Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“I’m so sure, Jack.” Her gaze met his without guile. “Besides, it’s already set up.”

Then she gave him a quick grin. “You don’t want to queer the pooch.”

This response caught Jack flat-footed. For the first time since Emma’s death, the spark of life had returned to Alli. She was visibly excited about using her skills, being part of something other than the hurt and pain that soaked through her insides. It was at this moment that Jack understood something about her that her entire battery of doctors had missed: What she needed more than anything else was to be drawn outside herself, to be engaged by the world, to be given a challenge, to feel once again her own expertise. Morgan Herr had taken away her sense of control. Jack saw that from the moment she had formed this plan she had set herself on the road to regaining what had been snatched from her, what now mattered most to her.

He nodded to her and smiled. Kissing her cheek, he let her go, watching her scamper up the steps with a newfound energy.

“I hope to God you know what you’re doing,” Annika said.

Jack’s gaze was fixed on the place on the stairs where Alli had vanished. “That makes two of us.”

MILLA TAMIROVA opened the door the instant Alli knocked. She must have been waiting at the door. She was another in a long line of Slavic blondes with magnificent bone structure, porcelain skin, cornflower blue eyes, and breasts with no need of being inflated with silicon. She had the kind of feral, predatory face men found irresistible, at least around the bedroom, which meant that she wore her sexuality outside her skin. Alli despised her on sight.

Nevertheless, she smiled winningly as she stood on the threshold, aware that the older woman was scrutinizing her as if she were a frog pinned to a board, its insides exposed for study.

“ Pajalyste chawdeetzye ,” Tamirova said, taking an abrupt step back. “Oh, forgive me, I forget that you don’t speak Russian. Please come in.”

She continued to peer at Alli as she shut the door and led her guest into a tastefully furnished room full of chintz and striped satin fabrics. Heavy drapes half covered the windows, the furniture was large and looked deep enough to get lost in, which, Alli thought, was probably the point.

Tamirova, her painted lips moving softly, said, “I find it odd that a child of Karl’s wouldn’t speak Russian.”

“I was brought up in America,” Alli said with an ease that amused her almost as much as lying to her doctors. “It’s only recently that I found out my origins—a photo, a name, a date, and a street name. I Googled it and came up with Kiev.”

The scrutiny clearly over, Tamirova raised her arm. “Sit down. Please.” She spoke English almost as well as Annika, one of many languages, she said, part of her training to be all things to all clients. She wore a long sea green robe of some material that both clung to her slim curves and seemed to foam around her ankles, which were strapped into high-heeled shoes. Who wears high-heeled shoes when they’re home, Alli asked herself.

When they were comfortably settled, Milla Tamirova said, “Have you any idea who your mother is?”

“Not a clue,” Alli lied without hesitation. She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not my mother, are you?”

“Heavens, no!” Milla Tamirova chuckled deep in her throat. “I’ve never been pregnant—well, except one time and then, you know . . .”

“Don’t you ever think of what that baby would have been like?”

“I wouldn’t have been a good mother, I don’t have—what do you call it in English—?”

“A conscience?”

“A maternal instinct.” A small smile played around her full lips. “Perhaps someday you’ll understand.”

“I hope to Christ I never do.”

“Is that what they teach you in America? Religion?” She lifted a hand. Her nails were longer than Annika’s. “You can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.”

“I’m twenty-two.”

“Good lord!” Milla Tamirova stared at her without seeming comprehension.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Alli said.

“Down the hall, second door on the left,” the older woman said as if still in a trance or plunged deep in thought.

Alli made use of the bathroom, flushed the toilet, ran water over her hands and dried them. Then she did a bit of reconnoitering. She saw Milla Tamirova’s bedroom directly across the hall, lushly feminine and inviting, except to Alli, who was revolted. Further down, where a second bedroom might logically be, was a closed door. Alli stood in front of it for a moment then, reaching out, turned the faceted glass doorknob. And came upon the dungeon.

Along the left wall was an array of whips and crops of all kinds, made of different materials. Below it, an assortment of manacles linked by chains. In front of this display was a Western saddle, complete with stirrups and cinch, thrown over a custom-made sawhorse. In the center of the right wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror, on either side three tiers of dummy heads on each of which was a full-head mask of either leather or black latex. Below each one, lined up like little red soldiers, were what she knew were gag balls. The one small window had been blacked out and was covered with thick metal grillwork straight out of The Count of Monte Cristo.

This regimental exhibit was unsettling enough, but it was the object in the center of the room that riveted her attention: a massive wooden armchair bolted to the floorboards. On each arm and on each of the front legs was a leather restraint with metal buckle. The sight of the chair, so similar to the one Morgan Herr had tied her into for the better part of a week, gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Do the tools of my trade interest you?” Milla Tamirova leaned against the open doorway. She had lit a cigarette while Alli was in the bathroom, and now she exhaled a cloud of pale smoke toward the high ceiling.

Alli couldn’t take her eyes off the chair, which both repelled and fascinated her. The atmosphere seemed saturated with sweat and sexual musk. “I want you to tell me about this.”

“The mechanics of bondage are simplicity itself.”

“Forget the mechanics.” Alli circled the chair as if in a death spiral. “I want to know about the psychology of it.”

Milla Tamirova, smoking slowly, studied her for some time. “It’s not about sex, you know.”

“It’s about power, right?”

“No,” the older woman said, “it’s about control, gathering it to you and letting it go.”

Alli turned to look at her. “Control.” She said this as if it were a word that Milla Tamirova had invented, one that was as potentially fascinating as it was inscrutable.

Tamirova nodded. “That’s right.”

“Give me an example.”

Milla Tamirova seemed to flow, rather than walk, into the dungeon. “Take this chair, for instance. The client is strapped in. He begs to be released, I ignore him. He says he’ll do whatever I want and I say, ‘Anything? Anything at all?’ and he nods his head, eager, avid, greedy, even, for the punishment I will mete out.”

A loathsome shiver crawled down Alli’s spine. She felt as if she were witnessing the beginning of an accident, a car crash, perhaps, the two vehicles heading toward each other at high speed.

“Why?” she said in a whisper. “Why do they do it?”

“Why does anyone do anything? Because it feels good.” Milla Tamirova exhaled noisily, like a horse or a dragon. “But that isn’t what you’re asking, is it?”

“No.”

“Mmm.” The older woman circled the chair, or perhaps it was Alli she was circling, as if drawn by a desire to see all sides. “These men are very powerful. They spend their days at the top of a pyramid of power, barking out orders to those groveling around them. Strange to say, they find this state of affairs enervating—all these people asking them what to do, waiting to be given orders, drains them of energy. They come to me to be rejuvenated. To them, being in a position where they not only don’t have to give orders, but are forced to obey them is sweet release.”