Gage
“Let’s run by your place and pick some of your things up so you have overnight clothes,” I said to Julia as I let go of her shoulder at the bottom of the stairs.
“That sounds good,” she said as she trudged up the stairs ahead of me.
She looked defeated. I had noticed as soon as she walked out of the room with Dimitri that she seemed worn down, exhausted. I wanted to ask her how it went, but I wanted to give her time to recover from it as well first. I didn’t want to bombard her with questions right away. She’d told me the gist of what he’d said already, and it was enough to make me want to send someone down to remind him of where he was, but I was saving all of that for later. I wanted to give her a chance to get information out of him before roughing him up.
I left Julia standing just inside the shop as I ducked into the office to see who was at the desk, just in case we had any official business come in. It was Chase, one of the brothers who’d taken down Dimitri in the first place.
He was sitting behind the metal desk in the corner, kicked back in the small office chair and watching something on his phone. “Hey, Chase,” I called abruptly, catching him off guard.
He grabbed the desk as the chair threatened to come out from underneath him. “Shit, Gage! What’s up?”
“Heading out with our translator for the night. While I’m keeping an eye on her, make sure somebody’s watching your boy downstairs.”
He nodded. “Will do. I’ll probably hang out here all night, so I’ll go down and check on him in a bit.”
“Be sure you do. And no funny business. He needs to be able to talk when we get back tomorrow,” I cautioned him.
“Got it.” He didn’t look back up from his phone, but I knew I could count on him to take care of business for us.
“Alright, let’s go.” I put my hand on the small of Julia’s back and walked her to the Suburban. Touching her sent shockwaves through my fingers, tingling all the way up my arm. I wanted to do horrible things to her, but when she was awake enough to enjoy them. She trudged with me to the car, barely picking up her feet, her shoulders slumped over.
“Don’t you have a motorcycle?” she asked as I opened the car door.
“Yeah, but maybe not tonight. Maybe when you’re feeling a little more up to it,” I said softly. “Besides, we usually use the Suburban for our guests anyway, or when it’s not really appropriate for everyone to pull up at the same time on a bike.”
“Makes sense,” she said lifelessly as she climbed into the SUV.
He’d really drained her in there, I thought as I watched her melt into the passenger seat. I needed to do something special to let her know everything was going to be alright. A lazy takeout dinner sounded good. Delivery sounded even better.
“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” she asked as we backed out of the garage. “Am I still staying with the motorcycle club until I get numb nuts to talk in the basement?”
“Yes and no,” I answered. “You’re not going home, but you’re not staying at HQ. You’re staying with me.” It sounded a lot better than I was sure it was going to be.
“Oh really?” she asked, turning towards me in her seat. I could hear it in her voice; she was thinking I meant more than just staying with me.
“Yep. I have a nice, comfy bed that you can use and a really comfy couch that I’ll be using,” I told her, not taking my eyes off the road. I didn’t want to see the suspicion and disbelief in her eyes.
“Right. We’ll see how long that lasts,” she said, turning back in her seat.
Out of the corner of my eye, I allowed myself a glimpse of how the seatbelt rested across in front of her, riding right between her breasts and showing me their curves perfectly. I could only imagine what she looked like under that sweater she’d been wearing all day. My desire had been growing quietly all day, and we would be at her place soon, where I would probably get a peek at what she was trying to hide.
She didn’t ask how I knew where she lived or how I’d been able to find her apartment building. She either took it for granted or understood it was one of those things she really didn’t want to know.
We parked in front of her modest apartment building, the solid brick structure standing above the trees in the fading evening light with its small square windows mostly lit up to keep the dark from creeping in. The building wasn’t quite what I’d expected for someone in her position, a prestigious world-renowned professor. She probably had a lot of student loans to pay back. She hadn’t been out of school but for a year or two with her PhD.
“Let me guess. You’re coming up with me,” she said flatly as we got out of the car.
“Of course I am,” I said. “I can’t let you out of my sight. What if you decide to try something stupid?”
“You know, I’ve had plenty of opportunities today to try something stupid,” she snapped back at me.
I winked. “You’ve been watched all day, so you were never really alone at any point today.”
I slid out of the car and closed the door behind me. She came around the front of the Suburban, heading toward one of the side doors in her building instead of the main front entrance. I pushed myself off the car and hurried to catch up with her.
We took the stairs up to her floor. “Do you have something against elevators?” I asked her as we passed the third floor.
“Why do you say that?” She called down to me, her tone upbeat now that we were in her building.
“You used the stairs at the university, and now you’re doing it here, too,” I pointed out.
“What, you can’t keep up?” she teased.
