But when I take a slice of toast to my mouth, I freeze before I take a bite. Something familiar catches my eye on his side of the room, hidden under a pile of books likely kicked loose with our crazy lovemaking, the blue binding of my journal catches the light of the room.
My journal. The one I left in America and haven’t seen since the day I came here.
I rise, my hunger forgotten. I’m suddenly both too hot or too cold. I’m shivering, and I feel a strange and sudden out-of-body experience take over, as if I’m watching a stranger cross the room.
I didn’t have my journal with me when we arrived here. How did it get here? Walking across the room, I look over my shoulder to be sure Kazimir is still occupied in the other room. We’ve just made love, and it was beautiful. I don’t want to incur his anger now.
But shouldn’t I be the one angry? Aren’t I the one whose privacy was violated?
With trembling fingers, I pick up the book. The physical reminder of the woman I once was. The reminder of the life I once lived. I open the page and read my own writing.Today I read the most lovely book, written during a time when it was okay for women to be feminine and demure, and acceptable for a man to ask for her hand in marriage. So traditional. I can’t imagine a thing like this happening in modern day America. Courtship. Dowries. Dresses that swoop to the floor in elegance.
Women weren’t allowed to vote, or work. So oppressive. So chauvinistic.I look away and smile to myself. And yet I read the books.
Why?
I forget where I am and who I am. My body’s still flush from lovemaking, my thighs damp with his seed marking me as his, while I read.I’ll never know the touch of a man, nor do I want to. I can’t imagine ever allowing myself to be so vulnerable that I allow another human to hurt me the way selfish, bold men do. The adoration of a lover is for the pages of a romance novel, and that is exactly where it belongs. In a world where women still swish in romantic gowns, men still speak with civil tongues. In a fantasy world where dreams are born and die.I close the book. I can’t read on. What would the old me have thought of the present me? The marks of my husband’s palm still on my backside where I begged him to spank me. I can still feel the scrape of his whiskers between my thighs, his swollen cock in my core. My eyes flutter shut as I draw my fingers across my abdomen.
His child grows within me.
Shaking so badly I can hardly move steadily, I shove the journal back where he had it and hide it. He’s still talking in the other room, his voice rising and falling in that commanding way of his, but now it doesn’t sound so sexy. Now it just sounds… foreign. Harsh. I should be angry at him for taking my journal, for violating my privacy, but such a thing pales in comparison to the other things he’s done to me. It isn’t him I’m angry with but myself.
The food I ate churns in my belly as I walk back to bed. I pull the covers over me and close my eyes. My stomach doesn’t ache, but my heart does.Chapter Twenty-OneKazimirI’m so preoccupied with the conversation I just had on the phone, I don’t even notice at first that Sadie’s back in bed until I’ve already made my plate of food. In my defense, she’s been in bed for three weeks, so it’s not all that unusual.
“Sadie?” I ask. The peace I felt after reconnecting with Sadie quickly evaporated when I had to take a phone call. Dimitri, angry and demanding, refused to tell me what he has to speak to me about on the phone and insisted I come down, alone, to see him, as soon as possible.
I wonder briefly if he knows Sadie’s pregnant. Both the doctor and Nikita are bound to secrecy, and I’d hoped he wouldn’t care beyond what Sadie’s inheritance brought him.
Has he figured out she’s pregnant?
We’ve just about come to the terms in the legal documents that specify how long she has to be married before her money becomes hers. Here in our city, I can easily have her money marked as mine, since we’re a wedded couple, and after the transfer, my obligation to Dimitri will be fulfilled.
What is it that Dimitri wants to talk to me about?
He can’t know that I’m trying to find a way to extricate myself from this mess. How can I keep Sadie’s trust, fulfill my promise to Dimitri, and care for my unborn child, all at the same time?