Leverage #2
she says. “It’s not the Cold War. What are you, forty?”—and whether instability is actually inherent in the Harrod-Domar model—“Of
course, you love neoclassical economics,” she grumbles, “you probably think the market will regulate itself, too”—and if the
neoliberalization of foreign aid can really be blamed for creating power vacuums in the Middle East.
As the heavy warmth of her drinks starts to flood through her, Lili takes out her phone and demands his time and location
of birth—January 3, 1977; 1:43 a.m.; Leningrad, frozen canals, mandarin rinds in the snow, empty squares, snowflakes on eyelashes,
skeleton staff at the hospital, days off for the new year. When she pulls up his birth chart, he doesn’t laugh derisively
or ask, You don’t really believe in that shit, do you?
Instead, he leans forward, listening as she taps through the houses of his chart.
“Capricorn, that checks out. But Jesus, Aries rising, really?”
“What do you mean, Aries? You just said Capricorn.”
“Everyone has multiple signs, obviously. Keep up.”
“Alright, what’s next?”
“So, your moon—Scorpio. Oh. That’s unfortunate.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, that’s not even touching the other houses—”
The weight of his attention is intoxicating. He listens intently, countering her arguments, raising an eyebrow when she overreaches
her points. Somehow luxuriant in the way he never interrupts her.
Once or twice, Lili catches him glancing at her mouth, brief enough that she could miss it.
She finds herself wishing that he’d linger there longer.
The bar is packed, and her body is angled towards him.
Close enough to taste his cologne, a mixture of cold nights and warm amber that mingles with the delicate burn of alcohol on her tongue, as she looks at his mouth, white teeth, as he’s saying something about economic neocolonialism, and—
“Would you like to come home with me?” His voice cuts under the din around them.
Lili grins before she can help it. She sends a quick text to her friends. He has a black car idling outside.
He doesn’t touch her in the car, like she expects. It’s a little absurd. She’s coming home with him, isn’t she? One night,
easy sex: Maybe she could even get him to be a little rough with her. As she tries to pay attention to his thoughts on von
Mises and restricted government interventions, her fingers tense with the restrained need to touch him—to crawl over the seats
and straddle him, imagining the scratch of his beard against her palms.
But when his driver stops in Tribeca, car gliding to a halt on a dark, quiet street, she’s caught off guard. Frowning, she
looks up at the building—cast-iron facade, one of the stunning old buildings converted from factories or warehouses—momentarily
distracted from fogged thoughts of sex. This isn’t where she’d have thought a man like him would live: downtown; a nondescript
entrance that could easily be mistaken for the staff door of one of the ground-floor art galleries; dim, narrow foyer sleek
with discretion; a doorman with the look of hired security.
In the elevator—five floors; he hits the third—she leans against the opposite wall from him, liquor-sharp and bold. “Not enough
cash on hand to buy the penthouse?” she teases.
“No, the rest of the building is social housing.”
She glares at him. “Hilarious.”
He grins. “You wouldn’t believe the tax breaks.”
The elevator slides open with a soft, sedate ding that drips wealth.
“This is actually your place?”
“Yes.”
Lili steps forward and spins slowly, taking in the loft.
The ceilings, the tall windows, the view of narrow Tribeca streets at night.
Across the room, a huge painting dominates a wall: beige canvas with gouges of dark color, terse scrawls, undercut with reds, oranges, white, blues.
The ordered chaos veers into graffiti, violent like Twombly’s Leda and the Swan or The Fall of Hyperion.
“Is that surprising?” he asks.
“I guess. Thought you’d be more of the 81st and Fifth type. You know, like, runs around the reservoir, bespoke Brioni, lunch
at San Pietro—”
“Vivid.”
“Hush, I was painting a picture,” she says, pointing an accusatory finger at him. A smile tugs at his lips. “House in Bridgehampton,
kids at Dalton—”
“I’m not married.”
Lili doesn’t know why that twists her stomach.
“Do you have anything to drink?” she asks. Suddenly nervous, she turns around, looking for a bar cart—too fast, her balance
fails, expensive rug and restored wooden floors rushing up.
Arms steady her. A hand comes to rest where her neck meets her shoulder.
