I didn’t need things to get complicated. I’m a man of no complications, which means I’m a man who uses women only for what I need, no more, no less. When you have as much money as I do, that’s a transactional matter.
I locked Natalia back up in her room and walked down the hallway in the dimming light. My back hurt where the orb she had chucked at the window had bounced back and struck me. I had no idea why I’d had the impulse to protect her, but I had. I had that impulse even now, twisting inside of me, making me feel uncomfortable feelings that were very dangerous in my profession.
In the kitchen—never used—her ratty purse was set on the counter. I opened it and dug through the contents. One slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes, which I set on the counter. A tube of lipstick, looking like it hadn’t been opened in years. Keys, presumably to her rattrap apartment. The money I’d left her, still wrapped, the wrapper slightly torn where she’d pulled a bill or two out.
Her own wallet was also ratty—nothing more than a satchel full of change, a five-dollar bill, and a handful of business cards.
I dumped the contents on my table and rifled through the trash. Some gum wrappers—Bubblicious bubble gum, for fuck’s sake. Melon-flavored lip gloss. A Hello Kitty keychain with no keys on it.
No needles.
No drugs.
I pushed the cigarettes, keys, and wallet aside and swept the rest of the purse and contents into the trash. I locked the wallet and keys in a drawer for safekeeping, and then I took the cigarettes to my workroom to see if Natalia’s claim was true.
It would make my life a lot simpler if it were, I thought. Taking care of a drug addict was outside of the promises I’d made, and I could dump her in rehab and wash my hands of this whole ordeal.
If she wasn’t doing drugs, then I had problems on my hands. The kind of problems that lurk around less in your mind than your body, the kind of emotional entanglements that lead to making stupid decisions. I needed to get Natalia straightened out, on the right track, and out of my hair as fast as possible.
Out of my mind.
I needed to get the feeling—not that I’d admit to myself I was feeling anything—that Natalia gave me out of my body.
The idea with Natalia had been to scare her away from here and out of sight of Viktor Piotrivich’s associates.
It had somehow gotten out of control.
Fuck it.
I pressed my hand to the biometric lock on my lab and looked into the retina scanner, summoning the willpower I’d learned to have in my life. Lack of willpower got you killed. In all things, be under control.
I knew, then, somewhere deep down inside, that there was more to me wanting Natalia to submit to me than just complying with my promises. I knew that I wanted to make her mine in a different kind of way.
I just chose to ignore it. I was under control, because that’s who I was.
The door opened and I went into mechanical mode. Machines don’t make mistakes, and machines don’t make errors in judgment.
It didn’t take long to survey my supplies and catalog my level of skills to know I didn’t have the right skill set for analyzing these things. Mechanically, I contacted Dr. Reeler through our secure communication channel—by leaving a draft of a message on an encrypted email server.
I would have to wait.
Minutes passed—and I knew full well that it might take hours for Reeler, who was on the other side of the world, to check his messages. The climate in the workshop was controlled to a tenth of a degree for humidity and temperature, but I felt tiny beads of sweat forming on my forehead. I felt them first, and then traced the source of them, only to discover I was still thinking of Natalia.
Natalia’s defiant smile. Natalia’s bubble gum, Natalia’s clumsy dancing. Natalia’s mouth, and what it would feel like to push her to her knees and make her open it for me, how hot that pink-red plum would feel when it closed around me. Natalia’s sweet pussy juices, which I could still smell as if she were here in the room. Making her well up like a swollen river by disciplining her, until she went limp like she had in my arms, and then sinking into her flesh while she bent over to let me have her any way I wanted.
The thought never really materialized in my mind as a fully formed idea—just a feeling, a fleeting fantasy.
I wanted her on her knees, her legs spread, her chest against my mattress, taking me deep inside that wet pussy, and everywhere else I thought of, not because I made her, which was easy enough to do.
I wanted her to do it because she wanted to.
I stared at the feed in Natalia’s room for a full thirty minutes.
I had a moment of relief when I saw her from beneath the covers, obviously alive and well. A warm, sweet feeling—the very kind I have been at pains to avoid my whole life—spilled over me, kicking up pangs from my cock to my chest. I was weak for only a moment, before I swept her away.
