Dangerous Alliance Read online

  Before I can respond her eyes turn back to the picture. She begins to rock back and forth slowly, her voice rising in song. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”

  It’s not like Mary to brush me off, but as I said, tonight everything feels a little strange . . . a little off. I back away, unnerved by the song and the bleeding-heart girl.

  And I don’t see him until I’m almost at my building. He’s standing by the stairs, on the street, one hand in his pocket, posture relaxed. The dim streetlights pick out the natural highlights of gold that ebb and flow through his straight brown hair.

  His eyes are already set on me; he must have been watching me approach for some time. There’s no escaping him.

  “You don’t belong here,” I say when I’m within hearing distance.

  “I don’t really belong anywhere,” Lander says mildly, “and I told you, I’m going to look out for you. It wasn’t an offer or a suggestion.”

  I shake my head, look around the street nervously. I’ve never invited Lander here. I’ve never even told him where I live.

  “As you can see,” I say tersely, “I’m fine.”

  “Only if you have a loose definition of the word.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He steps forward, into my space, unnerving me the way he always does. “What’s wrong, Adoncia?” he whispers. He raises his hand, traces the curvature of my ear with his finger. Before Lander I didn’t know how sensitive I was there, how just a touch can make my heart speed up a bit, just enough to warm me.

  “Talk to me,” he says.

  But I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t prepared to see him here tonight . . . I wasn’t prepared to ever see him here. I infiltrated his world with manipulations and seductions, but I never imagined he might infiltrate mine.

  Once again I scan our surroundings, which are as dangerous as they are familiar. There, under the nearest streetlight, is a broken bottle; there, next door, a gang insignia is spray-painted on the wall; there, in the far corner, a drug deal is going down, next to bags of garbage. East Harlem hasn’t really kept up with the gentrification of the rest of New York, although there are rumors that it’s coming. After all, we’re right next to one of the richest areas of Manhattan, Lander’s neighborhood. Books and movies have glamorized and exalted the virtues of the sliver of the Upper East Side that Lander inhabits. New York magazine claimed it’s where “the New Yorkers who run the world live.”

  New Yorkers who run the world all living just a few train stops away from East Harlem. It makes sense I suppose. Royalty likes to live near their serfs.

  “Adoncia,” he says, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  Reluctantly I move my eyes back to him. “I don’t bring people here.”

  “Are you ashamed?”

  “No!” I snap, jerking away from him.

  “Then is this the part of your story you don’t want me to see?”

  Stubbornly, I look back to the street. “It’s not safe to just hang around out here. Not at night.”

  “Then invite me in.”

  I laugh. It’s an odd seduction, but then, when have we ever been normal?

  “I’ll go back with you,” I say, finally acquiescing to his earlier request. “I’ll stay at your place tonight if it’s that important to you.”

  “No, take me into yours.”

  The smile dies on my lips and I protectively cross my arms. “It’s a studio. It’s too small for company.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  “I only have a twin bed.”

  “Then we’ll have to stay close. You’ll make my shoulder your pillow.”

  In the distance I can hear the laughter and howling of a group of guys as they prowl down the streets toward where we are. Lander calmly holds out his hand.

  “The keys,” he says simply.

  The first time Lander took me to his home he told me to undress for him. He stood back and admired me, insisting that I watch him as he watched me. It had been difficult to resist covering myself. It had been difficult to expose myself so completely to a man . . . no, not just a man, to a Gable. But even then I didn’t feel as vulnerable as I do now, laying my keys in his hand.

  “Good,” he whispers.

  The whisper is too gentle for this place, too tender considering the strength of his demand. What compels me to obey? Why am I allowing this?

  These are the questions that run through my head as he opens the door to my building. Now, standing by Lander’s side, I see for the first time what’s not here in the small foyer of my building. There’s no security desk, no sitting area, no luxury. Tiny metal mailboxes line the wall, the paint is chipped, the floor beneath our feet is scratched and sullied. And yet I find myself feeling protective of this grittiness and lack of pretense. This is where I’m from.

