dimitri’s toy to do with as he likes.

An equal, my ass.

After a pimply servant makes his third pass by the room, gawking, I can no longer hold my tongue. Over Tolya’s head—he’s bent down, the tape measure around my waist as he fumbles with it with shaking fingers—I say to Dimitri, “There’s some honesty headed your way, if you’re in the mood to hear it.”

He lights a cigar before he responds. He takes his time with it, tranquilly cutting the tip with a tiny pair of folding scissors unfolded from the bottom of his silver lighter, then lighting up and puffing. He deposits the snipped piece of tobacco into a crystal ashtray on the small table beside his chair, dusts off his fingers, and blows a perfect ring of smoke through his lips.

“My anticipation knows no bounds.”

He’s laughing at me. Mocking me. I wonder if he knows how much I’d like to shred his eyeballs with the tiny pair of scissors.

Tolya murmurs my waist measurement to his father, who jots it down on a small pad. He moves on to my hips, his face the color of a beet.

“If I’m to be your wife, you’re undermining my position. None of these men will ever show me respect after this.”

“You’re not the one they need to respect.”

Poor Vlad found that out the hard way. I wonder if the rest of the staff knows what happened to him. Though he might be devastated, Stefan seems too cagey to open his mouth and risk Dimitri’s displeasure.

“Is that why you killed Vlad?”

Tolya drops his measuring tape. The pimply servant blanches and turns around, hurrying back the way he came. Hopefully to spread the news that Vlad is dead.

I’m guessing he was well liked. Perhaps Stefan wasn’t the only one with a crush. Maybe there will be a mutiny . . .

Dimitri chuckles. “Look at those wheels turning. I enjoy seeing you like this.”

“Humiliated?”

“Strategizing.”

Our gazes meet and hold. He puffs on his cigar, a lion lazing in his den, belly full with a fresh kill, licking blood off his chops.