by Zara Cox
She holds out the takeout bag. The aromas that waft from it are heavenly enough to make my mouth water. “To make up for the confusion over the clothes,” she says.
I open the door wider with my right hand and reach out to take the bag with my left. Her gaze falls to my wrist. It hasn’t gone purple as I feared, but the distinctive yellowing is clearly visible. Her gaze sharpens.
“It’s nothing,” I blurt, but my heart sinks at the resigned look on her face. “Please don’t tell him.”
She enters, shuts the door behind her and regards me with a touch of sympathy. “It doesn’t work that way, Lucky. If there’s a situation we need to know about—”
“There isn’t, I swear.”
She reaches into her bag and pulls out her clipboard. “Give me the cliff notes. I can’t promise one way or the other how this will go. But I have a job to do, same as you.”
“And that includes bothering him with something this minor?” I gripe.
A flicker of something hard in her gaze reminds me of Q’s warning that not everyone’s as they seem. “Cliff notes, Lucky. Who. How. When.”
“Today, at work.” I stop and grimace. “My new clothes attracted a little more attention than I expected. That’s all.”
She nods in understanding, but her gaze doesn’t waver. “I’m waiting for the who.”
“It’s a guy I work with. Miguel. He’s pretty harmless,” I toss in hurriedly.
She finishes her notes and pulls out her phone. “Go eat.”
“Fionnella…”
“The food’s getting cold, Lucky. It’s your favorite. You’ll want to enjoy it while it’s still hot.”
She waits until I make my way to the kitchen before she retreats to the glass and brick wall at the far end of the living room. I plate the burger and fries and watch from the corner of my eye as she dials and presses the phone to her ear. Her voice is too low for me to catch her end of the conversation, but I don’t need to. The slight ding in The Boss’s one million dollar body has been duly reported.
The sanguine smile is back on her face when she joins me in the kitchen. We go through the next few days’ schedule while I eat. Then she makes me stand on a scale in the bathroom for my weighing. She catalogues my five-pound weight gain with another bright smile, after which she promises to be in touch soon, and leaves.
He’s going to call. But I don’t know when, so I distract myself by trying to work out the elaborate TV/entertainment center controls.
I finally figure it out and I’m watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory, when the black box flashes green.
My heart climbs into my throat. I debate ignoring it. On top of the subject I don’t want to discuss, I recall our conversation last night. My body is strung up on the attraction I feel for another man. I don’t know if I want to add Q’s brand of electronic hotness to my crazy right now.
But what choice do I have?
I slowly reach for the box. Before I can touch it, it flashes off. I jump back, relief and disappointment mingling through me. Five seconds later, the flashing resumes.
I pick it up and press the ‘on’ button.
“Were you thinking of not answering me, Lucky?” His voice flows around the room, like a living entity. “Think carefully before you answer.”
My fingers curl around the box. “Yes, I was.”
“Thank you for being truthful. Why?”
“The bruise is nothing. I didn’t want it to become something.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
My shocked laugh is tinged with more than a touch of exasperation. “Excuse me?”
“Small fact you should know about me. Everything I own is precious to me. Everything I own is unequivocally mine, until such time as I choose to dispose of it. Everything I own I maintain in pristine condition. Do I own you, Lucky?”
My exasperation stands no chance beneath his obsidian power and the inevitability of my answer. “Yes,” I whisper.
“Once again. With conviction. I need to know you’re convinced that I own you.”
“Yes,” I repeat. I toss the box on the sofa and take childish pleasure in glaring at it. “Yes, you own me!”
Silence seethes for several heartbeats. “Are you in pain?”
I’m not expecting that, nor the different cadence attached to the voice. He’s just callously labeled me an object. A possession to dispose of eventually. Rich people don’t care about the suffering of mere mortals.
And yet, he ensured you didn’t end up in the shelter…or worse.
While my emotions sigh with gratitude for that, my brain holds back, cautioning me that everything happening to me could still be a twisted game in some rich man’s fantasy.
The man I’ve labeled Q is a stranger. Until we come face to face and I’m able to assess him otherwise, he needs to remain that way, no matter how he makes me feel.
I tuck my feet beneath me on the sofa, noting absently that somehow the TV has been muted. “In the grand scale of things, compared to what your fitness instructor put me through today, I’d say the pain in my wrist is a piece of cake.”
“You think it’s the same? Pain deliberately inflicted and pain endured for the purposes of honing your body?”
I frown. “Of course not. You just…I was trying to explain…okay, I get it. No, it’s a touch uncomfortable when I touch it, but I’m not in pain. Can we get off the subject now, please?”
“We can. I have a prior engagement to attend to. If you would be so kind as to ensure I don’t have to make another call like this, I would appreciate it.”
The box turns black before I have a chance to respond. Or thank him for the clothes. Or just…enjoy the sound of his electronic voice.
I’m completely deflated.
When the TV miraculously un-mutes again, my enjoyment in my favorite show is nil. I flounder on the sofa for another hour before I drag myself to the double bookshelf at the opposite end of the room. I half-heartedly settle for a psychological thriller that promises high jinx on a pirate ship and take it up to the bedroom.
