Last Kiss

by Jessica Clare

  His eyes narrow at me. “All that are not friends are my enemies.”

  “Okay, how many friends do you have?”

  He is silent. Either he is dredging his memory for friendships or he truly does not believe anyone is a friend. I feel a stab of unhappiness on his behalf, which surprises me. I’m not a sympathetic person, but I feel like Vasily belongs to me. His germs, his smiles, his skin, his scent—they are all mine and I am unhappy that he seems alone. I know how that feels.

  So I smooth his collar and ignore the hand that swats my fingers away. “I will be your friend, Vasily. For now.” Until he threatens someone I care for. I think of his words from last night—he would kill Daniel or my parents if they stood in his way. That is a thought I can’t process right now. If I do, my mind will run in endless unhappy circles. So for now, I tuck it away and will turn it over in my head later, when we are not squatting in bushes by the side of a road.

  “I do not need friends. I am volk.”

  “That’s sad,” I tell him. Vasily is no optimized computer like me, so he should have lots of friends, shouldn’t he? Daniel does. I feel a stab of sympathy for my friendless wolf. “Aren’t we friends?”

  “Do you still consider me friend after all I have told you?” He asks the words in a low, intense voice.

  I remember our conversation. How he stated he would kill people if he had to. People I loved. But . . . he never said he would hurt me. I think of the way he carefully brushed my hair and spoke to me on the train to calm my spiraling mind. These are not the actions of a man who cares for no one.

  I’m torn.

  “Consider me one less enemy,” I say, unwilling to give entirely.

  A faint smile touches his face, and I feel as if I’ve somehow won a prize. Warmth blooms through me, and I smile back, meeting his eyes.

  He glances at the road, the buildings in the distance, anywhere but at me. The faint purr of a distant car approaches, and Vasily nudges me. “Step in front of the car and ask for help. A woman alone is less fearsome than a man. Pretend another one of your seizures if you must. When they stop, I will attack when they open door.”

  Oh no. A carjacking? I don’t like this plan. It’s one thing to take a car when someone has left it sitting in the road by itself. It’s another to force someone to pull over and mug them. My stupid, screwy mind imagines Daniel driving behind the wheel of the Volvo in the distance and I panic. “We can’t just leave a swath of crime throughout the Italian countryside,” I protest. I’m inches away from another freak-out.

  “Jump out, Naomi,” he growls at me. “Hurry.”

  “No,” I say, and wrap my arms around his waist, burrowing my head against his chest. I push the full, limp weight of my body against his in case he tries to ignore me and carjack on his own.

  I expect him to shove me angrily aside, and I’m prepared to lock my arms and act like a human sandbag. I feel him stiffen, but as the car drives past, he doesn’t move. Moments pass. The engine purr fades into the distance and eventually, Vasily’s hand rests on my shoulder. He caresses me, his hand moving through my hair. “Naomi?”

  “No more, okay?” I say, and realize I’m close to tears again. “Can’t we just buy some bicycles from one of the locals and head to the closest town?”

  His voice is soft, so soft my ears strain to hear. “Da. We will.”

  —

  Hours later, we ditch our bikes and limp into a place that Vasily says is called Ferrara. We took our time with the bikes, buying clothes and hats from a tourist stand and then biking through town as if we were sightseeing before heading to a hotel. I have to sit on my skirts and tuck them against my legs to bike, but I manage it.

  I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, by the time we get up to our room. One small room, with one tiny full bed. It’s nothing like the room we had in Rome, the grand suite overlooking the city. This is small and plain, and the bed is covered with an ugly duvet that looks as if it’s full of germs. Using the hem of my dress, I peel the bedding from the mattress and get the towels from the bathroom to lie on instead.

  “Nyet, do not,” Vasily tells me. “We need those.”

  I pause. “All of them?”

  “We both dye our hair again tonight,” Vasily tells me. “This time, you are red.”

  “Like blood?” I whimper. “I hate dyeing my hair, Vasily. The smell and the mess are so bad.”

