Lying and Kissing (4 page)

The house was huge, extending far back from the street. An elegant staircase led up to the second floor with another suited, frowning bodyguard at the top to make sure none of the guests strayed up there. At the far end of the hallway, I could see the huge living room through an open door. And in the corner of the hallway was another door, tightly closed. The door to Luka’s office.

We trooped through to the living room, sat down on the chairs they’d put out for us and got out our instruments. We’d tuned up and were just about to start when he walked in.

Some people have
presence.
I know this because I have none of it myself. I disappear into the background.

When Luka entered the room, all of us looked up. Even people who’d been facing in the opposite direction turned around. You just
knew
he was there, like a sixth sense for pure, undiluted evil.

He was wearing a black suit and white shirt, but the shirt was lazily unbuttoned at the neck and his tie hung unfastened around his neck. I could see just a hint of broad, curving pec and a glimpse of black—tattoos. The photos from his file swam up into my mind: symbols of gangs and death and brotherhood, a world completely different from mine.

He was huge—not just taller than me but broader, too, his shoulders almost seeming to brush the door frame, yet his waist was tight and perfect. He looked as if he was chiseled from stone, no softness anywhere.

It was his face, though, that really hit me. His eyes were blue but not the warm, clear blue of a summer day. They were like a winter sky when the air is so cold it hurts. And I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth, at that gorgeous full lower lip pulled tight in anger, or the shadow of stubble on his cheeks.

If someone had painted a portrait of the devil, he’d have looked exactly like Luka Malakov. Evil and beautiful. Scary and tempting.

The photo hadn’t even come close to doing him justice, not to his looks nor his sense of menace
.
It’s not that he was different from a normal man, in the way night is different from day. Night is just the absence of light. Luka sucked the light right out of the room.

I saw Karen react out of the corner of my eye. Her mouth fell open. Her knuckles went white on the bow of her cello. Fight or flight, like a mouse seeing a hawk. I think she stopped breathing for a few seconds; I know I did. My heart started slamming against my ribcage, my palms sweaty. I was terrified on a deep, instinctual level I’d never felt before.

Wait. That’s not true.

Once. I’d been scared like that once.

But this time, the fear was churning and boiling inside me, turning into something else. A deep, dark heat was separating out and spreading down through my stomach...down to my groin.

Fight or flight.

Flight or fuck.

There were a couple of people hanging around in the middle of the room, blocking Luka’s path, but he just strode towards them and
expected
them to get the hell out of his way, and they did.

He spoke in rapid-fire Russian to the bodyguard who’d let us in—the one with the scar, who seemed to be in charge of the others. I didn’t even process what he was saying, even though I’d been happily translating his calls for months. I was lost in the sound of his voice.

Like the photo, the recordings weren’t the same as the live experience. Each hard, snapped-out syllable felt like my brain was being slapped with a warm leather glove. I was reeling in seconds.

This was him. This was the man I’d been secretly fantasizing about, made flesh after so many months as just a voice. And now I knew what he was: a man who sold death to the highest bidder. A man who’d kill me if I got in his way. He’d certainly kill me if he found out I was CIA.

I have to get out of here. Right. Now.

And yet I was trapped there like an insect in amber. His presence seemed to drain all the will out of me. I didn’t want to run. I wanted to stay right there and look at him. And, down between my thighs, there was a lashing, snaking heat like I’d never felt before.

No. This is just a twisted crush.
Desperate for excitement, I’d locked onto some fantasy guy, created in my own head from a voice.
This is the real thing, Arianna, and he’s dangerous.
I needed to pull myself together and look away—

He looked at me. Just a glance at the four of us, a sweep of those icy blue eyes. But, as he passed over me, his gaze lingered.

And then locked.

It was as if someone had opened an oven door right in front of me. The wave of heat licked every exposed inch of flesh, from my bare shoulders to my arms to my legs. The heat throbbed and then started to pulse, burning through the fabric of my dress to the skin beneath. I couldn’t seem to draw a breath, the room’s air suddenly desert-dry in my throat. The warmth seemed to slide around my breasts, underneath and then over the top, stroking my nipples in an elegant caress.

Some men undress you with their eyes; Luka was full-on groping me with his. Our gazes were locked together—he seemed as unable to look away as I was. The heat was rising and scalding inside me, destroying every coherent thought. Between my thighs I could feel the arousal tighten and turn to slick moisture.
Another few seconds and I’m going to melt right into my chair.

Then Roberta’s voice, right in my ear. “
Focus!”

I jerked and tore my gaze away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luka stare at me for one more beat of my heart...and then finally look away.

