“What are you doing, Naomi?”
“Did you know that some people still use chastity belts as orgasm control? The key is given to the dominant in the relationship so he can—”
“That is fascinating,” he says in a patient voice, interrupting me. “But why are you researching dominant/submissive relationships at six in the morning? And where are your clothes?”
I look down. Sure enough, my breasts are out. “I sleep in the nude.”
“And yet you are not sleeping and still nude.”
“I was thinking. I got the computer so I could work. I guess I forgot a step.”
“Dress and we shall go to breakfast,” he tells me. His gaze is carefully averted.
“Is it safe?”
“Da.” At my hesitation, he says, “The Golubevs likely have no idea we are in Italy. Any rival organizations will either be searching in Rio, or waiting in Moscow. We will eat someplace extremely public, enjoy our toast, and I will bring my gun. Will that suffice?”
I think for a moment. “Can I have a gun?”
“Ah, but you have no place to put it,” he says, gesturing at my nakedness.
“I can put pants on.”
His mouth curls into a smile. “That was a joke, Naomi.”
“Oh.” I smile back at him, because it is rather silly to think about hiding a gun when I have no clothes on. I consider this for a moment and amend my statement. “Actually, I could put a gun inside my—”
“Clothes,” he says, interrupting my rambling. “Then breakfast.”
“Is it because you don’t trust me?”
“It is that it is dangerous for you to go around with a gun in a foreign country. You might draw more attention than you are accustomed to. And if someone sees you with gun, they might assume you know how to handle it. Do you know how to handle it?” He peers into my face.
“I don’t, but I can learn,” I tell him brightly.
“Then after you learn, you get gun.”
“This sounds suspiciously like a trust issue.”
“I cannot trust you, Naomi,” he says. He regards me with intense scrutiny. For some reason, I have the oddest urge to have him come and sit in the bed with me, naked. I wonder what he would look like with no clothes on. That’s a strange sort of thought for someone like me, and it makes me distrust myself.
“I would trust you more if you shared some of your secrets with me,” I admit, getting out of bed to dress. If I stay in longer, I’ll keep picturing him in it with me. “Tell me a secret and I won’t bug you about the gun.”
He thinks for a minute, watching me as I step close. When I move next to him, he reaches for me. And my normal instinct is to flinch away from the touch on my bare skin but . . . I don’t. I tell myself I want to see how I react to his touch.
For science.
One finger traces down my bare arm, and sends shivers through my body, reminding me of when he’d fingered me on the plane. I couldn’t wait to experience that again. “My reasons for not being touched are different than yours,” he says in a thick voice. “It has nothing to do with germs.”
My entire body is paying attention to that finger. “I thought you were supposed to tell me a secret? Even I knew that.” My breathing has sped up, and not in panic. Instead, I’m thinking about the time he washed his hands for five minutes and then fingered me on the plane. What if I ask him to do that right now? Will he get naked on the bed with me and put clean hands on my skin and—
He glares at me. “Dress. Breakfast. Now.”
Right. I scramble to dress.
Fifteen minutes later, my hair is brushed, and I’m wearing a pale pink polo dress and white Keds with no socks. It’s comfortable enough, and Vasily says it looks “sufficiently touristy.” He’s wearing a floral Hawaiian shirt made of a soft, silky material and man-sandals. His collar is curled on one side, and I automatically reach up to fix it, which makes him pause. His breathing escalates.
“I won’t touch,” I promise. I adjust his collar. “Did you know that if you have one tablespoon of peanut butter on your toast, you’re probably eating 4.2 insect parts and you have a one in seven chance of having a rat hair?”
“That is just what I wanted to hear before breakfast,” he tells me. “Let us go.” His hand goes to the small of my back to guide me, and we head down to the restaurant at the front of the beautiful hotel.
We order breakfast. Vasily requests succo d’arancia, and I ask the waiter if it’s canned, because the FDA allows one maggot per 250 milliliters in American food, and I’m not sure what the criteria is in Europe. He changes his order to cornetto and coffee instead. I order an omelet made with egg whites and spinach, and drink water. No lemon wedge, as more than seventy percent of them carry microorganisms on the rind, as I inform Vasily.
He simply stares at me as I go on about food safety. “It is a wonder you eat anything. I am surprised you do not try to subside on vitamins alone.”
“Actually, vitamins are not regulated by the FDA at all, and have shown that—”
Vasily holds up a hand. “Allow me to eat before you tell me more.”
I shrug and polish my silverware on my cloth napkin for a good two minutes in an attempt to rub any germs away, and then tuck into my omelet.
“So why were you looking up bondage this morning?” he asks after eating a bite of his cornetto, which turned out to be a croissant, and sipping his coffee, which actually looks like a Starbucks latte.
I turn my plate in a clockwise motion to continue eating the food on the far side of my plate. “The purchaser of the Madonna was Emile Royer-Menard. He also frequents many sex clubs in the area.”
He pauses and scrutinizes me. “I am not familiar with this name.”
“That is because I deleted all traces of the transaction before we left Rio, so our tracks would be covered.” I eat another hearty forkful of eggs. “You should eat more eggs. They’re a very safe food because eggshells have a protective coating that prevents bacteria from entering the egg.”
