She says, “He looks like he’s hunting.” Then, “Can I tell him he can hunt me?”
Heavy footsteps in the hallway make me hurry deeper into the darkroom. There is no door. Only the maze of the light trap. I don’t even think it’s going to hide me. He could just walk in. There are two ways in and out, though. If he comes in one way, there’s a good chance I can run the other way out.
Inside, in the low, orange glow of the Safelite, I’m looking for somewhere to hide. Seriously considering whether I could get inside one of the paper and chemical cabinets.
The only other space is under the sinks and the trays of chemicals. There are no doors.
From outside, I hear the sound of the door opening again. And Darcy. “She’s not here.”
She’s talking breathlessly, in a singsong lilt. It’s not like her.
Then, the deep, dark voice that I knew I would recognize. It’s him. Of course it is.
“She’s in here,” like he can smell me. Maybe he can. “I know she is here.”
Footsteps. Coming closer.
When the heavy click of his shoes comes close, I’m guessing he’s going to take the left turn. I’m thinking, How can shoes sound expensive? I’m distracted. The silly shit that pops up in your mind when you’re in a panic. If I guess right, I’m out, free. If I guess wrong, I run straight into him.
I run. Out through the right side of the maze. Back through the workshop. Hurtling across the room, I grab my rucksack and dash for the door.
Darcy says, “Parker, you’re crazy.” She looks like she’s practically salivating. Her chest heaves.
I call back, “Take him. He’s all yours. Do anything you want with him. Please, do anything you can to delay him.” And I’m out of the door.
I only get as far as the big stairwell before I hear his shoes behind me.
My knees are unsteady as I rush down the stairs. I feel like I should have the strength and the speed to escape from him, but I suspect that my legs are secretly in league with him.
Chapter 12
Him
“WAIT!” I SHOUT AFTER her.
She’s fast down the stairs and out the door. I’m too far behind her to see which way she went.
Bursting through the heavy glass door, down the stone steps to the sidewalk, I’m looking left and right. I see her.
“Wait!” I shout over the noise of the traffic. She slows. My god, her ass in those overalls. It’s all I can do to stop myself chasing her. But I think I know what she wants now.
Outside in the cool breeze, Parker has chosen to run uphill. That’s crazy. Unless she wants to be caught. She’s racing away, but she wants me to beat her. She must, unless she thinks San Franciscans have a natural advantage on hills. I’ll show her she’s wrong if I have to. But I don’t think that’s what she wants.
Her dramatic reaction yesterday, when I ordered her, firmly, tells me what she needs. And I’m here to give her what she needs. But this time, I’m going to give her all of it.
I shout again. Sharp. Firm. She stops and turns. Her face is defiant. Her eyes burn. Under the soft white tee-shirt, her tits heave.
She shouts back. “You can’t just chase me in the street. You can’t just tell me what to do. You are too fucking arrogant for words. You think that everybody should do what you want just because you say so. Let me tell you. You’re not going to win that struggle. Not with me. Now,” she juts her chin, “leave me alone.”
She turns. Spins on her heel and sets off again without a glance over her shoulder.
The more she fights me, the more I know I that she is what I need. I have to have her.
“Stop!”
I say it now with more force. I get such a charge when she responds. I feel as if in taking control, I’m giving up control. It scares me. And I like it. Maybe the first time in my life, I feel like I’m out of my depth with her. And I want it. More.
“Come back here.”
Patience does not come naturally to me. I want to run to her. But I know that if I do, she will flee. I have to make her come to me. That’s the game. I wait. I have to find what she wants. What she needs. There’s a silent rhythm to it.
I feel the beat, like a physical pulse.
She turns. Slowly. The fire in her eyes is electric, enough to set my whole body buzzing. My pulse hammers. My mouth is dry, and a dark tang, an iron taste of blood is on the back of my throat.
Walking toward me she says, “You thought I was a spy,” hurling the accusation.
I wait.
“You used me.”
It’s hard. But I wait.
“You think that I’ll do what you tell me. Just because you tell me to. Just because everybody else does what you tell them.”
I feel like a reactor, shaking, past its critical mass. Ready to melt down and detonate. But I wait. I take a slow, long, thin breath in.
And, determined, I wait.
Angry, she stamps down the hill, back toward me.
I could kiss her. I want to hold her so much.
