Vienna Bargain

by Lila Dubois

  She wanted that, wanted it so much that it was a looping fantasy she couldn’t ignore.

  In the fantasy she’d slide onto his lap, take his face in her hands, and tell him to shut up and listen. She’d tell him everything, he’d apologize, maybe grovel, and then they’d make love.

  Not scene. Not have sex.

  Make love.

  She was such an idiot.

  “Mr. Wagner,” Ruslan said as he walked up, “Mr. Schroeder was unable to provide us with information about the security system.”

  Alexander looked at Ruslan for a long moment. “Because there isn’t one.”

  Finn made a pained noise.

  Jakob, who seemed to like being the lead and doing the scouting, jogged down the front steps of the Russian opera house entrance and across the smooth, circular drive.

  Finn and Ruslan met him halfway, Ruslan keeping his head turned so he could keep an eye on her and Alexander. “It’s a maze,” Jakob said in German. “We need the security plans.”

  “No security system,” Finn said.

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  They kept talking, and she only caught every third word.

  “Follow,” Alexander commanded.

  Alena jumped as if he’d just thrown a bucket of cold water over her. She turned, ready to lay into him for ordering her around like a dog.

  The words died on her tongue. The camaraderie and amusement from looking at the house was gone.

  Alexander’s eyes were cold, his smile tinged with cruelty. He remembered exactly how much she hated one-word orders…which was precisely why he’d done it.

  Alena ground her teeth together and dropped her gaze. A sign of submission, when what she was really doing was hiding her anger. She didn’t want him to know he could get to her so easily.

  Alexander started for the steps, and Alena followed. Rather than walk beside him she stayed slightly behind. Once again, on the surface it was submissive, but in practice it gave her a few more moments of privacy to compose herself.

  The guards broke apart and surrounded them—Jakob in front, Finn to Alexander’s right, and Ruslan behind her. Jakob opened the door, Finn stepped in, one hand raised to prevent them from following him.

  After a long moment Finn stepped out of the way. She followed Alexander, and when the three-meter tall doors closed behind her, Alena couldn’t suppress the shiver of fear that worked its way through her.

  All she had to do was survive the next three weeks. Three weeks as Alexander Wagner’s BDSM slave.

  Terrifying, degrading, and thanks to her fucked up psychological makeup…arousing.

  The numbness returned once they were inside, and she embraced the lack of emotion. Alexander spent a half an hour speaking with the people—whom she assumed were staff—who’d been waiting inside the huge foyer when they walked in. Oddly enough, it seemed like the excessive and fanciful composition of the exterior didn’t carry through to the inside, which was simple and elegant. The floor was pale marble with blue and gray veins, the walls paneled on the bottom half and painted creamy white above.

  The grand double staircases, which curved around the edges of the foyer and met at a second floor balcony, were beautifully carved and glossy with care and polish. She looked around again, noticing other details indicating that time and skilled work had been put into the interior.

  The four male staff members—three of whom were the men who’d driven the cars to the dock—all had beards with varying amounts of gray. They were speaking with Ruslan as Alexander conversed with the three women. The youngest of the three was clearly dressed to impress in a navy cocktail dress and strappy heels with an Instagram-ready full face of makeup.

  Maybe you won’t be the only sex slave he has here.

  That thought cracked the numbing shell around her emotions, revealing that she was feeling plenty.

  The kind of emotions—fear, righteous anger, a certain grim pleasure—that would make her do something stupid. She needed to hold on to the fragile calm. See the numbness for what it was—a lid clamped down on the sickening mixture bubbling deep inside.

  Eventually, Alexander turned away from the women. The one who seemed to be in charge—a fifty-something woman wearing a floral blouse and rather shapeless gray pants—shooed the younger woman through the doorway under the second floor balcony.

  Alexander walked to the foot of the stairs. Pausing, he looked back at her. “Follow.”

  Alena put the side of her tongue between her teeth and bit down on it, using the dull pain to stay quiet. She walked across the foyer, aware of eyes on her.

  The second night together, at the club, he’d mentioned sharing her as one of his “dark” fantasies. Would he expect her to fuck the men she’d just walked past, either his local employees or the bodyguards?

  Alena misjudged, catching her toe on the edge of the next step. For a moment she teetered, her balance thrown off. Alexander, who was in front of her and several steps higher, turned and shot out his hand, grabbing her shoulder a second before Alena’s own scrambling resulted in a death grip on the stair rail.

  “Are you all right?” Alexander asked.

  “Let go,” she snarled.

  She felt him start, then his hand dropped.

  Alena bent her head, forcing down the anger and fear that had slipped her control. She stayed like that, hand gripping the rail, head bent, for several moments.

  Eventually she conceded defeat. The thought of being humiliated and whored out had ripped that calm lid off her emotions.

  Once more biting her tongue, she started up the steps, nearly colliding with Alexander who was slow to get going.

  Though the interior of the house wasn’t gaudy like the exteriors, it was still a massive place, with a rather odd layout. She followed him through halls of various sizes, down a half flight of stairs, through more halls.

