by Leah Wilde
I stared at her slack-jawed as I tried to put the book in my hand back onto the stack where I’d found it.
“I’ve found that a lot is lost in translation,” she said as she brushed her hair, not noticing my staring, feasting eyes.
“You know, I’ve heard that a lot,” I told her. “I don’t get it though. Can’t we just translate it directly over?”
“Oh no,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. She nodded toward her bedroom, telling me to follow while she walked back in there, continuing her explanation. “Translation is an art all its own. You can’t just copy things directly over. A lot of words don’t translate well, and you have to find something with a similar meaning in the language you’re going to. And sometimes you don’t have an equivalent. For example, you may have a single term in one language that you have to actually explain in another because there’s not a single word for that concept.”
“I guess I never really thought of it that way,” I told her, sitting down on her full-size bed. I looked around in her bedroom. She lived a quiet, cramped, studious life it looked like.
“Most people don’t,” she assured me. “It’s something you don’t notice until you’re working between languages.”
“And you do that a lot, don’t you?” I asked.
“I do. And not just between English and Russian.” She winked in her mirror. Then, she turned to face me, still pulling the brush through her hair. “I hope you don’t mind,” she apologized. “It just gets so tangled when I wear it up all day.”
“I’m in no rush, but you can bring your brush with you, you know. You don’t have to try to do everything while we’re here.”
She smiled. “You’re right. How long should I pack for?” She turned around to face me and leaned back against her little dresser.
For the first time all day, it was really just the two of us, and unless I was just that rusty on my signals, she was leaving herself open for me just then. It would have been so easy to take advantage of the moment and jump up from her bed to take her right there against her furniture. With the mirror right there behind her, I would have loved to turn her around to face it while I took her from behind. It didn’t seem right, though. She struck me as the type of woman who enjoyed being treated like a princess instead of like a cheap hooker.
“Earth to Gage,” she called to me, snapping her fingers and bringing me back from my imagination. “How long do I need to pack for?”
“Pack for about a week, just to be safe. Hopefully it won’t take that long, but just in case,” I told her.
“A whole week?” Her voice was strained.
“Yes, a whole week. You might want to call the university and let them know you won’t be back for a few days,” I explained.
“No way. What do I tell them?”
“Tell them the truth. Tell them you’ve got the opportunity to meet with a member of the Russian criminal underground and you’re going to get all of the information you can out of him.”
She stood upright and looked at me like I’d just given her some kind of revelation. “You know, you just changed that whole situation for me,” she said, enraptured now by the opportunity to treat Dimitri like he was some sort of underworld royalty.
“Well, look, don’t get too excited,” I told her. “We still need to get back to my place for the night. And I’d like to eat at some point. So, you can finish packing, or I can do it for you.” I cocked an eyebrow, enjoying the idea of deciding what she was going to wear.
She cocked an eyebrow back, giving me a look that said she wasn’t too thrilled with the idea. She grabbed a suitcase and threw it on the bed.
Chapter 9
Julia
I saw the way Gage looked at me when I walked into the living room after changing clothes. I felt his eyes probing my body over my clothes while he pretended to look at my books. I saw the same look in his eyes when I leaned against my dresser in front of him. He stared at me like a delicious piece of meat he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into. And I certainly didn’t mind the attention.
I’d never met a man quite like Gage, and I certainly couldn’t remember another man who’d devoured me with his eyes the way Gage did. His eyes had molested me the way I wanted his big, strong hands to. I wanted to feel his touch all over my body, and his eyes only intensified that desire.
I watched his imagination work over every article of clothing as I filled my suitcase in front of him. I purposefully took the time to choose each article of clothing individually, especially my panties and bras, holding them up against the clothes I had on as if checking to be sure they fit, when I was really just trying to gauge the reaction in his eyes. If it didn’t ignite his desire, it didn’t go in the luggage.
I could see him imagining what each piece of my underwear would look like on me with nothing else on. I could see his eyes putting my skin beneath the lace fabric, imagining parts of me he hadn’t seen yet, parts of me I wanted to show him. I drank in the look he was giving me. I drank in his delicious, palpable desire.
Packing my clothes became an ordeal, an exercise in desire. I got lost in pulling out different shirts, different skirts, watching him watch me. He didn’t seem to mind how long it took to go through my clothes. Rather, he seemed to enjoy watching me parade my different outfits in front of him.
