Her eyes searched mine.
What do you tell a girl like Natalia, if you have devastating secrets about her, and you are going to make her world crumble? How do you tell her that you’ve taken her fortune, but to save her life, and because that’s what her father wanted? How do you tell her that she could open a safe deposit box in Switzerland with her eyes, and a code that has been worked into one of my tattoos, and inside it find not only an ill-begotten fortune, but the location of stolen weapons-grade plutonium? That there is no shortage of men on this planet who would happily carve out her eyes to get at it, and torture her for the code she could not possibly remember?
“Why?” she demanded, hitting me on the chest. “Why? Tell me what the hell is going on!”
I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it even If I could have decided upon the best thing for her to know, so I held her close enough to me that she couldn’t hit me anymore. She struggled for a long time. “I can’t tell you,” I told her into her hair.
She didn’t like that answer; I felt her body stiffen. This was different than the struggle against me, which had been more railing against the facts than against me. But now that her anger had turned upon something tangible, it was a stiff and cold anger, and I could feel the change.
“You can’t,” she said quietly. “Or you won’t?’
“It’s better if you don’t know,” I said. I held her tighter. Just moments before she had been falling into me, relenting into my protection, and I wanted her back. It was another uncomfortable feeling—needing something from another person, wanting it, caring about what she felt for me.
“Natalia, please trust me. Trust me when I tell you, there are things in this world you don’t want to know.”
She wriggled away from my grip, stepping back. Her eyes were bright with fury. “Trust you? Trustyou? You’ve kidnapped me, drugged me, done—”
She caught herself, unable to say aloud the other things I had done, the things that I would like to do. In spite of how angry she was, how terrible the situation was, part of me wanted to take her right then, to feel her again around me. She pressed her lips together and gave up on her sentence with an exasperated sigh. “So... what’s the deal, then? I’m stuck here? Where is here? How long will you keep me here?”
Some of those questions I couldn’t answer. How long? How longwouldI keep Natalia here? That was the problem. How long would Natalia be someone I could not bear to lose? I couldn’t trap her here forever. And yet I couldn’t let her go...
“Natalia. I know you have no reason to believe me.”
She shook her head ‘no’ in emphatic agreement with that statement.
“But I have your best interests at hear—in mind. There are very,verydangerous men in this world who would try to hurt you. If you are here...” I waved around at the ocean that surrounded us on every side, “then you are safe.”
She was still angry, but her lower lip began to tremble. I took a step toward her. “I can protect you here.”
She folded her arms in resignation, her eyes welling up with fresh tears that she did not seem to be able to keep back now. “I don’t even know you,” she said, reaching up with one hand to wipe away a tear impatiently. She looked back at me. My heart felt like a molten stone when her expression changed, and she bit her lower lip. A tear fell out of the eye she hadn’t wiped. “You’re a bad man, aren’t you?”
I sighed and looked away from her face. The molten rock in my chest grew heavy, turning cold. What the hell did I care if she asked that question? The answer was yes, and I’d never been afraid to admit that before: I was neutral, really, and I was only a bad man to bad people. I was proud of it, in a way. I had certainly never wished that I could give a different answer than the truth.
I stepped toward her, and the icy cold in my chest thawed when she didn’t step away. I stroked her wet cheek with the back of my hand. It was almost too good to be true, her standing there, unflinchingly looking at me, waiting for my answer.
“It depends on who you are,” I finally answered. This was truthful, at least.
Her skin was like silk on the back of my hand. She hadn’t looked away when I answered her, and I moved closer to her, wanting so badly to take her, to feel her submit to me, to make love to her...
The final thought made me dizzy.
“And what amI?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I moved my thumb over her lip. My ears were ringing, and the intensity of the feeling inside of me was almost too much to contain. I don’t like emotions, so I avoid experiencing them.
But Natalia was unavoidable. I pulled her lip down gently, exposing the wet, raw flesh inside her mouth, thinking of how much I would have loved to feel her mouth around my cock, or under my own mouth, screaming with pleasure as I filled her full of my seed.
I shook my head, unable to speak to her. She was a treasure, she was someone I needed. But I couldn’t say that. The raw, cold-hot sensation inside my chest had spread everywhere and rendered me speechless. “You don’t have to worry about me,” I managed to say hoarsely.
Her mouth had been slightly open, and now she closed her lips around the tip of my thumb, sending a shudder through me. Our eyes met.
What would happen if Natalia suddenly learned of her power over me? What would happen to me?
I was suddenly furious with myself, furious with her, furious that this problem had come into my life. My raw anger and desire for Natalia collided, and I spun her around, pulling her head against my shoulder by placing my hand lightly over her throat. I breathed in her hair, the scent of her skin radiating from her body. It was warm, the air conditioning was not on, and she had begun to perspire lightly. The scent of her washed through me, exciting me, making me close my eyes. I could inhale her forever.
“You can’t keep me here forever,” she whispered.
I had no idea why she said that. But it tipped the precarious balance inside me, between love and almost a kind of hate, and I was angry again. I ran my fingers along her delicate neck and used my free hand to collect her wrists together.
