“I knew that music was what I wanted to do as a career, but it’s a difficult, precarious life. You can’t ever be sure of making a living unless you’re one of the greats. And I wasn’t ever going to be that.
“So, there I was, newly arrived, overwhelmed, and losing myself in the beauty of everything in St. Petersburg. The Hermitage, the Mikhailovsky Opera and Ballet Theater, the sculpture park. Everything seemed so exotic and magical.”
As I listen, I reach for my rucksack with her phone and her little shoulder bag inside. I should have searched her bag and checked it before.
She’s saying, “I was invited to play as a guest soloist with the St. Petersburg Academic Philharmonia and afterward, the director of music, a tall and urbane American with a devilish twinkle in his eye, asked if I could be available to step in when players were away. ‘Cello is very sought-after,’ he told me with a seductive smile, ‘We never have enough good players.’ I said I loved to play, but it would have to fit in with my course.”
I’m watching her eyes and trying to stay analytical.
“The first engagement was the next day. He called first thing in the morning and asked if I could play that evening. A Bruckner suite at a small conservatory. I said I’d love to, but I couldn’t do it unless he arranged transport for me. He said he usually wouldn’t, but that night he could. He would pick me up personally. But it meant I would have to be there early. I said that was fine. I was excited. Looking forward to the music and, I won’t lie, the money. The money was good.”
As she speaks, I take out her bag. Unzip it.
Cards in a colorful wallet. A little cash. Lip balm. There’s a makeup bag with lipstick, pencils, a brush. Mascara. I look up at her. She isn’t wearing mascara. Maybe she keeps it for certain occasions.
“On the way to the venue, the director told me, ‘With your art skills as well as your music, you’re obviously physically adept and mentally agile. And I sense you have an inquiring and adventurous mind.’ I thought he was trying to pick me up. Okay, I hoped he was trying to pick me up. He was middle-aged. Very distinguished. Oh, really very distinguished. He had the finest hands I’ve ever seen. I still get tingles thinking about them.”
She takes a breath. Presses her lips together.
The makeup bag has couple of compacts of powder. I think about opening them but then… my knuckle feels something hard in the side of the bag. My breath slows. I can’t see how to get into that part of the bag to get it out. I notice that she is watching me very steadily now.
At the bottom of the bag, I find a thin and very precise zipper, concealed in a hem.
“After the performance,” her voice lowers. “He said he wouldn’t able to take me home. He told me, ‘I have a rather urgent engagement.’”
She watches while I hold the bag, weighing it in my hand. She knows what I’m going to find. She gulps before she goes on.
“I told him I could find a cab, but I was remembering how difficult that is in St. Petersburg. Looking around the glittering room, I had the sense that musicians weren’t going to be welcome to linger. I also knew that the St. Petersburg Metro was supposed to be easy to find your way around, but every time I tried to use it, the signs had floored me. I got overwhelmed by the unfamiliarity of the alphabet. It made me feel like a klutz.”
She makes a little laugh.
I’m looking at her as I pull on the concealed zipper. But I know already what I’m going to find. Her hands are on the counter in front of her. Her right hand is by the Tavor assault rifle. She’s looking back at me directly.
I reach into the compartment. I know what’s in there. I can even guess the model.
She says, “So I was thinking about finding my own way, with buses and the Metro, hauling a cello through the snow in St. Petersburg late at night.
“Then the director said, ‘The thing that I have to go and do,’ he fixed me with his eye. I can still remember the sensation, like a trickle of cool, fresh water, running down my back. ‘It might interest you. But you would have to be prepared for some surprises, and you would have to be willing to keep a secret.’ Well, there. I was intrigued.”
I drop the cold steel into my hand. The shape and the pattern on the grip confirm the model. A Beretta Pico is claimed to be the smallest handgun on the market. Surprisingly accurate, though. Up to about ten paces or so, at least.
She’s holding the Tavor, pointed at me.
“I just thought,” she says, her voice level and even, ‘If you’re holding a gun, I might feel a little undressed without one.”
Her finger is on the outside of the Tavor’s trigger guard. I hold the Beretta in my palm, with my fingers open.
“We could both put them down,” I tell her. “That’s a powerful gun, but you know I probably am a very much better shot.”
