Dimitri Driven

by May Ball, Alice

  She reminds me of why I don’t waste my time with sex and relationships.

  When we’re ready to leave, I reach instinctively to grab Chrissy’s wrist, but I think better of it. I take her hand instead.

  A charge washes through me like electricity but pulsing on a wave from deep under the ocean.

  Her eyes gleam, shining wet as I look down at her.

  Chapter 7

  Her

  RIGHT ON THE BANK of the Potomac, the house is set in the middle of its own grounds.

  By a big metal gate, he enters a code into a keypad. He presses the keypad and I’m just about able to make out where his fingers tap. 1 5 5 7 1 1. The gate swings open and he drives us down a narrow track, right to the bank at the edge of the river. Another gate with a key code lets us into the grounds behind the wide, low house.

  Down a ramp, we drive into a basement garage. It’s dark and it grows darker as the metal door slides shut behind us.

  Lights flash on. From blind to dazzled again. We’re in a large, empty white painted cement garage.

  He steps out of the car and says, “There’s an apartment on the top floor,” he tells me, “and the secure facility is down here in the basement. The two main floors above, I don’t think will be using them much.”

  He opens the door from the garage with a keypad. Same code, 1 5 5 7 1 1.

  He carries the pile of pizza boxes on one hand with the bag of groceries. He has a rucksack slung over the other shoulder as he ushers me inside. We enter a big, shiny, industrial-looking kitchen with stainless steel ovens, fridges, and cupboards. Deep white counters. No windows.

  He puts the pile of pizza boxes on one of two large island counters in the middle of the kitchen. “Pick a pizza. Any pizza.”

  He looks at me with what feels like real tenderness. The thoughts that I’m having, and the feelings that are raging around my legs and my tits, they’re not tender at all.

  He checks the doors of the fridges and freezers. Then he takes a bottle of vodka from his rucksack and puts it in a freezer.

  I take the first pizza box of the pile and put it on the counter. Warm scents of freshly baked dough and melted mozzarella blend with basil and tomato, and waft into my nose as soon as I lift the lid. I pull off a slice and hunger takes over.

  I’m all the way through the first slice and two thirds finished with the second before I even look up.

  He’s got a maddening smile of satisfaction in his voice when he says, ”I’m going to make coffee. Would you like to try it with…?”

  “Thanks, no. I’ll just have water.”

  “I should’ve asked if you wanted soda. I know you Americans drink sugared fizzy water all the time.”

  “Not this American, Boris.”

  “Dimitri, please. Dima, if you like.”

  “Do I like?” I’m thinking about it, “That’s a tricky one.” I like ‘Dimitri.’ Too much, I think.

  He brings me a glass of water and looks in my eyes as he sets it in front of me. I wonder whether he’s checking to see that I’m okay, or if he’s assessing me for his interrogation. He puts a teakettle on to boil and sets the pack of ground coffee by a glass jug. He’s heading for the door, back to get something from the car, I guess.

  I say, “You know this house pretty well. You been here before?”

  He gives me a fraction of a smile as his head shakes. “I do my homework,” he says. “I cultivated a relationship with the rental company, and I watch their inventory. Just for emergencies like this.”

  I look at him, tingling in parts where I certainly shouldn’t tingle. I want to write it off as a kind of Stockholm syndrome type of thing, but it’s not that. He just really is fucking hot, and he makes my blood race. He shouldn’t. I shouldn’t respond to him this way. And I wish I didn’t. But there it is. I’m locked away with this huge Russian, alone in a secret unknown location, and my pussy is weeping and moaning for him.

  When the teakettle boils, he pours water on coffee grounds in the jug, then he cuts a hunk of butter into a blender and scoops coconut oil on top.

  Trying to keep my voice even and not completely succeeding, I repeat, “This kind of emergency?” and I ask him again, “What the fuck are you, Boris-Dimitri-Dima? Who plans for this kind of emergency?”

  “I’m just an operator. I get sent places to solve problems.”

  I stop eating, “Was I a problem you were sent to solve?”

  “No. I was sent to solve a problem, and somebody put you in its place.”

  “Put me in the place of your ‘problem’? Which you are meant to solve… how?” The realization drops through me like a bucket of cold water. My voice is scratchy, hoarse. The words drag out in fragments.

  “You were going to kill me.”

  “No, Chrissy. I was set up to do that. You were set up as a target.” He takes a step nearer. I’m frozen to the spot. His eyes smile a little. “I knew that you weren’t the one, though. From the very start.”

