I shake my head, feeling a blush creep into my cheeks. “I have never left my hometown. Except… that one time of course,” I say, feeling the embarrassment grow. He of course knows what time I mean.
“Not even for a day?”
Is it really so hard to believe? I’m beginning to feel a little attacked. After all, there was never really any good reason to leave town. My city is small and insular, of course, but it’s always had everything we needed. I wonder if my new husband is some kind of jet-setter.
“Not once,” I answer.
“How sad,” Andrei says, leading me to the elevator.
I dare not tell him that I’ve never been in an elevator before; I only know what they are from what I’ve seen in books. When the metal doors shut together, the two of us are left standing in a tiny, cramped chamber with mirrored walls. I can’t avoid looking at our reflections. We are surrounded by them. When it moves, my legs quiver, and he holds me a little tighter against his hard body, keeping me standing.
It strikes me now just how drastically different we are in every way. Andrei is frighteningly tall and muscular, and everything about him is cold and dark. He towers over my diminutive frame, and his dark eyes and black hair contrast sharply with my pale blonde hair and light blue eyes. We are night and day, the two of us.
I wonder to myself what will happen now that we are joined together.
What happens when the night meets the day? When the moon touches the sun?
An eclipse?
We ride the elevator all the way up to the ninth floor, and I cannot believe I’m even inside a building with so many floors, much less going to live in one. We step out into a hallway with hardwood floors and walk down a ways to a door labeled 905.
“Is this one yours?” I ask, looking up at Andrei.
Without missing a beat, he answers, “It is ours.”
My stomach does a flip flop and I gulp hard as the tall, powerful man beside me unlocks the door to my new home. My mouth falls open the second I step inside.
It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, with high ceilings and massive, wide windows along the stark white walls. The foyer opens directly into a huge, airy living room area, with the shiny, high-tech kitchen to the left and two doors leading to what I assume are a bathroom and bedroom on the right. The floors are made of a glossy, nearly black wood, and the furnishings are all variations of black and white. A small spiral staircase in the corner of the room leads up to what appears to be a sort of loft area. Crossing the room to stand in front of the windows, I draw back the heavy black curtains and gasp at the sight of the New York City skyline, an array of sparkling lights speckled in the pitch-black night like constellations.
Suddenly, I tremble at the touch of a hand falling at my waist. I swivel around to face my new husband, who is looking down at me with a tight-jawed expression. There’s something vaguely predatory flickering in his deep, dark eyes, and I inhale sharply as he raises my hand to kiss it with his full lips. Apart from my father, I have never felt a man’s lips on my skin before. In my dazed state at the wedding, I hardly perceived our first sanctioned kiss as husband and wife. My head was so fuzzy and filled with racing thoughts that it had simply passed me by. But now, alone in this apartment with the city teeming with nocturnal life, the sensation is startlingly pleasant, and I almost want to recoil from it. After all, pleasure is forbidden, and especially when it’s this kind of pleasure.
“Do you like it?” Andrei asks, and at first I think he’s talking about the kiss. Then I realize that he wants to know if I like the apartment. And I do, very much.
“Y-yes,” I reply, perhaps a little too quickly. “It’s beautiful.”
“I know the furnishings may be a little too simple to suit a feminine taste,” he admits, and he is partially correct. The apartment is utterly gorgeous, but it is a very minimalistic kind of beauty. The few items he does have are obviously of a very high quality, but he doesn’t have much more than the essentials. There is one black couch and one white chair. One massive flat-screen television mounted on the wall. Everything is monochrome and cold, very cold.
It’s the sort of aesthetic that reminds me of snow-capped mountains: breathtaking to behold but not particularly hospitable in practice.
“If you’d like, perhaps you could lend some of your warmth to the place,” Andrei added, brushing the hair back from my face and peering into my eyes as though searching for... something.
I instinctively flinch from his touch, and I see a shadow of regret cross his features. I immediately feel awful, as though I must do something to make amends.
I must be a perfect wife. It is my purpose in life to serve.