Yep, I’ve always suspected that the doormen at 2 Gild Street are all on Sergey’s payroll, and they must have received strict orders from him concerning Liam. For a moment I hesitate whether to tell Liam all of my thoughts about Sergey and Danilo’s death and my plan of actions, but I decide against it. I don’t want to get him involved. This is something I will have to do on my own.
I suddenly feel Liam’s body tense up and see him turn his head and squint his eyes looking toward the other end of the room. With a brusque motion he gets up from the couch, walks across and stops by the bar counter that separates the kitchen from the living room. There, in plain view are various bottles and small plastic bags with pills. I am actually surprised he has not noticed them before. Now he picks several up, examines them, and then turns toward me. There is anger mixed with fear in his face.
“You are done with all this shit. You hear me?”
“Liam,” I start saying.
“No!” he interrupts me. “This shit is over.”
He collects all the bottles and plastic bags from the counter, walks with them to the bathroom, and after a while I can hear the toilet flush. He comes back and sits on the coffee table facing me.
“Ok, listen to me carefully.” he says. “You cannot stay here. If Sensei does not accept you as an uchi-deshi again, I will quit my uchi-deshi position and we will find a place to live together.”
I shake my head and tell him that he must not give up being uchi-deshi and move out of the dojo. He still has many years of training until Sensei allows him to open his own dojo.
“You cannot give up on your dream because of me. I won’t let you.”
“Well, it has always been my dream, but dreams can change, can’t they? My dream is to be with you.”
He sits back on the couch next to me. I put my head on his shoulder and he kisses my hair and holds me tight against him. We sit like this for some time without saying anything.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Liam says when my stomach makes a rumbling noise. “Let’s eat. I really brought some stuff from the Chauve-Souris. Here, take a look.” He gets the bag he left by the door and unpacks several sandwiches, two salads, and several pieces of rugelach for dessert. “Fuck. I forgot to get anything to drink.”
I tell him there is plenty to drink here and he can open a bottle of wine if he likes. He opens a bottle of Chablis and fills two glasses.
“You know,” I say and put my sandwich aside. “Let’s drink to my brother.”
“Yes. To Danilo, may he rest in peace.” Liam wants to touch his glass to mine, but I move my hand away quickly.
“Oh no, according to the Russian tradition, you don’t touch glasses when drinking to those passed away.”
“I am sorry, Sasha. I did not know. But how come you are so Russian all of a sudden?”
“I am not really. Just today, I guess.”
After the meal I start feeling sleepy.
“Let’s get you to bed,” Liam says when he notices me yawn.
“I won’t be able to fall asleep though. Not without a sleeping pill, and there are no more left. You’ve flushed them down the toilet along with the other ones.”
“You don’t need any stupid sleeping pills. Come on, you’ll see, you’ll fall asleep just fine.”
I brush my teeth, undress, and get under the blanket in my panties and a tank top. In the meanwhile Liam pulls aside the heavy curtains and opens the blinds and one of the windows saying a bit of fresh air will do me good. He then sits on the side of the bed and tells me to close my eyes and starts stroking my hair. Later on I ask him to lie down next to me. He takes off his jeans and shirt and lies down on his back and I put my head on his chest. It is so nice and cozy lying like this, but all of a sudden I feel the tears come up again and cannot stop them. Liam holds me tight and whispers to me and strokes my hair until I calm down. I eventually doze off, but then wake up with a start and he whispers to me again. Several times throughout the night I wake up, and Liam isn’t sleeping, just lying here watching over me. He strokes my hair and my arms gently and comfortingly, and his touch makes me feel safe and protected. I relax and fall asleep.
Chapter 25
When I wake up again it’s still dark outside. I have a strange feeling that this night has stretched beyond its allotted timeframe. I don’t want to sleep anymore. I get up to go to the bathroom and on my way back pick up the unfinished bottle of wine and sit on the side of the bed drinking straight from the bottle. I shiver.
“Are you cold?” Liam asks
“I’m always cold these days.”
