Prince Roman

by CD Reiss

  “What?”

  She pointed. My bishop had been protecting my king. When I’d moved it, she’d been ready.

  A small girl with chocolate skin and a heart-printed down jacket stood on the edge of the board with her arms crossed, tapping her light-up sneaker. She looked to be about seven.

  “Are you guys done yet?”

  As if woken from a spell, I noticed the park had filled up. Kids yelped and squealed. The swings squeaked. The sun burned bright but not hot.

  Raven had her hands on her hips. I thought she was going to yell at the kid for interrupting. I didn’t want her to. I hadn’t told the entire truth about my ex. She’d wanted to settle down, but she didn’t like kids. Nothing was less attractive than someone who wasn’t nice to children.

  “He’s in trouble.” She pointed to me. “He’s in check, and as you can see”—she held her hand out to the board—“he’s dead meat in five moves. If you get him out of it, we’ll leave.”

  “Five moves?” the girl said. “He’s got you in four!” She jumped onto the board and put her arms around a rook.

  “Wait a minute!” Another little voice called from behind me. A boy this time. About the same age as my new partner. “If you move that he can’t castle, and she’s got him on en-eff-three.”

  The girl put the rook down and stood next to the boy, looking the board over. I stood next to Raven and said softly, “Is this age appropriate?”

  “This is what happens in a city full of geniuses.”

  “En-eff-three,” the girl said. “En-see-six.”

  “What are they even talking about?” I asked.

  “I have no idea.” She leaned against me, and I put my arm around her.

  The little girl moved my knight in front of my king.

  “If we left,” I asked, “would they notice?”

  “Half-half in six!” the boy cried.

  “No.” The little girl was offended by the idea. “I can win in four.”

  I took Raven’s hand and led her back the way we came.

  “Let’s say we both won.”

  When we got to the edge of the pavement, where the soft grass began, I held my arms out. “Ready?”

  “I have a better idea.” She took me by the shoulders and turned me. “Piggyback, ready?”

  “Ready.”

  She jumped on my back. I grabbed her calves and started running across the field where a soccer game was in full swing. I kicked the ball, dodged players, and jumped over a rock that would have sent us both flying.

  We didn’t stop laughing until we tumbled into bed.

  Chapter 15

  RAVEN

  The Russian agent came out of nowhere. He had on a suit and tie. A dapper little fuck with the motherland’s flag pinned to his lapel. I pulled the trigger. Missed. He had Roman in a chokehold. They were moving so fast, and I risked shooting Roman instead of the agent, but I had to gamble. I shot. Commie blood splattered everywhere.

  “Thank you!” Roman said from next to me.

  “I owe you one from the Mauritian Islands mission.” I blasted through a line of guys. “Give me cover, I’m—”

  “What’s that smell?”

  Beer and farts would have been my answer five minutes before. The basement of the video-game-themed restaurant reeked of men triggering dopamine responses, which I totally empathized with, because there were things I didn’t want to think about right then, either. Space was bought by the hour, not including food. For that you could play whatever video game you wanted either with a friend, a stranger who put their name on the board, or alone without anyone bothering you. The waitresses were specifically instructed to leave the food and go away.

  Ours had left a burger, a chicken sandwich, and fries on the table between us, and the smell cut through the stale air.

  I snapped my rifle back into the mount. My head was immediately blown off.

  “Damn Russians! Take that!” Roman greased the guy who shot me and put his own gun down. “Vengeance is sweet.” He turned his chair to the little table and kissed me. “You should play with Teagan some time. She’s a real assassin.”

  “You keep saying stuff like that.”

  “Like what?” He bit into his burger as if he didn’t have a single thing on his mind.

  “Like, ‘oh, at some future date this or that should happen.’”

  “Mm-hm?” He picked up his glass, pushed the straw out of the way, and washed down his burger with his Coke.

  “It’s Sunday night.”

  “So?” He put his glass down and picked his burger up again. I picked up a fry. My appetite for a shitty chicken sandwich had gotten shot out of frame.

  “So we’re in the office tomorrow. Together. And this was a weekend-only deal. Remember?”

  He took another bite, which was completely infuriating. One, it delayed his answer while he chewed. Two, how could he eat at a time like this?

  “I mean, I guess I should just appreciate it,” I said as much to myself as to him, “but you’ll excuse me if I’m not exactly jumping for joy.”

  He grunted around his burger again. I threw down my French fry.

  “We’re going to go back to your place,” I continued, “fuck a few times, and then what? You dropping me home tonight or tomorrow morning? And how am I supposed to feel? Well, I know what I’m supposed to feel. I’m supposed to feel nothing. But, duh to no one but me, I couldn’t have spent an entire weekend with you if I felt nothing.” I paused. Roman was looking at me in shock. He’d stopped chewing, but his mouth was still full. I shoved my tray away. “Obviously, you don’t have any feelings about it.”

  I walked out. He could pay the fucking bill. I couldn’t look at him.

  I didn’t know where my fury came from. Maybe from built-up aggression related to not being able to have a relationship outside work when the only men I ever met were at the office. Maybe it was from serial disappointments over everything. Maybe the fact that this stable forever job was turning out to be unstable in a completely different way.

