4. First Touch
first touch
Tatiana
W e catch a night train to Split because that's the only train leaving at this hour. We get a couchette compartment for the five of us. We each choose a bunk, and within minutes, both Lorenzo and Scarlett are asleep. Solomon and Lash sit beside each other on a bottom bunk, conversing quietly while I try unsuccessfully to fall asleep.
My mind whirls and spins like a child's toy top, spinning and wobbling as it slows.
I close my eyes and see Georg slumped over the hood of my car, sightless eyes staring at nothing while blood spreads in a crimson pool.
Again and again, I see Filip drawing his pistol and casually blasting a hole in Ana's head and then Katya's. I see their heads snap backward in slow motion. I see blood spraying, brain matter spattering.
My eyes wrench open and I stare, eyes burning with exhaustion, at the underside of the bunk above me. I struggle to quiet my mind, and slowly, slowly, sleep begins to pull me under.
In the bunk below me, I hear Solomon whispering to Lash. I only catch fragments, but it seems as if he is relating the events that brought him to the cell in Tata's compound. I hear exotic sounding places like Quito and San José, and descriptions of gunfights. Lash asks Solomon about Scarlett; I nod off as Solomon relates a story about an operation gone wrong in Venezuela.
Darkness enshrouds me. My feet are heavy, trapped in quicksand pulling me inexorably under. I smell body odor, a rank, thick miasma of rotting onions. A hand closes on my left wrist, and I try to scream, but no sound emerges from my throat.
LASH! The scream echoes in my skull, but my teeth are fused together, my lips stitched shut. I cannot move, cannot withdraw my feet from the sludge encasing them, cannot jerk my wrist out of the painful hold. The scream, my plea for Lash to help me, is stuck in my throat, trapped behind my fused teeth and stitched lips.
Body odor chokes me.
A hand slides up my belly, and then I feel Filip's fingers painfully pinching my nipple. I try to writhe away, but movement is impossible—my limbs are encased in granite, so I cannot push or pull, stand or sit, run or crawl.
Darkness swirls, eddying around me like fog. A big, bulky male figure hulks in front of me, outlined by a murderous red glow. His teeth flash white, all sharp predator incisors dripping blood, and his shaved head writhes with living tattoos, and his hand grows large enough to encompass the entire world as he reaches for me, and I cannot run, cannot run, cannot run.
His hands imprison me, the jaws of a Kraken crunching my bones, pushing me to the dirty wet cold ground; his weight is titanic and immense, and I cannot dislodge him. His breath stinks of beer and meat. His body odor is all-consuming, almost worse than his huge cruel hands scraping my belly as he gropes my breast.
Panic boils in my gut, surging like vomit up to my teeth.
JUST A LITTLE TASTE. The words scratch over my skin, crater in my skull. JUST A LITTLE TASTE BEFORE I GIVE YOU TO HIM.
I cannot scream, cannot scream, cannot scream.
He shakes me, rattling my bones. TATIANA , he growls, TATIANA, WAKE UP.
I cannot wake up, cannot wake up, cannot wake up.
TATIANA.
I try to scream, to run.
He’s too strong, too heavy.
I grope for his eyes, trying to punch my thumbs through the soft jelly. Try to knee his crotch. Claw his face. Bite his throat. Snarl like a cornered she-lion.
I feel something cold and hard and slender—a knife. Fumble for it while his hands fumble at my chest, clumsy and cruel.
It's a knife.
I find the small round knob and lever it open and jab it hard, feel skin break and guts puncture. Stab. Stab. Stab.
Fresh hot blood splashes my face and he howls in agony. Rage blazes through me and I cannot stop my hand from stabbing because he's still moving, reaching for me with cold cruel hands that will kill me if I let them touch me, hands that will choke and crush.
TATIANA.
WAKE UP.
WAKE UP.
I'm not dreaming. This is real. I'm not asleep.
I cannot wake up, cannot wake up, cannot wake up.
Stab, stab, stab. Blood splashes, and I stab so hard his soft belly presses hot and wet against my fist where it clutches the blood-slick handle of the knife.
