by Lucy Ellis
Alexei was disconcerted that he had arrived home early, intending to surprise her, and learned she had gone out. He regarded the shopping bags on the bed as if they were alien.
She dragged out a pair of jeans and some comfy T-shirts, putting them in a neat pile, then produced the lovely fuchsia silk dress that had been the stellar purchase of her day, holding it up to show him.
‘The shows are on next week, dushka,’ he asserted dismissively. ‘I will take you.’
Maisy hung on to her silk dress. That was his comment?
‘I can’t afford couture,’ she said in an undertone.
He frowned.
‘I mean, I know you want me to dress that way, and I appreciate it. But I wanted to get some clothes for myself today. It’s a bit weird, always wearing borrowed clothes.’
‘Maisy, the clothes belong to you. I got them for you. The clothes, the jewellery—whatever. It’s yours.’
Maisy sat down on the bed, holding on to her dress. ‘Oh.’
‘Most women would be pleased,’ he said.
It was the ‘most women’ that did it. Maisy smoothed out her new dress. ‘Is that how it worked in the past? You dressed the women you were with?’
It was the first time she had raised the subject since the villa at Ravello, and Maisy experienced a wave of vertigo at the immensity of what lay underneath her question.
‘No …’ Alexei spoke slowly.
‘Tara Mills, Frances Fielding, Kate Bernier.’ She rattled off the names as if she were reading them from the tag on the back of her dress, because that was where her eyes were. She couldn’t look at him. ‘I don’t suppose any of them needed help dressing up.’
‘How in the hell did you get those names?’
The tightly leashed aggression in his voice brought her chin up. She wasn’t backing down now. She had a right to know where she stood. He shouldn’t be so defensive in telling her.
‘I read about them in magazines,’ she answered truthfully. ‘It’s okay, Alexei, everyone has a past. I’m not going to go postal.’
‘I don’t appreciate you researching me, Maisy. If you want to know about my life, you only have to ask me.’ He spoke in a perfectly reasonable tone, but his eyes were as cold as flints of ice.
She had crossed a line, Maisy realised with a sharp twinge of reaction. These were the limits to their relationship. She dressed for him, waited for him, slept with him, but she didn’t ask him personal questions. Whatever he said.
‘I seem to remember you had an investigation done into me,’ she replied jerkily.
‘Yes, because you were looking after my godson.’
Maisy squeezed the silk under her fingers as she made fists in her lap. ‘And I read up about you because I am having sex with you every night.’ And morning, and sometimes in the afternoon …
‘I would rather you didn’t look for information about me in the tabloids.’
‘Fair enough,’ she conceded. ‘So, if you didn’t dress them, why do you dress me?’
‘I imagined it would make things easier for you.’
Yeah, right. This was about him being ashamed of her. ‘I think I need to buy my own clothes,’ she said, her voice amazingly calm given how shaken she was feeling. ‘Buying me a wardrobe isn’t a gift. It’s … impersonal.’
‘Impersonal?’ He sounded as if he was trying out the word.
Maisy took a step into the abyss. ‘It’s kind of like you’re buying me.’
Then he said absolutely the wrong thing. ‘I’ve never paid for sex in my life.’
The aggression coming off him kept Maisy seated. ‘I—I was talking about our relationship,’ she faltered. All the while another voice was saying, What relationship, Maisy? It’s sex. He’s always said it’s sex. He just said it’s sex.
‘I live a semi-public life.’ He paced out, as tense as she had ever seen him. ‘You need to be dressed for it if you’re going to be with me.’
If. If you’re going to be with me. Maisy’s eyes were starfish-wide as she cottoned on to what he was saying. Struggling to catch up, she recognised it for what it was. An ultimatum.
‘You can’t wear that—’ he made a dismissive gesture at the pink silk puddled in her lap ‘—whatever it is. To dinner tonight.’