  Eventually he stopped to open a set of massive double doors carved with stylized leaves and birds. It wasn’t the fine, delicate carvings of baroque Europe, but something simpler and more appealing.

  Alexander motioned for her to precede him through the open double doors. She paused, ready to insist he go first, in case this was one of those pull-the-door-closed-behind-her-and-lock-it situations, as if he was a Disney villain.

  The view compelled her forward. Ignoring her worries about being locked in—there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it if that was his plan—she drifted across the long, narrow room.

  The wall opposite the one they’d entered was entirely glass, with a view out over a cerulean lake surrounded by pale green and gold meadows and marshland.

  “This is the back wing,” Alexander murmured from beside her.

  “The view is beautiful.”

  “This is a protected natural preserve.”

  “Yours?”

  “No, it’s a national preserve.”

  This inane conversation was only slightly better than a discussion of the weather, but it helped her get a handle on her emotions.

  She turned away from Alexander to study a rather crude pastoral painting hanging near where she stood. The walls of the narrow room—narrow compared to the size of the villa, as the room was easily four or five meters wide—were the same wood paneling with creamy white as the foyer.

  The space reminded her a bit of a museum gallery, complete with a few small seating areas down the middle, from which someone could admire either the view or the art.

  She took a few more steps, eyes narrowing. The painting had a small clear plaque mounted near the bottom right corner of the gilt frame.

  Eastern European Folk Art Painting, Anonymous

  “I bought it in Cahul,” Alexander said. “The capital of this district.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Alexander crossed his arms, looking a little uncomfortable.

  “Why did you buy it?”

  “Because I liked it.”

  She glanced back at the painting, which showed three fig
ures—two men and a woman, walking alongside a wagon being pulled not by horses but by cows. It wasn’t any kind of realism, but it was compelling.

  What about this had called to Alexander Wagner, billionaire?

  “And you decided to display it here in your gallery?”

  “Gallery? No. This place is just a…” He glanced around, then frowned.

  “It walks like a gallery and talks like a gallery…”

  “What?”

  “The framing and displays are all gallery or museum quality.”

  “Absolon insisted.”

  “I’m sorry?” She cocked her head in faux puzzlement even as her heartbeat sped up.

  “Dr. Absolon Blanchar. The art historian who manages my family’s collection.”

  “You have enough art that you need your own PhD art historian?”

  Could he hear that her questions were based on a lie? The lie was that she didn’t already know the answer.

  “Most of it is on loan to museums, and keeping track of requests and exhibits is a full-time job.”

  “But you had him frame this as if it were going into a museum.”

  She walked to the next piece. A carved wooden panel, but unlike the double doors this one was painted and gilded.

  Panel from Vardo living wagon. Anonymous. Great Britain.

  One by one she went to each piece of art. All but two were credited to anonymous, and most were small pieces, not the larger canvases that the space could have handled. More pastorals, several depicting a religious festival, and even a set of three pencil sketches of Alexander himself.

  Alena looked at the three drawings which had been mounted beside each other. The first was a rough and loose sketch of a man in a suit with his face partially visible. The perspective was low looking up, and from the back, as if the artist had been sitting on the ground behind Alexander.

  In the second, Alexander had turned around, and his features were clear and recognizable, despite the hasty lines.

  “Who is Marcela Miklovan?” Alena asked, pointing to the tag under the center painting.

  “The daughter of one of the contractors. The one who built this wing.” Alexander frowned. “She would tuck herself into the corner and sketch while her father worked. I asked to see her sketch.” He pointed at the middle one.

  “And you agreed to sit for, pose for, this last one?”

  “Yes.”

  The third painting was a much more detailed sketch of his face. His eyes were serious, gazing out at the viewer, but there was the hint of a smile around his mouth.

  Alena wanted to reach out and grab the piece off the wall. She wanted to take it, to have it for herself, because the Alexander in that sketch wasn’t “Alexander the Dom,” or the current version—“Alexander the Betrayed and Terrifying.” That sketch was of the man she’d enjoyed talking to. The man who’d invited her to dinner in his home, and washed his own dishes—the black knight in his battle-scarred armor, serious but satisfied at the end of a successful quest.

  “I bought the paintings from her. Her father told her to give them to me, but she didn’t want to.”

  “I hope she made you pay a fair price.”

  “She was 11, and I’ve gone up against teams of corporate lawyers and consultants who were less skilled negotiators. I paid her two thousand that day, and put ten into a trust which she can access for school.”

  “Where is she now?” Alena asked softly.

  “I’m not sure. My solicitor in Chisinau oversees the trust.”

  Silence fell, and Alena wondered if he kept a count in his head, an hourly allocation of words and once he hit the limit he couldn’t speak again until the hour was up.

  That thought made her smile. “The mental image of you being fleeced by an eleven-year-old girl is one I will treasure.”

  Alexander harrumphed, but he was smiling.

  “You bought everything in here on your own?” She made sure the question, and her posture, were both casual.

  “Yes.”

  “So what does your curator think about them?”

  “He asked me if I wanted them insured.”

