“I know it started as fucking,” Jason said. He laughed lightly. It was the first time Samantha had heard him laugh. It was a nice sound, pleasant to the ear. He hadn’t laughed in the forest – he had been serious, commanding – and yet it made her think of the forest all the same. “I know it began as that. But I really think it could be much more. You are pregnant, you are keeping it . . . Why should that be a disaster? We can – we should – celebrate it.”
She didn’t say anything in reply to that. She didn’t need to. She kissed his chest and closed her eyes. Dimly, in the last moments of consciousness, she heard his light snores. They followed her into her dreams.
*****
Dad was furious for a month. He wouldn’t talk to Samantha, and he took paid leave from the company. And then Samantha ran into him one day near Central Park. He was carrying a paper bag. They didn’t have much to say to each other, it seemed. But then he showed her the contents of the bag: a pale blue t-shirt (probably the cutest thing in the world) made to fit a baby. “I got pale blue,” he said, a sheepish grin on his face. “That way a boy or a girl can wear it.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Samantha had said.
They had hugged, and Dad had cried, and the people walking up and down the street had thrown curious looks at them. But Samantha didn’t care.
“He probably still gets angry sometimes,” Jason said, holding Harry to his chest. After two hours on wailing, he had finally fallen asleep. He stood by the window with their son held to his chest, looking out at the July sunlight (one year—and yet so much had happened). Their house was a five-bedroom on the outskirts of the city. “But we chose our path.”
“Do you ever regret it?” Samantha asked.
She walked up behind her husband and wrapped her arms around his torso. She had held him like this countless times, and yet she was still surprised each time by how solid he felt, like a man carved of marble. Jason was the most solid man she had ever known. He kissed Harry on the forehead, and then turned and passed him to Samantha. She cradled her son close, and kissed him where his father had kissed him.
Then Jason leaned across and gave Samantha a kiss of her own.
“I’ll never regret it,” he said. “Do you?”
She looked at her perfect sleeping son, at her perfect, experience, muscular husband, and at the glorious house in which they all lived. She laughed quietly; the idea was absurd, but not absurd enough to wake Harry. “Regret? Never.”
Hard as Steel
Zelda Okafor paced up and down the London kitchen. Gray May sunlight shone in through the grimy window, and on the counter beside which she paced there were around one-hundred coffee rings. Zelda always hated coming to Angela’s house. Zelda had worked her way out of the council estate three years ago, but she couldn’t just forget about her friend. My friend who is way too bloody drunk this morning, Zelda thought, as she paced up and down, fists clenched at her side. Angela, Zelda knew, had an arrangement with some Russians. She was a masseur. Whether or not she was really a masseur and not something else Zelda didn’t know. All she knew was she was getting angrier by the second.
After around five minutes footsteps sounded from the end of the hallway and Angela came stumbling down the stairs. She was a white girl, alright. She was maybe the whitest girl Zelda had ever seen. Her skin was snow-white. If it wasn’t for the confused, drunk face, the cigarette-stained fingers and teeth, and the skirts that left nothing to the imagination, ol’ Angela Fitzgerald could have been a Disney princess.
“Angela!” Zelda snapped, walking across the room to her. She pointed down at the woman’s bare, dirty feet. “Where the hell are your shoes? You can’t turn up without goddam shoes! Seriously, you’re really starting to test my patience.”
Angela giggled the way drunk people giggle when they don’t realize how annoying they’re being. Then she waved her arms to the side and adopted Zelda’s voice, which was similar to Angela’s apart from a tinge of Mother’s African. “Ooh, I’m Zelda,” she said, giggling, eyes rolling up in her head like an old-time preacher. “I’ve got an office job and I don’t have to live on the estate anymore. I live in a two-bedroom house with my sister because my daddy’s dead and my mommy is, too.”
Zelda backhanded her across the face. Angela fell back, hands on her cheeks – where Zelda’s hand had left a red imprint – and then began to cry. “Why!” Angela wept. “Why did you do that!”