Vomit sears my throat and boils against my fused teeth, stitched lips.
"Tatiana!" Shaking, shaking.
I feel hands, but these are gentle, comforting. Brutally strong and rough with calluses, but they cradle me close and soothe the panic.
"It is a nightmare, Lovely One. You are safe. It's not real."
The voice is beautiful. There's no other word. His accent lilts, curves, dances gracefully across the syllables.
Lash.
Warmth flows through me, washes over me—the comforting heat of safety chasing away the cold of terror.
The blood on my hand drips, drips onto concrete, staining the filthy wet ground.
"Tatiana," comes that beautiful voice once more. "Wake up, Lovely One."
The dripping and drooling of the hot, sticky blood slows, and the darkness around me swirls.
"Tatiana, wake up. You are dreaming."
The knife in my fist loses reality, loses substance. The soft heavy weight of dead, cooling flesh crushing me fades.
"I have you, Tatiana. You are safe now. There is nothing to fear. You can wake up, now. You are safe. It is okay."
A shudder ripples through me; I blink awake. I'm sweat-drenched, fear-parched, terror-drunk. I feel strong hard arms cradling me. Lash's big, firm, broad body shelters me, shields me from the world beyond my narrow bunk. Another shudder wracks me.
"It was him," I whisper. "He was going to rape me. I couldn't stop stabbing him."
His arms tighten. "You did what you had to do, Tatiana. I know it was awful. I am so sorry you had to experience that."
I want to sob, but it's stuck behind my teeth. I can only shake my head. "I keep… feeling it."
He pulls me closer yet, and his warmth soaks into me, and the strength of his arms around me breaks the chains of the nightmare. "I know. I know. But it will fade in time."
I breathe out slowly. "Do you still have nightmares, Lash?"
"Of people I kill?" he asks.
I nod.
"No. Not really. I used to, when I was young. For several years, I dreamed of the first time I killed someone. But I have not had that dream in many, many years." A soft sigh. "I dream of other horrors, now."
"Will you tell me?"
A long pause. "Perhaps another time, if you really wish to know. It is not a happy story."
"You said you remember me when I was young."
"Yes."
"What do you remember?"
A thoughtful breath, the gentle rub of his chin on my shoulder. "I remember a summer's day. Where were we? Not in Zagreb. Your father's beach property, I believe. We left very early in the morning. Your mother was still alive, then. Your father carried you to the car and we drove all morning. The sun was bright and warm. I was in the car behind yours. Your father's driver parked and you shot out of the car before it was fully stopped. Your mother shouted at you, something about needing sunscreen, I think."
I smile to myself. "I don't know if I remember that specific day or not, but trips to the beach cottage with Mama and Tata I remember quite clearly."
You were neither a child nor a teenager. I do not remember how old. Perhaps eleven?" A pause. "I was very young, then, myself. Eighteen, I think, maybe nineteen. It was my first job that wasn't washing dishes and sweeping floors. Your father was proud of himself for being so progressive as to hire a gypsy .” He spits the word so it drips vitriol. "I remember your joy. It was like the sun. I remember envying you. You were so free, so alive, full of so much joy." He's murmuring to me in English, and the foreign rhythm of his words is lulling, soporific.
"I loved the beach when I was a little girl."
"Do you not anymore?"
I shrug, shake my head. "I don't know. I suppose I do. I have not been in a very long time. After Mama died, the beach cottage was too hard for Tata to bear. I don't know if he even owns it anymore."
"I remember you running like an escaped colt. You threw off your shirt and fell in the sand trying to get your shorts off while running. I remember your mother laughing at you when you fell. She caught up to you and slathered you in sunscreen. All you wanted was to get into the sea, but she made you wait until it was dry."
"Mama and her sunscreen," I say, laughing quietly. "I used to lie out on the balcony at the compound and sun myself. I wore my bikini. I wanted so badly to be a grown woman with big breasts like Mama.” I laugh again. "Now I am a grown woman, but I still do not have big breasts."
