19. Nineteen #2
"When have I ever?" He hauled my hips back to meet him, hard, and the next words went the way of all the others.
He kept the pace until I'd nothing left to be clever with, and then he kept it past that.
The tray went over the edge somewhere and clattered across the floor, and neither of us spared it.
My granddad was turning in his grave. I'd grieve the spilled work later.
Right then, there was only the wood under me and the weight of him over me and the heat building low and mean.
"Say my name," he said against the back of my neck.
"Aleksi—" It came out broken. He'd earned it.
His fist closed around my cock and he started to jerk it roughly. At the same time, his teeth closed on the shell of my ear. Then he pushed me flat against the table and slammed into me again and again, chasing his release.
I came with my face turned into the wood, swearing in a voice I didn't know I had, clenching down around him. He swore in Russian, and he drove in deep and stayed, shaking, his mouth open against my shoulder, the jacket still on his back with the ugly wallet tucked over his heart.
For a long minute, neither of us moved.
Then he pulled back, and I shuddered at the way his spend always ran out of me. He got an arm round my middle and took my weight when my legs declined to, and I let him, which I'd deny later.
"You okay?"
I couldn't help but laugh into the wood. "Ye fuck me within an inch of me life and ask me if I'm ok. That's the most Aleksi thing I've ever heard."
"All right. Knock it off. That'll teach me to give a damn about you."
I turned my head and watched Aleksi do up his trousers. The side of my face had the grain of the table printed into it, I could feel it. "I take it that means it was a good day at work, yeah?"
"Define good."
I stood up and pulled my jeans back up. "Yer alive. In yer line of work, I expect that means someone else is dead. Hence, ye survived another day. Good day."
His face soured.
"Aye. There it is." I did up my belt and nodded at the bag, still sat where he'd put it by my elbow an hour past. "Ye going to tell me why ye brought me a handbag, or do I have to work for that an' all?"
"Fin."
"I stitched a hundred of those. Maybe more.
" I picked it up. The weight told me before my fingers did.
I turned it over, found the bottom, and pressed my thumb into the seam where no thumb should've found anything.
The recess was there. The doubled line, sunk into the grain, sewn from the inside the way I'd been taught.
"Ye didnae bring me this to admire the work. "
"What can you tell me about it?"
I didn't answer straight off. I ran my thumb over the wrong seam again, and the whole flat went quiet around it, and the warmth I'd had in me a minute ago went somewhere cold.
"I can tell ye it's for smuggling contraband," I said. "But what kind, I wasn't privy to. And no, I didn't ask. I like having my head attached to my neck. I told you everything I knew about the operation, Aleksi."
"You didn't tell me they had you sewing secret compartments into the knockoffs." He picked up the bag and waved it at me.
"Because it wasnae a secret to me, it was a Tuesday.
" I snatched the bag back from him. "Ye think they sat us down and explained the why of it?
They handed me a pattern and a recess to cut and said make it disappear into the grain, or we'll find a lassie who can.
So I made it disappear. I didnae ask what went in after.
I didnae want to know. Same as I didnae ask what happened to the girls who got slow. "
"Fin—"
"No. Ye don't get to wave it at me like I held out on ye.
" The old heat came up, the warehouse heat, the one that had kept me alive by keeping me sharp.
"I told ye everything that was mine to tell.
The compartments werenae a secret. They were just the job.
Ye never asked me what the job was. Ye asked me who, and what, and where they kept me.
Ye never once asked me what my actual hands did all day, because ye didnae want the answer any more than I wanted to give it. "
He clenched his jaw.
"So, aye." I set the bag down between us, gently now.
"I can find them. That's what yer really asking.
Can the Scotsman pick these out of a crate by feel?
The answer's yes. I made enough of them, I'll know my own work and the work of every hand they trained alongside me.
" I met his eyes. "The question ye should be asking is whether ye want me anywhere near that warehouse again.
Because the last time I was useful to people like this, Aleksi, I came out a finger short. "
"You're not going back to that warehouse," he said. "It's sealed. Nikita's got men on the door, and the bags aren't going anywhere."
"Then what is it ye want from me?"
"He thinks K didn't stop at purses." He turned the knockoff over in his hand one more time and set it down. "Six months you were the best hand they had. They wouldn't waste that on handbags alone. Belts. Shoes. Bespoke. Anything with a lining."
I went cold a second time, a different cold. Because he was right, and because I knew it before he finished saying it. You don't sew a recess that clean into a forty-dollar bag and not get asked to do it into a four-thousand-dollar one.
"Suits," I said. "The good stuff. The pieces that have to pass a customs man with an eye." I thought of the work I'd done in that back room, the pieces they'd kept me for, the ones the women weren't trusted with. "Aye. I did the lining work on those an' all. Not as many, but some."
"So we don't go to the warehouse." He watched me. "We go shopping. You, me and Niko. Every fine leather house in the city, one at a time, and you put your hands on the merchandise and tell me which ones are wrong."
I laughed before I could help it. "Ye want to take me round the shops. Like a date?"
"Like a job."
"Like a date where I sniff out yer boss's contraband and somebody recognizes my stitching from the wrong side of it.
" I shook my head, but I was already turning it over, already half in.
"Ye understand what yer asking. Every shop that's dirty has somebody in it who might ken my face.
Or worse, ken my work and wonder how it walked out of that warehouse with all its limbs. "
"You'll be with me." He set the bag down firmly. "And if they touch you, I won't just take a finger. I'll take the whole fucking arm."
"That's no' as comforting as ye think it is." But I was smiling, the mean, small one. "Fine. We'll go shopping, Aleksi Laskin. On one condition."
"Name it."
"Ye buy me something real while we're at it." I picked the tray up off the floor. "I've spent six months making beautiful things for men who'd have killed me. I'd like to walk into a shop once as a man somebody's buying for."
He smiled like he'd won something. "Perfect. We can buy you some accessories to go with your new suit."