Rosalind
A warmth engulfs me, fills me, and wherever I am, it’s full of golden light.
I’m in white, a gossamer veils drifts about me, and there are white roses and jasmine.
It’s my wedding.
My heart thumps hard as fear slices through me. The horrible man is up ahead, only this time, he’s not facing me, and my clothes have changed. It’s not the creepy dress. This is silk, and it clings to me like a second skin. Everything else is familiar. The music. Men in black and a makeshift aisle. The groom grows leaner, broader, taller, and as I approach, the fear veers into something else, almost like sweetness. When he turns and smiles at me, my breath catches.
He’s devastatingly handsome in his tux, those dark, smoldering eyes and those killer cheekbones. His hard, cruel mouth that can turn sensual and hot turns up at the edges, knocking me sideways inside with the thrill and a lick of heat. Nikolai.
My groom is Nikolai, and he looks at me like I’m his, but this isn’t ownership. No, it’s something else. It’s the look of a man about to marry the love of his life. There’s love there, and it’s for me. I’m floating. My mother’s there in the crowd as I pass, Genius too, and she cheers. I can only look at Nikolai. He’s a dream.
His smile is admiring, too. It’s one of respect, of a man who chose me because I’m worth it and he sees me, who I am, deep inside.
He’s mine.
My heart flutters and swells, and happiness blooms in my stomach. I reach for him, knowing if we touch, the world will be right, but I can’t seem to connect and-
I gasp, and my eyes pop open. My heart flutters, beating fast.
I’m in bed, naked, sticky, and sore in all the good ways I associate with sex and Nikolai. Early morning light filters in around the edge of the blinds, and Nikolai is next to me, ass exposed, so fine my mouth goes dry. The dark, gorgeous tattoos on his broad back are familiar, and I want to trace the line of the writing down his spine.
My breath catches-what the hell was I dreaming? Marrying this man? Wanting him to love me? I’m way too aware that my emotions for him are tangled and wrong, that he’s a monster, just like-but different from-my father. Why the hell would I dream that?
This man is beautiful, but he’s hard and dangerous, cold with a searing hot center. He’s cruel and controlling, and I’d give him everything with one push. I already do, but that’s my body, not my heart. He’s not a man who’s going to marry anyone, least of all me, and he’s certainly never going to look at me with love.
He’s a killer, my kidnapper, even now. I’ve traded one cage for another, one villain for another.
Those soft feelings that move through me for him aren’t real…are they? They’re from the Stockholm Syndrome. Something that’s like love because I’m what? Pathetically grateful he can make me come?
I raise my hand, shaking, to my lips.
Something changed in me. A shift, somewhere between being taken from here, that disgusting fat man touching me, and my father’s nasty words and nastier punches. It’s a shift that hasn’t moved back with Nikolai’s reclaiming of me.
I’m a pawn, a tiny thing in a game. I know I shouldn’t feel things for him. I knew it before, knew it during my time with my father, know it now.
And yet…
He makes my heart flutter, butterfly wings against my ribs. His dark hair is a mess in sleep, and I want to touch it, burrow down into him.
I hate it, I do. I hate the confusion and the want that feeds my anger, the shame. Fuck, the shame twists in with the anger and the want, making it worse. Last night, I begged and pleaded for him to take me, begged for him to make me forget for a while.
Nikolai Wilder wants me, yes, but it’s as something to possess, to break and mold and use as bait. After how he let my father take me… It was part of his plan, I know. How else could my father’s men get into his private home so easily?
He’s a powerful man, Nikolai-one who has more control and power than that man who calls himself my father. Why come back for me at all? That’s the part I don’t understand. Why give me up so easily only to take me back?
He got a rose in for me, yet left me there? Only stepping in when… what? Not the marriage, even though the little innocent Rosalind who still somehow lives inside me wants to believe he just had to rescue me. It doesn’t matter really. I’m just a tool for Nikolai to get what he wants. What he did was just another move in the game.
Knowing all that, I still asked him to take me. What does that make me? So fucked up that there’s no hope? A disgusting whore, like my father calls me? Why the hell would I dream about a happy wedding to him?
With a shuddering sigh, I push back the covers and cross the room to shower. The water is hot, soothing, but it doesn’t wash away the dirt that clings under the surface. It doesn’t touch the shame.
When I’m done, I turn off the water and I grab a towel that’s half crumpled on the rack. Lifting it to my face, I breathe it in. It smells like detergent, something fancy, probably organic, and him. I almost throw it away, but as pathetic as I am, I dry myself with it, squeezing the water from my hair.
What I need are clothes, but the only thing in here are his trousers, his white shirt. Heart thumping, I close my fingers on that shirt and pull it on, buttoning it so it covers me from breast to thigh, the cuffs flopping down over my hands.
“You can’t be in here,” I say to my bruised, haunted, pale reflection. I turn and force myself not to look at him as I leave his room.
No one is around, and I pad down to my room-no, my prison. I place my hand on the door and breathe in, head down, eyes squeezing shut a moment.
That something in me remains changed, different. I don’t even know what it is, and I don’t prod it. Right now, it’s enough that it’s there, that I’m seeing things from a different perspective.
I straighten up. The door to this room is unlocked, and I know if I turn the handle, it’ll open. Why the hell am I stepping willingly back into my gilded cage?
Instead, I turn and walk down the stairs, trailing a hand along the gleaming wood of the banister. I stop on the bottom step, right before setting foot on the landing, as that something inside me shifts again.
Nikolai doesn’t care whether I live or die. He cares about getting what he wants and using me to get it. He just doesn’t want me to die before that happens.
That isn’t caring. It’s cold. Monstrous. Unforgivable.
I step down on the landing and immediately look at the alarm. Armed. Of course, it is. Wouldn’t want Rose to escape and ruin his fucking plans.
The hatred comes back, and I do my best to cling to it.
I need a distraction since I can’t run, so I head to the library, over the landing and down the hall. I push open the door, and it’s glowing with light from a lamp and the gray of the morning light. There’s an armed alarm there, too.
My heart clenches.
That’s when I see that there’s a young man in here, on the sofa, feet up on the arm, cushions under his head, an iPad in one hand. He drops it to his stomach as he eyes me from where he lies.
“W-Who are you?” I frown. I recognize him, but not by name.
“Rush, Nikolai’s favorite cousin.” He pauses, a smile playing over his mouth. “His only cousin, but I’m sure if there were more, I’d be the favorite.”
“Niko…” It slowly starts to come back. He was at the pageant, backstage. He’d stepped over Uncle Max’s dead body and called Nikolai Niko.
Rush sits up. “I wouldn’t call him that if I were you. He barely likes me saying it. Rose, isn’t it?”
“Rosalind,” I say, even though there’s a part of me that likes being called Rose. It’s better than Thorne.
He’s very handsome, probably almost as dangerous as Nikolai, but he’s younger, much younger, maybe closer in age to me. He looks softer, kinder, sweeter, but since he’s related to Nikolai, I don’t think any of that can be true. This man might not be as dangerous as him, but he’s not a romp in the park. I don’t think anyone in this world is.
His gaze moves over me, and I feel weirdly naked, even though the look’s all appreciation in that way guys get when they see a pretty girl. He doesn’t want me, even as he likes what he sees, and that makes me feel more naked than when I’m with Nikolai. When I am, I’m owned. Marked.
Safe.