She hadn’t been planning to. It was a dress for the daytime. But after all he’d said she was starting to feel completely surplus to his needs—had been feeling that way since they’d started travelling. And it was making her both terrified and very, very angry.
‘There’s nothing wrong with this dress,’ she stated between her teeth.
‘I want you in the champagne silk you wore in Rome.’
‘No.’
‘Fine.’
He turned away from her, removing his watch, his cufflinks. She watched him tumble them onto the bedside table. He headed for the walk-in wardrobe.
‘Where are you going?’
He didn’t answer, but a minute later he reappeared, naked. ‘Shower,’ he said briefly.
‘I’m going to wear what I want to wear,’ she defended herself. Why didn’t he say anything?
‘Do what you want,’ he replied. ‘The invitation is withdrawn.’
Maisy just gaped after him. What did he mean, the invitation was withdrawn? They weren’t going to dinner? She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Was he angry with her because she had bought her own clothes and refused his?
She heard the shower go on. Fine. She stood up too quickly and the room shifted slightly, so she sat down again. It had been such a long day—but, damn him, she wasn’t going to be a pushover. Giving herself a few minutes to calm down, she fetched her brush and toiletries and marched into the bathroom. He was towelling himself dry and seemed a bit thrown to see her. But Maisy ignored him, shaking her hair out of its pins and pulling the brush through it with rough strokes.
‘I’d like some space, Maisy.’
‘Tough,’ she replied, grabbing her spray conditioner and letting fly.
He wrapped the towel around his hips and left her to it. Maisy pushed down the pain and kept going, taming her curls into a neat chignon and then making up her eyes and mouth. When she emerged into the bedroom Alexei was dressed in trousers and was buttoning up a tailored white shirt. It clung faithfully to the wide expanse of his shoulders and chest like a sleeve, making him seem both overwhelmingly male and yet elegant at the same time. He was going out, she registered. Without her.
‘Where are you going?’
When he didn’t answer she hurled the brush she had in her hand at him, aiming for his legs and missing entirely. Her brush bounced on the luxurious carpet. He merely gave her a quelling look as if to say, That’s the best you can do?
Not quite knowing what she was doing, but powered by the unfairness of it all, Maisy stripped off the simple shift she had been wearing all day, unhooked her plain cotton bra, slid off her knickers.
She kept her back to him. She had never undressed in front of him in all these weeks. There was something unfailingly intimate about it. Once she was in bed with him it was different. But the act of actually going about her daily robing and disrobing made her feel vulnerable, and she didn’t need more of that.
She emptied out the bag of frothy nothings she had bought to wear for him, picking up a sheer black bra and knickers that had cost more than her pretty dress. The knickers had little bows at the side to be tied, and the bra had a bow at the front. Neither was at all practical for wearing anywhere other than in a bedroom to seduce a man.
Which had been her intention when she’d purchased them. Right now she had no idea what her intention was.
She adjusted her breasts into the cups, making sure they were secure, then cast a look at Alexei over her shoulder. He had got no further with his buttons from the moment she’d started stripping.
‘Come and help me,’ she requested, sounding petulant.
He didn’t hesitate, which fired her confidence, and when he was only a hand-span away from h
er she turned around and untied the bow, so that the weight of her breasts tugged the bra cups apart.
‘Do me up,’ she instructed.
His hands moved obediently to slide under the fabric, his thumbs circling her nipples so that her head fell forward onto his chest. ‘That’s not helping me,’ she murmured.
His voice was gratifyingly a register lower. ‘You started this. I’ll finish it.’
A lick of lust moved over her and she grabbed hold of his waistband, her hands trembling so that she was woeful at disengaging the buttons. But it didn’t matter. He lifted her and she wrapped her bare legs around his hips. Ignoring the bed, he propelled her back against the wall, yanking the bows on her knickers free, testing her readiness with his fingers, lifting her again to slide his erection into her, his back and shoulders bunching up under her hands as he took the strain of doing it slowly and steadily and completely.