Although I try to blank my mind and absorb myself in the story, I lose interest by the second chapter.
Two streams of conversation play through my mind, each with its own unique brand of mind-fuckery that sends my thoughts spinning.
I jumped out of the frying pan because my very survival depended on it.
But the fire licking at my heels might just consume me because the craving inside me, one that has grown without me even realizing it, has me locked in its terrible hold.
15
EXPOSITION
Q
I rip the voice distorter and the connecting earpiece from my face and crush the delicate tech in my fist. One piece of it breaks through my skin, but the pain doesn’t register. It’s buried far too deep beneath the Everest of deadly rage.
Striding to the trashcan next to my desk, I open my hand and let the fragments fall. Turning my hand over, I see three bright spots of blood dotting one finger. I rub at it with my thumb, smear it across my palm. All too soon the capillaries close up, my body’s natural defenses rushing to seal the wound. Regret flickers like a heartbeat on a monitor before it flatlines. My gaze traces up my bare arm to the almost invisible scar on my inner elbow.
The doctors did a fine job. But they were instructed on pain of death to leave no evidence. Not even for me to find.
But at times like this I don’t need a visual aid to feel the scar. It pulsates with a life force of its own, an open invitation to lose myself. To surrender to permanent darkness.
I reject the invitation, close my fist and lay it on my desk. The other hand falls flat beside it. The strains of Vissi D’arte fill my head. I count the sequences off one by one. Over and over.
Sweat pebbles my skin, drips down my face and neck and onto my bare torso as I count, my finger tapping faster and faster. But the dull roar in my head doesn’t abate.
It started the moment I saw her wrist. That blemish, the
re on her skin, was nearly my undoing.
My true undoing came the moment I touched her. That flame, searing and illuminating …hurt. It awakened. And alarmed.
Enough for me to contemplate giving in to the compulsion to end it all tonight, now. It writhes through me like a coiled snake, striking, ripping poisoned holes through me I make no attempt to staunch.
The temptation is overpowering.
But this isn’t how it ends.
I can’t let him get away with it.
I drop, drained, into my chair and stare into the gloom. In the near darkness my gaze finds her picture on my desk.
Mama.
Smiling. Always smiling. Trusting. So trusting.
I take a breath and it moves through me like a rejuvenating tide. Or as close to one as a soul existing in a vacuum can experience.
Except I didn’t feel that way this afternoon with Elly. Not when she stared at me with defiance and surrender. Or when she begged me to draw her deeper into my obsidian web. The vacuum shifted then, attempted to make room for fuck knows what.
I don’t want her soul. I have no use for her heart. Or her feelings.
But her body is mine.
And she dared to withstand it being, hurt…marred. To brush it off as nothing, the skin I’ve touched, the skin wrapped around the body that will bring an orchestral ending to a decade-long plan?
I surge to my feet, once again fully enveloped in my most comfortable suit of moral bankruptcy and scalpel-sharp focus.
No, not quite scalpel-sharp. That edge was dulled today courtesy of bottomless green eyes and a plump, quivering mouth that just begged to be fucked.
I thought my focus was back. But the conversation ten minutes ago…
The poison is acid-sharp, eating at my control.
I need something specific. Something to take my mind off Lucky. And Elly.
XYNYC is shut on Wednesday nights. I think about the Punishment Club, the underground club Axel opened five years ago. It’s most likely where I’ll find what I need, but I don’t think it’s a good idea tonight. For one thing, I don’t want to spend time hunting my prey. If I choose wrong, my state of mind will get worse.
For another, the Punishment Club is in Hell’s Kitchen, a defiant three blocks from the loft where I stashed Lucky. Letting myself into her space and bringing everything to an end isn’t a scenario I’ve mastered at ruling out.
With my immediate respites out of the question, I reach for my phone.
Adriana Nathanson answers with a groggy, “Hello?”
“Your office. One hour.”
“Quinn? It’s…ten o’clock at night.”
“That early, huh? Make it half an hour then.” I hang up, stride through the apartment to my bedroom and pull on a black Tee on top of my black chinos. A battered leather jacket to keep out the chill and a quick detour to the bathroom to throw water on my face and clean the blood from my palm before I head out. I activate the valet app on my phone and my DB9 is waiting for me by the time I exit my building.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Blackwood.”
I hand the valet boy a fifty and slide behind the wheel. Traffic is thankfully light and I reach Adriana’s office with five minutes to spare.
She must have alerted her office security because I’m escorted up to her office and let in by a security guard. I pace until the click of heels sends me to the door of her office.
She sees me and stops in the middle of the hallway. Her gaze rakes over my all-black clothing and she takes a nervous breath without moving.
“Why, Adriana. Don’t tell me you afraid of me?”
A single shake of her head. “You’re not violent. Not that way, anyway.”
I’m not sure why that soothes me, but it does. “Are we going to conduct this session in the hallway?”
“So you’re serious? You really want to talk?”
“Either that, or I want to fuck you up the ass. I haven’t quite decided yet.”