  I guess because my feelings are so raw and exposed right now, a crash of mixed emotions right there. Hearing him say he was never going to do it is meant to be reassuring, and I do feel a wave of gratitude. At the same time, hearing him say the words, ‘you were never the one,’ gives me a hollow feeling that’s hard to bear. My emotions are going crazy here. I’m going to have to really keep a check on myself.

  A timer pings and he plunges a gauze filter down in the jug with the coffee, then pours it into the blender. He leaves it blitzing as goes back out to the car. He returns with a heavy leather sports bag that he puts on the counter to the side of the kitchen.

  Now he pours the brown frothy coffee from the blender into a glass cup and brings it with him When he offers me a taste of the coffee, I tell him no.

  He drinks the coffee in two gulps, then asks me, “Is the pizza good?” as he takes a slice from the box.

  “I ate so fast, I don’t think I really noticed.”

  “More?”

  “I’ll take a bite of yours.”

  He holds his slice toward me. Holds to my lips. I wait. Look in his eyes. Snatch at it. Bite. And tug.

  When I swallow, I tell him, “Pizza is usually good in these upmarket districts.”

  I watch him eat. He watches me watching him. A tiny little piece of cheese stays on his lip. I watch it there for a couple of moments, but I can’t bear it for long.

  I reach across the counter with my finger to brush it off. He catches my hand. We’re both still. Looking in each other’s eyes. Suddenly my breath is heavy.

  We’re both thinking about it. Both knowing it’s a bad idea. At the same time, thinking it’s also a great idea.

  Softly, he lets go my hand. I brush off the piece of cheese. Hold it between my thumb and finger. Get up and walk over to the sink, brush my hands together. I swipe my palms and fingers, two sweeps. Two claps. All gone.

  I stay at the sink a little longer, keeping my face hidden from him. Inside I’m shaking like a leaf in a gale.

  Chapter 8

  Him

  I AM A LONE wolf. Always have been. I’ve seen what love and sex and all that stupidity and nonsense do to other men. I don’t want any of it.

  Two men I go hunting with, one of them is ruled by his cock. His life is an ongoing train wreck. Every time I see him, he’s either gibbering like a fool or, more often, he’s been destroyed by some new bed partner.

  The other man gave in to what he calls ‘true love’ years ago. His life is a long stretch of misery.

  I know that if I surrendered to love and sex, I would be consumed by it. Passion would take over my life. Where is the sense in that?

  I do wish I could have a son. A daughter, too, come to that. But without the right woman, it would be a catastrophe. And I don’t believe that the right woman exists for me.

  She would have to be a gourmet cook, a ballerina with the moves of a stripper, a philosopher and a chess grandmaster, as well as a runway model. Show me the woman who measures up to that, and I’ll
consider changing my view.

  Probably no-one would measure up to all that, but otherwise, why bother? I know I’m reminding myself of it all, so I remember to stay detached. To not fall.

  I move to the other island counter and open the sports bag. She returns to the counter with the pizza boxes. Time is running out, and I need to try something fast for interrogation.

  “You know that I have to get information from you,” I tell her. I need her to understand. “Even if you don’t know that you have it. You do understand?” While I talk to her, I take out all of the pistols, one by one, and set them out neatly, next to the sports bag. Her face drains as I arrange the two Sig Sauer 226s, the Walther PPK/E, the Glock M19. She draws in a sharp breath when I take out the Tavor bullpit submachine gun and set it on the other end of the counter.

  I say, “You’ve been put in a dangerous situation.”

  She gulps, looking at the guns.

  Spreading her hands on her stomach, she runs them up her body. Up to squeeze her breasts. Like she’s stretching. Unconsciously. But looking in my eyes.

  Stretching, she says, ”This is what you travel with? For, what, exactly?”

  I shrug. “Special occasions. Unexpected special occasions.”

  She giggles. “When you absolutely, posi-tively have to kill every motherfucker in the room?”

  I tell her, “That’s only the AK-47.”

  “What?”

  “Samuel L Jackson, right? In Jackie Brown. ‘The Kalashnikov AK-47. When you absolutely, posi-tively have to kill every motherfucker in the room.’”

  “You know that movie?”

  “Let me show you how to break one down. This one, the Sig Sauer 226. An excellent high-performance, all-round handgun.”

  She pouts a little. “Couldn’t you just ask me your questions? Ask me directly, whatever they are?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Try me.”

  “I don’t think you would know the answers if I asked you directly.”