Lash chuckles. "I know how that feels. When I was a boy, I wanted so badly to be tall. I would measure myself every day, hoping for even one centimeter of growth. Even as a teenager, I kept hoping I would have a growth spurt. I would dream of waking up one morning towering over my mother. I never did." The humor drains out of his voice. "You may not have large breasts, Tatiana, but they are perfect. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met."
"Even though you knew me when I was an awkward little girl?"
“Many years separate the girl you were then from the woman you are now."
"Trips to the beach with Mama and Tata seems like another life," I whisper.
"Truly, it does," he says. "I was not innocent even then, but I had not yet become what I am now."
"What are you now, Lash?" I ask.
I pull away so I can see his face, and his dark eyes glitter in the dim light, and his beard is soft and ticklish against my jaw.
"A ghost with bloody hands," he whispers. "A mulo .”
"I do not know what that is," I murmur.
"A vampire. Undead. Returned from death to cause havoc."
"You are alive, Lash." I touch his cheek, and the flesh is warm. "You feel my touch, yes?"
I hear him swallow. "Yes."
Warmth, safety, security—these feelings birth boldness, erase the shreds of dreamstuff still lingering in my belly, replacing it with heat and desire.
I curl closer, my hands clasped under my chin, one finger touching just below his lip. I feel his breath catch. Touch my lips to his. "You feel my lips?" I whisper so softly that he must feel the words as much as hear them.
"Yes.” It's a breath. "But Tatiana—"
I move my lips on his, and it’s not exactly a kiss—more of a hint of a kiss, a promise of one. "Lash, I know."
"You do not. You cannot."
"But I do."
"Remember how I said I was an obsidian blade?"
I nod, moving my lips on his again, relishing the slip and stutter of my lips on his. "I do."
"There is nothing on earth as sharp as obsidian. Not even lasers. An obsidian blade can cut between the walls of cells themselves."
"Truly?" I ask.
“Yes, truly. But obsidian is also incredibly fragile. It can chip and shatter easily if handled incorrectly."
"Oh." I consider this. "You are fragile, then?"
He sighs. “Sometimes I think so. Other times I feel as unbreakable as diamond. The years and the awful things I have done have accumulated upon my soul like the layers of a pearl. Trauma upon trauma."
“The hardest of substances are also the most easily broken when struck at the correct angle." I brush my lips against his, nuzzling his mustache. "None of us are invincible, Lash. We all have pain. You do not need to bear yours alone."
He inhales a short, shuddering breath. Touches his forehead to mine. Lets it out through pursed lips. "Hope is a cruel thing, Tatiana."
"Without hope, what do we have?" I only belatedly realize that at some point we switched to Croatian. "Allow yourself hope, Lash. Reach for something that brings you joy."
A subtle shake of his head. "I do not know how. I have sheltered my secret heart within a prison of isolation for so long that…" he trails off, shaking his head again, sighing.
"That what?" I prompt.
"I have forgotten what it is to truly feel."
"I am in your arms, Lash. I choose this. I want this. I like this. I feel safe with you, and I have rarely felt safe. Being my father's daughter has meant I have a target on my back at all times, and I have my whole life. But when I am with you, I know I am safe. I know I am protected. That is how I feel." I trail my fingers through his beard, from his earlobe and along his jawline. "How do you feel, right now?"
"It is hard to find the words."
I snort. "No, it isn't, Lash. I think you are just afraid of speaking them out loud."
"You demand much of me, Tatiana." He says this in English.
"By asking you to share your feelings? I am not asking you to share your deepest fears or secrets."
"You ask me to unearth my heart. I have buried it, Tatiana. I buried it with my wife. I buried it with my children."
I go still, barely daring to breathe. “Children?” It is a ghost of a question, a syllabic exhale.
"My deepest fears? My darkest secrets? They are deep indeed, and darker than the darkest shadows."
"You had a wife and children?" I ask.
"I did."
"They died?"
"They were murdered. By Roberto Pugli." He pronounces the last name POOL-yee .
I cannot get any closer to him while we are both still clothed, but I try anyway, snugging my hips against his, draping my thigh over his, resting my torso on his.
"You don't need to tell me," I whisper. "I can tell that the pain is too great."