Her eyes cut me. “Everybody doesn’t have to do what you say. The world does not belong to you. You’re not the boss of me.” She is magnificent. It’s all I can do to stop myself taking her here and now.
She comes to me. Stands in front of me. So close that the sound of her breath is like fine linen, ripping.
“I’m not here to be ordered around by you, Konstantin. Sometimes, you don’t get what you want.”
I seize her. Fling my arms around her. Grab hold of her and pull her to me. She trembles in my grip. Shaking. Like a little bird. Her heat presses against me. The scent of her intoxicates me.
Her eyebrows steeple and her mouth opens, “Please…”
I pull her to me. Take the kiss that she offers me. The kiss that I need so much. The heat of her body against my abs, my chest, my pelvis, the sweet softness of her in my arms. I want to eat her.
Our lips meet and her body springs to life. She flings her arms around me. I feel like an underwater volcano. Bubbles erupt inside me. Tight. Pulling me close. Squeezing. Tight. Her shin hooks behind my leg. Rubs the back of my thigh. Her heat scrapes and saws against my aching cock.
We flow together. We blend like two rivers, two seas, joining. Crashing, splashing, meeting in a storm.
The sound of the traffic fades. I’m drunk on the sweet scent of her hair and her skin. Her heat of her soft, curvy body makes me hungry and hot.
Our mouths connect. Our heads, our faces turn to make the fit more perfect. A more perfect union. She jumps and wraps her legs around me. I turn with her in my arms, feeling her breath reach into my throat, mine reaching down into her as our tongues play and dance.
A surge of heat, of need, scraping, grips her hard against me. The press of her tender body against mine sets makes all of my muscles tingle. I want this moment to last forever.
“I never knew a woman who could make me feel this way.” I’m looking at her in amazement. “I have something…” I pull back to tell her, but her hands are in my hair. She pulls my face back to her, my mouth to hers. Her lips reach for mine. My mouth devours hers. Our mouths wrap and seal us together again.
Her arms pull tight around my neck, sheltering us, like a blanket. A blanket to keep the storm in.
She pulls back, stroking through my hair. She whispers, “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t too hard.” And another kiss. A soft one, “It really didn’t take long at all. I knew that you would have to be attending the best photography school in San Francisco. And the Academy of Arts School of Photography is not all that big.”
Another kiss. This one long and deep. And hot enough to get a honk from a passing driver. I break off, “Wait,” I tell her, ready to catch the guy and break his head.
She holds my arm. She’s firm. “Now you wait.”
“He can’t…”
She squeezes my bicep, “I love that. But we’re in a public place. There’s a little park nearby. Let’s go and get under some shade.
”
She takes my arm, and I let her walk me to the little pocket park. “I have something. The photos you took—”
She squeezes my bicep. Hard. It almost hurts. I’m stirred inside. Damn, could this woman do anything that didn’t make me want to fuck her on the spot?
Her cheek is against my bicep as we walk. “You have the card? I need that card back. It’s mine. You know it’s my card—”
“I know it’s your card. I realized when I saw the other pictures on there.”
“I need it back.” There’s a shady spot under some Japanese maple trees in the far corner. “I’m not happy about you looking at my other pictures.”
“I didn’t know that it was your card until I looked. I thought it was either ours or Claudio’s. It wasn’t until I saw the pics from your college classes that I realized.” She licks her lips as she pulls me down to sit on the grass. Her tongue slips across her lips as she watches me. I tell her, “I gave you the camera with a Zavarovski card in. You swapped the cards.”
“I know. It’s still my card, though.”
“Of course. I brought it for you. Here.”
“Oh my god,” She springs onto me, “thank you.”
She kisses me. Hard. Again. And again.
She pulls back. Breathless.
“Your pictures from the show are really great. I want to use some for press releases and a few for advertising.” She frowns, “We’ll pay, naturally.” She looks up, questioning. I must have misread her frown, “But I was blown away by your other photos. Especially that portrait. The one of a lady, sitting by a window?”
“Thank you. That picture means a lot to me.”
“Can I guess who the subject of that portrait picture is?”
“Kiss me?”
We’re getting to know each other so fast. Our kisses are like a language. Each time, we say something more.
We kiss again. Three times. Maybe four. Each time we stop, one of us has to start again. Her shy blink after the last kiss melts me.
She says, “I don’t think my best picture from last night is on the card. It’s on my phone. Can I show you?”