  Maybe I just wanted him to like me as much as I liked him.

  I jabbed at my phone, walking fast so I could get as far away from the video game restaurant as possible. I’d have the Lyft driver meet me at the next corner, once I got past all the bars on Santa Clara St.

  He was a test. He was a test of my commitment to my goals.

  Goal number one. Stability.

  Men came and went. Sex could be had for the asking. But a stable job was all I ever wanted and it was all I ever risked.

  “Jesus.” Roman’s voice came from behind me. His hands were on his knees and he was out of breath. “You run…so fast…paid bill and…” He pointed back the way we’d come. “Thought you’d…toward Market but…”

  I would have run again but the car was meeting me on that corner.

  “Roman.”

  “Wait.” He straightened up, arms out. “You did all the talking.”

  The light across Almaden changed and packs of people crossed, getting between us. We were shoved and separated. I went through to meet him off the corner, in a little patch of empty concrete.

  “You’re right,” I said with the intention of doing even more of the talking. “You saved me from a stupid decision. It was a weekend for a reason. I’m sorry. I lost my priorities for a minute. I like you but I’m not losing my job over you.”

  A black Kia with a light in the windshield pulled up and rolled down the window.

  “Yeah…no.” Roman said. “I had food in my mouth. That’s not what I was trying to say.”

  “Raven?” the Kia driver called. She was blocking traffic.

  “My Lyft’s here.”

  “Do you really think I’m going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight?”

  I opened the door. “The chariot turned into a pumpkin, not the prince.”

  I got in and closed the door. Roman leapt up and stuck his head in the front window, where the driver had called out.

  “I’ll see you to
morrow, and I’ll know what’s under your suit.”

  “I’ll know what’s under yours, too. But it won’t matter.”

  He winked at me, the little shit. He was wearing a Henley, but that wink was all tailored suit and French cuffs. It was shiny shoes and expensive cologne. That wink was the confidence that I’d see him on Monday and fall into his arms.

  Well, he and his stupid ego-holeness were in for a big surprise.

  Chapter 16

  ROMAN

  Raven ignored me on Monday. She wore a tweed shirt and jacket with a turtleneck, low brown pumps, and her hair in a tortoiseshell headband. She looked as if she was de-sexing herself for my benefit. It didn’t work. I knew what her underwear looked like and what her pussy tasted like. I knew how filthy her mouth was and how smooth her skin was.

  I’d known the weekend deadline wouldn’t stick if I didn’t want it to. I was generally very capable of walking away from flings. I didn’t make attachments I didn’t need to make.

  But she was different.

  I didn’t need to get attached to her, but I hadn’t had a choice either. She was like an orange with a tough, attractive skin. Once peeled, she was soft, sticky, sweet.

  I was in the middle of a fantasy that involved feeding Raven orange wedges when Marie came in without knocking.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” I snapped out of it. “I’ve never been up to Burke’s new office.”

  “It’s a trip,” she said on her way out. I got my things and joined Marie in the hall. As I walked out with her, Raven came down the hall in her sexless pumps. I ignored her, or at least I thought I did. When I looked back toward Marie, I found her watching me suspiciously.

  We got into the elevator. I pressed the button to the top floor, Alexander Burke’s office suite. The doors closed before anyone else could join us.

  “Burke’s doing a big event the Friday before rollout. If it’s not live on Monday, he’s going to be embarrassed. We don’t embarrass clients.”

  “The system will protect Neuronet from some litigation. Performance benchmarks for the sales unit are a little aggressive. They’re working on the—”

  “Tell me how invaluable you are.”

  “He’s not going to get sued. That’s invaluable.”

  The elevator stopped and opened into a vast room surrounded with windows. It had been designed as another stark, angular office for a Silicon Valley tycoon, but Burke had managed to subvert the original intent. There were stacks of papers everywhere. Crowded corkboards leaning against the wet bar and the bottoms of the windows. The conference table had been turned upside down, and colored yarn had been strung between the six legs like an extreme game of cat’s cradle. Post-its with numbers and symbols were clipped to the yarn.

  “Captain Kill!” Alexander Burke called in his British accent, coming out from behind a six-foot-tall Lego model of DNA. He had on a black mock-neck tee, a black jacket, and black pants. His socks were Kelly green.

  “Bushwhacker!” Calling each other by our gamer names, we gave each other a back-slapping man hug. I hadn’t seen my old friend since he’d hired me two months before. He’d been ballooning around Antarctica.

  “Marie, right?” He shook her hand. “Perry set up the terrace; it’s a mess in here.” He walked across the room without looking back at his guests, head bowed as if the world outside his brain was too distracting.

  We went out to the terrace overlooking the bay. The inner workings of Burke’s mind hadn’t spilled out, so it was clean and neat. Drinks had been set out.

  “Am I getting my system?” he asked, running his fingers through his hair again. “I made it simple.”

  “The software infrastructure was easy. We just worked on the methods.”

  “My new VP of HR.”

  “Yes, I worked with her.”

  “She was at QI4, you know. Hard to get. Very smart.”

  “Very,” I said, about to launch into Raven’s virtues.