Roberta knew. She’d seen me on the security cameras, staring at Luka like some lovesick puppy. She was too kind to ask me what the hell I was doing—she’d just snapped me back to reality.
I owe her one. Did Adam notice?
Maybe not. Maybe it was the sort of thing only another woman would pick up on.

Maybe I could still pull this thing off.

Luka was marching out of the room. When he passed through the doorway, the whole room seemed to take a breath. I drew in a long, shuddering gasp myself and it felt like the first one I’d taken in minutes. Under the dress, my breasts still throbbed with remembered heat.

Next to me, Karen started to say something and then shook her head and stayed quiet. Clearly, she’d been affected by him a little, too.

She started to play and, after a few seconds, the rest of us did, too.

***

We played our first set and it went well. I wasn’t up to the standard of the others, but we were playing simple, well-known classics and I got through it with only a few mistakes. The others were friendly and sympathetic. I liked them.

All I could think about, though, was Luka.

As the party got started, he returned, tie now neatly in place. The fastened shirt didn’t do anything to hide the strong lines of his chest, though. Even with his jacket on, you could see the thickness of his upper arms and the solid sweep of his back, so wide from shoulder to shoulder. I kept my eyes off of him, except when he was looking completely the other way and I thought I could risk it. A couple of times, when he looked round and I was too slow to glance away, I could feel...
something.
Something dark and thick in the air between us, shot through with bright flashes. My whole body trembled like a magnet whose opposite is nearby.

I looked, very firmly, at my sheet music until the danger had passed.

After an hour, Karen put down her bow, rubbed her wrists and said we should take our break. We all stood. The two guys wandered off, probably in search of free wine. Karen pulled out a cell phone and went out into the hallway. That left me in the living room with about ten guests.

“Now,” said Adam in my earpiece.

I walked through to the hallway, trying to look as if I was just wandering and not really going anywhere in particular. On the way out of the living room, I nudged the door with my hip and then stepped through before it slowly closed, giving me privacy. The hallway was chilly—every time a guest arrived, the freezing night air rushed in. No one was hanging around out here. The bodyguard was still standing stoically at the top of the stairs but the door to the office was out of his line of sight. As long as no new guests showed up for a few minutes, it was just me and Karen.

I moved casually in front of the office door and then leaned back against it. Just an accidental push on the handle with my ass and I felt it swing silently open behind me. I took a deep breath. Karen had wrapped her arms around her against the cold and was turned away from me, trying to have a private conversation with someone—probably a boyfriend. Perfect. I figured I’d quickly step inside, slap the bug on the laptop and be back in the hallway in no more than five seconds.

I turned and took a single step into the office...and stopped.

Where was the laptop?!

I’d assumed it would be out and set up, but the desk was bare.

I reversed course into the hallway and pressed my back against the wall. Eyes squeezed shut, I stared at the after-image of the office in my mind. No laptop case on the floor. Nothing on the shelves but books. Unless it was actually hidden away in a safe or something, it wasn’t there.

“No, Connor,” Karen sounded embarrassed and yet turned on. “I am definitely
not
getting any more piercings. Especially not
there.
”

I knew I didn’t have to say anything. I knew Adam would be watching me through the security cameras. I found the one in the hallway, looked up into it and gave a firm shake of my head.

“Shit!” said Adam. “He must have taken it upstairs with him.” He let out a long sigh and I heard him rubbing the back of his neck. “There’s nothing you can do. Play the second set and then come on out and we’ll pick you up.”

As I walked back into the living room, I almost felt like crying. All that time and planning, all that practicing the violin, Roberta and Adam brought hundreds of miles from Virginia, all for nothing. My very first shot at a field op and it was a complete bust.

Karen rejoined me, a little flushed, and then the two guys. We began to play again, but I couldn’t concentrate. It wasn’t my fault, but that didn’t matter. There was no way I’d get another field assignment after this.

Part of me was glad. This whole thing had been terrifying enough. Crawling back to the support staff sounded pretty good, in some ways.

But I remembered how Adam had smiled at me, how he’d believed in me. He’d pushed for me to be given a chance and now I was going to disappoint him.

I saw Luka a few more times, talking intently to people, shaking hands and sometimes embracing people in firm, back-slapping hugs. There was no self-consciousness to him at all, no...
doubt.
I thought of myself at a party, standing nervously in the corner and waiting for someone to talk to me. He was the polar opposite.

There were women at the party, all of them in their mid-twenties and all of them, from what I could tell, Russian. They were classily dressed and model-beautiful, mostly blonde—exactly how I’d imagined Luka’s girlfriends, when I’d listened to his calls with them. All of them—every one—latched onto him at some point, grabbing his arm and looking up at him with big eyes. And he gave them a smile.