“I don’t want to shoot you, Boris-Dimitri-Dima. I just don’t want you shooting me.”
“You don’t know if the Tavor’s ready to fire.”
“Don’t I, though? Are you sure?”
“I am so going to fuck you.”
“Might have brought that up a little sooner, to be honest.”
“You don’t want to shoot me.”
“I kind of do,” her eyebrow wrinkles. “But really I don’t. Make any sense?”
“I’ll show you the protocol, then. First, we turn the guns away to the right. Then we lay them down flat.”
“You first.”
“Together.”
She says, “In the movies, they always point them up.”
“I think maybe you watch too many movies.”
“You can’t have too many movies.”
“Anyway, that’s outdoors. In a confined space like this, sideways is safer.”
Chapter 9
Her
SO I TELL HIM the rest of the story.
The director told me we had to hurry. His kind of hurry was smooth and efficient. No noise. No fuss.
As we drove away, with my cello in the trunk of his car, he said, “We have to be at the opera house well before the performance ends. In time to see everybody leave.”
I thought this was pretty unusual but maybe there was somebody he wanted to meet.
He parked on a side-street. We ran in through the grand entrance of the opera house and slipped up the side of the curving stairs on the left-hand side, as the wealthy audience were beginning to stream down. He led me to a balcony where we could overlook the people below, emerging from the stalls.
He said we needed a clear view of the audience. Now I was both fascinated and excited.
He spoke quietly, confidentially, into my ear without moving his mouth. I was excited by the way he did that. He told me, “I’m going to be watching the undersecretary to the defense attaché. He has a gift for cover.”
On his phone, he showed me a photo of a man.
“He makes many of his transactions in very public places, often accompanied by loud and extravagantly dressed women. He loves to stir gossip. Which is very clever. Watch him as he leaves.”
When the man in the picture came out, he was easy to spot. He wore an expensively cut maroon suit with shiny blue lapels, and he walked between two lively, buxom women. Both of the women were in revealing and brightly colored dresses, with heels several inches high. The three of them made a fascinating spectacle.
The undersecretary’s twinkling nudges and his apparently lewd remarks sent the two women into howls of laughter. For a man who is doing anything that might be at all covert or secret, he seemed to be doing all he could to draw attention to himself. But I remembered what the director said.
He kept up his banter as he waited for the two women’s coats, both of which were huge, complicated fur items, with hats and stoles and bags. He collected the women’s hats and coats, passing them back. Then a coat of his own which was radiant blue with a white fur collar. I watched carefully. He handed the girl in the cloakroom a small cylinder and for the briefest moment, they made eye contact.
I t
hought, He can’t help wanting to be noticed. And, She probably shouldn’t have done that.
While the undersecretary and his two noisy friends made their way down the grand steps of the opera house, the director and I left by a small, narrow stairway that led out to the street near the stage door at the rear.
As we slipped back into his car, he asked me, “So. What did you see?”
“The undersecretary held a small black cylinder under the cover of his hand, matte black, about an inch in diameter, and about 3 inches long. He passed it to the cloakroom attendant, she palmed it, dropped it into a pocket, and acknowledged it from him.”
“Good. She will get in big trouble for the acknowledgment. That was a mistake.”
“I thought that.”
His smile was exciting. He said, “You’re a natural. I knew it.” Then he asked me, “Do weapons interest you at all?”
Boris-Dimitri-Dima listened to all of that with great interest, I thought. So I tell him, “I think you should let me have my phone now.”
“Let’s put the weapons down first. We don’t want any accidents.”
“Do you shoot people by accident?”
“No.”
“Good. Me either. Phone?”
“Weapons.”
I want to stay firm against him, but my knees are literally shaking. Pointing the gun at him is a bluff, and I’m certain he knows it. The curl of that hint of smile tells me I’m not going to fool him for an instant.
If I say, ‘Together,’ I feel like I’m taking some measure of control. So that’s what I do.
I nod. “Together.”
In a kind of a slow ballet, we swing the guns away in perfect synch. We turn them flat in the air, and put them on the counters, still pointed away. Then our open hands rise. It’s like a ritual. A symbolic movement. And I feel that I’ve surrendered.
