“Take it, sweetheart—there you go, come on, just like that—”
Lili doesn’t realize she’s whimpering, helpless gasps stuck in her throat, until she registers his low words.
She lets out a sound of frustration, her body still holding onto her mind.More, she wants him to push her more; she doesn’t want a decision here, she wants the exhaustion of her choices, responsibility gone.
Lili pushes back against him. Starts to struggle for it: for a clean, dark moment of nothing; for an inhale that won’t come.
And he picks up on it. Her hunger. Nobody ever picks up on it.
A heavy hand presses her back down against the sheets. His grip doesn’t loosen around her throat. It fucking hurts, the still-building force of his hips against hers, and the push of that pain mixed up with the release of her pleasure makes her mind fall open and silent.
The pressure on her throat, the restriction of her breath, his thumb on her pulse point: Her world narrows to these things, and her grasp in the sheets spasms, sweat-soaked. It doesn’t feel like she was anything before he forced her through this, near crying—before this overwhelming crush, when he’s as deep inside of her as he can go, hand wrapped around her throat—and the terrifying freedom in the thought that he could push further still—adjust his hold, pure weight on her windpipe—that he could clean everything away until she’s nothing but a dwindling breath—
The silence collapses in on her. A spectacular bloom of heat that drains her of herself.
As her vision fades, she wonders if he’ll let go in time.
Light creeps in.
An unfamiliar room, soft sheets.
Pushing onto her elbows, she winces at the soreness in her hips, in her throat. Blinking against the shift of morning, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
A salmon-colored newspaper is tucked under a breakfast tray across the room. Fresh orange juice, black coffee. Steam wafting.
Movement in the bed beside her. A broad shape snags in her periphery: tangled sheets, back turned to her, expanse of skin, sleep-mussed dark hair—
Oh, fuck.
Silently, Lili slips out of the bed. She snatches her dress and shoes, downs a glass of water from the frankly offensively extravagant kitchen, and steals out of the loft.
She calls an emergency meeting at Domino Park.
“What do you know about him?”
James takes a long, luxuriant sip of his iced coffee. “Well, he used to work with my father, back at Goldman,” he starts. “Started out in London. Then went over to BlackRiver after some succession disputes, which I don’t think my father ever really forgave him for. Told him that BlackRiver wouldn’t amount to anything, and look how that turned out—world’s largest shadow bank, biggest asset manager globally, all that. Anyway, worked out of the Hong Kong offices for a while. No, wait, maybe Shanghai?Either way, led their APAC expansion, massive M&A activity, got tapped to integrate the whole operation across EMEA, too, before coming back here to headquarters during the recession. Somehow got the Fed to contract out full management of the bailout, all toxic assets, to BlackRiver—closed doors, literally no competitive bidding, my dad was furious. And yeah, now, he heads up the entire thing. He’s a fucking genius at managing risk, built up some crazy AUM for the firm—”
“English, Jamie,” Jackie interrupts.
“He’s a big deal,” he concludes. “Aleksandr Petrov. Huge, honestly.”
“He’s Russian?” Jackie asks.
“Yeah, but like barely. I mean, the Fed wouldn’t work with BlackRiver so often if he wasn’t in the clear. There was a whole hullabaloo in theJournalabout his background a few months ago, when the war in Ukraine broke out, but it turns out he’d renounced his citizenship in the nineties, severed ties when he left as a teenager. It’s not well publicized—my dad was muttering about it, probably bitter about the political capital—but he’s also done a fair amount for the relief effort. Kyiv engaged BlackRiver for setting up a reconstruction bank post-conflict, that sort of thing.”
“Did he leave before or after the collapse?” Lili asks.
“Before, I think.”
“Why’d he leave?”
James shrugs. “Not sure. Old world order crumbling, dawn of a new age, the moral righteousness of capitalism prevailing? If you’re so curious, I know some investor relations folks, I’m sure they keep a file on him.”
“No,” she says, too fast. “No, that’s fine.”
Amina grins, lying in the grass. “Was the sex that good?”
Lili glares at her.