  But when I turn to him, ready to defend this place, I stop. There’s no judgment in his eyes, just interest. He’s simply observing. He smiles ever so slightly as he looks down at me. “Take me to your apartment.”

  It’s such a simple, reasonable, and terrifying request. With measured steps I climb the stairs, with Lander right behind me. I don’t know if he’s looking at me, or the dingy walls, or the worn carpet that silences our footsteps. But then again, maybe it’s all me, from my Kenneth Cole heels to the water-stained ceiling. It’s the me I show the world and the me that I don’t.

  The hallway leading to my apartment has never seemed so long before, and yet I suddenly wish it was longer. Standing in front of my door I try again to come up with a way to dissuade him from entering, but of course that’s impossible. Lander has made a decision. There will be no dissuasion.

  “I’ve never let a man in here.” My voice is so low even I’m not sure if I’m talking to him or to myself. “It’s always only been me.”

  “And tonight,” he says, evenly, “it’s us.”

  I stand to the side as I watch this man put my key in my door. I watch his wrist twist slightly with the knob, watch as he opens it and steps inside . . . me.

  Just like his dining room table, my desk is covered with papers, all of them dealing with the Gables. The difference is that while Lander’s papers are reports from detectives he’s paid, mine are newspaper clippings and notes that I’ve made from articles I’ve found online or in the library. Under the window is a briefcase filled with money given to me by Micah, as untouched as it is unwanted. Under the desk and in the corners of the room are stacks of books, lovingly categorized by genre and author. But there’s no bookcase, no shelf to elevate them above the linoleum floor. Clothes cover my bed and hang from a clothing rack I bought off a vendor to help compensate for my lack of closet space. On the counter located in the part of the room that is my kitchen sit two boxes of Clif Bars and an unopened bottle of merlot. And next to the merlot is a book about how to talk about wine. I decide quickly that this book is the worst part of the room. My naked attempt to fit into Lander’s world lying there for him to see. The books placed under the desk are discreet but not much better. Books on history, art, tennis, chess, and finance . . . all subjects I versed myself in to make myself into a woman Lander would want. It makes me squirm. I’m folding into myself. But Lander doesn’t seem interested in any of that. Instead he looks at the books in the corners. Books that I love, from The Princess Bride to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He crouches down, runs his fingers over the bindings as if the titles themselves were made of braille rather than a simple font. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Maya Angelou, Anne Rice—they’re all there to greet him. When he stands and walks to the desk, his eyes settle on the only personal photo there—a photo of me and my mother. I’m the one wearing the pretty pink princess dress, with a rhinestone tiara in my hair. My mother is curtsying to me and I’m giggling madly, happy in my little Disney fairy tale.

  “She looks different,” Lander notes.

  It hits me that he’s comparing my mother in this picture to how she looked when he
saw her. The first time he met Julieta Jiménez was when she was screaming at the woman whose husband she was sleeping with. The next time would be on the witness stand as she pleaded her innocence to an unsympathetic jury.

  In a flash I’m by his side, snatching the photo from his grasp. “She was different,” I say. “She was happy.”

  “Was she happy often?” he asks. “Before Nick Foley’s death?”

  I open my mouth to insist that she was, but instead of words, memories come. Memories of my mother crying late at night, after she thought I was asleep. Memories of her looking wistfully at cabs as we waited for the bus in the rain. Memories of her mumbled apologies when a woman whose house we were cleaning angrily accused her of using the wrong polish on the silver. “There were times,” I say once I’ve found my voice. “There were times when she was happy. She was happy when she was telling me fairy tales. And it made her happy when she talked of her dreams for the future, a few dreams for her, lots for me.”

  He nods as if to say he understands, but I wonder if he really does. I wonder if he knows what it’s like to rely on dreams for happiness. I put the photo facedown as he walks around the small space, looking up at the empty walls and the flickering light fixture. “You can’t afford better than this?”