The picture she shows me is of Firebird. The top deck. The image wakes me like a bucket of iced water. My blood chills.
Sitting up, I take out my phone and call. I can’t stay still. I stand. Pace around, listening to the ringing tone.
When it stops, “Tatiana. Where the fuck are you… ?” I hear the start of her coy voicemail message. I’m shaking as I listen to it. Every second makes me angrier. Why the fuck doesn’t she just fucking pick up? “Tatiana. Call me when you get this. No. Fuck that. Get your ass back on Firebird. Now, Tatiana.”
Parker is startled and confused. I can’t help the anger in my face as I look down at her.
“Come with me.”
“No, I…”
“Come with me.” I hold out my hand.
The charge I get from her reaction makes me realize that the thrill is not that she’s in my power. She is, and that is fantastic. But that’s just the candy. The real kick is because she wants to be. Deep down, she trusts me.
Nothing means more to me than that.
Chapter 13
Her
HE HAS A CAR waiting. Of course. A long, sleek, black all-terrain SUV. With a driver.
He tells the driver, “Firebird. Fast.”
We ride in the back and he’s silent. I can feel his anger, though. My lovely picture is at the root of it and I don’t know what to say.
He takes out his phone and makes a call. From the thunder in his eyes, I’m guessing he got the voicemail again. He makes another call.
“Svetlana. Get in touch with Tatiana, any way you can. We have to meet. You, me and her. Immediately. It’s urgent… Yes. Very serious. You have no idea.”
We ride in silence for a while. Then he starts to tell me, “It’s her. I know it is. The man with her on the top deck? That’s Lev Molchalin. She’s feeding our secrets to him.”
“Who is he? How do you know him?”
“He’s someone we all knew from school. He’s always been jealous. We were more popular at school and our families were richer. We all liked him. Well, at first. We tried to include him. But it was no good. He was too bitter. Ever since then, he got vindictive. Set himself up to be the arch-enemy of the Zavarovski empire. It’s childish.” He looks out of the window. Thinking. “We keep in touch, but only in the most formal sense.”
“Was he invited last night?”
“I sent an invite to his dacha outside Sochi. I never thought he would come all this way. But I thought I saw him last night. Still wearing that ridiculous earring. It makes him look like an outcast from a Disney pirate movie.”
“But why would Tatiana do that?”
“That’s what I have to find out.”
We arrive at the Pier. By daylight, Firebird is even more impressive. It looks like a pleasure palace. A floating world.
As he walks me up to the gangplank, I ask him, “Whose yacht is she?”
His stony face softens just a little as he says, “Mine. You don’t really think I’m the security guard, do you?” And he says, “Stowaway.” Then I feel that, whatever else is going on, he and I may be okay.
At the top of the gangplank, as we’re stepping aboard, he takes a call. On the screen it says, ‘Svetlana.’ He puts the phone on speaker.
The woman’s voice says, “Konstantin, I’ll be there in a few minutes. I spoke to Tatiana. She said she didn’t want to come this afternoon. She wants to meet with us tonight.”
“I’ll call her.”
He walks me up a wide flight of polished wood steps to the top deck. Through a pair of wood double doors, he takes me along a wide corridor to a bigger set of doors. His phone is still on speaker. A ringing tone is followed by a click.
His voice is hard as iron. “Tatiana. We need to meet. On Firebird. Right now.”
A Russian voice, very like Svetlana’s says, “Konstantin, I told Svetlana…”
“I know what you’ve been doing.” He leaves a pause that a ship could fall through. “Come here.” He lifts the phone as he swings the doors open. “Right now, Tatiana.”
He hangs up. Switches off the phone and tosses it. Somewhere.
I’m distracted. He’s brought me to a big stateroom. One on the top of the ship. With panoramic windows. Rooms off the sides—bathrooms, probably. Armchairs. A couch. And a huge, canopied bed.
I’m wide-eyed and open-mouthed. All this silk, expensive cotton, velvet, damask. Rich colors, lush fabrics. And fire smoldering in his eyes.
Chapter 14
Him
NOTHING IN THIS ROOM is as thrilling or as appetizing to me as Parker in her workwear. The only thing better than the sight of her in her sneakers, tee-shirt and overalls, is the thought of peeling her out of them.
Leonid Unstoppable Page 6