  “You want to interrogate me for things I don’t know?” She peers up with a frown. “At this point I can’t work out if you’re a sadist or you’re just a lunatic.”

  “See.” I shrug. “I knew that you wouldn’t understand.” She glowers. “So, Chrissy, I’m wondering…”

  Her voice shakes. “Yeah, I know. ‘Why me’? Right?”

  I pick up the first Sig Sauer and pull back the slide. Check the chamber. Drop out the magazine. Then pull the slide all the way back, turn the release lever, and run the slide forward, up, and off.

  “There has to be a connection.” I tell her.

  “Connection to what? Why don’t you ask me straight?”

  I drop out the long recoil spring and the guide pin, then slip out the barrel. While I clean each of the parts and check them, I say, “Very strange things have been happening. But you are definitely the most strange.”

  She looks down. “I could say the same of you.” The look we share makes my cock beat and fatten.

  While I clip the Sig Sauer back together, I say, “You play the cello. You play with a lot of orchestras, right? Does that get you to travel much?”

  “Not as much as you might think,” she says looking straight in my eyes. She’s been watching the weapons, but she’s looking at me now. “I have to fit playing engagements around my studies.”

  I pick up the other Sig Sauer and field strip it the same way as the first for a clean. “Not the other way around? The music doesn’t come first?”

  “I wish. I’m not going to be a famous musician.”

  “Really? You’re fantastically good.”

  She looks at me. She realizes I’ve heard her on YouTube. She might be wondering which performances. I found nine. They all sounded sensational.

  ”I am,” she sighs. “Unfortunately, so are about two million other people. ‘Fantastically good’ doesn’t cut it. Kids from Japan, kids from rich families in – kids with rich daddies in Russia, thanks, oligarchs, and not to mention all of the Americans and Europeans who were talented and hot housed already. No, I’m gifted, but not extraordinarily gifted. And I wasn’t hot housed from infancy.”

  A trace of bitterness tightens her voice. I don’t blame her. “It must be rough if you’re brilliantly good at the thing that you want to do most, but other people are just that little bit better.”

  I unscrew the grips either side of the pistol. “Have you traveled much?”

  She’s watching. “Some interesting places. I wouldn’t say I’ve traveled a lot, though. I’ve played in Europe. Some in London.”

  “Russia?”

  “Yes, but I was there studying art.”

  She walks over and stands beside me. Watching her come near gets my blood pumping. Feeling the heat of her by my side makes my pulse zing and buzz. My cock is rock hard. I’m aroused by the scents of her, and the sight of her breasts swelling, soft and round under her loose tee-shirt.

  She says, “Show me?”

  “I had the insides of grips machined, just on these two guns.” I show her. “They have shuriken, throwing stars. Two in each side. Push on a point to pop them out.” Her eyes widen. I tell her, “So, even when they’re out of ammo, these two guns still have weapons capability. The grips can be unscrewed quickly with a coin.”

  I put the pistol back together and tell her to pick up the other one. The magazines are still on the table. I noticed that I’m nervous enough to look and double check.

  I show her how to pull the slide to check there isn’t a round in the chamber, how to pull it back to prepare for removal. I point to show her the catch to flip and how to remove the slide, slip out the recoil spring and the guide pin and slip out the barrel. Then remove the two sides of the grip.

  “Now you can put that one back together.”

  I reassemble mine then leave her by the weapons table to go for another slice of pizza. And a thought drips like water down my spine. She didn’t make any attempt to escape in the grocery store. I had congratulated myself on how I got us in synch and imposed my will on her so very successfully. Was that what happened, or is there something else?

  I ask her, “Tell me about Russia.“

  Her voice flutters like a tiny bird in a sweet, soft breeze. I want to fuck her. Right now. “I’m afraid to tell you.”

  I’m careful not to react. Other than to ask her, “Why?”

  “Promise you won’t hate me.”

  “I won’t hate you. I promise.”

  “Seriously. I mean it.”

  “I do, too.” The temptation, the urge, to go to her, to hold her and comfort her, it’s almost overwhelming. I have to slow my breath down and force myself to say, “Tell me.” But I say it gently.

  She looks around her. Pulls her shoulders together. Her hands clasp and her fingers entwine. Then she takes a breath, and she gives me a shy smile.

  “I was on the exchange course in St. Petersburg for three months, learning picture restoration at the Hermitage art museum. You wouldn’t think I’d have the time for anything else, with my studies and playing the cello, sometimes with two orchestras in an evening.