  “She worries me.” Marie put her glass down and leaned on the railing. Raven had just left me standing on a street corner the night before, but I still wanted to push her over the edge.

  “Really?” Burke asked. “How so?”

  “She and Taylor Harden had a thing at her last job.”

  I had to turn away before I told her to shut the fuck up.

  “I heard rumors.” Burke shrugged and brought his iced tea to his lips. “But what I wanted to talk to you about was some good news.” He put his iced tea on the glass tabletop and picked up an envelope. “Thank you,” he said, handing Marie the envelope. “Your team got this done well and on time.”

  Marie paused, glanced at me to see if I knew what was going on, and seeing I had no fucking clue, she opened the envelope. I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but the sun shone through it enough for me to discern both the check and her stunned reaction to it.

  “We haven’t billed yet,” she said.

  “That’s a bonus on top of billing. To thank you guys for getting it done.”

  Burke didn’t know what Marie wanted or how badly she wanted it, so he didn’t sense that her gratitude was genuine and grudging at the same time.

  “If you’re hiring new outside counsel for future projects—”

  “I’m thinking of keeping it in-house for now.”

  She put the check back in the envelope and folded the flap back. She was a wild card.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Alex,” I said, hoping to end this and get out, because Marie had had her eyes on a single target from jump, and it was a target I wanted to protect. “Really great. Any time you—”

  “Our job is to protect our client from lawsuits,” Marie cut in. “Be the eyes and ears of the world outside Neuronet.”

  “Of course.”

  “I think you need that.” She glanced at me, then back at Burke. Her gears were turning. “So if you ever feel isolated, or like you need ears on the ground, let us know.”

  She picked up her glass. I had the feeling my name wasn’t getting put on the stationery this time around.

  * * * *

  In the elevator, on the way down, we watched the numbers change.

  “You’re having a thing with Raven Crosby.”

  Marie stated it as a fact. I swallowed a vigorous denial. The question needed a question.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “What makes you not deny it?”

  I didn’t answer. The elevator slowed and stopped.

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said as the doors opened. “But if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. I’m not going to invent suspicion to look useful.”

  “Agreed.”

  I walked out of the elevator with the best of intentions, but once I got to my office and saw her across from me, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.

  Chapter 17

  RAVEN

  “Wait,” Masy said, glancing at me from the TV. She had a bowl of popcorn in her lap, ready for her Friday night show. “So you came home right after on Sunday out of spite, and you’re still ignoring him out of spite.”

  “I’m ignoring him out of necessity.”

  Since I’d gotten into a car without him five days before, we’d had two in-office meetings. I thought he’d try to get under my skirt or make innuendos. I thought he’d send an email or a note, but no. Nothing. He was a model of professionalism.

  I was glad he respected my wishes, but I was also disappointed. It was hard to sit across a table from him when his cologne was such sweet citrus. My father used a citrus scented brush cleaner, and it reminded me of when he’d let me paint. The creativity of childhood. The freedom of the instability.

  I wanted him to look at me, but he barely did. I wanted his eyes to peel me down to the underwear he knew I was wearing. I wanted to feel naked and exposed with him, but he’d put a wall between us and I had to admit, I did too. My desire bounced off it, back at me. By Friday I’d given myself an unsatisfying orgasm every singl
e night.

  “Are you watching Empire with me?” Masy folded her legs under her.

  “I’m going to the gym. I’ll watch it on the treadmill and we can discuss.” I needed to work Roman out of my muscles. I was looking forward to beating the hell out of them until I was too exhausted to fall asleep thinking about him.

  * * * *

  Twenty minutes into the treadmill, I was at a full canter, really close to that state of blissful concentration that excluded everything else. Close, because I was still aroused thinking about Roman. He wouldn’t get out of my mind. He was tenacious, hanging onto my thoughts whenever I became aware of my body. The blister on my heel, the burning breaths, the sweat dripping down my neck, my nails digging into my palm.

  Someone had on his lemony cologne. I could turn up my headphones and I could even close my eyes if I saw something I didn’t want to see. But I couldn’t stop breathing. I increased the incline and turned up the sound on Empire.

  He’d been such a surprise. Sexy and powerful, just the way I liked my men, but what that scent brought back was the fact that he was so much fun. He joked. He played. He made me smile. I stopped trying to avoid thoughts of him and let them come. The color of his hair and his gray-green eyes that I realized were the exact color of artichokes. His smile. His spontaneity. His stupid jokes and his terribly clever ones.

  I realized I was smiling and looked up at myself in the mirror.

  There was the source of the cologne. Roman was running on the treadmill next to me. He made the peace sign in the mirror.

  I punched the stop button and the treadmill came to an abrupt halt. I hopped off and snapped my towel off the rail.

  “That’s weird, Roman. Just weird.”

  He calmly stopped his treadmill. My clothes and hair stuck to me and I was breathing like a dog. No man should see me like that, but this man in particular had no choice.

  “I’m a member, Raven. Since way before I met you.”

  “You just stood there watching me.”

  “I wasn’t standing. I was running.” He wiped his face with his towel, not that he needed to. Even sweaty, he was perfect.