Page 25 of Vienna Bargain

Eyes still closed, she reached for her waistband. When the pants slithered to the floor, Alena stepped backwards out of both those and her shoes, putting enough distance between them that she was able to pull her shirt up and off. She let it drop, then reached down to peel off the no-show socks she preferred when wearing flats.

There was something so mundane about taking off socks that it made the moment seem more invasive. Seeing someone strip off socks at the end of a long day was a little intimacy shared by couples. Removing socks was rarely part of a striptease, because it wasn’t all that sexy.

The socks joined her shirt, leaving her in her bra and panties. Both were a basic tan-shade of nude. Again that made it seem more intrusive, because these were items she would never have worn to a club.

When she’d gotten dressed this morning—with a security guard standing watch outside the bedroom door—she’d considered putting on some of the lingerie she’d brought as possible club attire, but hadn’t yet worn. Doing so would make her feel more submissive.

And that was why she hadn’t. This wasn’t agreed-upon, negotiated play.

This was coercion.

A devil’s bargain.

She had no obligation to make herself appealing.

You could have opted for jail in Serbia. Eventually it would have been straightened out.

Alena reached back for the clasp of her bra. With a shrug it skidded down her arms and fell to the floor.

Alexander watched her dispassionately, one hand tucked into the pocket of his slacks. There were dark circles under his eyes. Had he slept? She had, but fitfully, aware of the guard standing by the door they hadn’t let her close, and plagued by anxiety for the future.

Hooking her thumbs in the waistband of her panties, she let them drop.

Once she was totally naked the anxiety faded, eclipsed by visceral fear.

She was naked and the most vulnerable, most in-danger, she’d ever been in her adult life.

No one knew where she was. There was no chance of running for an embassy even if she did manage to get out of the house. Assuming there was a U.S. embassy, it would be in the capital, and based on the flight map she’d covertly studied on the jet, Moldova’s capital wasn’t anywhere near her current location.

Despite that, and though she was scared, she no longer felt jittery. The fear was hard and cold inside her, almost reassuring in its weight.

He stared at her, quiet and almost dispassionate. A billionaire examining yet another one of his possessions.

Anger flared back to life as the seconds ticked by. Not rage as she’d felt on the stairs, but a cool anger that matched the ice of her fear.

Alexander pulled his hand from his pocket. In it he held a folded piece of leather. The buckle glinted in the light.

A collar.

“Lift up your hair.”

Alena gathered her hair, twisting it into a loose bun and securing it with one hand. The acrimony she felt kept her from shaking or flinching away as he slid the leather around her neck.

He buckled it loosely enough that she could easily put two or three fingers between it and her skin. On one hand that was reassuring, but on the other that probably meant he planned to leave it on her for longer than the course of a scene.

He would leave it on her for the remainder of their three weeks.

Metal clicked and then she felt a small padlock fall into place at the hollow of her throat. Her free hand curled into a fist, but her tone was perfectly polite when she said, “May I release my hair, Sir?”

Alexander’s brows drew together and he studied her face, as if trying to understand her sudden shift. Alena raised her chin, and met his gaze.

She would play the part of a submissive when doing so cost her nothing. Addressing him as ‘Sir’ and going naked were both easy. Wearing the collar was less so, but doable.

But she would not lower her eyes. That was where she would draw the line, and if he demanded it, that was where she would defy him, even if it meant physical pain.

That rather noble ideal of defiance was undermined by the fact that her traitorous body was most definitely aroused. If he fingered her sex, he’d find her wet and ready to be fucked.

The situation should horrify her, and in many ways it did, but how many times had she fantasized about being kidnapped and turned into a sex slave for a handsome, demanding master?

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