Lying and Kissing

by Helena Newbury

  There was a bang and a crash of shattering glass. Bits of the rear window were in my hair.

  “Arianna!” Luka’s voice was commanding and calm despite the chaos. “We have to go! Now!”

  I hauled on the wheel and pulled out into traffic, drawing honks and shouts. I prayed and floored the gas. We screamed forward, pinballing off parked cars but pulling away from the car behind us. For a moment, I thought it was going to be okay. Maybe I really was healed.

  Then a corner came up, way too fast, and we slipped and skidded on the hard-packed snow. The past rushed up to meet me, the horrible feeling of the wheels leaving the ground.

  I could feel the memories rushing up to engulf me, bright and sharp as the day of the crash. The feel of the seat under me. The creak and crunch of tortured metal. I squeezed my eyes closed but it was too late. I was with my parents, the car skidding towards the cliff—

  “Arianna!” It was Luka. “Stay with me!”

  I focused on his voice, on the exquisite, perfect solidness of him, my anchor in the here and now. I opened my eyes and I was out of the flashback and back in Moscow.

  I hauled on the wheel and managed to get us round the corner, though we clipped a parked truck. Luka gripped my arm hard, keeping me in the present. He was firing out of the window with the other hand.

  I sped through the twisting streets. There were several loud gunshots, but all I could do was stare at the road ahead, go as fast as I could and pray a bullet didn’t hit me in the back of the head. After a few more corners, the sound of the car chasing us seemed to fade.

  “There!” yelled Luka, pointing. “Go there!”

  I looked. A big, open doorway led to an indoor market. I aimed for it and then hit the brakes as soon as we were inside.

  We came to a stop with the car half-covered in rugs and carpets and a guy yelling at us in Russian that we’d ruined his stall—but at least no one was hurt. Luka pulled me out and carried me through the crowd, then planted me down on my feet and grabbed my hand. By the time the other car caught up with us, we’d disappeared into the crowd.

  ***

  “We have to change our appearance,” I told Luka. We’d left the market through a rear entrance and were moving through a maze of alleys.

  He blinked at me. “You really are a spy.”

  “I can talk in Russian, remember?” I said in Russian. “Less conspicuous.” Although my Russian accent wasn’t great. I’d only had to understand Russian, back in Langley, not speak it and convince people I was a local.

  I was shutting out the panic and fear, now, and going step-by-step through what I’d learned in my basic training. All the stuff Nancy used every day, the stuff I’d never thought I’d need. Thank God for my memory.

  Luka’s phone rang. He grabbed it and put it to his ear, pulling me into an alcove. I could feel the tension in his body….and then he relaxed. “My father is okay,” he said.

  I let out a long breath. Given how pale Vasiliy had been, last time I saw him, I’d feared the worst. “Yuri got him to a doctor?”

  “Yuri is the doctor.”

  I stared at him.

  “It’s fine. Yuri was a medic in the army.”

  “At least tell me they went to a hospital?!”

  He shook his head. “A safehouse.” He looked at my expression. “It’s fine. Yuri will have knocked him out with vodka and then dug the bullet out and stitched him up. It’s his third—no, fourth time.”

  “Please say this hasn’t happened to you!”

  “No. Well, only once. Bullet hit my leg. Hardly counts.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. It was a miracle any of the Malakovs were still alive.

  We found a department store that was open late and I led him through it, buying up clothes and make-up. Then we found the grottiest, seediest hotel we could, a place where they’d take cash and not ask questions.

  A half hour later, I stepped out of our room’s tiny bathroom. Luka was sitting on the battered bed, his face lit up by the weak bulb in the bedside lamp. He came to attention when he saw me. “Wow,” he said.

  What I’d done wasn’t subtle.

  I’d based the look on the people I’d seen at the Underside of Heaven club. Rich and yet cheap and tacky. With everyone looking for us, trying to be inconspicuous wouldn’t work. We had to be so obvious and loud they’d look right past us.

