Page 99 of Ivory Oath

I fight with him all the way to the door, but he pins my arms to my sides, kisses my forehead, and then pushes me away from the door just before he slams it closed.

For the first hour, I alternate between banging on the door and lying on the bed, my head dangling off the end. As if a different perspective on the room might reveal some escape hatch I missed earlier. A secret tunnel or one of those spinning bookshelves from the movies.

But it’s the same old room. A balcony that’s too far from the ground to jump off and a locked door that, even if I could get through it, would leave me facing down a small army of guards who would rather make a lifelong enemy out of me than go against Mikhail’s orders.

Eventually, I flip through a few books and try to lose myself in mindless television, but the minutes crawl by.

There’s one brief burst of excitement when the door cracks open mid-afternoon and Anatoly’s face appears. He’s there only long enough to hurl a protein bar and a bottle of water at me before snapping it shut again.

“Ow!” I shout at him, rubbing the sore spot on my thigh where the water bottle pelted me. I swear I hear him laughing as he walks away.

It’s as I’m pulling the hem of my skirt up to inspect my thigh that an idea hits me.

I kick the protein bar under the bed and run into my picked-over closet. Most of my clothes have migrated into Mikhail’s room, including all of my favorite pajamas and most comfortable leggings. But what this closet is absolutely lousy with is lingerie. Between Mikhail working nonstop the first few days we were back and our fight, I haven’t had much use for it.

Until now.

I undress, swap out my nude bra and undies for something red and lacy, and then re-dress. But this time, I hike my skirt a little higher on my hips, rolling the band under so the hemline falls to my mid-thigh. I also unbutton my shirt until my business-appropriate cleavage is something closer to “ripe for an HR complaint.” So much of my chest is visible that just walking through the front doors in this shirt might be considered sexual harassment.

If that isn’t, then texting photos of myself in this outfit to the CEO’s personal phone definitely qualifies.

But locking me in this room against my will is abduction, so I think said CEO has it coming.

I balance my phone on a pile of books at the end of the bed and embark on the boudoir session of Mikhail’s dreams. If he thinks he can drop me in this room and forget about me from nine to five, he has another thing coming.

I start off slow—a few stereotypical sexy assistant shots where I’m biting the end of a pencil and crawling towards the phone with my shirt draped open. Then I start thinking about how Mikhail will respond when he sees these photos. What he’ll do…

To himself.

To me.

I send the first batch of photos and don’t wait to see what he says before the skirt is in a rumpled pile next to the bed and my shirt is unbuttoned. I let the sleeves slip down my shoulders as I run my hands over myself, imagining they belong to Mikhail. I snap photos from every imaginable angle, sending them as fast as I can take them.

By the time the sun is sinking low outside my window, I’m wound tight. I texted Mikhail more than enough photos that suggested I took care of myself all day, but I never actually finished. Coming from my own hand while my traitorous brain pictured Mikhail would feel like a hollow victory.

I want to save the sexual tension swirling in me for when Mikhail comes crawling through my door, begging me for forgiveness and to put him out of his horny misery.

I’m perched on the end of the bed in my lingerie and my loosely-buttoned shirt when the lock finally clicks open and Mikhail steps inside.

I curl my legs underneath me, sit tall, and wait for the groveling to start.

But Mikhail doesn’t drop to his knees. His tongue doesn’t loll out of his mouth. Cartoon hearts don’t explode out of his eyes.

He stops in the doorway, looking like an exhausted, less put-together version of the man who locked me in this room eight hours ago, and crosses his arms. “Is this all a game for you, Viviana?”

None of the Mikhails in my imagination ever said that, so I’m not sure how to respond.

His jaw shifts. “I didn’t lock you in here as a joke.”

“That’s good, because it wasn’t funny,” I snipe back.

He drags a hand through his hair. His tie is loose around his neck. “I needed you to understand where I’m coming from. I thought you’d sit in here and think about?—”

“You sent me to my room to ‘think about what I’ve done?’” I snort. “I’m not a child, Mikhail. You can’t lock me away every time we disagree.”

“I don’t have a choice when we disagree on what your safety is worth!”

I roll my eyes. “You spent all day in the office. If you’re safe there, then I don’t see why I wouldn’t be.”

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