Page 14 of Edge of Ruin
“Yes,” I said. “It’s in memorium. For a friend I lost some years ago.”
His hand dropped. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded and turned to face him. It took all my nerve to raise my eyes to his, and when I finally managed it, the smoldering hunger in his gaze stole my breath.
“Do you have any other tattoos?” he asked.
I lifted my chin, straightened my spine. He had no right to do this, when I was all alone in the dark with him. Throwing those hot, intense sexual vibes at me, when I felt so vulnerable and tempted. “That’s for me to know, and for you to wonder about.” I aimed for a crisp, dismissive tone. Insofar as I could, with no breath to back it up.
The breathlessness once again made my words sound flirtatious. God help me.
Sure enough, he didn’t look dismissed. He looked like he was wondering what else was written on my naked body, as I had just freely invited him to do. Who could blame him? He was wondering so damn hard, I could feel it against my skin.
If he made a move on me now, I wouldn’t have the force of will to push him away. I was gooey to the core. I was sopping wet for him. One featherlight push, and down I would fall, right onto my back. Take me. Right now.
After all my uppity pronouncements. All my fighting words.
“Good night.” He turned and headed out the door.
I stood for a moment, looking at the black rectangle, wide open to the fragrant, noisy forest outside.
The candlelit room suddenly seemed terribly empty.
Chapter Six
Jack
I paced the length of my living room, hands clenched, stopping at each end like a caged beast.
I’d just spent hours on the Internet, researching Vivi D’Onofrio. I’d browsed around on her commercial website, looking at her jewelry designs. It was a kind of rabbit hole I’d never fallen down before. Necklaces, rings, brooches, earrings, nose rings, bracelets, anklets, toe rings, piercings. Little twisted metal frames to decorate perfume bottles, Christmas tree ornaments, mobiles, jewelry boxes. All made of glass, beads, metal, wood, homemade paper, found materials.
The stuff was weirdly beautiful. Unusual. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was exactly that I liked about it. I wasn’t a jewelry-wearing sort of guy myself, but I liked her prehistoric-meets-steam punk-meets-futuristic vibe. Weird, earthy, ethereal, all at the same time.
I wondered how she dealt with her mail-order business. If I were one of the bad guys, the first thing I would do would be to order a pair of earrings from her site, go to the address they were sent from, and start pushing whoever I found there. Dangerous for everyone involved.
There were also a lot of references regarding a big-shot art gallery in New York City, run by a guy named Brian Wilder. There was a picture of this Brian, one of those stiff, mannered shots, where the subject tries to look smart and deep and thoughtful by holding on to his chin with a hooked finger, as if hiding a zit.
The guy’s photo made my prick-o-meter shoot way off the chart.
I had also studied shots of Vivi’s artwork from the archived catalogs of the Wilder Gallery, from five or six years ago. They had much the same vibe as the smaller jewelry pieces on her website, but they were much bigger, much bolder and more ambitious, and the prices staggered me. Jesus wept. Even if the gallery took a huge cut, she could have gotten rich, if she’d stayed with it.
But hey. For some people, freedom was more important than wealth. No one knew that better than me. That was the thought that had propelled me into frantic pacing.
The situation was so fucked. I could hardly breathe. Wound up, turned on. The way things were going, I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself from tossing her down and having at her like a wild animal. And my instincts whispered the thought to me like a seductive siren song. Angry and proud as she was, I had a feeling that she wouldn’t stop me.
There were no checks or balances here. There was nothing to hold me back from this disaster but my own fast eroding self-control. Everything about her pulled me. I was strung out on the fruity, sweet smell of her hair. The outrageous vivid color of it. I couldn’t get over those big, brilliant eyes, the exotic shape of them. Her delicate, pointed chin. Her pink, full mouth.
I wondered, uncomfortably, who the friend was, the one she’d gotten the memorial tattoo for. I wondered if this person was a lover who had died. Wondered if she still missed the guy. Or grieved for him. He must have been important, to get his own commemorative tattoo.
Big can of worms. None of my goddamn business.
Her shoulder was so thin and delicate, decorated with that tiny, stylized sun image. Her skin so smooth, her muscles sinuous and strong, despite how slender her small frame was. Small and lithe and well-knit and perfect.
I looked up at the clock and did the math. It was six-thirty AM in Italy, where Duncan was currently wallowing in romantic bliss, in some picturesque B&B in Tuscany. He would be unthrilled to be dragged out of the clasp of his new lady’s silken limbs. Good. It served the bastard right for getting me into this.
Duncan’s satellite phone rang and rang. Eight times, nine, ten, eleven. I just sat there and waited, grim and relentless.
Duncan finally picked up. “Jack? What the fuck?” His voice was thick with sleep.
