“Stay on her,” Celino murmured silently, his voice fed into Romuld’s audio piece by his implant. “I want to know where she lives.”
“Should I tag her?”
“No. Just follow.”
The meeting came to its inevitable conclusion ten minutes later. By the time Celino resolved the issue and ascended to the dock housing his aerial, Romuld had sent him her address. She lived only a few minutes from the market, in Old Town.
She owned an old house, pre-second expansion. It perched behind an impact-proof plastor fence disguised as a wall of rocks. As he flew over it and circled the house, he saw the backyard. Filled with bright color, it suggested a garden. He had expected her to have a garden.
Celino landed on the small parking space, noting that no fresh scuffs marked the slab—she didn’t own an aerial—and made his way to the door. For a moment he considered knocking, then shrugged, and attached the small disk of the lock breaker to the plate above the electronic lock. The lock breaker’s display flashed a couple of times, but remained red. No dice.
Celino tried the door. Unlocked. Utterly ridiculous.
He let himself in.
A small house lay before him. A typical rectangular front hallway. He saw her shoes sitting in a neat row. Straight ahead the hallway ran into the kitchen. He heard a female voice humming and rhythmic strikes of the knife against the cutting board.
On his left the hallway opened into the living space, a large square room, proof of the house being built during the time when people still prized hard copy recordings and pseudo-paper books and needed ample space to store them. The room was mostly empty now and furnished in cool blue. Two soft chairs, a pile of floor cushions in the corner opposite a modestly sized screen on the wall. And at the far wall a sliding plasti-glass door stood wide open, only a thin mesh separating the house from the garden.
Celino strode into the kitchen. He could’ve sworn he made no sound, but she raised her head. Dark eyes glanced at him and he stopped, arrested by their unexpected beauty. Velvet, brown like the finest coffee, lit from within by her vitality and intellect, these eyes simmered the blood in his veins. With a single look she had awakened a feral need smoldering beneath the surface. He went hard. He would have this woman. She just didn’t know it yet.
“What are you doing in my house?” She seemed neither afraid, nor disturbed, rather slightly indignant that he dared to enter without permission.
“You never told me your name.” He forced himself to move and sat leisurely in the chair opposite her. The kitchen smelled of subtly spiced stock. A mess of minced herbs lay on the cutting board before her.
“I suppose I best call city security to throw you out.”
“Do you think they can?” Not likely. A squad of elite “busters” wouldn’t be able to remove him from her presence.
She surveyed the breadth of his shoulders. “Perhaps. You’re rather dark and menacing. Are you enhanced enough to support this promise of violence?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
She lifted the lid off the pot, releasing a cloud of aromatic flavor into the kitchen, and scraped the herbs into the soup. “What is it you want?”
“You.”
“Why?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure. But I’m plagued by dreams involving your breasts and honey.”
Her eyebrows crept up. He caught a hint of blush on the tan smoothness of her cheeks and found it at once elating and erotic.
“It’s quite adolescent of me, I know,” he said.
“You break into the house of a complete stranger, force yourself into her kitchen, and suggest that she should surrender her breasts to you so you can satisfy your honey dripping fetish. What woman could pass on that invitation?”
“You haven’t had many lovers, have you?” He watched her blush fade. It suddenly seemed important.
She blushed again and he smiled, satisfied in her answer. She pointed at the front door with an oversized spoon. “Out.”
“What will it take? What should I do to have you?”
“I think you might be a raving lunatic.”
He smiled. “But you aren’t afraid of me.”
She sat in her chair. “No. You don’t strike me as a man who would rape.”
“Despite me being dark and menacing.”
“You like to win.” She took a sip from her glass. “And forcing yourself on me would mean you failed in your conquest.”
In two sentences she deftly dissected his soul. “I’m Celino Carvanna. Name your dream and I’ll make it happen. And then, if you’re so inclined, perhaps you could fulfill mine.”
“A rather melodramatic declaration, don’t you think?” She smiled. Her mouth was soft, her lips pink like the sweet wine they drank.
“Women usually respond well to drama and decisive declarations of lust.”
“I’m not that sort of a woman. Unfortunately for you, I’m not for sale.” She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “So far you failed to terrify me and failed to buy me. I’m terribly curious what path you will attempt next.”
In his mind he lunged across the table and crushed her mouth with his. “Perhaps I will praise your cooking.”
“Ah. Flattery. A bit predictable, but it often works.”
“Do you find me attractive?”
She looked him over. Her gaze touched his chest, hidden by black doublet, slid up to caress his shoulders, then his thick neck, lingered on his cheekbones and finally rose to meet his stare. Her eyes were liquid chocolate and he felt a thrilling tension run through him.
“Yes,” she said, slightly surprised. “I do.”
“Will you let me kiss you?”
“Probably not. But I will share my soup with you, since you’re in my kitchen and I’m starved. You seem to be comfortable with rudeness, but I can’t let go of my manners and eat in front of you while you stare at me with your iceberg eyes.”
“Iceberg eyes?”
“Glacial. The bowls are behind you.”
Celino rose. The wall was dotted with standard hidden shelf covers. He tapped the closest one. A shelf slid out of the wall, offering a row of neatly placed bowls. He plucked two and pushed the shelf back into the wall.
She ladled the soup into the bowls. “Would you like to eat in the garden?”
She led him through the house into the garden. Flowers greeted him in every shade and shape imaginable. Dahlias. In his youth, he had spent countless evenings on the balcony of Carvanna house, sitting in a chair, puzzling over a financial riddle, and when he would look up to clear his head, the riot of dahlias blooming in the garden greeted him just like this.
“Take a chair,” she offered.
He sat and drank his soup from the bowl. It was delicious, spicy and tart, with an undercurrent of fiery peppers that nipped on his tongue.
They sat together, saying nothing even when they both finished their meal. A feeling of profound calm descended upon Celino. He let the peculiar refreshing serenity sweep through him, bringing him a deeply rooted happiness at simply being alive.
The audio piece piped into his ear for the third time. He was catastrophically late. He rose, bowed to her, and left without a word.
And there it was, Meli reflected. He found her. Less than twenty-four hours. She expected nothing less from Celino Carvanna.
He fantasized about dripping honey on her breasts. A small, satisfied smile curved her lips. It took almost eighteen years, from the skinny ten-year-old girl to the twenty-eight-year-old woman, but Mother proved right. She hit him like a brick.
And she managed to hide that a single glance from him made her entire body hum like a tightly wound string under the hand of a virtuoso guitar player. Celino Carvanna was honeyed poison in her wine. The same delicious fear she had experienced in his presence as an adolescent returned full force, only she was no longer an inexperienced child. She used this fear now, turning it into seductive tension, letting him sense just enough to spur him into open pursuit. Celino was a predator and every predator responded to prey who seemed to run. And when she finally let him catch her, their battle would drive him out of his mind.