Burn (13 page)

There was a knock at the door two rooms away.

“Mon? Come on!” It was Darren.

I ran through the bedroom, the living room, the dining area, and called through the foyer, “One second!”

Red dress.

But when I got to the closet, I realized I didn’t want to look like a bitch on fire. I didn’t want to be dangerously sexy. I wanted to be sweet and approachable. I slipped on the cream dress. I looked pretty. Like a woman of grace.

                                                  
CHAPTER 27. 

JONATHAN

Plan B was on his way to the museum from the airport. Petra had gone to her doctor’s appointment and gleefully told me she’d have to stop flying in a few months. I envied Jacques.

I’d left Feran with Monica and Darren, sent someone else for Plan B, and drove myself to the museum. I was much more comfortable at B.C. Mod than at the Eclipse show. My wife held little sway on this side of the border, and my place on the finance committee came not through family connections but a love of art Lanie Jackson had noticed when I donated some postmodern pieces to the burgeoning museum.

It was a small space and would never be the Moma or L.A. Mod, but Vancouver didn’t need a palace. It needed something intimate, like the city itself.

That night would be a smallish, boozy affair with collectors and fellow curators. It was Monica’s moment, and without Kevin around to suck the wind out of her, she could enjoy it. At the entrance, a string quartet played lilting top forty classical with a pianist at a black baby grand. I said some hellos, shook some hands, laughed at a couple of stupid jokes about L.A., and got a whiskey. I eventually found the Unnamed Threesome by following the sound of Monica’s voice.

It wasn’t the same piece. Though her voice, layered forty times like angels singing, then screaming, then moaning, was perfect, the piece wasn’t as good. Adequate. It would do. It wasn’t shameful, and it didn’t look wrong as much as it looked somehow aborted. I couldn’t figure out if the difference was that I’d seen it in its complete state and my eye had been colored, or if it truly did have something truncated about it.

Samuel Kendall approached me, hand out, wearing the same black turtleneck he always wore. “Did you see the Simulcra Brothers piece in the West Hall?”

“Not yet.” I pointed at the truncated house. “Got stopped by the voice.”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I saw it in L.A.”

“Ah, so you saw it complete.” He ground his teeth. He was not a happy man. “It was good. Amateur mistake.” He wagged his finger at me. “Never deal with amateurs.”

I swallowed my drink and smiled. “Amateur comes from the Latin agent
amatus
. To love. Never worry about love. Love delivers. It’s the incompetent professionals that’ll screw you.”

Kendall laughed bitterly. “Every freaking time.” He looked over my shoulder. “Who is that?” I followed his gaze to Plan B, who had just arrived.

“Harry Enrich, the president of Carnival Records. Great guy. I have some property for him to look at. He’s thinking of opening a mini-studio up here.”

“Who isn’t?”

Harry came my way with his wife, Yasmine, on his arm. He was a small man with wiry hair and cheeks that were never free of late-day shadow. “Jonathan, you’ve met my wife?”

“Nice to see you again.”

“Beautiful plane,” she said.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

I introduced them to Kendall, and Harry didn’t waste a second before asking him, “Who is this?” He pointed at the ceiling. “I know that voice.”

“She just walked in,” I said, knowing I was smiling.

She’d chosen the cream dress with the tiny sequins. As willful as she was, she proved she was mine with every small, seemingly inconsequential decision. She looked breathtaking, even on Darren’s arm, leaning on him as if he were her brother. In my mind, he was. She waved when she saw me and made her way to the bar.

“Don’t recognize her,” Harry said.

“Monica Faulkner.”

It rang a bell. In the tilt of his head and look in his eye, I knew Harry recognized the name. I also knew he didn’t know it well enough to be attached to any notion of how she should be signed or branded. That had all been Eddie’s idea.

                                                  
CHAPTER 28. 

MONICA

I dragged Darren through the lobby and into the galleries without telling him I was looking for Jonathan. I found Jonathan by our piece with three other people, including Kendall of the black turtleneck. The other man looked like Harry Enrich from Carnival, but he couldn’t be. Jonathan looked more relaxed and comfortable than he had been at the Eclipse show. More affable, somehow, better in his own skin, if that was even possible.