“You don’t need another drink, sweetheart.”
A shiver sinks into the base of her spine. Stern and soothing, his voice runs over her scalp, somehow both reassuring and
dangerous. It makes her lean into him, and his grip around her neck shifts, thumb brushing over her windpipe.
Lili’s eyes widen.
Aleksandr lifts an eyebrow. “No?” he murmurs, breath against her lips.
She surges forward, kissing him so hard she stumbles.
Wrenching her dress off her shoulders—a sudden intake of breath that’s not her own, vaguely remembering that she isn’t wearing a bra—frantic fingers unbuttoning his shirt—shoes discarded, somewhere—a too-big bed, sheets that are too soft—her nails scraping across his scalp, and the way he almost growls, pushing her against the mattress—her underwear down her thighs, dangling off her ankle, too impatient to kick them off—and the heat of his mouth at the hollow of her throat, hot and demanding at her breasts—a drag of his palm up her inner thigh; a trace of cold, and she realizes he’s wearing a ring just before he slides two fingers inside of her, a sudden stretch that should hurt but goes easily because she’s wet, so fucking wet—and he doesn’t relent, pinning her to the bed—she scrambles for his belt buckle, feels him hard through his trousers, and—
Suddenly, his weight is gone. Air and emptiness rush around her, destabilizing.
“Get on your knees.”
Fast, without full thinking—without considering saying no—she does as he says. She barely finds her hands and knees before
he’s behind her, heat pushing inside of her without warning.
“Oh—” Lili drops to her elbows. Stretched and full, her breath comes in short bursts, white-knuckled grip straining the sheets.
It’s close to the wrong side of too much.
“Shh,” he murmurs, placing a hand on the back of her neck. He strokes the notches of her vertebrae, the delicate bones of
her spine. It’s a soothing touch entirely disconnected from how he starts to fuck her: slow shifts of his hips, coaxing her
to sink deeper into the sheets, relax just a bit further—before he thrusts hard into her again, and she shudders.
“We need to break you in,” he says. The moan he forces out of her then is near animal. Her mind washes clean of thought. Just
her body, full of feeling and him, fucking her into his bed like she doesn’t deserve to walk, like he wants to suffocate her
in his sheets.
And this—this is what she’s after. The bleach of sex, tears and mascara on the pillow, these sounds of her begging—because that’s
what she’s doing, she realizes, under his hands heavy on her body—she’s begging him for more with barely coherent words.
She’s always craved rough sex, but this is something else. The astounding wash of surprise—no one has ever known to fuck her
like this—is flooded fast by the relief of letting go. Fears, failure, lack, everything out of her hands, finally out of her
control for a few moments. She starts to feel herself slip away; it feels like the release she’s always imagined and never
truly tasted.
Bruising grip, brutal pace: He forces breaths out of her, breaking into gasps. She can’t see straight—can’t think straight;
seams of her thoughts coming apart, and she wants more. Pressure builds, heat inside her, and Lili reaches down, fingers between
the sheets and her skin—
Her arm gets snatched away, twisted behind the small of her back.
“You don’t come until I fucking tell you to,” Aleksandr orders.
The thought makes her desolate, and she groans through her teeth. “No, please, please—”
He grabs her hair in a fist. Wrenching her upright, he pulls her flush against him, her head against his shoulder. “You don’t
tell me no,” he breathes in her ear. “You take what I give you.”
Heat surges through her; his words provoke the type of desire she’s often held back, bitten down, buried away. His hand finds
her neck, then. The muscles of her throat constrict under his hold as she swallows, struggles to breathe.
Lili lays her palm over his grip, and squeezes his wrist.
Take more, she thinks.
Please, just take more.
“Harder,” she whispers, hoarse. “Please, harder.”
A groan against her hair. His hold tightens around her throat. The rhythm of his hips grows deeper, and she feels like nothing
in his arms. This new angle hits depth inside of her that makes her hips tighten, pressure at the base of her spine growing
hotter—harder, darker, something that feels shattering and all-encompassing like pain but tastes sweet like pleasure.
Black spots flicker across her vision. She can taste silence at the edge of her mind—there, finally.
“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.