Dangerous Games

6

I move all my fingers, still holding Dimitri’s gaze.

His eyes reveal nothing. His expression and posture are both serene. Only a single finger betrays him. His right index finger begins to tap a slow, steady beat against the arm of the chair.

The doctor says, “It appears your nerves are unaffected. If you need surgery, you can’t have it until the swelling goes down, but in the meantime, I’m going to realign the bones. This will hurt. Tell me when you’re ready.”

I won’t scream. I won’t allow myself to scream. I. Will. Not. Scream.

“I’m rea—”

The doctor snaps my broken bones back into place before I can finish the sentence.

Withering heat flashes over me. All the blood drains from my face. I suck in a hard breath, my eyes widening. The pain is so intense I think I’ll topple over.

Instead, I lean into the aisle and vomit all over the plush oxblood carpet.

I retch and spit while the doctor patiently holds my arm, on his knees in his nice blue suit. When my stomach is emptied, I sit upright again, panting. I’m shaking. A cold bead of sweat snakes down my forehead and drips into my eye.

The doctor seems unsurprised by my reaction. “I see you had vegetables for lunch.”

I say hoarsely, “Vegetable soup.”

Dimitri’s still staring at me, but his finger has stopped tapping, and the upward curve of his mouth has returned.

The mechanical airstairs fold up, and the cabin door closes. The jet’s engines grow louder. The doctor applies a splint to my arm and fashions a sling for it, then removes a small bottle of antiseptic and a piece of cotton gauze from his bag and begins to dab at my cheek.

Then a beautiful raven-haired stewardess in a short skirt and sky-high heels appears from behind a black velvet curtain at the back of the plane.

She looks at me. She looks at the doctor. She looks at Dimitri, then at the chunky yellow pool of vomit on the floor. Then, with the glassy stare and blank expression of a person so used to horror she’s no longer able to be moved by it, she says, “We’ll be taking off momentarily. I’ll clean up the mess. Would anyone care for a drink?”

Dimitri says, “Let’s open the magnum of Cristal. I feel like celebrating. My lost little lamb has found her way home again.”

His smile comes on slow and full of malice.

The plane lifts off. The doctor stitches the cut on my cheek, then promptly falls asleep in a seat by a window. The stewardess mops up my vomit from the carpet, serves Dimitri champagne, then sinks to her knees on the floor in front of him and unzips his trousers.

Over the rim of a Baccarat crystal flute, Dimitri watches me with heavy-lidded eyes as she takes his erection into her mouth. He fists a hand in her hair and forces her down on him until she’s gagging.

And back into the monster’s twisted kingdom I go.

THREE

EVA

It’s raining hard when the jet touches down, the inky sky emptying itself in fat freezing drops that soak me as I walk barefoot and shivering to the Phantom waiting across the tarmac from the jet.

Dimitri walks beside me, the back of my neck grasped firmly in his hand.

A uniformed driver hurries toward us with an umbrella. Dimitri waves him aside and instructs him to open the door. When he does, Dimitri shoves me in first, then follows, sitting beside me and smoothing back his hair as I huddle in the corner. The driver closes the door and jumps back into the car, and we pull away.

After a few minutes, I glance over at Dimitri. He’s staring out the window at the rain-slicked passing night.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

His expression is neutral, but his tone is rough, the way it gets when he’s excited.

He has good reason to be. He’s caught his escaped pet rabbit and is bringing it back to its pen, where he’ll conduct experiments to see exactly how much pain the little bunny can take before it dies.

But if the bunny’s smart, it will keep him calm until it can get its hands on a weapon.

I glance away and moisten my lips, my heart a trapped hummingbird beating against the cage of my chest. “How did you find me?”

His laugh is soft and short. “So full of questions. You’ve forgotten how much I dislike questions.”

He turns to look at me. A passing streetlight illuminates an unmistakable bulge in his lap, and I turn away, sickened. I resist the urge to shrink against the door.

Obviously his appetite wasn’t slaked by the stewardess.

“I dislike these clothes, too.”

He reaches out and touches my T-shirt, then trails his finger down the bare skin of my arm. When I freeze, my skin crawling, he makes a small sound of satisfaction deep in his throat.

His voice silky soft, he says, “Do you know how much I want to f**k you right now, Evalina? How much I want to rip off those rags and curl my hands around your throat and f**k you while I listen to your strangled screams? Hmm?”

My mouth is too dry to answer. I sit in tense silence, listening to the drum of rain on the roof.

He chuckles. “Yes, you do.” He makes another sound, closer to a moan than a sigh. “You’ve always known what I want. I’ve missed that.” His voice drops an octave, turning husky. “I’ve missed that sweet cunt of yours, too. So sweet and tight. Or did your dead lover stretch it out with his big c**k?”

I form a crystal clear mental image of Naz making love to me, cradling my face in his hands and whispering his devotion as he spilled himself inside my body and laid claim to my heart and soul.