Naomi will set hers off. She will explain that she has gold around her neck and a dildo in her pussy. Surely they will not pull that out and inspect it.
“Clear,” he says, and I’m pushed through into a dimly lit foyer. I wait, anxious for any sound from Naomi. Seconds stretch out into minutes and just when I’m ready to charge into her room, she stumbles out beside me.
“How are you?” I ask, gripping her shoulders.
She is panting and I wonder if she is close to having an attack. I press down on her shoulders, recalling how the weight of me seemed to stave off a previous attack. It appears to work, as her tense body relaxes under mine.
“I did not like that,” she mumbles into my chest. “Don’t make me do it again.”
“Nyet, I will not. I apologize for these indignities.”
“They touched me all over. All over,” she shudders. “I need to take a shower. Water. I need water. If I had water, it would help. Water.”
I press harder.
“What’s wrong with her?” A suited man steps out of the shadows. “If she can’t handle herself, you both need to go.”
“There is nothing wrong with her,” I reply with rude haughtiness. “She does not like being manhandled.”
He snorts. “Fine, but if she disturbs others then you need to leave.”
Inside the club Vivaldi is playing. The wail of the oboe plays a haunting tune. To my right I spot an alcove and duck inside. There are two people fornicating. I cannot tell their genders given the darkness and their shapes nor do I care. I throw five hundred euros on the table. “Out,” I order.
They take the money and scramble away. There are plenty of places for them to fuck. Sitting on the edge of the leather-covered banquette, I gather Naomi in my lap. She is still shaking.
“Listen to my voice, Naomi. Take deep breaths. Concentrate on your breathing. In through your nose. Out through your mouth,” I instruct. I place my hand on her stomach and press. I breathe deeply myself, letting her feel my chest expand and then contract repeatedly. She begins to mimic me, slowly filling her lungs and then releasing the air. “Again.”
She follows and I feel her tremors calm and the tension leach out of her. We sit there for long moments as she gathers herself, one long breath at a time.
She uncoils from me, and I let her legs drop down until her heels hit the floor. “We are not in a hurry,” I lie.
“I’m okay,” she says, covering my hand still resting on her stomach. “You won’t leave me, though? Not again tonight.”
“Nyet. I will be by your side.”
“Always?”
Before I would likely hesitate, weighing my pursuit of power against her request, but now? Now it is only important that she is comforted. “Whenever you have need of me, I will be there.” I answer. She does not seem to notice the paucity of my promise. Instead, bravely, she straightens and takes my hand.
“I’m ready.”
We exit the alcove and I lead her forward. As promised, there are all kinds of wickedness here. There are ordinary ones played out in households all around such as the binding of the body or the slap of the whip. And then there are the extraordinary ones such that even those who play do not like to admit to. The ones that can’t be seen during an ordinary web search or on pornography sites set up by Russian girls for their keepers.
These dark perversions are behind heavily locked doors with discreet signs that only those who are in the know can follow.
“What are we looking for?” Naomi asks, rightfully confused, because to the ordinary eye, we are looking at blank doors, down dark hallways. I lead us up one set of stairs and then another until we are three stories up and I see the sign I’ve been looking for. The goddess Demeter is carved into a wooden relief above the door.
“Agriculture?” Naomi scrunches her nose in apparent confusion and then it clears. “Ohhh. I get it. Demeter, the goddess of agriculture for the animal lovers. That’s kind of gross. I don’t think she’d be happy with that.”
I pluck the tracking code off her shoulder and then peer down to look at the lock. It’s a simple one and strangely enough the thin knives I’ve hidden in the dildo will work perfectly for those.
Down one floor, I find a bathroom that is unoccupied.
“Naomi, I must remove the implement. Are you ready?” I slide my hands down her corseted sides.
“Yes.” She winces. “I could really use a break. I thought it would be sexy but it’s actually quite uncomfortable. I think if you were touching me, it might be more pleasurable but as it is I felt like I was waddling. What if it was bigger? I don’t think I could even walk then.”