Zelda sighed and leaned forward. “Listen to me,” Zelda said. “I don’t have to be here. You’re right. I have other things going on. I’m here because I’ve known you since before you were like this. I’ve known you when you were an actual human being, instead of just a mess.”
Angela kept crying, her hands on her eyes, tears squeezing through her fingers. “You hit me!” she cried.
Zelda knew she shouldn’t feel guilty. She said some nasty-ass things. She deserved it. But violence wasn’t the answer. Zelda knew that. She shouldn’t of hit her, and when she looked down at the woman, at her pitiful tears, she began to feel tight in her chest. “Stop crying, please,” she said, a thick tone of pleading in her voice. But Angela just kept on, weeping louder each second. “Angela!” Zelda exclaimed. “Stop goddam crying! You’re going to be late for work.”
“I can’t go,” she muttered.
“What? Why? That’s why you invited me here—to help you get ready.”
“No.” When Angela shook her head, she looked about eleven, like an eleven-year-old vehemently denying that she’d eaten any cookies. “No, I’m sorry. I need you to go in for me, Zelda. Just this once, please. They—” She stared at the ground. She’d stopped sobbing, but her lip quivered. “They don’t like it when their workers are high.”
“You're high? It’s half ten in the morning!”
“I’m high from last night, actually, Miss Judgmental!”
Zelda pulled a seat from the table and slumped down. She rested her forehead against the back of her hand. “I can’t go in for you, Angela,” she said slowly. “We’ll get you some coffee, sober you up, and then—”
“No!” Angela cried. “They make you do a breathalyzer, too, and I’ve been drinking.”
“You’re kidding,” Zelda said. “Why the hell would they do that?”
“The boss – Vladimir Bragin – they call him Steel – he doesn’t like drunk women. He doesn’t like high women, either. Apparently he’s very particular about that.”
She shrugged.
“Please, Zelda, do it for back in the day, when we were both piss-poor and living here together. But, please . . . Don’t give up on me.”
Fuck! Zelda thought, raising her forehead and clenching her fists. Angela was playing the world’s smallest violin – trying to get Zelda’s sympathy, trying to make her care – and the annoying part was that it was working. Zelda was beginning to care. She was beginning to feel sympathy for her washed-out, drugged-up, drunk friend. Before she answered, she knew she’d say yes. She had known Angela for too long, felt too much of an allegiance to her and everyone on this shithole of an estate, that she couldn’t abandon her now.
“Give me the address,” she said, rising from the seat.
She pulled out her phone and began writing a note. Angela read the address out slowly with the air of somebody who doesn’t memorize much but had memorized this. Zelda typed it in and pocketed her phone. “When does he expect his massage?” Zelda asked. Thinking the whole time: You’re not really going to massage a random man, are you? You’re not really going to let Angela manipulate you like this? You’re not really going to give in that easily? Come on, Zelda, come on! But she was; she already had.
“Midday,” Angela muttered.
Zelda looked down at her friend – a short, messed-up woman – and shook her head. “Fine,” she said. She didn’t try and hide her disappointment, her shame, for Angela. Angela had been a nice, smiling, hopeful young girl. She had turned into a manipulative, scowling, pessimistic woman. But sometimes it’s hard to shake your
childhood image of somebody, Zelda reflected.
She walked past her to the door (a thin flaky-painted thing which rocked in its hinges when the wind blew). She was about to walk out, but then she turned to her friend. “Be sober when I get back, please,” she said, and then left.
*****
Thank god it is Saturday, she thought as the bus drove her through the city. On Saturday Odessa – her sweet little sister – stayed over at her friend’s house. Usually, Zelda would use today for a bit of me time, but today had been different. She’d woken to a text from Angela – a text that was horribly misspelled, and should have told Zelda all she needed to know right there – and had had to come straight here after dropping Odessa off. And now my life has taken a very strange turn.
She knew she could stop this right now. She wasn’t personally invested in this. But she also knew that Angela would lose her job or worse if somebody didn’t go today in her place. She was walking into the lion’s den. She knew a little about Angela’s employers. She knew that they were Russian criminals, for one thing. Turn back! she urged herself. You don’t need to do this! But she didn’t turn back. She kept going.