"My heart is buried in the earth with Ileana, Leonora, and Leander." I hear him swallow hard. "What remains in here…" he taps his chest over his physical heart, “is nothing but broken pieces, sharp edges, and vacant spaces."
"You are a poet, Lash. Did you know?"
He snorts again. "Language is a beautiful thing. To create beauty and meaning from simple sounds is a kind of magic." His lips touch the top of my head, and he inhales, scenting my hair. "But then, I come from a long line of storytellers."
"You do?"
He nods, kissing the top of my head again. "Yes. My people, the Romani, have always preserved our stories, myths, beliefs, and legends in oral form. We tell stories—all people do. To sit around a fire and spin a tale of gods and men is what makes us human. It is how we understand the world around us. And for my people, it is especially true. We have never had a homeland, and so our stories become our home. They preserve our past, our heritage."
We lapse into silence for a long time, and the gentle rocking of the train lulls me into a drowsy twilight.
"Having you in my arms," Lash murmurs, "feels like…getting a breath of air when you are drowning."
"So keep breathing me," I mumble. "Let me be your breath."
He sighs, a rumbling breath. "Tatiana…"
"Mmmmm."
"It hurts to hope."
"Tata lost his heart when Mama died."
"It is a pain like no other."
"He gave up on himself," I say, struggling to make sense despite how sleepy I am. "In a way, I lost him too."
"Tatiana, I…"
I twist to find his lips with mine, leaving my eyes closed and seeking his mouth blindly. I find it, or he finds mine, or we find each other's. His kiss is slow and sweet, tender and hesitant.
"Just hold me, Lash. I do not ask anything more of you right now." I whisper this against his lips, and I can taste the sorrow on his breath, all tangled up with hope.
He kisses me again, once more so gently I almost wonder if I imagine it, dream it. Only the tingle of my lips tells me it's real.
I wake to Lash's soft snores against my ear. I leave my eyes closed, hearing Scarlett and Solomon whispering to each other, private murmurs I try not to overhear.
At some point in my sleep I have become wrapped up in Lash on the narrow bunk. His hard thigh is wedged between mine, pressing against my sex. His hand drapes lower on my hip, resting on my bottom, and his breath huffs softly against the top of my head.
I have never felt so safe, so content. I only wish we were alone. The desire I feel for Lash is a simmering cauldron in my belly—I struggle to keep it on a simmer, lest it boil over and push me to act on my desire.
I know he is not ready for that. To push him will be to lose him—he is a ghost of a man, and if I try to cling to him, he'll slip through my fingers.
He rumbles sleepily, shifting. Rolls to his back, bringing me with him so I’m lying prone on his hard, heavily muscled body. His heart pounds steadily under my ear, and his arms wrap around me, one slung across my shoulders and the other cradling my ass.
I grit my teeth and fight the desire bubbling in my blood. This task is made all the more difficult when he rumbles in his chest again and shifts in his sleep, nudging his hips against mine, pressing his erection against my core.
Morning erections are normal male physiology. I understand this. It is not evidence of his desire for me. I remind myself of this fact, because my heart wishes to believe otherwise. My body yearns to respond.
And it does, despite my best efforts. I lay upon him and breathe, just breathe, but my hips tilt, and press, because the burn in my core, the wild ache of need in my sex is liquid heat that only his touch can extinguish.
I curl my fingers into his shirt to keep them from wandering, from seeking skin, from exploring hardness and flesh. My hips, however…they have a will of their own. They tilt, push, and drive.
He groans again in his sleep and pushes against me. His erection is a thick ridge behind his zipper. The slide of denim against denim is noisy in my ears, and his heartbeat quickens.
"Mmmm." His drowsy growl is rough and quiet.
I know this can go nowhere; I am only torturing myself.
But yet…my face tilts and I seek his skin, find his throat with my nose and lips, taste the pulse at his throat, my fists knotting in his shirt.