He motions for me to get back in bed. I lie down and he pulls me in very close to him and holds me in his arms. We stay like this for some time. It feels different from before though. Now, lying together, every muscle, every nerve in our bodies seem to be tensed to the extreme, and eventually I am the one who initiates it. I run my fingers through his chest hair and touch his shoulder with my lips. I feel him tremble, yet he does not do anything just yet. He waits.
He is very hard already but still remains perfectly motionless, as if he were afraid to scare me away. I press my fingers into his arm muscles, move my lips across his two-day stubble, and find his mouth. I do not kiss him, just touch my lips to his. At this a big shiver runs across his body and he opens his mouth and starts kissing me but suddenly pauses.
“Baby,” he whispers. “You know how I feel about you. I always have.” He waits for a few seconds, perhaps expecting an answer, and then kisses me again, first gently and softly as if my mouth were some precious fragile object, then with an increasing and almost uncontrollable intensity. He lays me on my back and kisses my neck, my shoulders. He pushes aside the fabric of my tank top and kisses my breasts for a long time. I want him inside me now, but he does not seem to want to rush. He passes his hands all over my body, removing first my top and then slowly pulls down my panties, all the while kissing my stomach, hips, my thighs. He rolls me over and kisses my back, my ass, my legs. Then I feel him move away.
I don’t know what’s going on and I turn around and see him kneeling down in seiza position at the bottom of the bed, just looking at me. I sit up and move in close and touch his face, his shoulders, his arms. I kiss him hard on the mouth and then lie back down pulling him on top of me. He pushes inside me with a motion that is a bit awkward and too brusque, and I wince and let out a small cry. He stays still for a few moments to make sure I am all right and then moves slowly for a while. At one point I think I hear him say something, but I can’t make out the words. He repeats and I realize he is asking me to open my eyes. I open them and we are peering into each other’s eyes with such strange intensity as if we were trying to find answers to all questions that have ever existed in the world.
His motions become stronger and I close my eyes again, stretch my arms above my head, and clutch the sheet and then the edge of the bed. When I feel the onset of the orgasm approaching, I grab Liam’s shoulders and hold onto them as hard as I can and wrap my legs around his hips, tensing up my pelvic muscles to the utmost.
After I come, for a few minutes I am lying motionless, my body limp and as if completely weightless. I can feel Liam kissing my face and my mouth but do not have the energy to kiss him back. When I more or less recover and become responsive again, he keeps going, picking up the rhythm, lifting himself up on his arms to be able to move with more force. He pulls out and I want to see him come and watch his face when he does. I do not get to see anything, because he falls on top of me and presses himself tight against my belly, and I can feel his contractions as he comes.
I hold my arms around him with such strength, as if I never want to let him go, and suddenly I start crying again. I am crying silently, tears just pouring out of my eyes. I have no idea why I am crying, and I am glad Liam is too exhausted right now to notice anything. We stay glued together for a long while, his head on my chest, the
full weight of his strong muscular body on me. It is strange how when the sex is over, you suddenly realize that your lover’s body is almost crushing you, yet during the sex you do not seem to mind at all and actually enjoy it. I put my hands on Liam’s head and press it harder to my chest and all the while just can’t stop crying.
By the time we separate our bodies, my tears have dried up.
Liam gets up and finds a box of tissues and cleans himself standing near the bed looking at me. I ask for some tissues too, but instead of giving them to me he leans down and cleans me himself, gently and thoroughly. He then kisses my lips, the tip of my nose, my eyes, and my hair.
*****
“I love your face, it’s so beautiful,” Liam whispers as he traces its contours with his fingers. We are lying down facing each other. He touches a small scar right under my lower lip and kisses it, then examines another barely visible one near my right eyebrow, and kisses it too. I shiver inwardly, remembering the razor girl and what happened or almost happened the last time I stepped into the cage. Well, I think, I’m definitely lucky I managed to go through the Dark Fights without acquiring any bigger scars on my face. I’ve seen fighters in the cage with pretty nasty looking scars and their noses and ears permanently misshapen. Yeah, I definitely appreciate the fact that my face is intact.
