Page 255 of Bad for Me

“What? No. She could have the blue or the yellow car,” I point out as I reread everything myself.

Misha snorts. “No, because if she had the yellow car, then that would leave Mark with the blue car. Which he can’t have, because that would end up with Mark also living at the end of the street, but we know he can’t live there since…”

“Since April lives at the end of the street,” I say, nodding as I finally see where I’d gone wrong. I add the notes, checking off a few more boxes and crossing out others, and the answer to the entire puzzle somehow seems obvious. I grumble a little. “I’ve been working on this one for the past few days, and it was that easy?”

“If you know how these puzzles work, yeah.” Misha gives me a smug look. “Or if you’re just that smart.”

Which is very interesting to hear from a man who purportedly dropped out of high school. I don’t point that out, though. I get the sense there’s a lot more going on with Misha than he’s ever going to tell me, and I don’t want to spoil the moment.

“Oh, is that the case? You’re just that smart?” I flip several pages in the book, bringing us to the expert puzzles that I usually leave for days when I’m feeling particularly masochistic. “Here. You work this one out.” I unbind his hands, letting him stretch for a moment before shoving the pencil into one of them.

Misha looks at the pencil with some surprise, but I notice his lips twitching with the hint of a smile.

“And if you try to stab me with the pencil, I’ll stab you right back,” I grumble.

“Sure.” He reads through the clues, marking off the single obvious answer from the grid. He looks adorable concentrating as he mouths the clues under his breath.

He marks off another two, and I shake my head. “That can’t be right,” I say, pointing to one of them.

“Sure it is,” Misha answers. He taps on one of the clues. “January sales were in the red, and we know they were lower than February.”

“But December could have been lower still, and there’s nothing to say that John wasn’t the top salesman that month,” I say. I’m surprised at how invested I am in proving that I’m right.

Misha snorts and rolls his eyes. “Okay, but?—”

We start squabbling back and forth over the answers, and I find myself smiling more than I have since before I even… acquired Misha.

Why did the perfect man for me have to come in the form of a fucking slave?

When we come to an agreement over a few of the answers, the rest falls into place, and with the puzzle solved, I squeeze my arm around his waist. “Good job,” I tell him, unable to keep the wide grin from my lips. “Maybe I’ll get one of the logic puzzle board games for us to play. You’d keep me on my toes.”

Misha smiles at me, and I’m so shocked that I almost gape.

Fuck, he looks beautiful like that.

He doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it, either, because he ends up saying, “Yeah. I played some of those with… some friends. And escape rooms. Those are fun, even if some of the puzzles are obtuse.”

Some friends.

I don’t know why the thought fills me with so much jealousy, but my heart skips a beat and I’m not sure what to do about the feeling. I want to grill him about his life before, about his friends and his habits and everything else he did, but I know that will definitely ruin this. I’m only a few words away from seeing him retreat from me again.

I swallow thickly, wishing more than ever that I wasn’t part of this fucked-up family, that I was a savior instead of a slaver. “Yeah. I’ll definitely get some more of these. It’s more fun when you have someone to do them with.”

Misha’s smile drops just enough to remind me that he’s not here willingly.

It’s frustrating, and it pisses me off, too. Haven’t I been good to him today? Haven’t I done everything I can to make this pleasant for him? I could be terrorizing him, torturing him, but instead we’re doing fucking logic puzzles together.

“Go get on the bed,” I tell him, the words seeming to echo in my mind.

Misha nods, but he doesn’t argue with me either. This isn’t obedience though. The way he carries himself, that spark in his eye, makes it abundantly clear that he isn’t broken or cowed.

I watch Misha get on the bed face down. He even reaches up and clutches his wrists, as if his hands were still bound.

I should appreciate it, but instead, I find that it annoys me.

Pisses me off, even, because I want… I want more than this.

“We could’ve had a nice morning,” I tell him, my voice wobbling in a way that’s utterly fucking humiliating to hear. “You just had to… to pretend.” I shake my head. “But the only way I can get to you is pain. I see that now. You don’t want to be pampered or to enjoy yourself. You just want me to hurt you.”

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