His phone rings again. He holds my breasts, through the soft tee-shirt. I only wore a thin bra. Now my buds are scraping to get out of it. He takes another kiss and our mouths form together in new ways. His tongue and mine are making a new language. They’re inventing fresh ways to say, ‘Yes.’
The chirrup of his phone distracts us again. This time he takes it out. Breaks off the kiss long enough to say, “Yes?” in a way that clearly means, ‘No.’ before he gives me back his lips again.
We kiss as he listens. He grunts. “Mm. Mm-hmm” As he nods, it’s a change of rhythm for us.
I’m laughing as we kiss again.
“Mm. Mm? Mmm.” he says. His hand explores.
We break. He’s looking into my eyes. Then his eyes travel over my lips as he says, “You can take care of it…. Do whatever you have to. Okay?” His fingers are hunting for ways into my overalls.
He’s talking into the phone. But I’m nodding.
“You don’t need me.”
I mouth, ‘I do.’ He almost smiles. That’s a first. He’s taken a break from playing hunt-the-zipper. His hand is just taking advantage of my ass.
Then his face is still. “No.” His eyes stop moving. “Really? Are you certain?”
He scowls as he hangs up.
He kisses me again. And this one is the best.
But I know what’s coming.
“Look, I can’t… I have to do this. It will take ten minutes, I promise.” One more sweet kiss. “Wait for me?”
He slips out of the door.
I count to ten. I can’t leave. This is too good. He’ll be back. He’s what I need. I’m not really terrified, I tell myself.
I feel like Cinderella, just after her carriage turned back into a pumpkin.
I’m starting to feel something. I expect that’s normal. A man like him, how could I not? But I don’t want to. Between the buzz of his power and the tenderness that I see behind his eyes, he’s a man I want so much more from. And I see what he needs.
He’s too sure. He needs someone who can pull him back from the edge. Maybe I’m kidding myself, though, thinking I wouldn’t just follow him to the edge and over it.
I don’t feel things for people. Especially not for men. And I definitely don’t want to be feeling things for that arrogant bastard. Even if his kisses are like a class-A drug.
Slipping the door open a crack gives me a back view of the last of the glitzy crowd, thinning away, out of the ballroom.
I make a dash. Squeeze myself past the guests. Down the gangplank and I run. Hard.
If the beating the local lowlife got from Konstantin wasn’t enough to scare them away, I’m running too hard, they’ll never catch me. I’m on the dock, on dry land. Running as fast as I can.
He shouts from the top of the gangplank. He’s too far away. I run harder. He’s calling, but he’s fading into the distance.
And, a blessed rarity: a San Francisco Yellow Cab. I thought they were extinct. And his light’s on. I wave. He pulls over. I dive into the back. I can’t really afford it, but I have to get home.
All the way back, I babble at the driver. Talking nonsense about the fashion shoot, talking nonsense about a yacht and a boat and a ship. Talking about anything to keep the noise going. To keep my thoughts from wandering.
When he lets me out, the driver thanks me for such an entertaining ride. I don’t really even know what I told him. I run up the steps at the side of the house. Breathless as I get the door open, I pull it shut behind me, and almost collapse, leaning back against the door.
More than anything I want to slide down to the floor and just stay here. But I stagger for the little bathroom. Turn on the shower.
Water flows and I start to unbutton the straps of my life-saving overalls. I’m not feeling as grateful to them as maybe I might. And that’s when I remember. My data card is still in the camera.
The camera is still on the table.
I spend too long in the shower. I’ve fucked everything up. Now I want nothing more than to let the water run over my skin and have it wash away the whole day.
My breasts are hard, like they’re full. The buds are hard and sore. I’m hot between my thighs. I take the shower head, turn the water colder and start to spray it over my body. More on my tits. Then onto my pussy.
My clit is buzzing so hard, I can’t stand up. Folded over, I rub and try not to think of him. His strong hands. His deep voice. The hardness of that long bulge.
Quickly, I wash my hair, finish up in the shower. The temptation to point the spray up between my legs again is still there. But I resist.
I take a beer to bed and hug my spare pillow. Tight. I think of flicking through the pics that I still have. The ones on the phone. But I decide against it.
In the middle of the night, I wake up. Hot, and wet.
