Who would buy a young woman like Cassie.
My hand clenches around the sheets briefly as I remind myself of my own complicity, and I glance at the outline of Cassie in the dark.
I can tell myself I’m better than some other dreg all I want, but I still bought this woman. So if I am to be her husband, I’m going to bring her every pleasure I can afford her. If her sweetness was what affected my work so dramatically, I will make it grow and thrive.
And if I’m truly sick of working for the lowest of the low in this city, maybe this fire will let me bring some justice to those who have it coming.
8
Cassie
A sliver of fading moonlight through the lightly billowing curtains falls across my face, waking me up sometime before dawn. Once again, my half-asleep brain expects me to be in my twin bed back in upstate New York, waiting for my mother to knock on my door and get me up to make breakfast. But I don’t hear anything but the constant hum of life from the city streets several stories down. Even in the near-total darkness, my eyes begin to adjust to the lack of light. I glance sidelong at the curtained window and see the faintest glow of moonlight mingled with neon lights and sleepless billboards, night-shift workers working by lamplight through wide, executive windows. Then my eyes turn to the space beside me in the massive bed,
There is a solid few inches of clear space between my body and the one next to me, and I realize with a jolt that I have tangled myself up in the entire blanket, leaving my new husband’s shirtless body completely uncovered. He’s obviously made no attempt to steal the sheets from me, letting me sleep comfortably while goosebumps rise along his limbs from sleeping in the cool air without a blanket. And the space between us sends a little vibration of appreciation through me, as it occurs to me that he has been lying perfectly straight and still, nearly on the edge of the bed, just so that he wouldn’t touch my sleeping body and wake me up.
Or perhaps, a cruel voice in the back of my head suggests, he is just so repulsed by me that he doesn’t want to brush up against me in the night.
I shake myself internally of that thought. He has married me. He has chosen me. So he must really want me — right? Then the events of last night come rushing back to me in a series of rapid-fire images and sound bytes: his face between my legs, my own cries of astonished pleasure, his words to me, low and possessive.
I want you.
I swallow hard, my eyes lingering on the chiseled outline of Andrei’s muscular stomach and chest. Last night I didn’t get to see any of this, the hard abdominals and rock-hard chest, his bulging biceps and solid jawline. The soft, dim light plays along the contours of his handsome face. Even in sleep, his expression is cold and hard. I almost want to reach out and touch his full, sensual lips, run my finger along his straight nose and heavy brow. I want to smooth away the slight worry lines and convince his beautiful mouth to smile.
But instead, I slowly sit up in bed and look down at myself.
I have to suppress a gasp at the sight of my totally naked body.
I cannot believe I have slept next to a man in the same bed without any clothes on! My mother would be so disappointed, my father enraged! But then, I think bitterly, they are the ones who forced me into a smelly basement in only my underwear, surrounded by revolting men.
Except for one man. The one who saved me.
Or did he? Perhaps he was just another bidder, surveying me like a customer at the butcher, appraising each pound of flesh with a detached hunger...
Biting my lip, I feel a lump rising in my throat and tears stinging in my eyes again. It isn’t fair. All the other girls in the congregation have been married off to men we all knew. Upright, conservative, godly men who wore khakis and sweaters and sang in the choir. Men who would surely avert their eyes and condemn the very sort of meat market I was pushed into. I’ve spent my entire life waiting for my Prince Charming, and now I’m stuck with this dark, ominous man I first saw in a dark and terrifying basement. This is not at all how I envisioned my life.
Getting out of bed carefully so as not to wake Andrei, I quietly pad out of the room, searching for a bathroom. When I walk into the living room, my stomach drops as my eyes land on the huge, floor-to-ceiling window across the room. A flash of last night invades my brain and I recall the cold glass against my spine, my new husband kneeling between my thighs, his tongue eliciting such sensations from my nether parts that I never thought possible.
I shudder to myself, thinking of how many transgressions against God I have made in this past week alone. Naked in front of men. Impure thoughts. Resentment toward my mother and father. Forgetting to pray. Marrying a man who doesn’t seem to be of my faith…