We flood our senses with each other and the room disappears. The whole world stops spinning. Raw desire courses through every fiber in my body. It is madness. It is obsession. We fuse irrevocably and indisputably. Time passes in our singular state. Eventually, I raise my head breathing hard, and look into his eyes. They are impossibly dilated. My breath hitches.
‘Have you ever heard the story of the scorpion that asked a frog to help him across a river?’ he asks, his voice low and strange.
I stare into the crystalline eyes. They are inscrutable crystal worlds. Fabulously beautiful but inhospitable to carbon based creatures. Slowly, I shake my head and feel the strands of my hair brushing my bare shoulders.
‘The frog said, ‘No. You could sting me while we are halfway across the river and I will die.” The scorpion said, “If I sting you I will die too.” That logic made sense to the frog so it said, “All right. Climb on my back and I’ll give you a ride.” Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog cried out in mortal pain. “You stupid scorpion, now we are both going to die. Why did you do it?” And the scorpion replied, “What do you expect I’m a scorpion. That’s what I do.”’
I feel an eerie sense of calm permeate my whole body, perhaps even my soul. He doesn’t know it is too late to turn back.
‘The frog should have learned to fly. He should have taken the battle to the air where the scorpion would have been disorientated,’ I whisper, my jaw tight.
He smiles sadly. ‘You’d have made a good mafia general,’ he says.
‘Actually I got the idea from Olga,’ I say.
‘I take it back. You’re far too truthful to be one.’
‘I’ve told my share of lies. Ask my mother,’ I say lightly.
‘I’m a ruffian and a murderer, Dahlia.’
‘Difficult to tame, I know,’ I say softly, ‘but not impossible.’
He stands immobile and as tense and sprung as a fully stretched catapult, ‘I don’t want to break you.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll bend.’
He lifts me off the table. I curl my thighs around his hips and he carries me to the bed and lays me on it. I lie on my back and look at him shedding his clothes and think, you are mine. You don’t know it yet, but you are mine. For ours is not a monkey love. It’s pure and beautiful. One day he will realize that jut having animal sex with me is not enough.
He lies down beside me.
‘I own you, Dahlia. I own every inch of you,’ he states possessively.
‘How can you say that if you are planning to give me away in less than a month’s time?’
‘I’m not giving you away, rybka.’
I squash the urge to grin like an idiot. I open my mouth to reply and he places a finger across my lips.
‘Don’t speak,’ he says, and his eyes are so desolate I feel frightened for him. What is it that this man hides? Why does he suffer so?
I stare up him mutely. He says nothing more and eventually I fall asleep inside the tight circle of his arm.
Three
Dahlia Fury
I wake up the next morning alone, touch the indent in the pillow, and sigh. I have no idea where he is or when I will see him again. My relationship with Zane reminds me of a falconer training a wild falcon. He brings the bird to ‘flying weight’. It is a euphemism for keeping the bird hungry. Only through small gifts of food will it recognize the falconer as a benevolent master and hunt for him. Like a falcon in training I feel underfed for his attention.
I get out of bed, use the bathroom, and going up to my own room get dressed before I go downstairs to the kitchen. Yuri is sitting at the counter. When he sees me he nods in acknowledgement, but his eyes slide away quickly.
‘Good morning,’ I say with as much dignity as I can muster. He saw me fall down the last few stairs yesterday. I turn towards Olga. She is standing on tiptoe putting something away in a top cupboard. She pops her head out from behind the door of the cupboard and smiles cheerfully. ‘Good morning.’
‘Can I please have a word with you, Olga?’
Yuri stands up and brushes crumbs off his clothes. ‘Right I’m off.’
I watch him leave and take the seat next to the one he just vacated. Olga closes the cupboard, goes to the coffee machine comes back with a mug of coffee that she puts in front of me.
‘Thanks Olga,’ I say and take a sip.
She sits opposite me. ‘So … how can Olga help?’
‘I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Hmmm …’
‘Last night you said that I have a chance of finding a way to Zane … well, Aleksandr’s heart.’