“I can keep up, honey. I was just making an observation.”
“Then hurry up, because if you can’t keep up, you might miss which apartment is mine.” Her head disappeared over the railing, and I heard the stairwell door open on the landing above me.
I hurried up the stairs and through the door in time to see her unlocking her door and opening it to walk into her room. When she went to close it, I put my foot between the door and the wall, catching it with my boot.
She laughed and opened the door. “You’re pretty good,” she said. “I’m impressed you made it.” She stepped back from the door to let me in. “Please, make yourself at home. I’m going to grab a few things I’ll need.”
I walked into her apartment. It was a little one-bedroom deal, almost all living room. There were books everywhere—on the couch, under the coffee table, holding up her TV, overflowing from the bookshelves she stood up against the walls. I was sure there were more in her bedroom as well.
“Excuse the mess,” she said. “I’ve got books everywhere.”
“I see that,” I said, moving a stack of books off the couch and onto the floor. “Are you getting ready to move or something?”
“No, I just don’t have room for all of my books here. I need to move,” she called from the bedroom.
My original assumption, that she was studious and bookish, was reinforced by her apartment. I reached down and picked up one of the books I’d just placed on the floor, trying to get a glimpse into what made her tick. The title along the hardcover’s spine was in Russian. Of course. I picked up a few more and saw that they were all in Russian. At least that whole stack was.
“Do you have any titles in English?” I called back to her bedroom.
“I’ve got a few,” she said. She walked out of her room in a loose t-shirt and pair of jeans. While the jeans were tight, hugging her hips and ass, her shirt hid her figure again, just as her sweater had hidden her from me until I touched her or the seatbelt found the spaces between her delicious curves.
I stared at her slack-jawed as I tried to put the book in my hand back onto the stack where I’d found it.
“I’ve found that a lot is lost in translation,” she said as she brushed her hair, not noticing my staring, feasting eyes.
“You know, I’ve heard that a lot,” I told her. “I don’t get it though. Can’t we just translate it directly over?”
“Oh no,” she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. She nodded toward her bedroom, telling me to follow while she walked back in there, continuing her explanation. “Translation is an art all its own. You can’t just copy things directly over. A lot of words don’t translate well, and you have to find something with a similar meaning in the language you’re going to. And sometimes you don’t have an equivalent. For example, you may have a single term in one language that you have to actually explain in another because there’s not a single word for that concept.”
“I guess I never really thought of it that way,” I told her, sitting down on her full-size bed. I looked around in her bedroom. She lived a quiet, cramped, studious life it looked like.
“Most people don’t,” she assured me. “It’s something you don’t notice until you’re working between languages.”
“And you do that a lot, don’t you?” I asked.
“I do. And not just between English and Russian.” She winked in her mirror. Then, she turned to face me, still pulling the brush through her hair. “I hope you don’t mind,” she apologized. “It just gets so tangled when I wear it up all day.”
“I’m in no rush, but you can bring your brush with you, you know. You don’t have to try to do everything while we’re here.”
She smiled. “You’re right. How long should I pack for?” She turned around to face me and leaned back against her little dresser.
For the first time all day, it was really just the two of us, and unless I was just that rusty on my signals, she was leaving herself open for me just then. It would have been so easy to take advantage of the moment and jump up from her bed to take her right there against her furniture. With the mirror right there behind her, I would have loved to turn her around to face it while I took her from behind. It didn’t seem right, though. She struck me as the type of woman who enjoyed being treated like a princess instead of like a cheap hooker.
“Earth to Gage,” she called to me, snapping her fingers and bringing me back from my imagination. “How long do I need to pack for?”
“Pack for about a week, just to be safe. Hopefully it won’t take that long, but just in case,” I told her.
“A whole week?” Her voice was strained.
“Yes, a whole week. You might want to call the university and let them know you won’t be back for a few days,” I explained.
“No way. What do I tell them?”
“Tell them the truth. Tell them you’ve got the opportunity to meet with a member of the Russian criminal underground and you’re going to get all of the information you can out of him.”
She stood upright and looked at me like I’d just given her some kind of revelation. “You know, you just changed that whole situation for me,” she said, enraptured now by the opportunity to treat Dimitri like he was some sort of underworld royalty.
“Well, look, don’t get too excited,” I told her. “We still need to get back to my place for the night. And I’d like to eat at some point. So, you can finish packing, or I can do it for you.” I cocked an eyebrow, enjoying the idea of deciding what she was going to wear.
She cocked an eyebrow back, giving me a look that said she wasn’t too thrilled with the idea. She grabbed a suitcase and threw it on the bed.