Charlotte Stein - Run To You

‘I won’t be what you expect, you know.’

But he defeats me again, as easy as anything.

‘Of course you will. You’re the girl I saw in the lobby, aren’t you?’ he says, and when I answer with a shocked silence he laughs. ‘Oh, my darling. Did you really think I didn’t remember?’

There are so many reasons why I’m standing in the lobby of The Harrington again. Obvious ones, like the curiosity which now burns through my body unchecked and uncontrolled. Undeniable ones, like the draw of that voice and the deal I made with him.

And then there is the real reason:

He lied.

Or, at the very least, he didn’t say. Either way it doesn’t matter, because the result is the same: I’m here and waiting for him, angry and stupefied but most of all safe, oh, so safe in the knowledge that he knew all along. I won’t be a shock to him. I’ve never been a shock to him. He saw my face and my clothes and my body, and carried on with all of this even so.

In fact, he carried it on to almost insane heights. He said I was lovely, and made me say it too. He told me I was a thousand things, and now all of them must be true. Even his guesses now seem stronger and on surer footing.

He’s not a magician after all.

Though it seems like he might be one, when his hand suddenly smoothes over my back. I don’t hear him cross the skating-rink lobby, or see his shadow out of the corner of my eye. He keeps everything drawn in, so that this one touch will have the strongest possible impact. And oh, it does.

I think my whole world lights up to suddenly feel him. My skin bristles all over, so sharply aware of that one innocuous touch. That one nothing touch. He doesn’t even cup my waist or linger for a while, and somehow I’m feverish over it. I’m flaming hot and hardly able to stand it – though I suspect the reason why.

The very casualness of the gesture is what makes it so very potent. Only intimate acquaintances would touch each other like that, with some unspoken hint of all the years between them. Somehow, I think, we have years between us, even though we’ve never actually and properly met.

This is the first time, and despite those years it feels like it. I’m shaking in the semi-shelter of his arm, afraid to meet his gaze but dying to do it anyway. Will he be as magnetic as I remember? It seems impossible, and yet I know the answer before I look. I don’t have to see those eyes. I can feel them on the side of my face: a slow caress.

And when I finally turn my head he’s even better than I expected.

I do it in increments, starting at his stubble-roughened throat, before moving onto his muscular jaw. There’s something so fist-like about his face, so brutal … until you get to the centre. Until you get to that mouth like melted butter and those eyes, oh, those eyes. Had they seemed so alive before? I would have called them hooded and sultry, I think, but I can’t quite call them that now.

They still are, but it’s different. It’s like he’s searching for something; I can see the restless pacing behind that gaze. I can feel him wandering through my insides, trying to find something I don’t know how to give. I’m sorry, I think at him, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Once he’s done with this looking, his mouth lifts a little at the corner. Just faintly, hardly anything at all.

But I recognise it for what it is.

This is the same smile I heard in his words – only now it comes with confirmation of its warmth, of its affection. I can see it in his eyes. I can feel it in the hand he raises to brush aside an errant strand of my insane hair.

And most of all, I can hear it in his words.

‘Hello, my Alissa,’ he says.

* * *

The room is just as I remember it: opulent, and filled with the kind of awed hush people usually find in museums. It makes me want to be very, very quiet, in case I accidentally breathe and disrespect the drapes. I almost fail at following him inside, for fear my shoes will dirty the quicksand carpet.

And for other reasons, too. Now that he’s not holding me and caressing me and saying the one word that turns my insides upside down – ‘my’, I think, mine, my own – I’m not quite sure how to behave. I feel as though I’m trailing in the wake of an enormous dark ship, and if I draw too much attention to myself I’ll be crushed by its jagged edges.

He could definitely crush me, if he wanted to. He’s much taller than I remember. Perhaps six foot two or three, though his overall size makes it seem like more. He really is built like a boxer or a rugby player, which probably explains why I jump back when he suddenly turns to face me. I just wasn’t expecting him to move. I was quite content following a couple of steps behind, and in one abrupt movement he closes that gap too quickly.

It isn’t a shock that I slam into the door behind me.

But it is a shock to him. He raises one eyebrow, which I suppose is his version of that feeling. It’s measured and a little amused, and it makes the corner of his mouth lift a little.

‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ he asks, though I think he knows I am. He just wants to show me how silly that is, how bemused it makes him. He isn’t going to do anything horrid to me, so why did I almost barge my way back out into the corridor?

Because he’s big? Because he’s a prowling, dangerous predator? He certainly walks like one, all from his hips and with the minimum of excess movement. It’s almost like his upper body remains completely still and ready to lunge, while his legs do all the work. It’s impossible to describe fully and so insanely masculine.

But it doesn’t explain why I wanted to run.

No, what he says next explains why I wanted to run.

‘You do understand that I’m not going to suddenly perform strange perverted acts on your innocent young body, don’t you?’

‘Of course I understand that,’ I snort, but I’m still standing by the door. And he’s still raising that one eyebrow. We both know I’m not fooling anyone. ‘All right, maybe I didn’t completely understand that.’

He turns to the drinks cabinet by the window, that great broad back now to me. It doesn’t make any difference, however. I could no more read his face than I can his shoulder blades. They’re both a blank slate.

‘Then let me be very clear: I didn’t bring you here to do anything you don’t want.’

‘So what did you bring me here for?’

He glances over his shoulder at me, smile now as sharp as a shark’s.

‘To find out what you do want, of course.’

‘Don’t you already know?’

‘I told you. I’m not a mind-reader.’

He has a glass of what looks like Scotch in his hand when he turns, and for a moment I think he’s going to give it to me. Instead he simply sits down by the table in front of the window, free hand working the buttons on his jacket until the whole thing hangs loose. One big leg jutting in my direction, the other tucked back.

It’s neither a relaxed pose nor an aggressive one.

It just is . He’s just himself, utterly contained and totally compelling.

‘I suppose the other women are pretty clear.’

‘The rules of the assignation are pretty clear. We always know beforehand what particular game we might be playing, though we never see each other more than once. Everything relies on an unspoken understanding between participants. But you and I don’t have that understanding.’

‘So what do we do now, then?’

He rolls the liquid around inside the glass, but doesn’t drink.

He speaks instead.

‘We do it the old-fashioned way. I ask, and you tell me.’

‘Can’t you just guess?’