The bus stopped two streets down from the hotel which was the base of operations for Angela’s employers. She had expected the hotel to be a dingy, out-of-the-place building, with grimy walls and even grimier staff, but what she saw surprised her. It was a normal-looking hotel, quite fancy, with smiling, professional (mostly white, she noted) staff. Zelda walked through the main doors – a smiling doorman holding it open for her – and to the elevator. The Russians had commandeered the entire fifth floor, according to Angela. She rode the elevator up, each floor – each juddering of the elevator – causing her heart to beat quicker and quicker. She clamped her hand to her chest.
“What the hell am I doing?” she muttered. “Jesus, what the hell?”
But she didn’t have long to question herself. The elevator reached the fifth floor. As soon as she stepped out, a burly man covered in tattoos which Zelda was familiar with from Eastern Promises stepped out in front of her. He smiled widely, and Zelda saw that his back teeth were gold-plated. “Who-are-you?” he said in a thick Russian accent that made it sound like one word. “What-are-you-doing-here?” He looked her up and down, and then smiled his gold-toothed smile.
Newspaper headlines filled Zelda’s head: Woman killed by Russian gangsters in the hotel. Women viciously beaten by Russian gangsters . . . stabbed . . . etc., etc. She took a deep breath, calming herself. The man seemed to find this funny. He smiled even wider. Zelda forced herself to look into his face. “I am here for Vladimir Bragin,” she said. “I am to give him his massage.”
The man nodded slowly. “Follow-me-please.”
He led her down the hallway. All along the hallway, through the hotel-room doors, Zelda heard Russian voices raised in laughter, or quick Russian words, or the sound of dice rolling on wood. He led her past all these rooms to the largest room at the end. Then he reached into his pocket and handed her something like what she’d had to blow into when the doctor had thought she had had asthma as a girl. “Blow-in-please,” he said.
Zelda’s hand shook as she lifted the breathalyzer to her lips. She blew on it, and waited with a feeling of dread in her pocket. She knew she wasn’t drunk – she hadn’t had a drink in two weeks or more – but she had the same fear that she’d had at school when the teachers had walked up and down the classroom asking who stole this or that: that she’d be wrongly convicted. But the man took the breathalyzer from her and nodded. Then he pulled out a small torch and shone it into her eyes. Zelda waited, statue-still, afraid that if she moved she’d scream. I just walked in here, she thought in wonder. How stupid can I be? I just walked in here. And all for a woman who would never do the same for me.
“I-have-to-how-do-you-day-pat-you-for-weapons.There-is-woman-who-can-do-this-if-you-like.Take-longer-to-find-her-though.”
“Just do it,” Zelda muttered. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as she could.
The man was quick and thorough and professional. He didn’t try anything sleazy. He patted her over quickly, and smiled almost kindly at her when it was done. “I-need-keys,” the man said, once his hands were away from her. Zelda had barely felt him. She forced her mind away from her body, away from this moment. She was here now – stupid! madness! – and she doubted that they would let her leave. But she wouldn’t cry or panic. That would just make things worse. “For-stabbing,” the man explained.
Zelda handed him her keys. He could’ve easily taken them from her, anyway. He nodded, smiled, and then unlocked the door. He waved her in, and Zelda had no choice but to be shepherded in the room. The door closed behind her; the lock clicked. Zelda was alone in the large hotel room. It opened onto the living room. A large couch sat opposite a plasma screen TV, but had been pushed aside to allow room for the massage table.
Not knowing what else to do, Zelda walked across the room and sat on the couch, which faced the door which led to what Zelda presumed was the bedroom. From within the bedroom, she heard somebody moving, groaning as they stretched, heavy footsteps across the floor. It was Vladimir Bragin, the man they called Steel, a violent criminal, a murderer. You’ve walked into the lion’s den, Zelda, she thought numbly. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, in her ears, in her palms. She gripped her knees to stop her arms and legs from shaking.