“What about my body?” I ask.
“Let’s see.” He smiles and pulls away the covers.
He then puts on a very serious look and proceeds to inspect my body intently. He furrows his forehead and knits his eyebrows but there are visible glints of delight in his eyes. When he encounters a few scars, his expression changes to genuine sadness. Well, it could have been much worse. Fortunately, most of the cuts and breaks healed cleanly without leaving a visible trace, if you don’t count slightly misshapen toes and a couple of odd-looking knuckles on my fingers. I suppose on the outside my body is in a good enough shape, and the problems with my knee, my elbows, my shoulder, and a few other old injuries are scarcely noticeable when I am lying naked in bed.
Liam continues his detailed inspection for a while, but the game stops abruptly when he gets to the scar on my side. He does not say anything but just locks his eyes on mine and shakes his head. This scar is not from a Dark Fight. It is from the tanto cut during my second-degree black belt examination.
“Liam,” I say. “I know it was that crazy Martine who switched the wooden tanto for a real one. And she was the one who threw me down the stairs. I can’t believe I could ever think it was you. I am sorry.”
“I’m sorry I failed to protect you and . . . well”—he sighs and lies down on his back and stares at the ceiling—”I gave you a hard time at the dojo myself.”
“Well, yeah. Why did you?”
“Don’t know, baby. I’m not good at handling feelings because . . . well, I never told this to anyone, not sure it’s a good idea to tell you.”
“Tell me.”
“It was years ago . . .” He pauses and glances at me.
He seems very nervous and I can tell this is really difficult for him, so I stroke his arm and take his hand and hold it the whole time he is talking.
“I was already training a lot but wasn’t an uchi-deshi yet. I’d just moved to the city and I met this girl. It was the first time I was really crazy about anyone. I was sure she felt the same way about me too.”
“She liked to go clubbing and stuff. I didn’t care for that, but I went too, for her. One time we were supposed to meet in a club, but I couldn’t find her there. Someone told me she was in one of the back rooms. So I went in and saw her with a guy. He had her pinned under him on a couch. I went mad, absolutely mad, enraged. I thought he was raping her. I attacked him and beat the shit out of him. I would have killed him. I don’t remember how or who pulled me away. I was just blind with rage.
Turned out he was not raping her at all. I got it all wrong. She admitted she was fucking other guys behind my back.”
He is silent for a few long moments.
“I was charged with assault, which in New York is pretty serious,” he then says. “With the extenuating circumstances though, I was given a lenient sentence and only served a year of actual time, and when I came out Sensei took me in. My first two years as an uchi-deshi I didn’t set foot outside the dojo, just didn’t want to see or deal with the fucked-up world outside. I also promised myself never to fall for another woman ever again, and I was doing all right, till I met you. After that one night we had, you changed your mind, and I was stupid and angry, and very jealous and tried to convince myself that I hated you. I would look at you and realize just how much I wanted to hold you and kiss you. And then I would get even angrier with myself, for not being able to stick to my promise. And I took it out on you.”
Liam breathes deeply and looks at me. “Do you think I’m totally messed up?”
I don’t answer but move my face close to his and kiss him on the lips with all the tenderness I feel inside. I put my head on his chest and he wraps his arms around me, and we stay like this for a long while.
“You know, I was not quite finished with the full-body examination,” Liam then says. Without even looking at him I can hear the smile in his voice. He goes back to inspecting me, pretending to look for scars. He uses his mouth and tongue, focusing on my breasts, not relinquishing my nipples for a long time, and then moving further on. After a while he kisses me on the lips and I kiss him back, but this time the tenderness is replaced by something much stronger and more urgent. I kiss him hard and deep and bite his lower lip as I feel him go inside me.