Maisy’s head flopped forward, her hair cloaking them both as he buried his face in her neck and began to thrust into her with little finesse but a great deal of energy. Maisy couldn’t stop the noises that were answering his rather effective grunts as she lost herself in the flashing pleasure.
That it could be like this startled her. That he could do this to her was almost overwhelming. No condom, she thought presently, straining against him. It must have hit him at the same time, because he seemed about to pull away from her, but his body continued to thunder forward and won out. Yet as he slid her down the wall and her feet touched carpet he pulled free and came over her bare stomach, holding himself with such an expression that Maisy never thought she had ever seen anything so beautiful. She felt like a goddess, all of her anger spent, all of him on her.
He was apologising to her, leaning against her, his head heavy, bent low, his breathing laboured, those big shoulders heaving. Maisy loved this. Loved the way she could do this to him. It made everything that had gone before somehow meaningless, as if this thing they shared overwhelmed the prosaic realities of the life they were living together.
Alexei was still in his shirt. He had stepped out of his boxers and trousers and Maisy had pushed the shirt back over his shoulders as they’d grappled. It hung suspended halfway down his back.
‘You didn’t come,’ he muttered in her ear.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wound her arms around him, burrowing, needing that closeness.
‘You can wear what you want to dinner. We’ll eat here. Whatever you want.’
Maisy hung on to him, but she had gone very still and quiet inside. Her instincts were telling her something and she didn’t want to hear it right now. Easier just to take him at his word. But those words settled like stones in her belly.
This was her power over him. This was what she used for leverage. She had just manipulated a situation her way with sex. Those games he had tried to play with her early on and quickly given up she had now instigated as her own, however unconsciously.
But something about this relationship—probably to do with how it had started, the imbalances between them and Alexei’s history—was changing her. Changing them.
She didn’t want to be this woman. She didn’t want to be this way with Alexei. She wanted honest, and real, and for him to love her. The realisation flashed with neon clarity across her mind. She was in love with him.
She wanted him to love her as she loved him. Had loved him from the moment she tore the lining of his jacket and he had looked at her, really looked at her, and she had seen him and recognised in him something she needed very much.
And right now all the danger signs were flashing red.
The first night they were back in Ravello Alexei dreamt of St Petersburg.
He was eight years old and on the streets. He ran in a pack of kids, all of them living hand-to-mouth. He couldn’t remember his father, but he could still see his mother’s stunning face, cosmetically enhanced, bending in and blowing alcohol into his lungs. Promising she would return for him in a few days but never coming back.
He woke bathed in sweat, shaking. Blackness was all around him and he was alone.
Maisy woke to the sound of a shout. She sat up, no longer disorientated when she woke in the night to find herself in a vast bed. Falling asleep every night pinned by Alexei’s arm had made what was once so novel an integral part of her every day life.
Alexei was awake. It was too dark to see his face, but she could feel the startled reaction running through his big warm body. He’d had another one of those dreams. She reached out in the darkness and laid her hand on his chest. It was hot and hair-roughened and rose fast under her hand.
‘Are you okay?’ she whispered.
He rolled away, dislodging her hand and presenting the bulk of his back and shoulders to her.
Maisy was wide-awake now. She didn’t know what to do. The other time he’d woken in the night like this he had pretended to go back to sleep, but they both knew he had lain awake most of the night.
‘Alexei,’ she whispered, ‘talk to me.’
He made that grunting noise she recognized, which told her she could wrap her arms around him but not expect much communication. So she did, lying down and wrapping her arms around his middle. Alexei sought her hands, knotting them with his and lashing her against him.
He could feel her breath against his back, the soft brush of her wayward hair, the sweet rub of her smooth calf over his. It soothed.
He said, half to himself, ‘Kostya will be all right.’
His voice was hoarse and Maisy was instantly on high alert. Something was very wrong.