She stared at the door, unable to look away. Then the heavy footsteps approached, and the door creaked open slowly. Vladimir Bragin – Steel – stepped out of the bedroom.
His gaze settled on her. Zelda felt a chill crawl up her spine.
*****
Vladimir Bragin – Steel – was an enormous man, but there was not an ounce of fat on him. Zelda could say this for sure because when he opened the door he was wearing nothing but a baggy pair of gray shorts. His torso was huge, like the Hulk (but not green). His muscles were like hills, deep ridges set into his skin. His chest muscles bulged tight, his abs were one block of steel-hard muscle, and his arms were like marble carvings. His neck was thick, and so were his legs: two lengths of implacable muscle. His body was covered with Russian tattoos, black markings all over his legs, his torso, his neck, his hands. His face was strong and Slavic, with high cheekbones but a square jawline to set it off. His hair was cropped close to his face, jet-black. And he had a few days rugged growth on his face. He was, all in all, the manliest-looking man Zelda had ever seen, and intimidating as hell.
“You are not the usual girl,” he said simply. His accent was Russian, but nowhere near as strong as the other man’s had been. It was mixed with the accent of a Londoner.
Zelda made to speak. She opened her mouth. But no words came out, only a quiet croak. She licked her lips – and the whole time Vladimir seemed to stare at her lips, watch them – and tried again. “She is unwell,” Zelda said, her voice thick with Mom’s African accent as it always as when she was nervous for some reason that Zelda never understood. “I am here in her place.”
“Hmm, are you?” he said. He walked across the room – each of his steps heavy against the floor, causing the coffee table to tremble – and stood over her. It was like standing under a giant statue. She knew that this man could break her with one finger. She had never seen a more muscular man. He was tall, too. He must have been at least six foot five. But you wouldn’t have noted his height. He was not lanky or gangly like some tall men. He simply gave the overall impression of being massive, like a primeval beast.
He reached down, and Zelda was too paralyzed with awe and fear to stop him. When his hand down her face, turn her chin up to him, it was softer than she’d imagined. “You are scared,” he said matter-of-factly. “Do I frighten you?”
Zelda thought about lying, but then she saw his eyes. They were a blue so pale they were almost white. It looked like he was wearing undead contact lenses. They were the kind of eyes that can see right through a person. “Yes,” she whispered. “You do.”
“
But I make you horny, too,” he said. Again, he said it matter-of-factly, as though it couldn’t be denied.
Even so, it took Zelda off-guard. She looked within herself, tried to understand what she was feeling beneath the fear. And yes, it was there. Her pussy was warm, and getting wet. Her heart was still beating fast, but not only with fear and anxiety; excitement was mixed in with it. Her palms sweated. The chill down her back became a tingle. It was madness. It had been madness when she was here just to give him a massage, but the way he was looking at her now – like a lion at a gazelle – was even madder.
She made to stand – to run, to fight, she didn’t know – but he placed his hands on her shoulders, pushing her back down the chair. He did this casually, like a full-grown man pushing a child down. “Your black skin makes me hard,” he said. His own skin was pale beneath the tattoos. “Look. No—feel.”
Without waiting for her response, he reached down and grabbed her wrist. She bit her lip, half in terror and half in crazy excitement, as he led her hand to his shorts. His cock lifted the fabric of the shorts. It was huge, she saw, like the rest of him. Then her hand touched it, and she let out a moan. She didn’t realize she did it until afterward, when she heard it, as though it had come from somebody else. “Rub it,” he said, in a commanding tone of voice.
He didn’t wait for her to do it. He moved her wrist up and down the considerable length of his cock, and she felt it get even harder against her palm. She looked up at him with wide eyes. “I’m not here for that,” she mumbled, her voice sounded weak, and her body betrayed her. She, in her mind, found this situation mad, unlike anything she had ever imagined, but her body was intrigued by it. A thrill of anticipation moved through her when she touched his cock.
“This is what I want,” he said calmly. “And you will give it to me.”
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