He waves that helpful information aside. “Tell me more about Royer-Menard.”
So I tell him what I found out. He’s a French expat, he’s into fetish-play, and he is wealthy and likes to procure extremely rare items that then disappear without a trace. His bank account grows every year despite extreme purchases, so it’s a safe bet that he’s reselling items to purchasers that do not wish to be noticed. “It’s likely he’s procured your Madonna and resold it to another party off the record.”
Vasily absorbs this in silence. There is no sound but that of his coffee cup being placed on the table. I eye it, wondering if he would be bothered if I put my mouth where his was. I’m growing very accustomed to his germs, and I like the thought of pressing my lips there and seeing what he tastes like this early in the morning—
He snaps his fingers in front of my face, and I realize I’ve been wandering in my thoughts. “Hm?” I ask.
“I am very upset at you, Karen. What other information have you been keeping from me?” His mouth is pulled down in a frown and I think I’ve made him angry.
I consider this for a moment. Have I kept anything else from him? “I masturbated vigorously last night prior to going to bed?”
He licks his lips. “While that is good information, I refer to the Madonna.”
I shrug. “You know all of it now. If I find out more, I will share it. We’re a team.” At least we are, now. His murder of Aleksei to keep me safe has brought us together. We are united. “So I think we should go there tonight.”
“Go where?”
“To the sex club. To find Royer-Menard.”
He makes a noise in his throat, and I don’t know if it’s agreement or disbelief. “And what makes you think they will let us in?”
“We’ll go in disguise. You can be my submissive.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
VASILY
The fetish-wear shop is doing nothing to quell my thickening cock, which has been half-ready since
I observed her nude, hunched over her computer. My once-overriding distaste for sex has been replaced with a near-constant erection. I get hard from hearing her voice, watching her type, inhaling the lingering jasmine scent she leaves behind after showering. It is as if my body is making up for years of quiescence.
In my mind’s eye, she is wearing leather boots, a collar, and looking fierce. Nothing else. Her heavy breasts would bounce with every movement and the heels of her boots would thrust her ass out. Bent over, I could use a long bar to separate her legs, opening her to my gaze and touch. With rope, I could bind her hands at her waist or raise them above her head, stretching her body out in one long, continuous line from the ceiling to the floor, allowing me to explore her body with no interference.
You can be my submissive.
Any other woman would expect me to protest to the idea of submission, but Naomi is not ordinary. To her, the suggestion is absolutely rational, because she prefers order and control.
The salesclerk ignores us. We are wearing garish tourist clothes. Likely she believes we have stumbled in by mistake.
Naomi observes the items and touches nothing, but her gaze keeps returning to a leather bustier. There is a collar and a corset connected in the back by a web of leather straps. I lift one away from the rack and hold it in front of us.
“Submission and dominance is not about the acts but about the mental state of the parties. A true submissive is one that enjoys pleasing others, who strives to fulfill her master’s desires, who lives for her master’s commands.” I speak low so that only she can hear. “She would wear this and follow behind her master, and every inch of her body would quiver from his touch. As the eyes of envious revelers land above her exposed breasts, she would get wet in anticipation of showing them even more for the benefit of her master.”
She shifts beside me, the fabric of her shirtdress making almost no sounds, but her desire is unmistakable in the lift of her chest, the quickening of her breath, and the hardening of her thick nipples. “Is that what you like?” she asks.
A discernible clink is heard when I place the hanger forcefully back onto the rack. “Nyet. I do not share, and I would not allow other wolves to slaver over what is mine.”
“Then how do you know what doms and subs do?”
“Merely because it is not what I prefer in the bedroom does not mean I am blind. To many, this is the way their sexual appetites are appeased.”
“How is yours appeased?”
“Naomi, if you do not want me to fuck you in the middle of this store, you will cease asking questions,” I snap.
Surprise flares in her eyes. Surprise and perhaps . . . interest? Her gaze drops lower to see the proof of my arousal, and I harden, again, under her stare.
“So we won’t go?” Disappointment lies heavy in her question.
“I did not say that. I want the Madonna, and if this is the only way to procure it, then I will go and play your pet, but do not mistake my acquiescence in this as a precursor to our bedroom activities.”
“We will have bedroom activities?” She is flushed, a juicy plum ready for taking. My tongue aches to taste her, and my fingers curl with the need to touch her.
“Did you think that our business was finished in the plane?”
“You haven’t touched me since and I thought you did not like to be touched but you don’t have a problem with touching me. You could touch me again. Maybe you could use your penis. Your fingers were great but I feel like I could accommodate something larger.”
“Like this?” I pull a dildo down from a shelf. It’s long and curved on the end. Her eyes get huge.
“No, I meant . . .” And she struggles for the first time articulating what it is she wants. It is not shyness, I think, but ignorance. She does not have the experience to know what it is to ask for.
“You have suggested I be your submissive. Do you understand how that would work? Because it is not merely you providing instructions and me acquiescing to your bidding. You must control the environment in every way. You must be able to assess every reaction and be able to respond immediately. As a dominant your first instinct must always be to care for the submissive.”