*****
Afterward we fall asleep and when we wake up it is almost noon. Liam is very hungry and wants us to get dressed and go out and have a big breakfast or lunch. I am not sure I want to go, but I don’t feel like disappointing him. He says we’ll ride down together and walk straight past the doorman. He doesn’t care if our being together is reported to Sergey. But I have other thoughts on the matter. I don’t want to set Sergey off and have him send his men to deal with Liam. So I convince him to pull his cap low over his face again and go out first. I meet him some ten minutes later around the corner. As we walk on the street Liam holds my hand. It feels strange and unusual, but I do not take my hand away. We go to a nearby diner. It is supposed to be one of the oldest and most famous diners in Manhattan, and maybe for this reason it is pretty packed and we have to wait a while before we can get a booth. I order a tuna melt and Liam has a turkey club and we drink black coffee with our meal.
“So, I think we’ll go to Fulton Station now.” Liam says after we are done eating. “We’ll take a train there and go straight to the dojo and talk to Sensei. Sounds good?”
I don’t answer for a long while, drinking my coffee, looking into the cup.
“Babe?”
“You go to the dojo. I cannot come with you.”
“What are you talking about? I thought we decided everything last night.”
“I am sorry.”
“Baby, what’s going on?”
“I cannot return to the dojo. I have things to take care of.”
“What things?”
I get up from the couch on my side of the booth and go over to Liam’s. I put my arms around him and kiss him on the mouth.
“I have to go now,” I say then. “Please, don’t follow me. Goodbye.”
Walking out of the diner and passing by the window I see him looking at me. I turn away and hasten my step, blinking in rapid succession so as not to cry. I cannot cry anymore. I cried enough last night and it should stay in that night. All of it should stay in that night. I need to push down and block away whatever emotions and feelings Liam has brought out in me and get back to my pain, anger, and cold hatred.
Chapter 26
I am alone in my apartment at 2 Gild Street. Anxious and restless, I am pacing the room. Waiting. Waiting.
I took a
shower hours ago but am still wearing the towel. As the nerves get the better of me, I tear the towel off and fling it on the floor. I catch my reflection in the floor-length mirror. In the semidarkness of the room, I can’t see the details, just the overall silhouette of a very fit young woman with a vague oval of the face, big eyes exaggerated by the play of shadows, and long hair, which they have not allowed her to cut short lest the image of the “Samurai Princess” be ruined. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t recognize this person at all and throw the towel over the mirror so as not to see her.
I resume walking around the apartment, then press my face to a window, and look at the lights of the city. Waiting. Waiting. It’s getting close to midnight. I braid my hair and put on my shorts and a sports bra with the securely inserted breast guards.
Finally the doorbell rings and Head Tattoo comes in.
“Ready?” he asks. “Put on a hoodie or something. Does not matter what. We are not going far.”
We take the freight elevator down to the basement and walk along a wide hallway with a low ceiling. I am not sure if we are still under 2 Gild Street or have crossed into another building. As we walk, Head Tattoo takes a small plastic bag with pills out of his pocket and offers it to me. I do not take it. He gives me a quick, curious look but does not say anything. We reach a steel door and Head Tattoo talks into his lapel mic. An unknown gentleman opens the door and lets us in. Baldy and Buzz Cut are not around. I guess the protocol has been changed. Well, at least Head Tattoo is still here.
It is the same space where my first Dark Fight was held. There is that cage in the middle of the chamber, elevated a few feet above the floor, and the same elegantly dressed mass of people walking and sitting around in low, oversized couches, eating, drinking, talking, and not paying much attention to the cage just yet.
As soon as the “Samurai Princess” is announced, most of the guests leave their comfortable seats and gather around the cage. The crowd grows denser with each second. The fight hasn’t even started yet, and they are already yelling “Samurai Princess” and cheering, and the overall level of excitement is the highest I have ever seen cage-side before a bout. I guess the audience is pumped up by what they saw in the cage not so long ago during the interrupted Big Night and anticipates a continuation of that brutal spectacle.
The Dark Fights Page 26