By the time we were finished, I had a pile of clothes in my suitcase, far too much to take with me for just one week. I walked out of my closet with my last casual dress in my hand.
“This is the final one,” I teased him, holding the dress up in front of what I was wearing.
“I like that one,” he said, his eyes burning for me.
I put the dress down on top of my clothes. “On second thought,” I said, “I may need you to pick my clothes for me after all.”
He laughed and sat up, looking at the clothes spilling out over my suitcase. He grabbed the gown I’d just set on top and pulled it next to the suitcase on the bed. Then, he moved through, tossing some clothes on the floor and setting others on the new pile next to the luggage. At the end of it all, I had a week’s worth of clothes, and Gage zipped up the suitcase.
“You’re ready,” he said in his commanding, matter-of-fact tone. “Is there anything else you need to do before we can go?” he asked.
I looked around the apartment. “I’ve got everything I need. You’re talking like I won’t be back at all until we’re finished,” I said, sounding a little sadder than I wanted to.
He sighed. “Ideally, no, you won’t be back until we’re done, but if you really need to come back at any point, let me know, and I will bring you back here if we’re able to come back at that time.”
I tilted my head. I wanted to ask him why I wouldn’t be able to come back, but I decided to let it slide and trust him. Besides, if he could imagine a situation that would keep me from being able to come back here from Kings of Hell HQ or his place, which I still hadn’t seen, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know what it was.
As he pulled the Suburban out of the parking spot in front of my apartment building, he turned to me and asked, “Why is it that a research fellow and successful professor like yourself still has such a tiny apartment?”
I shrugged. “I never really gave it much thought. I mean, you’ve seen my books. They’re everywhere.”
“Yes, they are.” He laughed. “What does that have to do with the size of your apartment?”
“I just spend all my time studying and working. I never really thought about needing a bigger apartment.” And I hadn’t thought about it before. For me, my apartment was all I needed. When I was home, I was reading or working. When I wasn’t home, I was either at work or visiting my mom. My apartment really just served a need. It offered me a place to sleep, eat, and bathe.
“I was just wondering. It seems to me that if you’re more successful at work, you would want a bigger, better place. That’s all,” he added.
“Yeah, it’s just not one of my priorities,” I
explained. “I have student loans, my research projects, and other expenses to worry about. My apartment is the only thing simple and cheap in my life, and I like that. I feel like it keeps me centered.” I hoped my explanation didn’t sound like a total crock of shit.
“Let me ask you this,” he started. “What about guys?”
I groaned. “What about them?” There weren’t many guys. In fact, what I had thought of as desire in the past was probably just sheer physical need. I felt like with Gage, I was finally starting to understand was true desire was. If what I felt for him was how it felt to want someone, then I hadn’t wanted anyone else in my entire life.
“How does it work when you have guys over?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I answered quietly, turning away and looking out the window at the nighttime cityscape passing us by.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said I don’t usually have guys over.”
“When was the last time you had a guy over at your apartment?”
“Tonight,” I said with a smile, teasing him.
“Before tonight.”
I looked back out the window and didn’t say anything.
He didn’t pursue it any further.
Soon, we pulled into the parking deck behind his apartment building. It was a tall glass building. It didn’t look like apartments at all from the outside. From the outside, it looked like a tall office building, but as we entered through the parking deck, it quickly became obvious that the outward facing windows were all apartments.
We took the elevator up to his floor. As he unlocked and opened his door, I was floored by the exquisite beauty of his view of the city. When we walked in, he flipped a light switch by the door and the apartment was filled with atmospheric accent lighting along the walls, the bar in his kitchen, the fountain where I would have expected there to be a fireplace, and along the floor in the hallway leading to his bedroom.
Outside, against the backdrop of the beautiful night sky, the city was lit up like so many stars. I hurried to the window and stared out into the night. “It’s so beautiful,” I told him. “So, so beautiful.”
I stood like a child in a candy store, looking back and forth, trying to take in everything I could possibly see. I could see the headlights and taillights of cars speeding along the streets below us. I could see traffic lights, streetlights, and the lights in all the windows of every building downtown.
“Do you ever get dizzy standing here?” I asked him.
He chuckled behind me. “No. Honestly, I don’t really pay it much attention. Like yourself, I’m usually working and not giving myself time for things like the view from my apartment.”
I turned to face him, and he towered over me, an intimidating, looming figure carved in stone. I wanted to touch him, but he seemed so unapproachable in that moment, as if he had somehow been removed from the scene.