  “Is necessary,” he tells me. “I will do mine with you. It will not be so bad.” He nods in my direction. “Come. Take your clothes off,” he tells me, stripping his own clothes. “You do not want dye on your skin. It is a telltale and I do not leave those.”

  I peel off my dress, still intensely unhappy about the turn this day has taken. “I’m tired of Italy. Can we go to Russia now? I want snow and the dacha.”

  “Not yet,” he says. “A bit longer, Naomi.” His hands reach out and trace my skin, where bruises are mottling my shoulders. “You are hurt after all?”

  “I jumped from a train,” I tell him. “I didn’t land that well.”

  He chuckles, his thumbs brushing over my skin in a way that makes my nipples get tight and achy in response. “You were right about the bones. The train was slowing to a stop, or else it would have been a death wish.” His fingers hover over a particularly bright bruise, and then his big hands are moving all over my skin. I’m wearing nothing but my bra and panties, but he’s still checking me over with a skim of his hands. “You are not hurt more than bruises, are you?”

  “I don’t think so,” I tell him. “Though you might want to look at my pupils to see if I have a concussion. You don’t even have to be hit in the head to get a concussion. All you need is a blow that can cause the head to move back and forth rapidly. And traumatic brain injury is the number one killer of people under the age of forty—”

  His hands cup my face and he peers into my eyes. My gaze skitters away, but his hands clench on my cheeks. “Look at me.” His voice is so firm it scares me a little. I look at him, though I feel weird about it. He gives me the tiniest little shake. “You are not going to die, Naomi.”

  “Shaking me is probably not conducive to my brain health if I do have head trauma—”

  “You’re fine,” he says, giving me a thoughtful look. His thumb skims my lower lip, and then he releases me. “Now come, we dye our hair before someone else finds us.”

  It feels like he’s rushing me. It’s not like him. “Are you stressed? You might be the one with the concussion. It’s more common in men than women and one of the signs of concussion is irritability—”

  “Naomi, if I am irritable, it is because I am not happy with having a set of new, mysterious assassins. They must be after the Madonna as well. This makes me very angry for a variety of reasons, none of which are aimed at you.” He raises a clenched fist and for a moment, I think he’s going to punch a wall, but he doesn’t. Instead, he flexes his hand and then returns to undressing. I head to the bag and pull out the small bottles of hair dye he has carefully packed away for emergency. Vasily says he is dyeing his hair, too. I think he will be brown. It would look odd if we were both red, though the mental image of that makes me smile.

  I turn around just in time to see Vasily peel a wet, sticky portion of his dark shirt off of his body, revealing the wound underneath. There’s blood everywhere—blood on his skin, on his clothing, and now leaking onto the towel that he presses to the wound.

  Oh God, so much blood. This must be why he’s rushing. He needs medical attention. I blink rapidly as blackness swims in front of my eyes. It’s not my wound. It’s not my blood. It’s not. It’s nothing.

  But Vasily belongs to me, and his wound might as well be mine. I swallow hard, and then I black out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  VASILY

  “You forgot your eyebrows,” Naomi says. She’s eating crackers and drinking juice in bed. After she passed out from the sight of my puny wound, I bundled her into the bathroom and while she was unconscious I d
yed her hair a dull red to match the new papers we will be getting from Guillaume. I knew she would prefer it that way. She came to as I was rubbing the concoction through her strands. Thankfully she closed her eyes and willed herself to not look at the mess. When I was done, I carried her back to the bed and dyed my own hair brown.

  I run out and find a pizzeria still open and buy us two pies. Half for her and one and a half for me. Hopefully the cheese is brown enough for her.

  In the bathroom I see my error. The hair on my head is rather dark but my face looks pale. I frown. Her face appears behind. She is holding a black tube.

  “It’s mascara.”

  I take it out and examine the fuzzy, curved brush covered with a dark brown substance. “Put it on me,” I order.

  She scrunches her nose. Naomi does not like my orders but she complies. I sit down on the dirty bed that is barely big enough for one let alone two bodies, but both of us are sore from our jump from the train.