  I was in white knee boots with a towering heel and a ridiculous number of laces up the front. Fishnet stockings, then a tight dress in metallic blue made of some gleaming, sparkling fabric that had to stretch to allow me to walk. Over the top I had an ankle-length padded jacket in shiny black, like a latex fetishist’s sleeping bag. I’d gone heavy on the make-up, my lips a vivid red and my eyes dark and smoky. The crowning glory, though, was the wig.

  It was gleaming, silky and blonde. Blonde like only one of Luka’s old girlfriends could do. Arrow-straight, the hair reached right down to my mid-back.

  “Wow,” said Luka again.

  I’d dressed him in expensive black pants and designer boots, with a flashy belt and an eggshell-blue sweater that matched his eyes. He’d drawn the line at a chunky chain around his neck but the effect still worked. We looked like a pair of rich kids out for a good time. Or, possibly, a hooker and her pimp. Fashion-wise, there wasn’t all that much difference.

  He held out his arms to me and I climbed onto the bed. The springs squeaked—given the sort of hotel this was, they probably saw a lot of action. As if to back up my suspicions, a rhythmic banging started in the room next to us.

  Despite everything, I laughed. “Who do you think they are? Two lovers, on their honeymoon?”

  Luka snorted. “More likely boss and his secretary. Wife thinks he’s working late.” He looked at me. “Or hooker, with client.”

  He kept looking at me and that familiar heat washed through me. I was kneeling up on the bed and I was very aware of how tight the dress was on my thighs. “Are you implying I look like a hooker?” I asked in my best I’m-really-offended tone.

  “No,” he said. “You’re too beautiful to be a hooker.”

  The heat throbbed down to my groin. Sex had been the last thing I’d been expecting. I wouldn’t have thought getting turned on was possible, when you were running for your life. I hadn’t realized that danger is an aphrodisiac, that having adrenaline pumping through your system for hours leaves you itching to do something with all that nervous energy. Suddenly, I was like a cat in heat. “Well, you’re too good looking to be a client,” I said.

  “I know,” he deadpanned. He sat up fully, so we were just inches apart, and traced my cheekbone with one finger. “What would you call yourself, if you were a Russian hooker?”

  “Natalia,” I said, shaking out my long blonde hair.

  He blinked. “I had a girlfriend called Natalia, once.”

  “I know. I remember the phone sex.”

  He stared at me. “You listened to—”

  “Many times.”

  He just looked at me for a moment, anger flaring in his eyes and then turning slowly to lust. “So, Natalia. How much would it cost to sleep with you?”

  “A lot,” I said. “Millions of dollars.”

  “I have millions of dollars,” he said, leaning even closer. His lips were almost brushing mine. “So I could hire you and fuck you.”

  I was quaking now, the heat rolling through me. This was all getting very kinky, very fast. It was like sex always was with him: dark and dangerous and edgy...and wonderful. It felt different now that we were together. The sex we’d had at Vasiliy’s house had been the tipping point, when we’d actually dared to talk about our sex games. I felt free, free to share my fantasies—if I dared. The potential was huge but the timing was awful—sex should have been the last thing on our minds.

  But maybe, I realized, it was exactly what we both needed.

  “Yes,” I said huskily. “You could. And I’d have to do anything you said.”

  “Oh, would you?”

>   “Yes. Anything.” My head was spinning from the raw lust in his voice. God, how does he always do this to me?

  He moved back on the bed, sitting up against the scratched wooden headboard. And then he glanced down, just once, to the bulge in his pants. “Susi hui,” he instructed me. Suck me.

  My cheeks flared. He was being crude. Deliberately crude. And for some reason, that only made me hotter. I glanced around the room, seeing the torn wallpaper, the glowing neon sign outside the window. I really could be some Moscow hooker, kneeling over her client, preparing to suck him to pay my rent.