The pillow’s between my knees. I’m anxious. Writhing in the heat. Tossing and turning. Hands on the tops of my thighs. I look down at the pillow and realize I must be still half-dreaming, seeing the hard gleam of his eyes there.
My fingers move to try to soothe the ache, my breath catches and flutters.
And I’m thinking of his hands. Strong. Elegant. Insistent.
I’m rubbing and the ache isn’t going away. If anything, it’s getting worse. I wish that I’d stayed. Let him do what he wanted to do. Fuck the consequences.
If I could, now? I would do anything he wanted.
To feel him, wrap myself around him. To have him bury himself in me, to fold myself into his strong arms and hold him close. To feel the beat of his warm breath, panting on my neck.
To feel myself open to the great swollen length of his body, stretching, plowing.
I felt like the night would never end.
Chapter 10
Him
THE BRIGHT SQUAWK OF seabirds in the golden and turquoise dawn drags me awake to a gorgeous morning on the San Francisco Bay.
I’m cranky, my neck is stiff, my shoulders ache. I slept badly, tormented with dreams of her.
I don’t do this. Obsessing over a girl. It’s not me.
Her face rose in my dreams and the honey, peaches and cream scent of her hair and the back of her neck.
I drag myself out of the bed and leave it in a heap. Drench myself in the shower.
When I get down to the foredeck for breakfast, Svetlana is sipping espresso. No sign of Tatiana yet.
Ivan pours coffee for me and asks how I’d like my eggs.
“Boiled,” I tell him, “With thick slices of toasted sourdough. Leave the coffee pot.”
“The bay is lovely.” Svetlana is looking out, shading her eyes with her hand over her sunglasses. “We could stay here a few days, if you’d like.”
Shrug. I sip my coffee. Strong and dark.
Svetlana’s fingers touch mine. Through her sunglasses, she studies my face. My cousin’s concern should be reassuring.
“You don’t mind if we stay, do you, Konstantin, at least until tomorrow?”
I shake my head.
“I want to do some shopping. And it would be nice to do some touristy things. Maybe take a cable car.” She watches me. I don’t feel like talking.
I do like the way she understands me. She and her twin sister are so alike, and so completely different. If Tatiana were here now, the breakfast table would clatter and rattle with noise. Every single part of last night’s launch party would be picked at, talked over and examined, three, four different ways. Who did what, who said what to whom, how they looked at each other. Most of all, what everybody was wearing.
It’s restless enthusiasm, and I have to admire her for that. It’s a lot of nervous energy, too, so I’m not sorry that she isn’t here to join us for breakfast.
Still, I ask Svetlana, “Do you know where Tatti is?”
Svetlana’s head shakes. “I think she went ashore last night. I don’t know where, though.”
A few more sips of coffee and I’m feeling almost human. “Did you have a good time?” I ask my
cousin, “Did you enjoy the launch?”
“I would have rather finished the evening with a big, hot, hunky man. I know there are plenty of them in this town. The bars on North Beach are always brimming with them. And I know they’re not all gay.”
She sips the rest of her espresso and butters a thin slice of toast. “But the show was terrific. I think everybody did a great job.”
She senses that I’m not in my usual frame of mind. I’m grateful that she doesn’t want to talk about it, though.
The little stowaway got under my skin. Her laugh is like a breath of fresh air, like a drug to me. In her eyes I see someone who’s young but with an intuition beyond her years. She has an insight, a perception that I want more of. Without my even knowing it, she’s lured me out of my depth. What frightens me is how much I like it.
Instead, Svetlana raises another ghost. “I thought I saw Lev at the party. Was he here?”
Chapter 11
Her
MOST MORNINGS I GET a coffee for my go-cup from Spike’s. Today I’m too unsettled. This morning the little table in the far corner is going to be my hideaway. My refuge. I’ll sit with a coffee and my little rucksack and try to pull my thoughts and feelings together.
Losing the card with that photo feels like the worst thing ever. The original was on my phone when it got stolen.
There must be a copy somewhere in all of my files, but so much disappeared in my last computer melt down, when I lost my old cloud backup.
I always carried that portrait on the card that in my pocket. The picture was as real as any precious object to me.
Thinking about any of the other things from last night in general, or about a big, forceful man who came to my rescue in particular and… then… yeah, I’m not going to be thinking about any of that. Not anytime soon.
Any thought of that man spins my insides like a storm at sea.
