Fredrik’s housekeeper comes into the kitchen, plump and older than both of us, precisely the kind of woman that Fredrik can never be tempted by, which is why he hired her. She asks him in Spanish if she can go home to her family early tonight. Fredrik responds in Spanish, granting her request. She nods respectfully and walks past me into the living room. I watch her from the corner of my eye as she takes a bulky brown leather purse up from the floor beside the leather recliner and shoulders it. Then she makes her way to the front door, shutting it softly behind her.
Sarai is standing in the shadows of the living room when my gaze falls away from the front door. I didn’t even hear the sliding glass door open when she entered, and apparently neither did Fredrik.
She steps into the kitchen and into the light, her arms crossed loosely under her br**sts, her delicate fingers arched over her girlish, yet toned biceps. She is so beautiful to me, even in the ravaged condition she’s in.
“How long did you plan on leaving me outside?” she asks both of us with a trace of irritation in her voice.
“No one ever said you had to stay out there, doll,” Fredrik replies.
He likes her, it’s obvious to me and he probably knows as much. But he also knows that I’ll kill him, too. Though, I trust him more than I worry if he’ll ever revert to his dark side and harm her of all people. Fredrik Gustavsson is a beast of the most carnal kind with a love for women and a love for blood, but he has boundaries and standards and he takes loyalty and respect and friendship very seriously. His loyalty to me is, after all, the reason he betrays the Order every day by helping me.
Sarai walks over to me and looks up into my eyes, cocking her head softly to one side. The smell of her flesh and the gentle warmth emanating from her skin nearly sends me over the edge. I’ve done fairly well to hold myself back since I kissed her in the elevator. I intend to maintain that control.
When she doesn’t say anything, but continues to look into my eyes as if she’s waiting on something, I become confused. She cocks her head to the other side and her eyes soften, though with what exactly, I’m not quite certain. It feels expectant and a little mischievous.
I hear Fredrik chuckle under his breath and the refrigerator door closing, but I never look away from Sarai.
“Things are so much easier the way I do it,” I hear him say with a smile in his voice.
“Contact me as soon as you get the information on Niklas,” I say still looking into Sarai’s eyes and disregarding his comment altogether. “And when you hear from your contact that Dina Gregory is safe in Phoenix.”
“I will do that,” Fredrik says and then walks toward the hall entrance that leads toward his room. But he stops and looks back at us. “If you don’t mind—”
I finally look away from Sarai and give Fredrik my full attention. “Don’t worry,” I interrupt, “I know where the guest quarters are.”
He shoves the corner of a sandwich that I barely noticed him prepare into his mouth and bites down, tearing the bread away from his lips. I catch him wink at Sarai just before he disappears down the hall. It was perfectly harmless, directed at what he assumes might happen between us once he’s gone, rather than a flirting attempt.
“What information on Niklas?” Sarai asks, her soft features now shadowed by concern.
I reach out and drag my fingers behind a small portion of her hair. “I have a lot to tell you,” I announce and I let my hand fall away before I lose control of myself and touch her more than I intended. “I know you must be exhausted. Why don’t you shower and get settled in first. Then we’ll talk.”
A soft grin sneaks up on her lips, but then fails under her blushing cheeks.
“Are you saying I’m disgusting?” she asks coyly. “Is that your way of telling me I need to wash my disgusting ass?”
“Actually, yes,” I admit.
For a flinching moment, she appears offended, but then she just shakes her head and laughs it off. I admire that about her. I admire a lot about her.
“All right.” Her playful expression shifts into something more serious again. “But you have to tell me everything, Victor. And I know you may have a lot to tell me, but I want you to know that there’s a lot I need to say to you as well.”
I expected as much. And before she pushes herself up on her toes, leaning her body against mine and kisses me on the lips, I know that by the time she gets out of that shower I’m going to have to figure out what we’re going to do. I’m going to have to make some important decisions that will affect both of us.
Because I am sure of only one thing: Sarai can never go home.
Sarai
When I return, Victor is sitting in the living room, perched on the edge of the couch, leaning over the glass coffee table now littered with pieces of paper and photographs. He continues to sift through them without raising his head to look at me as I walk farther into the room. But he’s not fooling me, I know he’s as aware of my presence as much as I want him to be.
I raided Fredrik’s closet for a white T-shirt, which I’ve slipped down over my bare br**sts. Unfortunately, I’m still in the same panties I put on this morning, but Fredrik’s boxer-briefs aren’t exactly the kind of undergarments I would want to wear to seduce Victor. Just a T-shirt and panties. Of course, I made it a point to wear as little as possible, because I want Victor and I’m not shy in the least bit about letting him know it. Though I’m still having a hard time believing I’m even in the same room as him again after months of thinking he was gone forever.
I think the kiss in the elevator is where my mind is suspended, as though time stopped in that moment and every part of my being is still yearning for the moment to continue, but the rest of the world has still been going on all around me.
I sit down next to him, pulling one bare foot onto the couch and tucking it underneath my thigh.
“What’s all this stuff?” I gaze down at the paper and photographs on the table.
He fingers a few pieces of paper, stacking them into a precise spot. “It’s a job,” he says and then places a photograph of a man wearing a wife-beater tank on the top of the small pile. “I work for myself now.”
That takes me aback. “What do you mean?” I think I know exactly what he means, but I’m having a hard time believing it.
He picks up the stack and hits the edges against the table to make all of the pieces fall neatly into place. Then he slides the stack down into a manila envelope.
“I left the Order, Sarai.” He glances over at me.
He presses the little flaps of the silver clasp down to seal the envelope.
Victor sighs.
“Vonnegut found out about us,” he says and has my undivided attention. “It was Samantha…the night she died. Before I left the Order, I met with Vonnegut in Berlin, the first face-to-face meeting I’d had with him in months. I was in an interrogation room. Four walls. One door. A table. Two chairs. Just me and Vonnegut sitting across from each other with a light blazing in the ceiling above us.” He looks back out the glass door behind him and then goes on:
“At first I thought for sure he brought me there to kill me. I was prepared—”
“To die?” If he says yes, I’ll slap him for it.
“No,” he answers and I feel like I can breathe a little more. “I went prepared. I kidnapped Vonnegut’s wife before I met with him. Fredrik held her in a room, prepared to do…his thing, if it came down to that.”