  We need to rest before we can journey further. It is doubtful I can resist her no matter that the sheets might be dirty or that there is blood on my shoulder and my side. I’ve resigned myself to my own frailties. I plan to explain this to Naomi before we lie down. She, of all people, should understand neurosis—if not from an intellectual level at least.

  Her red hair dangles down around her face. I’m not certain how she colored her eyebrows, but they have a red tint to them as well. She is still beautiful but somehow she is not Naomi. The color is too harsh for her or too red or just not her.

  “I prefer you as a blonde.”

  She pulls a lock of her hair and stares at it. “Me too.”

  She steps between my legs and bends over. The position is awkward for her.

  “Why don’t you sit on my legs,” I suggest.

  “But you don’t like to be touched,” she reminds me.

  “This isn’t touching. It is merely providing a place for you to be seated while we finalize the details of my disguise.”

  This explanation must make sense to her, because she nods several times and climbs onto my lap. I cup her back to prevent her from falling off, but my hands drift lower.

  “Vasily, I’m too close to you now. Don’t hold me so tight.”

  I’ve pulled her toward me, I realize. Close enough so that her stomach is nearly flush with mine. Other parts of us are touching as well. I force myself to relax and loosen my grip.

  “You’re hard,” she says as she bends forward with her small brush. Her observation is made coolly and without any indication that it excites her. Having experienced the evening with her at the fetish club, I now know how she sounds and looks when she is aroused. Her eyes glitter and her facts turn provocative. If she wanted me, she would say something like—

  “A man’s penis averages around six inches. The vaginal canal might be longer but the G-spot is only one to three inches inside. And most women come from clitoral stimulation not penis-in-vagina sex so six inches is all you need. Six inches is three inches extra, although if someone has like a twelve-inch penis not all of it would be able to fit inside the vagina. And something that big would hurt bad.”

  Perhaps I still need lessons on how to read her. “Do you want to have sex with me, Naomi?”

  “Of course. I don’t need sex, exactly. But I’d like for you to put your mouth between my legs. And I’d like to feel your penis inside me. I think that would feel good based on prior empirical evidence.”

  My hands return to grip her tightly. “Naomi, you must be aware that I am not a good man. Are you certain you want to have me touch your body in such an intimate fashion?”

  “Because you kill people? It seems like the people you kill need killing. Like those guys on the train? They would have killed us so it makes sense for you to shoot them first. You shouldn’t feel bad about that.” She tosses her stick to the side and blows on my brows lightly. “Don’t touch your eyebrows. The mascara needs to dry. It looks good, though.”

  “Does nothing unsettle you?”

  “Are we back to the killing or something else? And yes, I was upset when you said you would kill my brother or my parents. Was that a joke? I don’t get jokes a lot of the time. I mean, I understand them obviously because I’m brilliant, but I don’t get why they are funny.”

  “It was not a joke. You should know that before we have sex. I would kill anyone who stood in the way of what I wanted.” I hold her securely, her covered sex against my growing erection, because I don’t want her to edge away even though I’m a danger to her, even though I do not like to be touched, even though I know that I’m losing my mind.

  “Oh.” Her mouth makes a perfect oval at this sound.

  An oval that I’d like to plunder with my cock. The pressure is building inside me. I can feel it pushing at every nerve ending, rising to the top of my skin. Behind my pants, my cock hurts. I’ve gone without for a very long time, it reminds me insistently. “You need to be aware of this so that you can make the decision. Tonight we lie down on that bed together, and I will need to have sex with you. If you do not wish for this to happen, tell me now.”

  She’s silent for a moment. “I want to have sex with you, too, but I don’t want you to kill my family. I don’t really care if you kill anyone else. Wait, kids. I don’t want you to kill any kids. Maybe no one under the age of twenty-five. Also, the elderly. I think those people should be able to dictate the terms of their own death to the best of their ability. So like, no one over sixty-five.”

  I choke back my laughter. “Anyone between the ages of twenty-five to sixty-five would be sanctioned targets.”

