Wildalone (13 page)

“Let's see . . . Show me your jeans.”

I dropped them on the bed: three pairs, probably not brands she knew.

“The ones in the middle are too bland; you can use them for class. So either the dark wash or the skinny. I'd go with the skinny. It's sexier.”

“Does everyone really wear jeans all the time, even to parties?”

“Pretty much.” She reached into the closet for a black tank top and a pair of high-heeled sandals. “Perfect! Unless, of course, you want to use your forty percent on the legs. With legs like yours, I think you should.”

This time I was completely lost. She started laughing.

“The killer equation: you never show more than forty percent of your skin. Jeans go with cleavage. Miniskirts need at least sleeves.”

The art had started to feel like trigonometry. It still felt that way now, as I was about to head out to Cleveland Tower, with the same three pairs of jeans spread on the bed.

Badass
, I tried to convince myself, staring in the mirror to decide if black eyeliner would be overkill or not.
Badass Bombshell
.

The clock above the bed ticked 8:40.

I threw on the skinny jeans and, a few seconds later, was out the door.

WALKING TO THE GRADUATE COLLEGE
this early was like swimming against the current of a mountain rapid: everyone else rushed in the opposite direction, trying to make it to class on time. I had decided to skip the golf course and take College Road, to clear my mind before meeting him. It didn't work. The long walk only made me tense. I told myself that he might not show up; that his urge to spend the day with me could have dissipated, together with the fog. But he was there, right on time. Just as he had been for the two Chopins.

His effortless walk brought him over to me in seconds. I had never seen anyone walk like this: owning every move, as if he had absolute control not just over his body but over every inch of the world that surrounded it.

“Good morning, creature.”

“Good morning, captive.”

“Me?” He leaned in, over my ear. “I'm about to take you away. That makes
you
the captive.”

“And what does it make
you
?”

“It makes me want to start your captivity right away.”

I tried to look away from his face. To focus. To figure out a way to tell him that I couldn't stay. That I was late for class already.

“Let's go.” He reached for my hand but I pulled it back.

“Go where?”

“You'll see.”

“Why can't you tell me?”

He took a keychain out of his pocket and an open convertible beeped from the parking lot by the tower.

I was starting to see, yes. No wonder he acted as if he owned the world—just like those students Donnelly had warned me about, the ones who never served food to anyone. He had probably eaten at Procter Hall the night before. I might have even cleaned his tray without knowing. Now I was expected to drop everything and take off for a day, simply because a guy with a fancy car said so.

“I'm sorry, but I have to leave.”

“All of a sudden, just like that?”

“I can't skip school. I told you this already.”

“You can't or you don't want to?”

“Both.”

“I see.” Not a hint of hesitation. “These games are cute, but I don't play them. No need to put on an act with me. We both know school can wait.”

“And you can't?”

“I don't want to wait. I haven't stopped thinking about you all morning.”

All morning? I haven't stopped thinking about you all week!

“Do you even go to school here?” I had assumed he did, but most of my other assumptions about him were turning out to be wrong.

“What if I didn't?”

“Then I can see why it's not a big deal to you.”

“Forget the why. Come with me.” He looked at my lips again—as before, without any attempt to hide it. “I'll wait for the weekend if I have to. But I'd rather start being with you now. It doesn't need to be the whole day, I can bring you back sooner.”

His voice had softened. Or maybe it was those words—
start being with you
—that made me change my mind. They sounded like a promise. The kind of promise I had fantasized about ever since I saw him in Alexander Hall.

He took my hand and headed back toward the car. It turned out to be a Porsche, black and shiny.

“I didn't realize my captivity would be so . . . high end.”

He shrugged. “It's just wheels.”

A select few in Bulgaria drove expensive cars on the streets of the capital. My parents had such friends, and even some of mine received the occasional permission to borrow daddy's pricey ride. Most of them loved to play coy—what impressed us ordinary humans was, of course, just “wheels” to them. But unlike anyone I had ever met who drove a car of this caliber, he sounded like he actually meant it.

“Where are we going?”

“Breakfast.” He opened the door for me. “It's too far to walk, trust me.”

Trust him? Based on what? But I ignored my fear and got in. Only the night before, I had spent hours at the piano imagining this very moment, and now had come close to ruining it. So what if I skipped a few classes? He was probably doing the same. Or skipping work—which was a bigger deal anyway.

The automatic locks clicked. I tried to think of something else, to act as if I hadn't just driven off with a guy I barely knew. Rita and all her talk about stalking! This was Princeton, everyone knew the place was safer than a police station. Besides, if I wanted a safe and sheltered life, what was I doing in a foreign country, all by myself?

We passed through several streets whose crooked old trees closed a tunnel over our heads. He drove as effortlessly as he walked, each move calculated to deliver exactly the effect he aimed for. I watched his hands on the
wheel—the nails bitten down, strikingly flawed against his otherwise perfect looks—and realized that he probably had bad days too. Stress. Letdowns. Things that bothered him or didn't go his way.

Before I noticed, the houses had given way to woods. Smudged green, racing us on both sides of the road.

“Where are you taking me?”

A smile—slow and sure of its impact. For a moment or two, while my heart pounded its panic through my chest, I had mental flashes of what could happen next. Things this guy might do to me. Stuff I had seen only in movies.

He stepped on the brakes and swerved into the grass. I looked in the side mirror—the road was completely empty.

Was there any chance that pain hurt less if inflicted by someone beautiful?

A key turned, choking the engine off—

Then everything became absolutely quiet.

THE GRASSES SWAYED DREAMILY IN
the morning wind. Tall. Thick. Reaching almost to my waist as he led me through them.

I was still embarrassed after what had happened by the car. He had held my door open, in disbelief that I refused to come out.