  It occurs to me to take offense but I find that I can’t. “Maybe I could,” I admit. “But New York is an expensive city.”

  “But you could,” he presses. “You could have found things to put on your walls too. You could have found the money for a bookcase. I know Travis pays his assistants extremely well. And even if you weren’t working for him, you could have pursued other careers that would have afforded you more than this.”

  “That’s not where my focus has been,” I say bluntly.

  “No, it hasn’t been,” Lander acknowledges. “It’s been on punishing others.” He stops and turns to me, radiating a new kind of energy. “You’ve also focused on punishing yourself.”

  I stare at the wall behind him, unwilling to explore his line of thought.

  He moves close to me, putting his hand around my waist, his lips by my ear. “Life is not meant to be a punishment.”

  “Meant to be?” I repeat with a quiet laugh. “All those children starving around the world, is that meant to be? The people who are killed in genocides, the women who lose their kids to violence, the kids who grow up to be violent despite having loving parents—is any of that meant to be?” I step back, pulling away from him. “Haven’t you figured it out by now?” I ask. “There is no meant to be. There’s only what is.”

  “Maybe,” Lander says, his eyes never leaving mine. “But more often than not, what is is what we make of it.”

  I laugh again, this time more lightly. It’s a pleasure engaging in a battle of wits with a man like Lander.

  Again he studies the room, absorbing its shabby details. “There’s something I’d like to see.”

  “What’s that? A poster perhaps? A piece of decent furniture?”

  “You.” He turns back to me, his eyes alight with a new idea, or perhaps a new vision. “I want to see you wearing nothing, stretched out on this bed, on top of these piles of clothes that make up your costumes.”

  I cock my head to the side. “This is my home and you are an uninvited guest,” I say, a little teasing, a little provocative. “What makes you think you can ask that of me here?”

  “Because it isn’t your home,” he says, his voice both gentle and steady. “Not as it stands now. It’s just a place where you sleep and where you plan. And now I’m the one holding the keys.”

  I hesitate for a moment. It’s just a game after all. There’s no reason not to play along. But as I slowly take off my jacket, my shoes, my shirt, I find myself trembling slightly as he watches. I’m unsure of myself, unsure of this moment as my skirt falls to my ankles, my bra falls to the floor. I wait for him to touch me, but he only watches and waits, his eyes drinking me in as I finally bend down to remove my thong.

  When I stand again, I’m conscious of the flickering light, of how it reflects on my body, on my flaws.

  But the way Lander is looking at me, you’d think he was looking at something perfect.

  Slowly I walk to the bed, then lower myself, stretching out on the mattress full of clothes, feeling silk, cotton, and leather against my skin.

  He steps closer, but he doesn’t reach for me. The only thing that touches me are his eyes, which are drinking me in, memorizing my details.

  “When was the last time you touched yourself, Adoncia?”

  My mouth drops open, and for a moment I feel innocent, like a virgin. “It’s not . . . That’s not something I really do.”

  “No?” He leans down, lets his fingers run gently up my leg, making me inhale sharply at the pleasure of it. But when I try to touch him he steps away.

  “I want you to touch yourself now, slip your fingers between your legs. I want you to make yourself wet for me.”

  I bite down on my lip. I’m trembling again and the truth is, I’m already wet. But still, I follow his instructions, slowly, hesitantly moving my hand between my legs, touching myself here, on this bed, under my roof, caressing my clit, toying with it, embracing the hedonism of it as my body begins to move against the clothes beneath me, my eyelids half-closed.

  Lander reaches forward, takes my free hand, and places it on my breast. “Go ahead,” he urges, his voice soft but insistent. And almost of their own volition my fingers pinch my hardened nipples as my other hand continues to bring me closer and closer to a climax. I am literally writhing before him as he watches me.

  “Yes, Adoncia.” I hear his voice as it weaves into the pattern of my moans. “Give yourself this pleasure. You won’t deprive yourself, not while you’re with me.”