  Don’t react. “Rather mercenary, for an art curator.”

  Alexander shrugged. “He does his job.”

  “I took several art history classes in college.” That much, at least, was not a lie, though it wasn’t the fullness of the truth either. “I loved the idea of going out and buying art I liked, creating exhibits based on emotions. A gallery filled with paintings and sculptures I thought represented true love.” She’d said more than she meant to and she had to stop herself and carefully compose her next words. “I was very disappointed when I realized museum curators didn’t get to travel the world buying art.”

  Alexander was silent for long enough that she was mentally rephrasing her statement so she could repeat it, hoping she could prod him to say something.

  “Museum curators don’t. My curator does.”

  Alena held very still so she wouldn’t shatter this pivotal moment. “He buys paintings from new artists?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly known pieces. Rembrandts, a Van Gogh, da Vinci. They’re investments.”

  “You own a da Vinci?” No amount of self-control in the world could have kept the shock out of her voice.

  Alexander grimaced. “I don’t like to think about how much I paid for that one. It’s in a museum, of course.”

  The most expensive painting ever sold was an oil painting of Christ attributed to da Vinci. It had been heavily damaged and restored, was thought to be a copy of a lost original…

  And the sucker sold for 450 million dollars to an anonymous buyer.

  She stared at Alexander. She was about to ask—actually she wanted to grab him and demand to know if he’d purchased Salvator Mundi—but changed her mind. That would reveal more about her than was safe.

  “In college,” Alexander said softly. “You studied art history.”

  “Among other things,” she said slowly.

  “Where?”

  “Where what?”

  He frowned. “Where did you go to college?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “My people said Magdalena Moreau never went to college.”

  “Maybe I just never graduated.”

  “They didn’t find a record of attendance.”

  “Shoddy record keeping is hardly my fault…”

  Alexander reached out and she tensed. He tucked her hair behind her ear, but the caress didn’t relax her. His hand stroked her hair, and Alena fought to suppress a whimper.

  He carefully gathered her hair into a tail at the back of her head, then wrapped it around his fist. Alena’s breathing was fast and shallow, and despite knowing it was coming, when he tightened his hold on her hair, making her scalp prickle with pain, she yelped.

  “Who are you?” Alexander whispered in her ear.

  “You have my passport, I’m—”

  “Passports can be faked.”

  She didn’t reply and he tugged, forcing her head back until she was looking at the ceiling. Afraid of falling, needing an anchor, she reached up and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding her hair.

  “I wouldn’t suggest scratching me again,” Alexander murmured.

  “Or what?” she snapped. Her options were anger or fear. That helpful numbness was long gone, and her fear was too thick to allow her to even pretend to be calm, let alone actually feel calm.

  Anger was easier, safer, and she clung to it.

  Alexander didn’t reply, only forced her head back further. Her back arched, her body weight off center so she was now leaning into his hand.

  “Or what?!” she demanded in a high voice, already preparing for him to release her, in which case she’d fall.

  Alexander brought her head up, until she was standing erect, both her hands still clamped on his.

  Her quiet man didn’t speak. Instead he used his hold on her hair to guide her to the doors midway down the gallery-that-he-insisted-wasn’t-a
-gallery. He turned the handle, pushed it open, and then nudged her inside before releasing her hair.

  She heard the door close, heard the click of a lock. It was just like she’d imagined, with one very important difference.

  Alexander wasn’t on the other side of the locked door.

  He was on the inside. With her.

  “Strip.”

  Chapter 6

  For a moment she trembled, on the verge of breaking down in tears. Maybe if she cried, if she let him see how fucking terrified she really was, he’d relent.

  In her fantasy she’d cry prettily, then he’d apologize and back off, both physically and psychologically. He’d do it because, despite her current situation, Alexander wasn’t a sadistic kidnapper. He was a pissed off, powerful man, and her opponent in this very high-stakes game.

  She needed to keep reminding herself of that—this was still just a game.

  A game that had changed, because she’d broken her own rules.

  A new game she wasn’t all that good at.

  A game in which her lack of skill was amplified by an extreme disparity in advantage—her metaphorical bad hand of cards.

  She’d flown to Vienna thinking of Alexander as a playable piece. The black knight. If she’d done her job right, if she hadn’t been so stupid, she would have left Vienna and Alexander would never have questioned anything about her except maybe to wonder where she was when she didn’t show up at later Orchid Club events. But he would have moved on, as people did.

  It would have worked, if she hadn’t fallen in lust with him.

  Standing with her back to him, her ears ringing with his command to strip, she could lie to herself. Lie and say that she hadn’t realized what changing her list to allow intimacy would mean. Lie and say she hadn’t realized what could happen.

  She’d known. Even as she’d rationalized what she was doing while editing her list. Even as she tied a mental Gordian knot to justify her actions. She’d known.

  “Alena.” His voice cracked through the air, a hard cold sound like ice breaking. “Strip.”

  With her back to him, she closed her eyes, screwing her face up to fight back the tears. “And if I don’t?” There was a quaver in her voice she couldn’t stop no matter how desperately she wanted to.