Page 47 of Dance with Death

I glare at him, my arms crossed over my chest, trying to keep the warmth in. I don’t want to get in that tub. I know that once I get into that tub, something terrible is going to happen and I don’t want to know what it is.

“You can get in on your own or I can put you in. Your choice.”

As if that’s even a choice.

I step forward with hesitancy. I carefully lift my foot from the floor and sink it beneath the water’s surface. Instant panic strikes my chest and I step back out, backing away.

I think Nikolai has done well giving me a healthy fear of water.

Vigo turns to me and plucks me from the floor with ease. He grips me by the waist with his two large hands and I naturally grab hold of his wrists, though I don’t know if it’s to push him away or to hold myself steady.

He whips me around and carries me to the tub. He’s so tall and strong that he easily gets my feet above the tub’s edge before I can protest. I kick mid-air, trying to grip the rounded edge with my toes, but he plops me down in the water with a splash before I can find purchase.

The whoosh of the water as it splashes with my landing, the feel of it rapidly rising from feet to knees prompts me into a fearful stillness. I stand, shivering and trembling harder than before, terrified to sit, terrified to put my face any closer to this substance that could drown me.

“Sit,” he orders. All I can do is shake my head. “Sit.” His tone is sharper and he places his hands on my shoulders.

My fingers jump to fight him off, my eyes widening at the trigger that makes me feel as though he’s going to push me beneath the surface—the way Nikolai had done three times before in the pool at Mikhailov Manor.

“Sit or I’ll makeyou sit,” he warns with an even tone. He removes his hands from my shoulders in a show of good faith.

Still, all I can do is shake my head and shiver.

He steps back and tilts his head coolly. “Papàonly wants to give you a bath. You’re filthy. Don’t you want to feel clean again?”

He’s baiting me to sit in the water and the bait he’s dangling is inviting. I feel disgusting and want nothing more than to cleanse myself of every trace of him. Though my brain begs me to keep my head as far from the water as possible, my body forces me to bend. I slowly lower, taking sharp and shallow breaths as my body fights with my mind, tripping the wire of anxiety to a point of distress.

Tears are falling again, but somehow, I’ve managed to do the impossible—I’m sitting in a tub full of water. Though my hands grip the edges of the tub so hard my knuckles are white, my breaths are quick and my heart is racing, I’m sitting in the water.

With his sleeves rolled up, Vigo flips his black tie over his shoulder so it’s not dangling in front of him. Dripping soap onto his hands from the bottle of wash beside him where he kneels on the tile, he dips his hands beneath the surface and I flinch. The water pulses, rolling out and back toward me as I move. My breath catches in my throat and I hold back a sob.

“I’m just cleaning you,” he says with a smile, as if that should make everything better.

I try to steady my breathing through clenched teeth as his hands slide between my thighs. My eyes are wide, though I wish I could press them closed and find a safe space in my mind.

He gropes under the guise of cleansing me, though I’m feeling anything but clean as his fingers dance in and out of my pussy, circling around in-between my crack.

But then he stands, yanking his hands from the water so swiftly that I let out a scream as it splashes across my face, a droplet landing on my eyelash. I see him turn away, but when my panic sinks in, I can’t care about what he’s doing. I throw myself backward, away from the spray and start to push to my feet.

But Vigo is back at me in a flash.

He’s there before I can shift my hands back along the edges of the tub to push off. I see his sinister smile as he spins around to face me, but I don’t see the needle coming toward me until it’s too late. Before I can find the strength to climb from the tub, he plunges the syringe that came from nowhere into the side of my neck .

“What did you do?” I demand to know as he tosses the syringe behind him onto the floor haphazardly. “What is that? Whatisit?”

Almost instantly the awareness of my sense of touch begins to fade.

Am I still gripping the edge?

I look at my hands to see that I am, though I can’t really feel it. Then I see my fingers loosen, slowly losing their grip. I snap my head to look at him where he kneels beside me, his forearms leaning against the tub’s edge, his chin resting on his arms, his head tilted, watching me with curiosity and amusement.

Sick amusement.

He speaks to me as if we’re two old chums having a friendly conversation. “It’s a paralytic agent. It’s a fascinating drug. It freezes you inside yourself. Within a minute or two, you’ll lose the ability to control your body. You won’t be able to move. Completely paralyzed and at my mercy and it will last forhours. But here’s the fun part. You’ll remain conscious and awake and aware the entire time. Your eyes will stay open, unless I choose to press your lids closed, though I can’t think of a reason why I would want to do that,la mia bambola Russa.”

Panic has taken hold of me entirely. My grip is weakening. My body is slipping. I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t know if it opens. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. I’m slipping, slipping, sinking in the water.

“Before he sold you to me, Nikolai disclosed that he used water as a serious punishment for serious offenses and that it was quite effective with you. Disclosure of such things is standard in the paperwork when selling a slave, you understand. So, of course, I thought,what a fun game that would be to play with you, Anya. You didn’t think I’d only play daddy with you and send you on your merry way, did you? Of course, you didn’t. As you so rightly observed your first night here,I’m sick.It’s true and I fucking love it. In moments, you’ll become a real living doll and I will break your mind in ways you never imagined possible.”

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