Her eyes widen and light up with suppressed excitement before her gaze drops. “Maybe we can do…both?”
I laugh. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to send you back home to dear old Stanley with a sore ass and a heart brimming with fulfillment for all the good work you’ve done? Tell me, how is the darling husband doing these days?”
She resumes walking toward me. “Quinn, if you dragged me all the way here to toy with me, be warned, I’m not in the mood.” The practiced sway of her hips beneath the wraparound dress she has on contradicts her words. I don’t care enough to point it out.
I turn sideways for her to precede me into the office. She stops and stares up at me.
“Something’s happened,” she muses quietly. “What is it, Quinn?”
“Inside. Now.”
She walks in, and I shut the door. I decline the drink she offers, cross the room and drop into the sofa. Both hands spear into my hair and I search for words.
“You’re right. I’m…affected.”
“It’s understandable, seeing as your father’s back in the city—”
“It’s not him. Well, it’s not all him. But he’s being a good demon for now and staying in his allotted box.”
“Then who is it?”
“Names aren’t important.” I don’t want to mention her name here, even the names that I know are fake. Not in this place of sickening filth and half-baked healing. For the first time, I wonder what her real name is. Where she’s from. I catch myself and return Adriana’s stare. “All that’s important is how to get rid of it.”
“Rid of what? What are you feeling?”
“The need to succumb.” I say. My voice is barely a rumble. But with the time of night, and the quiet of the office, she hears me.
Her gaze moves over me. To the side. Down my arm. “Are you self-harming again?”
I silently commend her for not beating about the bush. She’s in full shrink mode, and I realize I need that.
“No. That’s not what this is about. Besides, harming implies an ongoing situation. Mine wasn’t. It was a one time thing.”
“But you said you’d been thinking about it for a while before you did it, so there was forethought.”
I shake my head once. “That’s not what this is, Adriana. Trust me.”
“Okay. Tell me in what way this person affects you, then.”
Her image rises up. Defiant. Gorgeous. Fucked up. Utterly fuckable. Dangerous. I shrug. “They’re poking holes in my black spaces.”
“And this distresses you?”
“Hell no. I’m distressed for them.”
“Why. Do they matter to you?”
I pause a second before I answer. “There’s a potential they might fall through my cracks. I don’t need the collateral damage. I thought I didn’t care. I’m still not sure that I do. But it’s…affecting me.”
“Maybe consider cementing your cracks first? Put off involving this person in your situation just yet?”
I think of my fingers touching her satin-smooth skin, the white-hot flame on my desolate landscape. “It’s not that easy. I’m already invested.”
“Have you thought about setting yourself a hard limit?”
“It could be too late.” I have a feeling it’s already too late. For Quinn, anyway.
Q is another matter.
“Only you can decide by which point the investment will begin to lose its value. You’re not afraid of making tough choices, Quinn. But you also enjoy the buildup of chaos. That has been one of the things you’ve refused to tackle. Maybe now is the time to start?”
“Timing’s not good for me. Come up with another solution.”
She sighs and sits back. “The only other alternative is to let them see who you are. Give them the choice to walk away. But I don’t recommend that.”
“Why not?”
“Because people see what they want to see. And because you’re especially skilled at getting people to walk down a path they may not necessarily want to go but are unable to
stop themselves from taking.”
“Are we still talking about just me here, Dr. Nathanson?” I smirk.
Unease flits over her face. “I’m serious, Quinn.”
I shrug. “So your solution is to save this person from my sociopathy before they hurt themselves through their own choices?”
“This isn’t a game, Quinn. You wouldn’t have woken me up at this time of the night if you weren’t worried—”
“Seeking clarity doesn’t equate with worry.”
“Then let me be clear. Until you take steps to fix what’s wrong with you, you’re putting them in danger. You probably know this already, but have convinced yourself you don’t care. But what you need to ask yourself is, do they deserve it?”
The stillness descends on me. It stops everything, including the roar.
I wanted clarity.
I’ve got it.
Will the demons let me keep it? Will the weight of my destiny let me even contemplate it?
I stand and walk over to her window. Down below, traffic on Lexington Avenue trips on as usual.
Through the reflection, I see Adriana stand. She hesitates for a moment before she makes her way to me. Her hand touches the middle of my back. No higher. She knows what that will earn her.
“I miss her too, Quinn. She was the best of all of us. That’s why I want to do everything I can to help you heal. I know if anything were to happen to you, Adele would never—”
She gasps as I twist around, grab the hand on my back and use it to propel her against the window. My hands close over her arms, and I lift her slight body up until we’re face to face.
“Do not fucking speak her name, do you hear me? I don’t want her name to ever pass your lips again. Not because she was your best friend and you miss her. Not because she made you my godmother, but you’ve taken delight in sucking my cock since I came of age. Do. Not. Speak. Her. Name. Because you know what happened. You were fucking there. And you did nothing.”
Her face goes as white as the walls in her office. “Quinn, please—”
“Shut the fuck up. I don’t want you to say my name, and I don’t want to hear your excuses.” My hiss is low, deadly enough for her to understand I mean business.