He exhales, and his hips push against mine, his erection driving against my sex, making me bury my lips against his throat and mewl as arousal sears through me from core to crown, heart to hands. He rumbles and his huge powerful hands tense, flex, and twitch against me. Another shift of his hips, another growl, and I can feel him waking. His hands scour my back, roaming from shoulders to shoulder blades, mid-back to lower back. My breath snags in my throat as he cups my ass, fingers tightening in the swell of flesh and muscle, and then slipping back upward to the gap between T-shirt and jeans. The pound of my pulse becomes frenetic when his hands find flesh, sliding up my spine, carving over bare skin to my shoulder blades and back down, dipping under the waist of my jeans, under the elastic of my panties to clutch hot skin.
I whimper, rubbing against his erection. "Lash," I breathe.
"Mmmm," he murmurs.
I can't help myself. I seek his flesh, his hard muscle, the cut lines of his predator's body. I feel the grooves and ridges of his abs, his ribs, and the fine nerve endings in my fingertips find the raised lines of scars and the hard divots of bullet holes and the smeared smoothness of burns, and the subtle give of muscle.
I look up at him, and his eyes are black holes, voids piercing me with sharp wild life, blazing with desire. I scrape my hands over his pecs, his flat nipples pebbling under my hands, and his grip curls into my ass, and I rub against him; heat billows in my belly, flows with the inexorability of lava, a pyroclastic surge of primal female hunger.
"Tatiana," comes his voice, a growl I feel in my bones, in my sex, in my soul.
I mewl again, rub against him, and his black eyes burn into mine, fiery with fierce need.
"We can't," he murmurs. "Not here, not now, not like this."
I taste the skin of his throat, salty and stubble-rough below the neckline of his beard. "I know," I breathe.
"Never have I wished so badly for privacy," he whispers. “Touching you, feeling the beauty of your body, I can almost forget."
I don't need to know what he can almost forget. The details are irrelevant; the sorrow is all that matters. His heart has calcified in his chest, has become a xenolith.
I dig my fingernails into his chest and find his mouth and I kiss him. He grips my ass so tightly it almost hurts, and he kisses me back, and now finally his lips part and his tongue steals in against mine. I gasp into the kiss as heat pounds in my belly, expanding into my core, making my thighs shake and my breath comes hard and short, and I taste his tongue, his breath; I swallow a soft growl in response to the helpless push of my sex against his erection. He kisses me and kisses me, and my eyes flutter closed, and I grip the huge hard mounds of his shoulders and grind against him.
"Tatiana," he whispers. "Have mercy on me. We cannot."
"I know," I whimper. "But I…I can't not. I crave you, Lash."
I pant into his kiss, and my hips flex in a slow, sinuous writhe, pushing burgeoning heat through my body like a bubble on the verve of bursting.
"It's just you, Lash," I whisper, grinding against him, feeling desperate in a way I haven't since I was a teenaged girl in the back of my first boyfriend's car. "I don't know. I don't know."
Lash rolls me to my back, putting me between himself and the wall, hiding me with the bulk of his body. He leans into me and his palm covers my bare belly, rough and hard against soft skin. I hold his eyes, hold still. The train sways, the clack-clack clack-clack clack-clack a muffled metronome rhythm. He dips his fingertips under the button of my jeans, and I reach down, flick open the button, lower the zipper. Beg with my eyes, with the push of my hips.
"Tatiana," he whispers. "We can't. I can't."
"Please," I breathe. "Just…touch me, Lash."
"My hands, my soul," he murmurs, "they are not clean."
I catch his free hand in mine, press his palm to my cheek. Nuzzle his palm, kiss his wrist. Drag his hand to my throat, keeping my eyes locked on his. Guide his hand down to cover my breast where my nipple presses diamond-hard through the fabric of my bra and shirt.
His answering growl is low and hungry and frustrated, and his fingertips steal lower, under the elastic of my panties, scraping sensuously over my skin, and I press my hand over his against my breast and tilt my hips in another silent plea. I feel his middle finger slide to the top of my slit, and then his touch glides down my seam and I whimper.
He presses his mouth to mine. "Hush, Lovely One. You must be quiet. I will not share these beautiful sounds you make with anyone."
