Monday, October 24, 2016 — Manhattan
* * *
The model’s name was Katarina.
He found her at a Fashion Week after-party in a converted warehouse in Chelsea — an event he’d attended for a single reason, the same reason he attended anything: because it contained something he wanted.
What he wanted tonight was simple.
His body had been demanding it for six months.
The deficit warning had turned from red to a pulsing white — a new state, one the console described as CRITICAL: OVERRIDE THRESHOLD APPROACHING — and the pressure had become a physical thing, a heat in his blood that ran hotter every time he sat across from Eliana Roth and didn’t touch her.
He needed a release that wasn’t Eliana.
A body that would reset the counter without complicating the mission.
Katarina Kovač.
Twenty-four.
Croatian.
Victoria’s Secret since twenty-one.
Five eleven in bare feet, six one in the Louboutin stilettos she wore with the ease of a woman who’d learned to walk in heels before she’d learned to drive.
She was standing near the DJ booth in a silver chainmail Paco Rabanne mini that ended mid-thigh and clung to her body like it had been soldered on, her legs bare and endless, her hair black and straight and falling to her waist, her face all cheekbones and full lips and dark eyes that were scanning the room with the professional boredom of a woman who’d been the most beautiful person in every room she’d entered since puberty.
Her body was a spectacle.
The silver dress had no back — it was held by two thin chains across her shoulder blades, and the fabric stopped just above her ass, which was round and high and firm, the kind of ass that Victoria’s Secret built campaigns around.
Her waist was narrow, her hips flared, and the chainmail caught and threw light with every movement.
Her breasts — a full 34D, maybe more, pressing against the silver mesh, the outlines of her nipples visible through the metal links — sat high and heavy, the dress doing nothing to contain them and everything to display them.
She looked like something a sculptor had made to end arguments about proportion.
He positioned himself at the bar.
Ordered water.
Waited.
She came to him in twelve minutes.
“You don’t look like fashion,” she said.
Her accent was soft — Croatian vowels wrapped around American inflection, four years of New York laid over Zagreb.
“I’m not.”
She studied him.
Her eyes tracked from his face to his shoulders to his chest to his hands — the automatic assessment of a woman who’d been looked at by professionals and knew how to look back.
He was wearing a black Henley, sleeves pushed to the forearms, dark jeans, boots.
No flash.
The Henley stretched across his chest and shoulders in a way that said the body underneath was built, not bought, and she’d noticed because noticing bodies was what she did for a living.
“Then what are you?”
“Leaving.
Do you want to come?”
She looked at him for three seconds.
Her mouth curved.
“Yes.”
* * *
His penthouse.
Eleventh floor to eighteenth floor in the elevator.
She leaned against the wall and looked at him and didn’t speak and neither did he.
The space between them was charged — a voltage that had nothing to do with conversation and everything to do with six months of celibacy meeting a body designed for magazine covers in a steel box ascending through a Manhattan night.
The elevator opened.
He stepped out.
She followed.
The penthouse was dark except for the city through the floor-to-ceiling glass — Central Park below, the skyline of the East Side a wall of light across the trees.
He didn’t turn on the lamps.
She walked to the windows and stood in the city light, the silver dress catching the glow from outside, and turned to face him.
“No furniture,” she said.
“No.”
“You live here?”
“Yes.”
She kicked off the Louboutins.
One, then the other, the red soles flashing as they tumbled.
She went from six one to five eleven and looked up at him — still tall, still long, still built like a weapon in a chainmail dress, but with bare feet on the white oak floor, and the barefoot changed everything.
He crossed the room.
He didn’t rush.
He walked to her the way he walked everywhere — controlled, deliberate, each step a decision.
She stood her ground.
Her chin lifted.
Her dark eyes tracked him.
He stopped six inches from her.
Close enough to feel her heat through the chainmail, close enough to smell her perfume — something sharp, jasmine and something underneath, something warm and animal.
He reached up and took her jaw in one hand.
Not rough, not gentle.
Firm.
His fingers along the line of her jaw, his thumb at her chin, tilting her face up.
Her lips parted.
Her breathing changed.
He kissed her.
Not the kind of kiss that asks permission.
The kind that announces an arrival.
His mouth covered hers and his tongue pushed past her lips and she made a sound — a small, involuntary noise from the back of her throat — and her hands came up to his chest and gripped the Henley and pulled.
He kissed her until her knees softened.
Then he pulled back.
“Take it off,” he said.
She reached behind her neck and unclasped the chain.
The Paco Rabanne fell in a cascade of silver links, pooling at her feet like liquid metal.
She was wearing nothing underneath — no bra, no underwear, just skin and the remnants of a fake tan that had faded to a warm bronze.
Her body in the city light.
Her breasts — full, heavy, the nipples dark brown and hard, the areolae wide.
They sat lower than Eliana’s, weight pulling them down slightly, but the volume was extraordinary — a full D cup, maybe more, the kind of breasts that photographers shot from every angle and never got bored.