“I need a drink,” I whispered to Darren.

He nodded and pulled me back to the lobby. The string quartet and pianist, two women dressed in long black skirts and three men in tuxedos, played a Brahms’ Hungarian Dance like a dirge. It somehow worked. Gabby and I had taken a ton of gigs like this through high school and college. Little parties and big events full of wealthy people trying to act wealthy. They paid crap, but we figured we would have been practicing anyway.

“What are you having?” Darren asked, somewhat less comfortable in a suit and tie than Jonathan. He cast his eyes down to his phone.

“Whiskey rocks. Who’s texting? Kevin? Is he okay?”

“No.” He tapped the bar then shook his head as if a fly had landed on his hair. “No, I mean it’s not Kev.”

“Okay?”

“Adam has landed.”

“Is he coming?”

Darren rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Well, if he’s here and he came to see you, you’d better think of something fast. Like a piece of pie or a cookie. You don’t want him to waste the trip.”

Our drinks came with a flirty glance from the bartender to me. He had arched eyebrows and full lips, reminding me of Kevin..

Christian Rondo, one of the artists who had helped us that afternoon, introduced us to Donna Santonini. Meeting her made me blush because not only was her work unforgettable, it was also pornographic and arousing and high-minded, all at once. I loved her, told her so, and met seven other people in the next ten minutes.

My customer service smile was getting a workout. Everyone thought I was with Darren, and we fell naturally into a brother/sister routine we’d honed since we broke up. The musicians took a break, silencing the background noise. Our klatch of artists didn’t notice. We just kept talking about getting shafted, fucked, disrespected, kicked in the ass. Stuff we all had in common.

And Kevin. We talked about the missing status of Kevin Wainwright.

I felt Jonathan’s hand on my back. Even through my dress, I knew his touch. His fingertips just grazed me, and I wanted to melt under them.

“That dress makes me want to destroy you,” he said in my ear.

I faced him, and I noticed his hand left my back. I felt suddenly cold. “Missed your opportunity last night.”

“I’ll take you when you’re ready and not a minute sooner.” He pressed his lips together, looking at me as if he’d swallow me whole once the moment of readiness came. “I have someone here who swears he’s heard your voice on some scratch cut one of his acquisitions people brought him.”

I looked behind Jonathan and found the guy I thought was Harry Enrich talking to three other people I didn’t recognize. “The president of Carnival records?”

“Eddie’s boss.”

Jonathan and I stood together, looking at each other, no words passing between us. I saw the blue flecks in his eyes and the laugh lines at their corners.

“I could introduce you,” he said. “Or you could remind him of the cut he heard.” He glanced at the empty piano, then back at me.

“I could prove I’m not Bondage Girl?”

He nodded. “The song can be what you want. Sing it.”

“You’re releasing it?”

“Yes.”

“What if I sang something else?”

“Your call. I’ll never hold you back again.”

“Jonathan.” Leaning into him with my eyes half-closed, I whispered it so softly, I doubted he even heard me.

“Go,” he whispered just as softly. “Take what’s yours.”

He stepped back, and I felt at once totally alone and totally powerful.

Eleven steps to the piano.

I could do the new song, “Crave/n/” He’d recognize my voice, maybe, but I’d be Monica.

Six steps to the piano.

But if I did “Collared,” he’d know who I was right away.

Bondage Girl.

Two steps, and limited time to get the song out before the musicians came off their break.

I slid onto the bench and started with a B-flat scale, then my fingers decided the song for me.

                                                  
CHAPTER 29. 

MONICA

The hotel carpet silenced my feet. The sconces lining the hall cast warm light on the wainscoting, and the elevator got smaller in the distance as if it was stepping away from me. I felt as though I was walking down the center aisle of a church after receiving a benediction that actually conferred a blessing.

I touched his door when I walked past it. Just once and exactly in the center. I slid the keycard through the reader. The green light flashed, and I opened my door.

A single lamp lit the living area, and the first thing I checked was the door between our rooms. It was closed. I touched it, pressing my whole hand to the wood, then I knocked. I breathed three times before the door opened.

Jonathan stood there, jacket open, tie undone, shirt open halfway. A glass of whiskey with a single ice cube hung from his fingertips. “How did it go?”

