My gaze shifts around the room, and I listen closely. He spoke to me in English, but I respond in Russian. “Is anyone else here?”
“No.”
“So when you say no one, you just mean you?”
He takes a bite of food, chews, and swallows. This time he answers in Russian. “Yes, I mean me.”
I exhale. “All right.” Standing, I glance at him. “Good. I mean thank you.”
He nods, and I go into the guest bathroom. Inside the small trash bin, I see a bloody washcloth and discarded packaging for wound care supplies. Glancing at the door, I wonder how extensive his injuries are.
I lock the door and then take off the huge black shirt. My skin is dotted with specks of blood. His? Or Vlad’s? Maybe both. Sitting on the sink’s edge is clothing and a towel and washcloth. I lift the clothes. It’s a dark blue t-shirt style dress. It looks too big for me, but that’s actually a good thing. I wonder where he got it.
I take a hot shower, scrubbing my skin and washing my hair until I’m sure there are no traces of the past few days. Then I dry off, dress, and wrap my hair in the towel.
When I return to the living room’s doorway, I find him sitting on the couch. Holding up his black shirt, I wait. He nods for me to drop it, but I don’t want to do that. His home is clean. I ask where the dirty laundry is stored, and he points. Finding the little room, I drop the shirt into the machine.
With nothing else to do for the moment, I return to the living room and him.
“I’m Natalia. What’s your name?”
He looks at me like he wants to call me a little liar, which of course would be accurate.
Instead he only says, “You know my name, Natalia.” His voice is sexy gruff.
A small smile plays at the corners of my mouth. “Alexei what though? No one told me your last name.”
“Vesenina.”
“Mmm. A pleasure to meet you, Alexei Vesenina.”
His brow rises. “And you.” I spoke to him in Russian, but he once again replied in English.
“Russian is easier for me than English.”
“English is easier for me than Russian.”
For some reason that makes me smile. “Your Russian is better than my English. It’s very good in fact.”
“Do you want to go back to Russia eventually?”
“No,” I say quickly, thinking of the associates of Egorov’s that might find me again and the fact that I don’t have much of a home to go back to anyway.
“If you’re not going back, you should practice English.”
Licking my lips, I nod. “Da, okay.” My English doesn’t always sound good, which I know. All the more reason to practice with someone like him while I’m here.
“Alexei, I am your… prisoner?”
“No, but you can’t leave until your contract expires. You understood that, right? When you agreed to be a kitten prize?”
I’m tempted to blurt out the truth, that I had no choice. But he won’t care about that. He worked hard to win me. Very hard. In his place, I wouldn’t want to hear that I don’t want to be with him.
“You don’t get paid unless I bring you to Polasky and tell him you’ve served the entire month.”
I do need that money. Badly.
“So I’m your girlfriend for one month.”
