11. Ofelia #3
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Dima rubs a hand over his face.
“That bastard has been playing his games with you for so long, he knows exactly what buttons to push. Be careful, Alexei. If he gets even the smallest idea how much the thought of raping that girl sickens you, it will be the best fucking game he’s ever played. ”
Alexei stands up abruptly. “Don’t you think I know that?” he hisses. “Don’t you think I fucking know?”
A long, tense silence ensues. It’s broken in the end when Dima touches Alexei’s shoulder briefly. “We’ll be ready, brother. You have my word.”
He leaves the room, and I lie on the floor, my heart thudding, listening to Alexei’s uncharacteristically harsh breathing.
It’s all I can do to stop myself from crossing the room to offer him what little comfort I can.
The utter irony in feeling the urge to comfort my possible future rapist is not lost on me at all.
Nor is the fact that instead of feeling horror at the thought of Alexei taking my body, I feel a strange, uneasy excitement.
I shiver beneath the thin blanket and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
I jerk awake, my entire body trembling with adrenaline and desire.
I wanted him, I think, my heart thudding. Even then, in that godforsaken cell, I wanted him.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had that dream. Or rather, since I’ve allowed myself to remember that time.
Not because it traumatizes me to recall our time in captivity, but because remembering it became a dark obsession.
One that left me twisting in a private agony over why, exactly, Alexei had been so sickened at the thought of raping me.
Now, after Paris, I don’t have to wonder anymore.
He wanted me too.
Even then. Despite everything.
I know it.
But knowing it doesn’t help me endure his deafening silence since Paris.
One day passes, then another. Still more pass, but with no word from Lars’s friends with the yacht—or from Alexei.
I walk in the early morning, out past the cave bars of the Sacromonte, shuttered and silent after their late-night shows.
I take the road beyond them that winds along the valley, past the ruined mansion I always dream of restoring and the old monastery rumored to hide ancient secrets in its underground tunnels.
I return as the sun grows high and take my breakfast on the terrace.
It’s the same every day: fresh orange juice and black coffee with a tostada, savored as I listen to the sounds of the Albaicín coming to life.
I settle into piano practice by midmorning, when I can hear the buzz of scooters between the stone walls and the cries of the small delivery vans, custom-built to fit the narrow cobblestoned streets, carrying everything from gas bottles to fresh bread and milk.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Spain until I woke here again, amid the cheerful bustle of humanity and familiar scents and sounds.
It soothes some part of me that never feels truly settled in large cities.
I practice piano with my doors open onto the Alhambra and the constant feedback from an ever-moving audience below.
Sometimes, when I miss a note, the ex-flamenco dancer who lives one street over calls out to scold me.
When I play well, she joins my other neighbors’ enthusiastic applause and chorus of “?Olé!”
And through it all, Alexei is who I think of. When I walk in the morning. When I breakfast on my terrace. When I practice, or teach local students.
When I cook lunch, making velvety gazpachos and eating the heavy figs that hang from every tree at this time, savoring them with fresh yogurt and honey from the market.
In the afternoons, when I sunbathe naked on my terrace, my body burning with heat that has nothing to do with the blazing sun and everything to do with the recollection of Alexei’s mouth between my legs.
In the early evenings, when I shower in the vast tiled bathroom, using the Moroccan almond-and-rose body scrub sold in one of the Moorish street markets nearby, rubbing the mixture into my inner thighs, my body in an almost incessant state of mind-bending arousal, unable to think of anything but Alexei’s hands, his mouth.
He lives inside me when I dress in floaty summer frocks and head out to Lourdes’s family bar, to take a tapas and watch my friend play guitar for the nightly flamenco performances.
When I’m leaning forward in my seat, my breath stuck in my throat as the dancers arch and stamp, their sultry, sensual display almost seeming to mock my own frustrated desire.
I wander home along the deserted alleys in the early hours of the morning, flanked by the tactful shadows of my ever-present security detail, the warm summer nights winding around me in a seductive haze of rich scent, music and laughter, and I miss Alexei with a physical ache.
I embrace the rhythm and try to use the burning longing inside me to fuel my practice. But the edge that Dittorio talked about remains elusive, buried somewhere deep inside, churning with my frustrated desire and the memory of Alexei’s face.