“No?” A glance at the trees behind him, then another one back at me. “What exactly do you think I'll do to you?”

As if what I thought mattered. We were alone, in the middle of nowhere.

“If you really suspect I'm a serial killer, you'd be much safer outside my car than in it.”

I didn't find any of this funny. “Why did you bring me here?”

He walked over to the trunk, opened it, and came back with a blanket and a picnic basket.

“Breakfast. Do you believe me now?”

I slipped out of the seat. “Sorry, my imagination is too vivid.”

“Vivid is good. But don't freeze up on me like that.” He shut the door and, with the same assured smile, blocked my way until I leaned back against the car. “I don't cook for a woman just to drag her into the woods and torture
her. Not against her will, anyway. So I need you to relax for me. Just relax. Can you do that?” His voice had the opposite effect on me. “I'm not going to do anything to you unless you want it.”

There was something hypnotic about him, something that made any thought of resistance seem absurd. Even just hearing him talk about doing things to me made me want them, badly, whatever those things might be. And this scared me, more than any scenario I had imagined back in the car.

Our mystery destination turned out to be a field surrounded by trees, a place so secluded that the forest had to be crazy not to hide all its secrets there. The keeper—an old willow—dozed in the middle, crown drooping to the ground, long ago succumbed to gravity.

He parted the branches and spread the blanket in their scattered shade, waiting for me to sit down first. “This is my hideaway. I don't show it to anyone.”

“Never?”

“Never. I come here when I want to be alone.”

“Why make an exception now?”

His eyes traced every spot where the sun touched my skin. “Maybe it's a lucky aberration—”

He said the last word directly into my lips, opening them, tasting them—a deep, greedy, luscious kiss that could wipe out any instinct for self-preservation.

“What's wrong?” His lips still touched mine, even as he spoke.

“Nothing, I just . . . I felt dizzy for a second.”

“Being with you gets me carried away. I should know better.”

I don't want you to know better
. “Maybe it's because I haven't slept much.”

“Or because you haven't eaten much?”

He took out a bowl and a plate of matching porcelain, tore the plastic wrap, and placed them on the blanket. The bowl was full of blackberries and the plate had four crepes, rolled up in tubes.

“This should help.” He lifted one of the crepes to my mouth.

I took a bite, trying not to make a mess all over his fingers. He fed me like
a child, amused by it, by how I stole glances at him, my eyes already hooked:

Boots. Black and angular. Baring each crease of their thick leather. Dark jeans, loose on the hips despite the belt. His stomach, its muscles almost visible under the soft white fabric that covered them. And that T-shirt—the most striking one I had seen on a guy. It fit him perfectly, a cut so tight it forced you to imagine the rub of his skin against cotton when he moved, the V-neck deep and wide, exposing his chest all the way down the rib cage.

“Have these too.” He pointed at the bowl of blackberries.

“I will, on one condition.”

“Shoot.”

“Tell me who you are. I don't know anything about you.”

He leaned back on his elbows. “What do you want to know?”

“Where you live, what you do, what you like . . .”

His eyes got lost in the willow, narrowed by a smile (unless it was the sun falling into them). “How would knowing change anything?”

“Maybe it won't. But it will leave less to my vivid imagination.”

He said nothing for a while, then reached for my hand.

“Come.”

I followed him out into the field. After a few steps, he turned around and gave me a flower. It must have been caught in the green web surrounding it, hidden, invisible until now. The delicate petals were saturated with red, trembling at the slightest touch of air.

“I didn't realize poppies grew here in New Jersey.”

“Nobody does. It's a secret.”

At each step, as he opened the grasses to make way for us, I saw more poppies. All of them in wild bloom. Astonishing. Surreal.

Finally he stopped and turned to me:

“Knowing always changes everything. Be with me this way.”

He remained still, mouth pressed to my ear, waiting. There was so much about him I wanted to know, and the way he evaded my questions promised nothing good. But at that moment, none of it mattered. All I could think of was his breath, fast and warm against my skin.

Be with me. . .

I kissed him—over the collarbone, where the shoulder curved into the neck. He absorbed my answer. Savored its meaning. Then poured over me as if I was about to slip away any second. I felt his kisses everywhere, through the clothes, as he kneeled on the grass and pulled me with him.

It was too sudden and I tried to slow him down. That didn't work, only electrified him more.

“Wait, I can't—”

“You can't what?” His hand went up my leg, I could feel its heat through the jeans. “Don't be afraid of me.”

“I'm not.”

“Then let me.” He pulled the zipper open and my entire stomach turned, as if someone had twisted it inside me.

I caught his wrist. “Don't.”

“Why not?”

“It's too soon. I've barely just met you.”

His weight lifted off me. I thought he would be angry, but he took my hand and kissed it.

“Technically, you haven't met me yet. I'm Rhys. And you?”

“Thea. Your name means ‘lynx' in my country.”

“That explains why you're so afraid of me. And which country are you from, Thea?”

“Bulgaria.”

His smile froze, as if he had sensed a predator approaching through the forest. “Of course you are.”

“Why ‘of course'?”

Just a shrug, no answer.

“How much do you know about Bulgaria?”

“Not as much as I should, apparently. But maybe we can fix this?”

He started asking about my home, the piano, and how I had ended up all the way in America. I skipped only the Elza part—the part I wasn't sure I would ever reveal to anyone. We lay like that for a long time, hidden inside the grasses, talking. Around us the forest was at peace, except for the occasional
flap of a bird or swish of wind coiffing the branches. When I felt his hand on mine again, I realized I had been asleep for hours. The sun had started to set, and shadows of trees now stretched across the entire field.

“Why did you let me sleep all this time?”

“Because you needed it.” He helped me stand up. “We have an entire evening ahead of us. Or at least I hope we do. If you don't have to be back yet, I'm taking you to dinner.”