  I took a deep, shuddering breath and unfastened his belt, pulling down his pants and then his shorts. His cock sprang out, thick and already erect, and I gazed down at those strong, muscled thighs. I slid my hands over them, pushing his pants lower. Then I slowly took him into my mouth.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d done it. But doing it for him was completely different. With my boyfriends in the past, it had just been a part of sex—mechanical, almost. This felt...dirty. But in a good way. Like I was demonstrating how filthy I could be by doing it, and he loved me for it.

  I rolled him around in my mouth, using my tongue, and he groaned and called me a good little shalava. I added my hand, his shaft hot and slick with my spit, and he began to stroke my long, blonde hair. Every time I looked up at him with my big, painted eyes, I could feel him grow harder in my mouth. We stared at each other as I bobbed my head, the tension building and building. God, I felt so dirty...and yet it felt utterly safe. Because, however much he played at being the callous, unfeeling customer, I’d seen the real him.

  He suddenly pulled my panting mouth off him and then lifted me onto the floor so that I was standing, facing the bed. He put a hand on my back and pushed me down so that I bent at the waist, my hands braced on the bed and my ass high in the air.

  I caught a glimpse of us in the mirror and scarcely recognized myself. Some blonde hooker, bending over for her client. I recognized him, though. Luka Malakov, big-time criminal, wanted arms dealer. As I watched, he stripped off his sweater and shirt, kicking off his pants so that he was naked. His tattoos gleamed in the dim light and, as he moved in behind me, the sight of his muscled body made me catch my breath. A mafioso, using one of his girls. Using me. It was exactly how I’d imagined him back before I’d really known him, before I’d seen past his defenses. Pure darkness. I’d seen the good in him, now, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be—my groin tightened—evil.

  He kicked my legs apart and I cried out in shock as I dropped lower. Then he was jerking my dress up over my thighs, baring my ass. I felt my panties shoved aside. God, I was already wet for him. There was the rubber sound of a condom and then—

  I gasped as he drove up into me, filling me in three hard thrusts. His hands hooked around my hips, drawing me back onto him, his thumbs rubbing along my lower back. I writhed and groaned at the feeling of him inside me, that combination of size and hardness, just the right side of too big.

  He was hard and brutal—just the way I needed it. His breathing turned from gasps to sharp, almost angry grunts as he pounded me. He stroked my ass, his hands soft and tender, a stark contrast to his plunging cock. I could feel the pleasure flooding outward in warm waves, soaking into every part of me from my toes to my fingertips. I dared to open my eyes and the sight of us in the mirror, my blonde hair tossing, his muscled body tight up against my ass, rocketed me forward towards my orgasm.

  His strokes sped up until the wonderful smooth friction seemed to blur and loop in on itself, becoming endless. My hips were grinding back against him and he was calling me filthy names in Russian and English. The words soaked into my brain and exploded in my groin.

  And then, just as he reached his peak, I felt his hands spreading my ass and gently rubbing me there with his slickened thumb and I lost it completely. I yelled and screamed and I think I called him names, thrashing and grinding against him until I flopped on the bed, exhausted.

  From the other side of the wall there came an angry knocking and a voice telling us to keep it down! We both laughed.

  Afterwards, I said, “It’s never been like that before.”

  “Maybe you just needed to let go.”

  I thought of the way he usually took control, pinning my hands or throwing me on the bed. That let me let go. Pretending to be his whore had, too. Maybe he had a point. I imagined a future with him, with glorious long nights in some penthouse somewhere, learning more about letting go. Hell, forget the penthouse: my old apartment in Virginia would do just fine.

  What I wanted was him. But, unless we could figure a way out of this, we had no future at all. It was only a matter of time until either Ralavich’s men or the police caught up with us.

  We lay there in silence for a few moments. Then he said, “Arianna?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s your real name?”

  I turned and looked at him, gaping. He still didn’t know. Ever since the restaurant, he’d trusted me, even though I was CIA, without even knowing my real name. That made my heart swell until I thought it was going to burst.

  “It’s Arianna,” I said breathlessly.

  “Your real name,” he said patiently.