‘Of course he will be.’ She spoke feelingly but she felt uncertain. A couple of weeks had passed now since Kostya had been told of his parents’ deaths. Alexei had been amazing with him, giving both her and Kostya the strong bulwark they both needed in those awful fragile days as the tiny child groped for security.
Maisy had broken her rule on those nights, having Kostya in bed with her to soothe his night terrors. Alexei had volunteered to take the other bed but Kostya had wanted his beloved Alessi too, and what Maisy had most feared had come to pass. They were a facsimile of a family, huddled together in this vast bed that had once seemed so alien and threatening but was now where all the happiest times of her life were spent.
‘I’ll protect him,’ Alexei asserted.
‘I know.’ She stroked his back.
He tried to clutch on to the human warmth of her touch, but he was being swamped by his own fears from the past and they were fast dragging him under. It coalesced the longer he lay there, beginning to tense under the feel of her touch. He had allowed her to get too close and he knew the terror he was feeling was a warning. She too would leave. It was inevitable one of them would abandon what they had. He had to reinstate proper distance. He could not allow his own fear or weakness to dislodge the grip he had on his emotions. He had to do it now.
Abruptly he shifted, dislodging Maisy’s hold, and reached up, flicking on the lamp.
‘I can’t protect him from you, can I?’
He watched her blinking blearily in the unexpected light, covering her eyes with her hands. Defenceless. But he needed to be brutal. She needed to hear this.
‘What are you talking about, Alexei?’
‘I’m talking about you leaving, Maisy. Because we both know there’s an end date.’
She stared back at him, appalled. A slow cold trickle of dread made its way down her spine.
‘Why are you attacking me?’ she whispered. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’
Then he said the words she had been dreading in the darkest part of her soul. ‘I can’t do this any more, Maisy.’
A tiny, endlessly hopeful, naive part of her had imagined a future with him—one involving a white dress, a picket fence and babies. The things she’d longed for when she was a little girl and the world had been a much more black-and-white place. But she knew now that wasn’t going to happen. Not with this man.
Weeks of living with him, sleeping beside him,
welcoming him into her body, and she understood she hadn’t really touched anything beyond his surface. These dreams she sensed were a gateway into whatever darkness was eating away at him, but even lying in bed with him, privy to their ragged effect on him, she was not invited inside.
‘I see.’ It was all she could think to say, although she didn’t see at all. But it was three o’clock in the morning and he was ripping her heart out and she hadn’t even seen it coming.
Although in retrospect the signs had all been there. Despite the travel, they had essentially been alone. She hadn’t minded a bit, because she’d had Alexei and Kostya, but it said volumes for where he saw her in his life. She remembered those photographs in the magazines, those women on his arm. That would never be her. He had never intended that to be her. She was like some sort of secret he kept.
Deep down she’d known this day was going to come. But it made no sense—not at three o’clock, not just hours after she’d fallen asleep in his arms, her body still bearing the traces of his lovemaking. He couldn’t be tired of her yet. He was just shucking off the effects of his nightmare. If she stayed very still and very small he might just go back to sleep and forget about it. But she wasn’t that girl any more. She had changed. She had grown up.
She watched a deep breath shudder through him, and he said almost hopelessly, ‘Are you happy with me, Maisy?’
‘Yes.’ I’ve never been so happy. I’ve never felt so right in my whole life.
‘You never go anywhere. You never see anyone.’ He propped himself up against the headboard.
‘I see you,’ she said. ‘I see Kostya.’
He was trying to persuade her to leave.
‘We can’t keep this up. It’s starting to get on my nerves.’ He looked down at her. ‘We need to be with other people, out in the world, or this is never going to be normal.’
What on earth was he talking about? Maisy wanted to shake him, but she sensed half of this was about his pain and the strange hour and the stillness. If she kept quiet he might just say something revealing, something that would let her in just a fraction.
