Broken: Boxed Set

by Wilde, Leah

  I watched his imagination work over every article of clothing as I filled my suitcase in front of him. I purposefully took the time to choose each article of clothing individually, especially my panties and bras, holding them up against the clothes I had on as if checking to be sure they fit, when I was really just trying to gauge the reaction in his eyes. If it didn’t ignite his desire, it didn’t go in the luggage.

  I could see him imagining what each piece of my underwear would look like on me with nothing else on. I could see his eyes putting my skin beneath the lace fabric, imagining parts of me he hadn’t seen yet, parts of me I wanted to show him. I drank in the look he was giving me. I drank in his delicious, palpable desire.

  Packing my clothes became an ordeal, an exercise in desire. I got lost in pulling out different shirts, different skirts, watching him watch me. He didn’t seem to mind how long it took to go through my clothes. Rather, he seemed to enjoy watching me parade my different outfits in front of him.

  By the time we were finished, I had a pile of clothes in my suitcase, far too much to take with me for just one week. I walked out of my closet with my last casual dress in my hand.

  “This is the final one,” I teased him, holding the dress up in front of what I was wearing.

  “I like that one,” he said, his eyes burning for me.

  I put the dress down on top of my clothes. “On second thought,” I said, “I may need you to pick my clothes for me after all.”

  He laughed and sat up, looking at the clothes spilling out over my suitcase. He grabbed the gown I’d just set on top and pulled it next to the suitcase on the bed. Then, he moved through, tossing some clothes on the floor and setting others on the new pile next to the luggage. At the end of it all, I had a week’s worth of clothes, and Gage zipped up the suitcase.

  “You’re ready,” he said in his commanding, matter-of-fact tone. “Is there anything else you need to do before we can go?” he asked.

  I looked around the apartment. “I’ve got everything I need. You’re talking like I won’t be back at all until we’re finished,” I said, sounding a little sadder than I wanted to.

  He sighed. “Ideally, no, you won’t be back until we’re done, but if you really need to come back at any point, let me know, and I will bring you back here if we’re able to come back at that time.”

  I tilted my head. I wanted to ask him why I wouldn’t be able to come back, but I decided to let it slide and trust him. Besides, if he could imagine a situation that would keep me from being able to come back here from Kings of Hell HQ or his place, which I still hadn’t seen, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know what it was.

  As he pulled the Suburban out of the parking spot in front of my apartment building, he turned to me and asked, “Why is it that a research fellow and successful professor like yourself still has such a tiny apartment?”

  I shrugged. “I never really gave it much thought. I mean, you’ve seen my books. They’re everywhere.”

  “Yes, they are.” He laughed. “What does that have to do with the size of your apartment?”

  “I just spend all my time studying and working. I never really thought about needing a bigger apartment.” And I hadn’t thought about it before. For me, my apartment was all I needed. When I was home, I was reading or working. When I wasn’t home, I was either at work or visiting my mom. My apartment really just served a need. It offered me a place to sleep, eat, and bathe.

  “I was just wondering. It seems to me that if you’re more successful at work, you would want a bigger, better place. That’s all,” he added.

  “Yeah, it’s just not one of my priorities,” I explained. “I have student loans, my research projects, and other expenses to worry about. My apartment is the only thing simple and cheap in my life, and I like that. I feel like it keeps me centered.” I hoped my explanation didn’t sound like a total crock of shit.

  “Let me ask you this,” he started. “What about guys?”

  I groaned. “What about them?” There weren’t many guys. In fact, what I had thought of as desire in the past was probably just sheer physical need. I felt like with Gage, I was finally starting to understand was true desire was. If what I felt for him was how it felt to want someone, then I hadn’t wanted anyone else in my entire life.

  “How does it work when you have guys over?” he asked.

  “I don’t,” I answered quietly, turning away and looking out the window at the nighttime cityscape passing us by.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said I don’t usually have guys over.”

  “When was the last time you had a guy over at your apartment?”

  “Tonight,” I said with a smile, teasing him.

  “Before tonight.”

  I looked back out the window and didn’t say anything.

  He didn’t pursue it any further.

  Soon, we pulled into the parking deck behind his apartment building. It was a tall glass building. It didn’t look like apartments at all from the outside. From the outside, it looked like a tall office building, but as we entered through the parking deck, it quickly became obvious that the outward facing windows were all apartments.