  “Lander,” I gasp, but he puts a finger against my lips.

  “Shh.” He leans forward, whispers in my ear. “I want to see you come.”

  I thrash my head from side to side; I can feel how close I am. I have never once been able to bring myself to orgasm with my fingers. But here, under Lander’s gaze, I can feel the explosion coming. Feel it building inside of me. My own titillation and unbridled desire take control as my fingers move faster, as I become wetter and my body aches and tingles.

  “Slip your finger inside yourself,” Lander whispers. “You know what to do.”

  And I do, touching myself in so many ways. And that’s when it comes, the wave of rapture crashing through me, making my back arch and my last semblance of control dissipate. And it is in that moment that I feel Lander gently pulling my hands away, feel his body on top of mine, his arms wrap around me as he rides with me into another wave. I feel his lips against my neck, feel his tongue as he tastes my skin, hear him as he whispers, “You are more than a vessel for rage.”

  I try to absorb the words but I can barely think right now as I cling to him, as he presses inside me deeper and deeper. He pulls away from my grasp, using his arms to lift himself, staring down at me as he continues to rock against me. I meet his rhythm, thrusting my pelvis against him so now my clit is rubbing against the very base of his cock. “Lander,” I whisper again, and this time he doesn’t silence me. His breathing is staggered with mine as my bed creaks. For so many years this room has been sterile and austere, a place where satisfaction meant revenge, where passion came from hate.

  But now we’re baptizing this room with different emotions, different desires, different energy. And he’s right. Now, in this moment, I am not a vessel for rage. As Lander presses into me again and again I am simply a woman who revels in being alive.

  When the climax comes again, he comes with me, calling out my name as I cry out to God. For a split second I have a vision of a supernova lighting up a starless sky, pushing the boundaries of what is . . .

  . . . and what can be.

  chapter nine

  * * *

  The next morning I wake up with the sun. Unlike Lander, I don’t have blackout drapes. Still, usually I can sleep
through the sunrise.

  But now I find myself pressed into the side of my lover, like I’m Eve just taken from his rib. And as I blink my eyes and adjust to the morning light I realize . . .

  . . . this room looks a hell of a lot worse in the daytime.

  How is it I never realized that before? How could I have missed how depressing this place is?

  Because it wasn’t my focus.

  As quietly as possible I get up and try to figure out a way to make the room look marginally presentable before Lander wakes. But of course there isn’t really anything I can do. I have no storage space, and even if I did my problem isn’t just that what I have is sort of all over the place. My problem is what I don’t have: pictures on the wall, decent furniture, anything that is even remotely ornamental or a single wall that isn’t suffering from chipped paint or water marks.

  But as Lander pointed out, this isn’t my home. Not really.

  I study Lander as he sleeps peacefully in my bed. How many beds have I been in over my life? Every foster family, every children’s services facility, every shelter, every lover, they’ve all had beds. Until now the only bed that hasn’t served a purely utilitarian purpose was Lander’s. Even the beds of my past lovers were nothing more than places where I could find much-needed distractions.

  Well, no, that’s not quite right. In a way those beds were places for me to further destroy myself. Places where I learned to be deadly.

  And then, of course, there was the bed I was in when I was a little kid. That was my safe place. So much for that.

  I turn to the window and focus on the fading shades of pink streaked across the sky. Everything’s changing . . . and I don’t know what that means.

  “Adoncia.”

  Just the sound of his voice does something to me. But I don’t turn around. I don’t really want to see his expression as he takes in my apartment in this light for the first time.

  “Time to get up,” I say in as cheery a voice as possible. “We have work to do.”

  While Lander showers I throw on some jeans and a T-shirt so I can go down to get the mail that I neglected the night before. Jessica has a list of chores for me to do: check in with the venue for the dinner, with the florist, with the staff of the candidate. But mostly I have to figure out how the fuck I’m going to get that stepladder out from under her bed and back into the storage closet.