My whole mood clears and lifts when Darcy steps into Spike’s. Darcy is my favorite classmate in the School of Photography.
She runs over to my table, pausing halfway across the floor. I’m already saying, “I didn’t know you got your coffee here.”
“I don’t.” Her frizzy chestnut hair is a hot mess. I adore it. Could be the reason we’re so tight is, we’re the two girls who pay the least attention to our appearance. Though she looks like a windswept movie star. I, on the other hand, look like a soggy muffin. Like always. Probably worse today.
“Look,” she says. “Do you want to be here on your own?”
“I did.” I love how we sense each other like that, like we’re on a frequency together, “But I’m all solituded out, now.”
It’s true. Seeing Darcy makes me forget it all.
She gets a latte and a biscotti and the barista offers to bring them to the table for her. She gives him a foxy smile.
She tells me stories about her crazy ex. They all sound hair-curling, but she makes them hilarious. I’ve told her before she should totally put them together for a stand-up routine. “What, publicly humiliate crazy stalker guy and flip him into deranged, persecuted victim-with-a-mission?”
He always sounds more desperate than dangerous to me but then, it’s not me that he’s calling up at three in the morning to blubber at. I ask her, “Would it be so tough to change your phone number?”
She laughs and says, “If I did that every time my BF turned out to be a lunatic, I’d have a full-time job calling and texting people with my new number.”
I’ve given her advice before. Sometimes she’s taken it, and I’m always relieved that it’s worked out well. Today, I can tell that she just wants to tell me what’s happened. To share and be heard. The more she tells me, the more outrageous she makes it, and the more she makes me laugh.
We talk about that and all the silly stuff that bubbles out of us, and for half an hour, I just forget everything.
“So?” Darcy asks me as I’m getting ready to leave, “Did you get to the fashion party of the millennium last night?”
And I tell her about it. All of it. Every little bit. It all washes out of me. I watch her eyes grow wider and wider. At the end, I say, “There has to be a way that I can get the card back without talking to him. Don’t you think?”
She gives me a look. Then she says, “We’ll get to that, girl. Right now, though, what about the pictures you got on your phone?”
I hadn’t given them a thought. I have pics of the first part of the show, and some of the reception, including some snaps of the horde of Hades. Darcy laughs loud, seeing the pics as I describe their comments and my lame responses.
When she sees the shots from the show she says, “Damn, girl.”
“Some show, right?”
“Fuck that. Some pics, girl. You’re hot.”
I shrug. But I appreciate it. I don’t know if they’ll be enough to impress our professor.
Darcy makes a comic scowl. “He only said you needed to show guts and get in. He didn’t say anything about getting a reel of centerfold shots.”
“You know what,” I tell her, “I think my best photo could be the one I took before I even got into the party.” I show her the pic of the couple, silhouetted on the top deck of Firebird. Clouds and the half-moon behind them and the Zavarovski logo up in the top corner.
“That’s a money shot, girl. You got a banker there. You should sell that to them.” She looks closer, “Is that Svetlana Zavarovski?”
“I think it’s her sister. I saw Svetlana—she’s in one of the reception pics—but she was in a long white gown.”
“The guy looks scary. Is that your guy… “
“He’s not ‘my’ guy, Darcy. And, no. That’s not him. Konstantin is way better looking.”
“Serious?” Getting ready to go, she looks up. “Damn.”
I’m alone in the photo workshop, mentally still beating myself up for leaving that card in the camera last night.
Darcy hurries in, flustered. She leans back on the door as she closes it behind her.
“There’s a man.” Her eyes roll, dreamily, “He’s looking for you, Parker. I think it’s the guy who you swear is not your guy.” She says, “Only, I think you may need to tell him that.”
A flood of sensation, deep and hot inside me feels like a dark warning. I know it’s him. It has to be.
“Darcy, you can’t let him find me.”
“Is it okay if I let him find me instead?” She mimes fanning her face with her hand. “He’s in loose black pants and a cream silk shirt I kind of want to eat.”
“I’m not kidding,” I tell her, hurrying for the darkroom area.
“Neither am I, Parker,” opening the door to the corridor and poking her head out. She looks both ways. I make my way into the short maze that keeps light from getting into the darkroom. I hear Darcy close the door again behind her.
Leonid Unstoppable Page 5