  We took the elevator up to his floor. As he unlocked and opened his door, I was floored by the exquisite beauty of his view of the city. When we walked in, he flipped a light switch by the door and the apartment was filled with atmospheric accent lighting along the walls, the bar in his kitchen, the fountain where I would have expected there to be a fireplace, and along the floor in the hallway leading to his bedroom.

  Outside, against the backdrop of the beautiful night sky, the city was lit up like so many stars. I hurried to the window and stared out into the night. “It’s so beautiful,” I told him. “So, so beautiful.”

  I stood like a child in a candy store, looking back and forth, trying to take in everything I could possibly see. I could see the headlights and taillights of cars speeding along the streets below us. I could see traffic lights, streetlights, and the lights in all the windows of every building downtown.

  “Do you ever get dizzy standing here?” I asked him.

  He chuckled behind me. “No. Honestly, I don’t really pay it much attention. Like yourself, I’m usually working and not giving myself time for things like the view from my apartment.”

  I turned to face him, and he towered over me, an intimidating, looming figure carved in stone. I wanted to touch him, but he seemed so unapproachable in that moment, as if he had somehow been removed from the scene.

  His apartment was not at all what I expected. I would have expected someone as rough around the edges as Gage to live in a place more like mine—small, old, cramped, and cluttered. I hadn’t pegged him for the kind of guy who would have smooth immaculate wooden floors, tall ceilings, mostly bare walls, and a wall of glass overlooking downtown. I expected posters for old rock bands, his favorite movies, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing. I walked around in a dreamy daze, looking at how every surface in his apartment was completely spotless. It was rather impressive indeed, and it just made me want him more.

  “So, were you serious about the bed and the couch?” I asked him at end of my impromptu self-guided tour of his apartment.

  “Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back again and leading me down the hallway to his bedroom. “Step right this way and I will show you the amazingly comfortable king-size bed I’m offering you for the duration of your stay with me.

  He pushed the door to his room open, and the lights were already on around the top of his king-size canopy bed. The four posts around the bed were like wooden columns carved out for the temple of some Greek god or goddess. Sheer curtains were gathered at the posts, hanging from the railing at the top of the canopy.

  This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hand down on the mattress. “Here, have a seat.”

  I sat down on the bed, and the mattress welcomed me like an old lover wra
pping their arms around me for the first time in many years. I lay back and sank into the bed. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m never leaving this spot. You’ll just have to sleep around me whenever you want to sleep in your bed.” As the words came out, it occurred to me how they might have come across as teasing or tempting, but I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to tempt him.

  Part of me didn’t want to sleep alone tonight.

  “Stay as long as you’d like,” he said, his voice heavy with suggestion.

  It was possible, I hoped, that he was thinking the same thing I was.

  After lying in his bed for a few minutes, he shook my foot. “Hey, Julia, how do you feel about Chinese?”

  I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I’m fine with Chinese,” I said. “Are we going out?”

  He looked down at me and smiled. “No, I’m having it delivered so we can have a lazy night in and take it easy.”

  “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” I told him, lying back down on his bed.

  I was asleep before dinner ever made it to us.

  I woke up early the next morning still in my clothes from the night before with a note on the pillow next to mine.

  Julia,

  You fell asleep before dinner arrived. Leftovers are in the fridge if you’re hungry. Plates and bowls are in the upper cabinets next to the fridge. Silverware is in the drawer underneath. I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. I didn’t want to disturb you. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t worry about trying to be quiet. I’m a heavy sleeper.

  --Gage

  I crept down the hallway to the living room to find Gage sleeping on the couch, just as he’d said he would, with a thin blanket pulled over his mostly naked body. I stared at the scars and the tattoos on his toned chest and abs. They told a story, a story I wanted to read with the tips of my fingers and my longing lips that hadn’t been kissed since before I could remember.

  He hadn’t bothered me all night, and he’d even slept in another room. This brute of a man, this sleeping beast before me, had shown the common decency to treat me with respect even though I was passed out and available to him on his bed.

  I couldn’t say I had known too many other men who could claim that. Even the best men I knew had their moments when their gentlemanly behavior would be forgotten for pure, primal lust.

  I was sure there was plenty of lust waiting to be fulfilled in that body before me. Gage was just good at controlling it. The question was, then, could I control my desire for him?

  And for how much longer?

  Chapter 10

  “Something’s different,” Dimitri said when I sat down across from him.

  “What’s different?” I asked him. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s more confidence, but you’re not the same person you were yesterday.”