  She nods. “That’s the best I can come up with on the spur of the moment. The list might change. Oh, and Regan, Daniel’s friend, should be off your list.”

  I tuck the top of my hand inside her waistband to anchor her on my lap and use my other to trace her fine features. I notice her eyebrows are starting to lighten as the makeup she’s applied has begun to rub off. “The parameters you have suggested have already been violated. There are killers who start at the age of ten. All they know is violence. They rise from their beds to kill and they dream of killing at night. And for some, killing is the least of their hated tasks. Sometimes going out and taking a life means avoiding more objectionable things at home.”

  “What could be more objectionable?”

  “Many, many things.”

  Her brow furrows and then clears. “You don’t want to talk of those things? Are they related to why you don’t like to be touched?”

  “Those things should be buried,” I say, not really answering her. “After we have sex, we will sleep. We will then continue on to seek out the Madonna. Once that task is completed, you will go to Lake Ladoga, where my dacha is, and wait for me.”

  “Why?”

  “It is dangerous now, Naomi. You saw the men on the train. I do not want you hurt.”

  She stares at my cheek and with visible effort tries to meet my eyes. There’s a blue flash and then they slide away. “You care about me.”

  Because I am so attuned to her now, I hear it—a longing that she might deny experiencing. Voice low, I admit, “I do but that is dangerous itself. Do you understand? When a man like me cares for someone, that person becomes a target. They can use you to make me do things; they could hurt you just to hurt me.”

  “How long will I wait?”

  How long are you willing to wait? I do not answer her, for I’m too desperate. The need to taste her, to have a physical communion with her is too great. Instead I draw her mouth down to mine. When her small tongue darts out to rub against my lips, I feel only pleasure. I’m emboldened and open my mouth to receive her. She invades me. Her hands come to clench my face and her sex rubs against my hardness.

  I did not realize she is as hungry as I until her small mouth devours me, all sharp teeth and wicked tongue. Her pressure pushes me backward and I fall, allowing the bed to catch me. Her fingers pluck at my shirt and I wrest it off.

  She whimpe
rs when the contact between our mouths must be broken, but hurriedly removes her top as well. We shove at our buttons and zippers and clothing until it is just her smooth, silky body against my rough, scarred one.

  I know I am not worthy of the gift she is to give me—the gift of her body, the gift of pleasure—but I am a bad man and I will take it. But in return, I will bring her to the precipice of ecstasy again and again. There will be no delight she wants that will go unfulfilled.

  I could stay here forever with her in my arms in this dilapidated hotel room on this well-used mattress. I have never felt as good in my life before. Not when I killed my father. Not when I sent my sister to Cambridge. Not when I seized control of the Bratva. Naomi wanting me, kissing me, making love to me is the pinnacle of good in my life, and I do not want to let her go.

  Me, a man who loathes touching, who loathes sex, wants nothing more than to lie between this precious woman’s legs and sink into her soft flesh. I want her to embrace me and all my vileness until I am cleansed by her acceptance.

  “I like your germs.” She moves down my chest, tonguing me everywhere. I did not realize my neck was sensitive or that bones were pleasure receptors. She bites my flat nipples and moves down to my stomach, where my cock bobs its head in greeting.

  “It’s more than six inches,” she says, pausing for a moment in her exploration to take in my size. I’m well endowed and have been since a boy. It is why I was picked for certain purposes. Those images threaten to imperil my time with Naomi and resolutely I shove them down into the dark recesses of my mind.

  “It is,” I admit gravely. “Imagine how much friction I can generate against your G-spot. I can fill you up and stroke every tiny centimeter of your sex. But not until you are wet enough. Touch yourself, Naomi. Are you wet enough for me, or do you need my mouth?”

  She reaches between us and slides at least one finger, maybe two, inside her cunt. Her lack of inhibitions is incredibly erotic. One day I will drape her in a floor-length silver fox and nothing else. Her legs will be lashed to the arms of a chair and I will sit fully clothed as she brings herself off. As her orgasm approaches I will kneel between her legs and drink her essence until every cell in my bloodstream is coated with her.