TORTURE ME_ The Bandits MC(109)

“Excuse the mess,” she said. “I’ve got books everywhere.”



“I see that,” I said, moving a stack of books off the couch and onto the floor. “Are you getting ready to move or something?”



“No, I just don’t have room for all of my books here. I need to move,” she called from the bedroom.



My original assumption, that she was studious and bookish, was reinforced by her apartment. I reached down and picked up one of the books I’d just placed on the floor, trying to get a glimpse into what made her tick. The title along the hardcover’s spine was in Russian. Of course. I picked up a few more and saw that they were all in Russian. At least that whole stack was.



“Do you have any titles in English?” I called back to her bedroom.



“I’ve got a few,” she said. She walked out of her room in a loose t-shirt and pair of jeans. While the jeans were tight, hugging her hips and ass, her shirt hid her figure again, just as her sweater had hidden her from me until I touched her or the seatbelt found the spaces between her delicious curves.



I stared at her slack-jawed as I tried to put the book in my hand back onto the stack where I’d found it.



“I’ve found that a lot is lost in translation,” she said as she brushed her hair, not noticing my staring, feasting eyes.



“You know, I’ve heard that a lot,” I told her. “I don’t get it though. Can’t we just translate it directly over?”



“Oh no,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. She nodded toward her bedroom, telling me to follow while she walked back in there, continuing her explanation. “Translation is an art all its own. You can’t just copy things directly over. A lot of words don’t translate well, and you have to find something with a similar meaning in the language you’re going to. And sometimes you don’t have an equivalent. For example, you may have a single term in one language that you have to actually explain in another because there’s not a single word for that concept.”



“I guess I never really thought of it that way,” I told her, sitting down on her full-size bed. I looked around in her bedroom. She lived a quiet, cramped, studious life it looked like.



“Most people don’t,” she assured me. “It’s something you don’t notice until you’re working between languages.”



“And you do that a lot, don’t you?” I asked.



“I do. And not just between English and Russian.” She winked in her mirror. Then, she turned to face me, still pulling the brush through her hair. “I hope you don’t mind,” she apologized. “It just gets so tangled when I wear it up all day.”



“I’m in no rush, but you can bring your brush with you, you know. You don’t have to try to do everything while we’re here.”



She smiled. “You’re right. How long should I pack for?” She turned around to face me and leaned back against her little dresser.



For the first time all day, it was really just the two of us, and unless I was just that rusty on my signals, she was leaving herself open for me just then. It would have been so easy to take advantage of the moment and jump up from her bed to take her right there against her furniture. With the mirror right there behind her, I would have loved to turn her around to face it while I took her from behind. It didn’t seem right, though. She struck me as the type of woman who enjoyed being treated like a princess instead of like a cheap hooker.



“Earth to Gage,” she called to me, snapping her fingers and bringing me back from my imagination. “How long do I need to pack for?”



“Pack for about a week, just to be safe. Hopefully it won’t take that long, but just in case,” I told her.



“A whole week?” Her voice was strained.



“Yes, a whole week. You might want to call the university and let them know you won’t be back for a few days,” I explained.



“No way. What do I tell them?”



“Tell them the truth. Tell them you’ve got the opportunity to meet with a member of the Russian criminal underground and you’re going to get all of the information you can out of him.”



She stood upright and looked at me like I’d just given her some kind of revelation. “You know, you just changed that whole situation for me,” she said, enraptured now by the opportunity to treat Dimitri like he was some sort of underworld royalty.



“Well, look, don’t get too excited,” I told her. “We still need to get back to my place for the night. And I’d like to eat at some point. So, you can finish packing, or I can do it for you.” I cocked an eyebrow, enjoying the idea of deciding what she was going to wear.