  He was right. I was more confident, but not in my ability to work with him. I was more confident in Gage. If I had wondered who he really was before, I knew now. I knew the gentleman he could be, the noble savage. Gage managed to blend his rough and tough exterior, his hard-nosed thuggish biker persona, with a caring and gentle man, while so many I’d known before couldn’t even get the gentleman part right.

  “Well, thanks, I guess,” I said.

  I shifted my weight in the chair and sat up a little straighter.

  “So, let’s talk.” I remembered what I’d said to Gage about using his idea of researching the Russian underground through Dimitri, and I decided to treat our interviews as research. Maybe by digging deeper into Dimitri’s history, I could get some good current information to use.

  “Alright, let’s talk,” he agreed, but his voice sounded like it was hiding something dark and sinister.

  “Do you have anything for me today?” I asked him.

  “That depends,” he taunted me.

  “Depends on what?” I wasn’t afraid of pursuing him.

  He grinned. “It depends on what you’re bringing me today.”

  “Well, I’ve got some questions of my own today,” I started. “Just some things to satisfy my personal curiosity.”

  “Okay. I like the sound of that.” His eyes narrowed as if he was trying to get a read on me.

  “I told you my name when I came in, right? Dr. Julia Danvers at the University of Chicago. I’m a research fellow and the history department chair. My specialty is Russian history and culture. I’ve made a career out of it, so instead of sitting here running over the same old drills, I figured maybe we could actually talk a little,” I explained myself.

  Dimitri nodded. “What can I teach you about Russian history and culture that you don’t already know?” he asked.

  “Organized crime.”

  His blue eyes focused on me suddenly.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble or anything like that,” I assured him. “I just got to thinking last night, I don’t know a whole lot about the Russian underworld, and you can probably help me out.”

  “Can I refuse to answer?” he asked cautiously.

  “Sure, if we run across something you don’t want to discuss, we don’t have to talk about it. You can pass,” I agreed, establishing the boundaries of our conversation.

  “I’m ready to start whenever you are,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. This was a different approach, and I just hoped I didn’t give myself away too easily. “Alright. First, how long have you been working for Ivan?”

  “I’ve only been working for Ivan for a couple of years, as long as I’ve been in the States.”

  “How did you get connected to someone in the States?” I asked him.

  “It’s not that different from the way it works here,” he told me. “Ivan has connections back home, and he told a guy who knew a guy who knew me that he needed some muscle, so someone reached out to me, and here I am. Networking is networking, whether it’s in America or Russia. Or, in Ivan’s case, in both places.” He smiled, pleased with himself.

  “I guess it really wouldn’t be different, would it?” I asked.

  “Oh, it’s different,” he added. “The networking is the same, but back home we have more power than we do here. Here we have to be careful a lot of times when we wouldn’t have to be back home.”

  “Really. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, with all the changes that have occurred over the last few decades.”

  “Exactly. See, you already know.” He seemed amused at my questions, and maybe they were a little naïve, but in all of my time studying Russia, I had never really paid attention to the criminal element, especially in regards to organized crime.

  I added the Russian mafia to my bucket list of things to study.

  “So, that’s all I’ve got,” I told him. Hopefully, I thought, it would be enough to get him to talk a little more to me.

  “Well, I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Something you need to know.”

  “Okay.” I wondered what he possibly could have told me that I just needed to know.

  “I know why you seem a little more confident today,” he started.

  I sat back and crossed my arms. “Why’s that?”

  “You went home with Gage last night, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry?” I knew my face must have given me away.

  “Maybe you didn’t sleep together, but it seems like you guys are circling each other right now, maybe flirting a little, trying to figure out how to court each other,” Dimitri taunted me.

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask him, incredulous.

  “I’ve seen it all before,” he said distractedly.

  “What are you talking about? You’ve seen what before?”

  “Nothing in particular.” He tilted his head back and looked into the darkness above the light hanging over us. “He’s using us both, you know. Well, you should know, but maybe you’re a little blind right now because your hormones are firing off here and there, and you think you
might be falling for this big alpha male street thug.”

  “Come on, now. Stop dancing around it, Dimitri. Tell me what you’re really trying to say.”

  He looked at me again. “It’s easy. He’s got you thinking you’re helping him out with me, and he’s got you thinking he might like you, making it easier to get you to come down here and ask me questions, trying to find out where Ivan is or what he’s up to. I think you even believed at one point that he was going to let both of us go home when all of this is over.”