His apartment was not at all what I expected. I would have expected someone as rough around the edges as Gage to live in a place more like mine—small, old, cramped, and cluttered. I hadn’t pegged him for the kind of guy who would have smooth immaculate wooden floors, tall ceilings, mostly bare walls, and a wall of glass overlooking downtown. I expected posters for old rock bands, his favorite movies, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing. I walked around in a dreamy daze, looking at how every surface in his apartment was completely spotless. It was rather impressive indeed, and it just made me want him more.
“So, were you serious about the bed and the couch?” I asked him at end of my impromptu self-guided tour of his apartment.
“Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back again and leading me down the hallway to his bedroom. “Step right this way and I will show you the amazingly comfortable king-size bed I’m offering you for the duration of your stay with me.
He pushed the door to his room open, and the lights were already on around the top of his king-size canopy bed. The four posts around the bed were like wooden columns carved out for the temple of some Greek god or goddess. Sheer curtains were gathered at the posts, hanging from the railing at the top of the canopy.
This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hand down on the mattress. “Here, have a seat.”
I sat down on the bed, and the mattress welcomed me like an old lover wrapping their arms around me for the first time in many years. I lay back and sank into the bed. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m never leaving this spot. You’ll just have to sleep around me whenever you want to sleep in your bed.” As the words came out, it occurred to me how they might have come across as teasing or tempting, but I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to tempt him.
Part of me didn’t want to sleep alone tonight.
“Stay as long as you’d like,” he said, his voice heavy with suggestion.
It was possible, I hoped, that he was thinking the same thing I was.
After lying in his bed for a few minutes, he shook my foot. “Hey, Julia, how do you feel about Chinese?”
I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I’m fine with Chinese,” I said. “Are we going out?”
He looked down at me and smiled. “No, I’m having it delivered so we can have a lazy night in and take it easy.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” I told him, lying back down on his bed.
I was asleep before dinner ever made it to us.
I woke up early the next morning still in my clothes from the night before with a note on the pillow next to mine.
Julia,
You fell asleep before dinner arrived. Leftovers are in the fridge if you’re hungry. Plates and bowls are in the upper cabinets next to the fridge. Silverware is in the drawer underneath. I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t worry about trying to be quiet. I’m a heavy sleeper.
--Gage
I crept down the hallway to the living room to find Gage sleeping on the couch, just as he’d said he would, with a thin blanket pulled over his mostly naked body. I stared at the scars and the tattoos on his toned chest and abs. They told a story, a story I wanted to read with the tips of my fingers and my longing lips that hadn’t been kissed since before I could remember.
He hadn’t bothered me all night, and he’d even slept in another room. This brute of a man, this sleeping beast before me, had shown the common decency to treat me with respect even though I was passed out and available to him on his bed.
I couldn’t say I had known too many other men who could claim that. Even the best men I knew had their moments when their gentlemanly behavior would be forgotten for pure, primal lust.
I was sure there was plenty of lust waiting to be fulfilled in that body before me. Gage was just good at controlling it. The question was, then, could I control my desire for him?
And for how much longer?
Chapter 10
“Something’s different,” Dimitri said when I sat down across from him.
“What’s different?” I asked him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s more confidence, but you’re not the same person you were yesterday.”
He was right. I was more confident, but not in my ability to work with him. I was more confident in Gage. If I had wondered who he really was before, I knew now. I knew the gentleman he could be, the noble savage. Gage managed to blend his rough and tough exterior, his hard-nosed thuggish biker persona, with a caring and gentle man, while so many I’d known before couldn’t even get the gentleman part right.
“Well, thanks, I guess,” I said.
I shifted my weight in the chair and sat up a little straighter.
“So, let’s talk.” I remembered what I’d said to Gage about using his idea of researching the Russian underground through Dimitri, and I decided to treat our interviews as research. Maybe by digging deeper into Dimitri’s history, I could get some good current informati
on to use.
“Alright, let’s talk,” he agreed, but his voice sounded like it was hiding something dark and sinister.
“Do you have anything for me today?” I asked him.
“That depends,” he taunted me.
“Depends on what?” I wasn’t afraid of pursuing him.
He grinned. “It depends on what you’re bringing me today.”
“Well, I’ve got some questions of my own today,” I started. “Just some things to satisfy my personal curiosity.”