She stares at the dildo and then glances back to the collared bustier. “Would I have to wear that as your submissive?”
“No. There are many outfits. I think in a den of leather and chains, that the perfect outfit is not here.”
Before we leave, I buy a mask and earplugs along with a dramatic, floor-length cape. Naomi eyes the purchases suspiciously and looks disappointed as we exit.
“Was there something you wish to purchase?”
“No, but I like things that come out of plastic bags. How long do you think that cape has hung in that store?”
“We can have it washed. Via dei Condotti, numero 66, per piacere,” I tell the taxicab driver.
When we arrive, she protests and points up the Spanish Steps where our hotel, the Hassler, sits like a matron staring disapprovingly down upon her troublesome children. “Are we going back to the hotel because we’re up on the hill?”
“Later,” I say, pulling her out of the vehicle. She winces at the sound of the crowd, but as we turn down Via Bocca di Leone, the noise fades away and the furrow of her brow smooths out. At the end of the street, I usher her into Letto di Angeli, the bed of angels. It is nearly silent inside the small salon. I draw Naomi over to a small settee.
“Buongiorno.” A svelte saleswoman in a cream pencil skirt and silk blouse comes over to greet us.
“Inglese, per piacere. Il mio fidanzata non parla l’italiano.”
“What did you say?” Naomi whispers.
“That you do not speak Italian.”
“Allora! We all speak English. I am Yvette. What can I do for you?”
“We are getting married, yes?” I cover Naomi’s ringless hand with my own. “We are looking for a boudoir set. Tasteful yet revealing.”
Yvette exclaims with disapproval. “Tsk. Do you not know these things should be a surprise?”
She tries to wave me away with an imperious hand but I know Naomi will not want to be left alone with these ladies who will pinch at her skin and flutter around her like anxious butterflies.
“Nyet. I approve all of these things as a man should. Yes?”
Yvette nods slowly and retreats to the back where she can gather her wares. Halfway through the mini fashion display, Naomi loses interest and pulls out her phone. I select several items and ask for modification of the robe.
“I would like all garments to be washed, dried, and delivered in a plastic, sealed bag. We are at the Hassler. I expect delivery by eight.”
Naomi looks relieved.
Back at the hotel, I instruct Naomi to nap. I make several calls to find the right outer garment for Naomi. It is summer and tourist season and few stores are selling what I need, but a call to a private atelier nets me one at last. I arrange for it to be cleaned, wrapped in plastic, and delivered to the hotel. Afterward I send emails to my sister and check up on the Bratva, and it is then that I notice an alert that I have opened a new account with Islands National Trust. The amount is eye-opening. I check the Bratva accounts but there is no change; it is only mine that has been affected.
When Naomi wakes before dinner, I ask her about the account discrepancies.
“I put some of Hudson’s money in a new account in your name. He’s dead, you know. He won’t use it. Do you think Daniel needs some funds? He doesn’t work anymore. He used to be in the army but he must not be there anymore.”
“No . . .” I pause, unsure of what I should tell her. “He was looking for you.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize that. How long?”
“Eighteen months.”
Her eyes widen. “That long. That’s . . . that’s the entire time I was gone.” Her lower lip trembles.
“He loves you, Naomi. It is what a brother does for his sister.”
“Then I definitely need to send him some funds. But it’s g
ood he doesn’t have to look for me, right? I should let him know that I’m okay.”
I look at the phone and then consider Naomi’s request. Daniel is too far away to pose a threat, so I nod.
She picks up the phone but does not immediately dial. Her hands press nervously against the metal housing. “What do I say to him?”
“That you desire to help me.”
“I don’t think he’ll buy that.”
“Are you worried he will try to come and take you away?”
She nods. “He’s very protective and I know he must feel guilty because he had wanted me to get out and make friends. That’s why I went to Cancun. I was kidnapped on spring break.”
Daniel and I have so much in common. Instinctively I must have recognized this or I would not have relied on him to assist me in ridding the Bratva of Sergei Petrovich. Too bad I could not convince him to take out Elena, but he would not hurt a woman. Elena is no woman, though. She is a monster. And she will have her day of reckoning.
“Tell him that you want to repay those against whom you have transgressed and that is the way you can find peace for yourself.”
Her troubled eyes turned to me. “How did you know I feel guilty about my work as the Emperor? I’ve never told you that.”
“Because you are a kind person and because Aspies have feelings, too.”
She smiles at the parroting back of my words.
“Go, tell your brother that you are safe and that you love him.”
She rises with a tentative smile and leaves to make her call. When she returns, her step is lighter and her smile is more genuine. I watch her silently as she returns to her chair and begins to eat.
As she chews her scallop, I wonder if she notices how carefully I have selected her food. The seafood is grilled on both sides giving it a light brown, caramelized appearance. I have tried to order food that fits her dietary preferences without being noticeable. So browned food with green vegetables. And kiwis. There are few green fruits here. Muskmelon. Kiwi. Green apples. “You don’t have as much as I thought you would,” she admits.
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