I am no exhibitionist; I am a private person. I avoid public displays of affection, much less anything like this. I have never been daring, sexually. I prefer the quiet solitude of my home: lights dimmed, door closed, and blinds drawn so only breath, touch, and flesh remain. I like the mystery of touch in the dark, blind kisses and finding each other without sight, relying on touch and trust.
But with Lash I am different. I know him, down to his soul—I know his sorrow, I know the shape of his torment; I know how deeply he has kept his heart buried, how tightly he locked down his need, his desire. He’s an enigma, more at home in the shadows than light.
I do not care who hears.
In fact, what I hear from the bunk above is the sound of kisses, and a soft feminine gasp, and a low male laugh. I hear the bunk shift, creaking. Lorenzo snores on the topmost bunk opposite.
I mate my fingers to Lash’s inside my jeans and underwear, guiding his fingers inside me. I hold his eyes, let him see the need bursting through me, the ecstasy of his touch. I push my sex against him, writhe on his finger as it delves inside me.
His brows furrow and his jaw clenches.
"Who is clean in this world, Lash?" I ask. "Who is innocent? I am not."
"But I—"
"I do not care," I whisper. "When we are alone, I will hear your secrets. You can confess to me as if I am a priest, and I will be your penance."
"Tatiana," he breathes my name like a prayer. "Tatiana…"
His fingers move inside me, and the soft wet squelch makes me squirm in embarrassment, but he covers my mouth with his and slashes his tongue against mine and curls his finger inside me. He gathers my wet slick essence and smears it against my clit.
I whimper into his mouth, and my hips lift, my ass tightening as I drive into his touch. "Yes," I breathe. "Lash, please."
"You cannot beg, sweet Tatiana," he murmurs, lips moving on mine. "My control is at the limit already."
I thrust against his finger, yank my shirt up and rake down my bra cup so my breast falls free, and crush his hand against me. He bumps his forehead against mine and growls in short, rough, panting breaths and his finger curls again to gather my essence and smear it against my clit until I'm soaked and dripping, and then he touches the pad of his middle finger to my clit, circling swiftly.
Lighting strikes me at his touch, and he swallows my mewling gasp of pleasure, and his hard hand gives my breast a rough squeeze, and then gentles, and his thumb trips against my thick, rigid, aching nipple and I have to bite down to silence a cry, which shreds past my teeth as a shrill catlike snarl.
Heat smashes through me and stars burst behind my eyes and I grind into his touch and kiss him, shoving my tongue into his mouth.
Ecstasy becomes all-consuming, and I ride his finger to the cusp of climax.
I reach between us and cup his erection over his jeans, and then fumble at his zipper, seeking more, seeking him, seeking his pleasure as the natural mate to mine.
He growls a negative, capturing my hands in his and pinioning them in his fist, preventing me from grasping him. I fight his hold, but he's far, far too strong, and then I’m lost and helpless as my release detonates.
I gasp into his mouth, panting, whimpering, trying to be quiet.
My orgasm spreads through me all at once, a white wave of incandescent heat, and I shake all over, trembling as wild hot pleasure sears through my being. I struggle against his hold on my hands, and he's so strong that I can fight with every ounce of my strength and it makes no difference—I'm helpless, caught in his touch, held and possessed.
I let go.
He takes my tongue and devours my whimpers, touches me through my climax until I'm left shuddering and panting raggedly, a boneless pile of jelly beneath his weight.
Brakes squeal and the train slows, and a male voice squawks indistinctly over the intercom, announcing our arrival in Split.
I wrench my eyes open, meet his. "Lash," I whisper, but can't find anything else to say.
He kisses me again, withdrawing his finger from within me; he zips and buttons my jeans, releases my hands.
"I wouldn't leave you like this," I whisper.
"I don't care. You are all that matters to me." He puts his middle finger into his mouth, and his eyes shut at the taste of me on his finger. "But now I'm going to dream of you. Dream of tasting you, having you on my lips. Hearing you scream."
I whimper again. "Lash, dammit,” I whisper. “I want—”
He growls in frustration, rolls off the bunk with abrupt speed, and is out of the couchette compartment before I know what's happened, before I can finish my statement.