I pull her panties down to her knees and then reach between her legs. Even though she said she was uncomfortable, she is still quite wet.
She groans when I pull it out. “Now I feel empty. You should kiss me and make it feel better.”
I lock my knees so I don’t fall to the floor and fulfill her request. “I will fuck you until you pass out after we are done,” I promise and press a hard kiss to her forehead. I unscrew the bottom, and drop the two knives in my hand. “Hold out your hand.”
She does so, like a good soldier. Despite her many questions and her nonstop talk, Naomi is one of the best people I’ve worked with. Generally she does what I ask, and I know I can trust her implicitly. I drop the knives into her hands and then discard the dildo and wash my hands.
The knives are secreted in my pocket next to the tracking device. “You must be very quiet now,” I say. She nods.
We exit the bathroom with Naomi’s hand tucked into mine. For people who do not like to touch, we seem to be bothered more when we are not connected.
When we arrive at the Demeter door, I make quick work of the lock. I can tell by her swiftly indrawn breath that she wants to comment on this, but she remains silent.
It is not the time nor place, but I cannot help myself from tipping her chin up. Her gaze skitters across my cheek as I bend down to meet her lips. I press against the softness until she yields and opens her mouth with a sigh.
My tongue sweeps in to remind her of my possession—or perhaps to accede to her possession of me, because I’m rapidly becoming obsessed with her. When I should be thinking of other things, she is there in my mind.
Such as now.
We should be entering the room, depositing the tracking device, and leaving. But I’m savoring the taste of her on my tongue and the memory of us joined together, hip to hip, chest to chest.
“Ahh, Naomi, you undo me,” I say breathlessly as I draw back.
Her eyes are cloudy with passion and she merely nods. I rub a finger across the lip I’ve just sucked. It’s wet from my mouth and hers. Under my touch, she shivers, and my cock grows diamond hard. Suddenly I’m ready to finish our business so we can return to our hotel and pleasure each other, once again.
Holding the tracking device between my fingers, I gather Naomi to me and then I let the door fall open. The room is small as most rooms in Venice are, and it does not take long for me to encounter another body as we pretend to stumble inside, passion crazed and looking for an empty room
“Figlio di puttana,” the occupant cries. Son of a whore. “Get out. Get out.”
“Scusi. Scusa. I am in the wrong room.”
“Porco dio! I will kill you.”
“Is that a—” I cover Naomi’s mouth and then hustle her out, shutting the door behind me to the curses and threats.
“Behind you!” she screams. I turn but it is too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY
NAOMI
There’s a donkey in the room.
I knew coming into this room that Marco Cassano was into animals. Still, thinking it and seeing it in front of me are two different things. The donkey is white and so it stands out amidst the shadows. I’m so shocked at the sight of it—and the man behind it—that I don’t realize that there is someone else here.
I hear footsteps and think Vasily is leaving me alone with this per
vert, so I turn just in time to see a man behind him in fetish wear.
“Behind you!” I tell Vasily, but I’m a moment too late. The man in the rubber fetish suit throws the coil of a leather whip around Vasily’s neck, choking him. To my surprise, my big Russian is neatly trapped against the man. Vasily’s hands go to the whip, like something out of a movie, and he strains as the man strangles him.
“Porco dio!” the other man is shouting, the donkey fucker. He keeps shouting it over and over again, pointing at us. “Porco dio!”
His shouting is making me want to crawl into myself. I freeze for a long moment, strains of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” rolling to the forefront of my mind. I stare at Vasily’s purpling face and begin to mouth the words. I don’t like screams, so I must drown them out . . .
But even as I start to slide away, I see the urgency in Vasily’s face. He’s not concentrating on his attacker. His hands are locked on the whip, and they shake back and forth, but Vasily’s gaze is completely on me.
Waiting on me.
I blink. Push away strains of the song. Through a hazy blur, I consider things. I can attack the man strangling Vasily . . . or I can do what we came here for. I think of what Vasily would do, and what he would want me to do if I was part of his Bratva.