“You left.”

“It was your moment.” He leaned in the doorframe, but his bare feet were still on his side. “Which song did you pick?”

“I did ‘Collared,’ but different. Less bondage. More sweet.”

He took a sip of whiskey. “And?”

I looked for a negative reaction and saw none. “They demanded another. So I did ‘Craven.’ Went good. Real good. I wish you were there.”

“I’m here now.”

He was, in all his straight-shouldered, commanding, controlled beauty. Right there in front of me. Close enough for me to smell whiskey and leather.

“I’d like to go to Seoul with you,” I said without thinking. Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it was the right thing. I felt a press of tension flow out of me in a flood from the rightness of it.

Jonathan looked at the floor, and I couldn’t see his face. Had he changed his mind? A little tension returned until he picked up his head and looked at me. His smile went wide, and he touched his chest.

“Goddess.” He looked as though he wanted to say more but didn’t have the words.

“I have to figure out what to do about work. I might lose my job.”

“I can smooth it over with Debbie.”

“Do
not
.” I held up my finger. “It’s my responsibility.”

“You’ve made me very happy.”

I had a snide response at the ready, but instead I said, “I’m glad.” The ice in his glass clinked, and I looked at it wistfully. He held it out. I parted my lips, and he raised the glass to them and tipped a little liquid in, his fingertips at the bottom so they didn’t touch my face. The whiskey stung my tongue and burned my throat. Hot and cold swirled in my chest at the same time.

“Thank you,” I said. “I should be getting to sleep.”

“Of course,” he said, stepping backward into his room.

“Not like I’m tired or anything.”

“Right.”

“But there’s this no touching rule, and if I spend another second with you, I’m going to lose my mind and try to take your clothes off. I’m tired of being the one with no self-control around here.”

He just looked at me, up and down, a little smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. I knew that look; Jonathan calculating the game, imagining all of its possibilities.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Your choice. We wait until we get back to L.A. We talk. We agree you never turn your back on me again unless I cheat on you or hurt you, neither of which will happen. We rush off to Korea, and I’ll probably have you on the plane or in a car or something. I don’t even know. Or the other option, and this is a terrible idea...”

He stopped.

“Go on,” I said, a little excitement building between my legs.

“Right now, you agree never turn your back on me again unless I cheat on you or hurt you.”

“And?”

“When this ice cube melts, the no touch rule is rescinded.”

I cleared my throat and looked down. My hands were at my sides, fingers twitching as if I was playing a stringed instrument. “Jonathan.”

“Monica.”

“I can’t imagine a situation where I’d turn my back on you again. At least, not for us being who we are. I won’t deny it again. I won’t pretend it’s anything but what it is or that I’m not submissive to you sexually. If you fuck or even kiss someone else, we’re through. And if you hurt me or if you’re careless with me, I really will walk.” I softened my tone and leaned towards him. “Barring that, I’m yours. You own me. You always have.”

He stepped into my side of the doorway. He was so close. All I had to do was lean forward, and he’d have to catch me to keep me from falling.

“Here’s how it’s going to go then, Monica. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“When this ice cube melts, I’m going to make love to you so slow, everyone in this hotel is going to know my name. It won’t be play. It’s going to be dead serious.”

“Okay.” I peered into his glass. That ice cube looked huge.

“Then it’s playtime.” As he’d done on our first night, he took his glass and pressed the coldest bottom part to my nipple. He didn’t touch me, only the glass did. I hardened through the dress, parting my lips so the
ah
could come out. “I’m going to tie you down and take every part of your body until I’m satisfied. It will hurt, goddess, and you will beg for more.”

“Promise?”

“You’re not scared?”

“Actually, I’m kind of really turned on.”

He drank the rest of the whiskey and lodged the ice cube in his mouth. He put down the glass and leaned toward me. The ice touched my lips, and he dragged it across them, dripping cold water down my chin. I opened my mouth and took the cube, but he didn’t let go. Both of our mouths were lodged on that cube, me at six and one and him at five and two. A low groan escaped my throat. I ran my tongue along the bottom of the ice, trying to get it to melt faster. His face was so near, and the cube so cold and big between us, I felt both the closeness and distance acutely.