  “No, it really is Arianna.” I laughed bitterly. “That’s how lousy an agent I am. They didn’t trust me to keep up a real alias. They just changed my surname. I’m Arianna Scott.”

  He stared at me for a long time and then sort of grunted. “Good.”

  “Good?”

  He rolled over onto his side. His hand traced down the length of my body. “Because I like you as Arianna. I was worried I might have to get used to a new name.”

  I stared into his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  “Lying was your job.”

  “I don’t think I want a job where I have to lie, anymore.”

  He rubbed my cheek with his thumb. “I think you can do anything you want to, Arianna.”

  I shook my head. “They’ve disavowed me. My passport’s been invalidated. Even if I could get home, there’s nothing for me there, now. If they want to, they could try me as a traitor.”

  “Where is home?” he asked.

  “Virginia. But I’m from Wisconsin, originally.”

  “What’s Wisconsin like?” It was almost like we were on our first date.

  I had to think about it. It had been a long time since I’d been back there. I’d told myself, ever since I’d started working for the CIA, that Virginia was now my home. It was only now that I realized I’d been lying to myself. “Wisconsin’s beautiful,” I said. “Lakes. Cows. Do you like the country?”

  He blinked. “I don’t know,” he said, quite serious. “I’ve never really been there.”

  My heart went out to him. All he’d ever known was the city, his world of crime feeding off the population.

  His fingers knitted with mine. “If we get out of this,” he said, “I’ll take you there. I swear to you, Arianna. Even if we have to smuggle you back into America. No one should have to be separated from their home.”

  I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, offering me a slender straw to clutch at. But I loved him for trying. “We could go swimming, in the lakes.”

  “We could go thin-dipping.”

  “What?!”

  “Without clothes.”

  “Skinny-dipping.” I laughed, but there were tears in my eyes. It sounded so good. And so impossible.

  He brushed the tears from my eyes with the back of his hand. “Will you tell me, now?” he asked. “Tell me what happened to you? Do you trust me enough?”

  I stared at him. “Is that what you thought? That I didn’t—God, Luka, of course I trust you. I just can’t—” I caught myself and shook my head. “I couldn’t. But now, I think, I can.”

  And, gripping his hand for strength, I told him.

  When I reached the part about being trapped in the car, he pulled me onto
his lap and wrapped his arms around me, surrounding me with his warmth. And even though the memories were so sharp and clear they felt like they could cut me, I didn’t feel in the same danger from them. I had a shield between them and me, now, and he was strong enough to protect me from anything.

  Afterwards, as we sat there in the near-darkness, I felt...not healed, but more cemented in the present. As if the past had loosened its grip on me just a little. And it felt as if, the longer I stayed with Luka, the easier it would get.

  I could feel the tension in him, the anger at how I’d been hurt and the frustration at not being able to change the past. “What can I do?” he said at last.

  “Will you just hold me?” I whispered.

  He tightened his grip and nestled my head into his shoulder, and it felt so good that I was asleep in minutes.

  The next morning, the cracked ceiling made me frown for a second until I remembered where we were. Then it all came back to me like cold lead dropping from above, pounding me down into the depths.

  We’d bought some toiletries from the department store so we could scrape a wash. Breakfast came from a battered vending machine, normally only used by the hotel’s prostitutes between clients. I noticed all the gum was gone.

  Luka passed me a scalding cup of instant coffee and offered me the choice of the last two chocolate bars. “That one has raisins,” he said, deciphering the unfamiliar brands for me. “That one is sickly, but I used to like it when I was a child.”

  I took the raisin one and we sat on the end of the bed. It was an odd sight, watching a huge, tattooed arms dealer eating a candy bar. I wondered what Olaf was doing, at that moment.

  “Do you think Olaf’s still at your dad’s house?”

  Luka nodded bitterly. I imagined Olaf sitting at the huge dining table, tucking into an extravagant breakfast like a conquering king.

  “It’s the staff I worry about,” muttered Luka. “I don’t care about the place, but the people….”

  “The staff?” I asked.