So I finger my gold pendant with the thin tracking sticker stuck to the back of it. I need to get this on that man’s skin so we can get the painting. My fingernail pulls up the edge as I run for the man who is screaming in Italian at us. He’s pressed up against one of the thickly curtained walls of the room, his genitals gleaming with lubricant. The donkey brays and I skirt it wide, heading for the man. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I tell him. “I’m scared—protect me!”
He stares at me like I’m crazy and mouths a stream of gibberish Italian at me. “Allontanati da me!”
“I’m scared,” I repeat, and fling my arms around his neck, clinging to his side and avoiding his filthy genitals.
He pushes at me, shouting obscenities, but I’m clinging to him like a tree vine as I maneuver the tracking sticker off of the pendant. My fingers brush his nape even as he shoves me roughly. Success.
His hand slams into my jaw and I lose hold of him. I stumble to the floor, and his lubricant is all over my legs and stomach. I whimper with horror, knowing what I am covered with. “Vasily,” I moan. “He’s so gross.”
“Putta!” the donkey fucker shouts at me. He gibbers something else, pointing at Vasily, then at me. I can guess what those instructions are—kill me, too.
I look over at Vasily and my gaze meets his. He’s utterly calm. It’s like he’s waiting for me. So I nod. It’s done.
His nostrils flare, his only outward sign that he’s caught my signal. I see something metal flash in his hand, and then he stabs behind him.
The man in the rubber gimp suit bellows with pain. He was not, I think, expecting to be stabbed. Vasily grabs the whip and yanks it away from his throat. His hands move, so very fast, and I watch as he stabs and stabs the man behind him over and over again.
My assassin was never in any danger, not really. It was all a ploy to give me time.
However, I am in mortal danger now of catching a staph infection from this man’s lubricant. I shudder and vomit on the floor, unable to control my stomach. The “Itsy Bitsy Spider” returns, and I curl up around myself—my dirty, dirty self—and begin to hum and rock while the room goes to chaos around me and the donkey brays and brays and brays.
Hands press down on my shoulders. “Karen. Karen. Wake up. It is time to go.”
Who is Karen? The pressing becomes harder, the voice familiar. Vasily. Then I remember I’m supposed to be Karen. And we’re in the pervert room.
It’s not the place I want to have an episode. My eyes snap open and I see him kneeling in front of me. His fingers caress my cheek and it hurts. I wince and pull away.
“It is time to go, Karen,” he tells me again, and I nod.
He takes my hand and pulls me against him. I look over, expecting to see the donkey fucker shivering in the corner of the room. But the donkey fucker is laying in a pool of his own blood, his throat cut. His eyes are gazing up at the ceiling, seeing nothing. I turn and the assassin in the gimp suit is also dead. His mask is ripped off and the face there is not one I recognize.
Vasily has killed our target. I’m . . . pretty sure this wasn’t part of the plan.
“Um,” I question as Vasily takes my hand and leads me out of the room. “Why is our target deceased?”
“Not now,” he tells me, touching my cheek and pulling me through the club’s maze of hallways. We pass by people, but no one is paying attention to us—everyone is too busy with their own perversions. I shudder as we stumble past a group of people, one dressed up like an animal of some kind.
When we pause in a doorway, I can’t hold my questions back. “Who was that man that tried to kill you?”
“Karen, I will answer all questions but it must not be now,” he says, voice gentle, and I realize in his other hand, he grips the other knife. Oh. We’re not safe just yet, then. I follow his lead as we duck through more rooms. Vasily opens a new door and I cringe, anticipating another donkey, but it’s just another side room that is empty. Music plays, violins slicing through the quiet. I wait, tense, as Vasily locks the door we came through, then rams one of his knives into the doorknob, jamming it.
He heads to the opposite side of the room while I stand in the middle of the floor, shivering and not entirely in my own mind. I watch as he presses his ear to the wood of the thick door, then moves to the curtains and wipes his hands clean of blood. He spits on his hands, wipes, and spits some more. It strikes me as horribly filthy, but there’s no shower in this room.
