Chapter 5 5

Chapter 5

"Why not?" Alexander's voice stayed soft, almost gentle, which made an odd contrast with the sharpness in his eyes. "You don't want it?"

Ana shook her head quickly, pressing her lips together, trying to keep her expression from giving anything away.

'Calm down. Stay calm. If I look even a little too eager, he's going to think I'm desperate — and after everything he already did for me last night, jumping at this like some starving stray would just be humiliating.'

She unclenched her fists, took a breath, and made herself answer evenly.

"It's not that I don't want it, sir. It's just — you've already done so much for me. Taking a job from you on top of that feels like too much." She bowed her head slightly, offering a smile that felt stiffer than she wanted it to.

Alexander leaned back against the sofa, chin lifted, watching her with the easy, unhurried confidence of a man who rarely heard the word no and had never once taken it seriously when he did.

His gaze drifted, and whatever composure he'd been holding onto slipped a little.

Morning light was pouring straight through the window behind her, and it hadn't occurred to Alexander until just now that the plain white shirt she'd slept in — since her underwear had been soaked through along with everything else — was doing very little to hide anything at all.

He swallowed, hard, and had to actively remind himself where his eyes were supposed to be pointed.

"If you really feel like you owe me," he said, voice dipping into something considerably more suggestive, "there's a much more interesting way to repay it. Become my woman instead."

Ana blinked.

"...My what?" She tilted her head, half-certain she'd misheard. "Your — woman?"

"I'm sorry, are you joking right now?" She let out a short, uneasy laugh, though nothing about his expression suggested he was.

This was not, by any measure, a conversation two strangers were supposed to be having.

Alexander watched her sit there, flustered and clearly out of her depth, and felt something hot uncoil low in his chest — something that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the simple, inconvenient fact that he wanted her.

He swallowed again, harder this time, and let his expression settle into something more deliberate.

"Ahem." Ana straightened her spine instinctively under the weight of his stare, that deep, oceanic blue that seemed to see straight through whatever composure she was trying to hold onto.

"I'm not joking, little girl." His voice had dropped, quiet and certain. "You have two options. Work for me as a maid. Or belong to me as my woman. I did save your life last night, after all. That's a debt, whether you like the word or not."

Ana's throat went dry. Her hands twisted together in her lap.

"You've gone quiet all of a sudden." Alexander's mouth curved. "That's... unexpectedly cute."

"I'll count to three." His grin sharpened. "If you don't answer by then, I'll assume you've chosen door number two — my bed, starting tonight. And I promise you, we'll find plenty of ways to keep ourselves entertained."

"One."

"Two."

"Wait, hold on, why is this suddenly a countdown—"

"Thr—" He was already on his feet by the time he started the last number, that same dangerous, teasing smile fixed in place, and Ana's nerve finally snapped.

"MAID! I'll be the maid!" The words came out louder than she intended, her face flushing red. "I'm actually really good at cleaning, I promise, there's no way I could just suddenly be your, umm... your woman, that doesn't even make sense—"

Alexander paused mid-step, clearly fighting the urge to laugh outright at how thoroughly flustered she'd become.

He recovered quickly, though, and crossed the remaining distance until he was standing right beside the bed, looking down at her with an expression that had eased into something a touch more genuine.

"Alright. Maid it is." He tilted his head, studying her face — still pink, still adorably overwhelmed. "Though before we get into any of that, shouldn't we actually introduce ourselves properly?"

"Oh—right, of course." Ana cleared her throat, straightening up and extending a hand toward him with as much composure as she could scrape together. "My name is Anastasya Rose. I just turned twenty, so for the record I'm not actually a little girl."

Alexander looked down at her outstretched hand for a beat, something almost fond flickering across his face, and then wrapped it in his own — warm, and large enough to make her fingers look almost delicate by comparison.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The moment their palms met, something surged through Alexander's chest, sudden and fierce — an urge to pull her closer, to claim far more of her than a simple handshake, something he had absolutely no logical explanation for and no particular interest in resisting.

"Anastasya Rose," he repeated slowly, like he was testing the shape of it in his mouth. "Beautiful name."

"I look forward to having you around." His mouth curved again. "Call me Alexander."

"One more thing." He leaned in, and this time his gaze dropped somewhere considerably less polite. "You might want to put something on underneath that. I can see... quite a lot, actually."

"Not that I'm complaining," he added, entirely too pleased with himself. "If you wanted to keep showing it off, I certainly wouldn't stop you. I could even help — hold it, kiss it, whatever you'd prefer."

Ana stared at him, uncomprehending for a full three seconds — and then, slowly, horribly, followed his gaze down to exactly where it had settled.

Her whole world stopped.

"HUH?"

"HUUUUHHHH?!"

She froze completely, the reality of the situation crashing over her all at once — the thin, sun-soaked cotton, the fact that she'd been sitting here for who knew how long having an entire conversation while essentially transparent.

Her face went from pink to a shade closer to boiling red, and Alexander, watching the transformation, allowed himself a low, satisfied laugh before finally straightening up.

"I think that's more than enough introduction for one morning." He was already moving toward the door, unhurried, infuriatingly composed. "I'm nearly late for work. I'll see you tonight, Anastasya."

He disappeared into the next room without a backward glance, leaving her sitting there in stunned, mortified silence.

He had, admittedly, wanted to stay and tease her further — there was something deeply satisfying about watching her unravel like that — but the office wouldn't wait forever, not even for this.

...

The moment the door clicked shut behind him, Ana collapsed face-first onto the bed.

"AAAAAAAA—"

She rolled sideways, pounding a fist into the mattress, into a pillow, into anything within reach.

"How did I not notice? How was I just sitting there, having a whole conversation, completely... completely—"

"AAAAAAA!"

"I would honestly rather pass out right now than remember any of this." She pressed both hands over her burning face. "Amnesia. I would like amnesia. Right now. Please."

She stayed like that for a solid minute, groaning into the pillow, before a second, worse realization hit her and she bolted upright.

"Wait..."

She looked down at herself properly for the first time. Not her dress. Not her clothes at all.

"So who," she said slowly, dread creeping in, "changed me out of my own clothes last night?"

She already knew the answer. There was only one person it could have been.

"He saw—" Her voice cracked. "He saw everything? Oh my god. Oh my GODDD."

"How am I supposed to look him in the eye ever again," she moaned, dropping her head into her hands, cheeks burning hot enough that she was fairly sure steam should have been coming off them. "This is it. This is how I die. Of embarrassment. At twenty years old."

She might have stayed there indefinitely, wallowing, if her phone hadn't chosen that exact moment to start ringing from somewhere across the room.

She scrambled for her bag, saw the name on the screen, and felt her stomach drop for an entirely different reason.

"Hello?"

"Ana, where are you?" Gwen's voice came through sharp and clipped, already irritated. "You're late. If this happens again, I won't have a choice but to replace you."

"I'm — I'm so sorry, I'll be right there." Ana was already on her feet, scanning the room for her dress, which lay in a wrinkled heap near the sofa exactly where it had been left the night before. "Something came up this morning, it won't happen again, I promise—"

"Ten minutes," Gwen said flatly, and hung up before Ana could get another word out.

"Okay. Okay, okay, okay." Ana snatched the dress off the floor, checked that the coast was clear, and changed as fast as her still-trembling hands would allow.

Then, without pausing to process anything else that had happened that morning, she bolted out of Alexander's room and down the hall, leaving behind a night — and a morning — she was fairly certain she'd be replaying in mortified detail for the rest of her life.