He strides around to me. Grabs my chin and glares into my face. His hot rage is so powerful it makes me vibrate inside. I’m so afraid it’s like an unbearable gush of thrills.
He takes my face in both hands, His huge shoulders hunch as he pulls my face toward him.
“Don’t ever point a gun at me again.”
I’m shaking. My breath shakes and my mouth quivers. But I say, “I knew you were going to be holding a gun. I knew that you’d be angry. I just needed to protect myself.”
The animal scent of him is overpowering. He moves his face nearer, and his breath burns my skin. His voice is low and hard.
“If you need protecting,” he snarls, “I’ll protect you.” Inside I’m shaking. My heart pounds. My pants are drenched. “You don’t ever need to protect yourself from me,” his voice rasps. “Nothing is going to hurt you. Ever again.”
My pussy aches and burns and my tits sting. I want him so bad it’s breaking me in two. I don’t understand. And I can’t believe him.
He holds me by my throat. His thumb is under one ear, his forefinger is under the other. I feel like he holds all of me in one hand.
“You are safe with me. Do you understand?”
I shake my head. “No.” My breath trembles so much I have to say it twice. “No.” I search his eyes, his face. Desperate. “But I believe you.”
He pulls me to him. He holds my face. Pulls me by my waist. Crushes me against him. I can hardly breathe. My lips part, looking up into his face. “Who are you?”
I ask him again, “My phone…”
“It’s there by my rucksack, but don’t switch it on or power it up. Not here. Okay? Only when we’re a long way away. Out of the neighborhood, at least. Okay?”
His top lip trembles. His mouth opens and I’m stretching up. When his lips take mine, I feel like I’m falling open. Like I’m his now, and he’s taken ownership. My hips roll and grind against the massive hardness of his thigh. I reach up as his tongue rushes in to claim me. The solid strength of his body makes my hard, sore nipples chafe and burn.
Where his hands reach for my throat, then down to my breasts, the blood beneath my skin fizzes and crackling sensations burst through me as I yield, pushing myself into his grip. Giving myself to his demands.
Drenched in my panties, my swollen pussy yawns and yearns for him. I feel his power coursing into me like a rushing wave. Every waking thrill makes me want to shout for more.
My arms can barely get around him, and I drag my hands over every part of him that I can reach. His shoulders, rolling and massive, the slopes of his hot pecs. The jagged stubble on his face scrapes against my soft, trembling palms, sharp like a weapon. His hard, high cheekbones.
All the time, his breath, his tongue, the moving mass of his body starts fires all over me.
My thigh lifts. His hand slides under, along and up. Twisting, my pelvis offers him more.
He reaches back. I squeal and gasp as he lifts me by my ass. I want him. I want his hands on my skin. I want my flesh on his. I want to be wrapped around him, I need him inside me.
I need his power and his strength to fill me, flood me until I burst and overflow.
When our lips part, I gasp. Breathless.
“Can I trust you?” My voice sounds small. Not how I want to sound.
He kisses me again. Is he reassuring me or is he just overwhelming me as a way to convince me? I can’t tell. But he sets fires of feelings all over me and he makes me want more.
I want to believe him so badly, but I know that I shouldn’t. He’s going to take me apart, like he does the guns. He’ll break me in two and leave me shattered. But I want it.
I want him like I never wanted anything.
All my feelings and emotions are spinning inside me, welling up and whirling in a rising storm. His hands on my body make me twitch and shake. I claw at him, pull his face in to make the kiss even deeper, shove against him as hard as I can.
He lifts my thigh and I gasp. My neck stretches and my head throws back.
I can’t be feeling this way about a man. Not a man like him.
He pulls back.
“You aren’t ready for this.”
I slap his face. I have no idea where that came from. “I so am, Boris.”
“Look, don’t call me that, okay? I don’t like it.” He holds my wrist. But he’s not harsh or mean. He just holds it.
“You’re in a vulnerable state right now. You’re exposed. Your feelings are all mixed up.”
“I know what I’m feeling right now, Boris.”
“Okay, look. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”
“Why do you care?”
He pulls me closer. “Because I want it, too.” His eyes burn into me, “I want it very much.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want you to regret it. I mean it. You’re what I want. For good.”
I laugh. It’s not a nice laugh. I immediately regret that.
Dimitri Driven Page 5