And I want a shower so bad. I think of the germs I have on me: the strangers that touched me when I entered, the man’s lubricant, the secretions from the donkey he was fornicating with, the floor I sat down on, any blood that might have spattered . . .
I feel faint.
“I’m going to be sick,” I tell Vasily in a weak voice.
“Good,” he tells me and moves to my side. “Vomit down your front. It will be convincing.”
I swallow hard, but in the end I lean over and throw up on the nice Aubusson carpet. Vasily pulls my hair back as I puke, and then he pulls me into his arms, carrying me.
“I’m filthy,” I protest. “Don’t touch me.”
“Shh,” he says, and his voice is soft.
I’m in a haze as we go back to the entrance of the club. His slave is sick, Vasily explains, and we must leave early. I must look rather frightful because they give us our coats without question, and off we go back into the streets of Venice. Vasily immediately heads for the water’s edge and summons us a water taxi.
We climb in, and I suck in deep breaths of the clean night air. We say nothing until we return to the hotel, and then Vasily locks the door behind us and then barricades it with the nearby dresser. “Into the shower,” he tells me, voice firm but hands gentle.
I nod, but I’m still hazy and Vasily has to undress me out of my costume and then leads me to the shower. The water is scalding hot, but I start to feel like myself again once it pours down on me. Then, I grab the soap and begin to scrub every ounce of my body. Clean. Clean. I need to be clean.
Vasily steps into the shower next to me, and then he takes the soap from my hands and begins to rub it over my shoulder blades. “I am sorry,” he says to me.
I start to tremble. “It was a rough evening.”
“Da. It was bloody.” His fingers are gentle as they soap my skin in circles. “You were clever to think of the knives. They came in handy.”
I scrub the washcloth over my stomach and thighs. “Do you think I still have donkey vaginal secretions on me?” I ask in horror, and begin to dry heave again.
“We will make sure you are clean,” he assures me. “Do not worry.” And he continues to soap my skin, helping me scour every inch of dermis that might have come into con
tact with anything tonight. Eventually, the water cools from its blistering temperature and my skin throbs but it feels . . . better. I start to feel more human again, and I switch places with Vasily in the shower, letting him have the spray.
I lean against him, exhausted but still full of questions. “Why was there an assassin tonight?”
His hands drag through my hair, stroking it. Petting me. I never realized how good it felt to have someone pet you like a cat. “Someone knew we were coming,” he says.
“Who was that man?” I ask. “You took his mask off. Did you recognize him?”
“Da,” he says, and his voice is flat, thick. Angry, I realize. “He is one of the Alexsandr’s pets. Nikolai knew him well.”
“Who is Alexsandr?”
“Alexsandr was a very important man, once. He trained many young boys into assassins, including my old friend Nikolai. Both he and Alexsandr are dead now.”
I’m not connecting things. “I don’t understand.” I press my cheek against Vasily’s freshly scrubbed chest, listening to his heartbeat. “The man tonight . . . he was working for the enemy?”
“He works for the Petrovich Bratva.” Vasily ducks his head under the spray, his way of avoiding my questions.
I sit up and wait until he’s done. “So someone sent a Petrovich assassin after you?”
“It would seem so.” He reaches over and turns off the shower, so casual.
“Is that why you killed our mark? I thought the plan was to track him. When did that change?”
“I killed him because he was braying worse than the donkey,” Vasily says as he steps out of the shower. He picks up a thick, fluffy towel and wraps it around me, tucking me into its warmth. He begins to dry my skin with tender motions, and it’s an odd dichotomy—this caring, thoughtful side of a man that ruthlessly killed two people earlier. “And because he is no longer necessary.”
I frown. “Why is he no longer necessary?”
“Because Elena Petrovich must have the painting at this point. She has beaten us to it, somehow, and now seeks to eliminate me. We walked into her trap.”
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