Her waist was narrow, the abdominals visible, a faint six-pack from whatever regimen the agency prescribed.
Her navel was a deep oval, the skin around it taut.
Her hips were wide, the hip bones visible beneath smooth skin.
Her ass — he hadn’t seen it yet, but the shape of it was visible from the front, the way her thighs curved up to the cheeks, the width of her hips promising volume.
Between her legs: bare.
Completely bare.
Not a strip, not a shadow, just smooth brown skin, the lines of her outer lips visible, clean, a slit he could see.
Her legs were the asset.
Long, lean, the muscles defined without being hard — quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, all shaped by genetics and walking in heels and whatever combination of yoga and starvation the industry demanded.
Her feet on the white oak floor: long, narrow, high arches, toes with chipped black polish from a pedicure that was two weeks old.
He pulled the Henley over his head.
Her eyes went to his chest.
To his stomach.
To the V-cut at his hips above the waistband of his jeans.
Her lips parted again.
“Fuck,” she said.
He picked her up.
His hands under her thighs, her legs wrapping around his waist, her bare ass in his palms — round, firm, heavy, the cheeks flexing as she locked her ankles behind him.
Her breasts pressed against his bare chest.
Her mouth found his neck.
He carried her to the bedroom.
The bed was a king, unmade, white sheets.
He set her down on her back and stood over her and looked at what he was about to do.
Six months.
He started at her feet.
Her left foot in his hand — long, narrow, the arch high, the sole soft.
He pressed his thumb into the arch and she flinched and then relaxed.
He brought her foot to his mouth and kissed the arch, then the ball, then each toe — slowly, one at a time, his tongue sliding between them, tasting salt and the faint ghost of her perfume.
She gasped.
Her toes curled against his lips.
“What are you—”
He didn’t answer.
He sucked her big toe into his mouth and ran his tongue around it, and she arched off the bed, and the sound she made was not a word.
Her right foot.
The same — arch, ball, toes, tongue.
She was gripping the sheets, her hips shifting.
He kissed her ankles, the inside of each one, the thin skin where the bone pushed through.
Then her calves — the long, lean muscles, his mouth dragging up the inside of her right calf, his teeth scraping the skin, not biting, not yet.
Her shins.
The backs of her knees — he lifted her leg, bent it, kissed the soft hollow, and she trembled.
Her thighs.
He started at the knee and worked up — the inner thigh, where the skin was thin and warm, and he bit her there.
Not hard enough to break skin.
Hard enough to leave a mark.
She moaned and her legs opened wider.
He bypassed her pussy.
Moved up.
Her hip bone — he licked the ridge, then bit the crest.
She cried out.
Her hands were in his hair.
Her navel.
He tongued the deep oval, circling the rim, pushing in, sucking, his saliva pooling in the hollow.
She was writhing, her abdominals clenching.
Up.
Her ribs, each one — his tongue dragging over the ridges, counting them.
The skin beneath her breasts, the sensitive crease where the weight of them settled against her ribcage.
He licked that line, left to right, and then took her left breast in his mouth.
He sucked hard.
His mouth covering the nipple and the areola, his tongue flattening against the hard peak, his lips sealed around the dark skin.
She arched into him, her hands pulling his head against her breast, and he sucked harder — drawing the flesh into his mouth, his tongue working the nipple in circles, his teeth catching the tip.
“Oh god — oh fuck—”
He switched to the right.
Same pressure, same ferocity — his mouth devouring her breast, sucking the nipple hard enough that she’d feel it tomorrow, his teeth closing on the peak and pulling gently while she bucked beneath him.
Her neck.
The hollow at the base where her pulse hammered.
He licked the salt from her skin and bit the tendon at the side of her neck and she moaned so loud the windows seemed to vibrate.
Her underarms.
He lifted her right arm above her head and kissed the hollow — smooth, bare, the skin thin and sensitive.
He licked from the pit to the inside of her elbow, his tongue flat and wet, a line of saliva gleaming on her skin, and she shuddered.
She shuddered and gripped the back of his head and pulled him closer.
Her hands.
He took her right hand and kissed each finger — index, middle, ring, pinkie, thumb — and then sucked her index and middle fingers into his mouth, his tongue sliding between them, and she watched him with eyes that had gone dark and wide.
Her back.
He turned her over — not roughly, not gently, with purpose.
She went.
Face down on the white sheets, her black hair fanned across the pillow, her back a long slope of bronze skin from her shoulders to her ass.
He kissed her spine — each vertebra, top to bottom, his mouth leaving a wet trail down the centre of her back.
She shivered with every kiss.
He bit the dimples above her ass, one on each side, and she gasped into the pillow.
Her ass.
Round, firm, high, the cheeks full and tight.
He cupped them — one in each hand, spreading them apart, looking at everything.
Her asshole was small and dark and tight, clenching as the air hit it.
Below, her pussy — the lips puffy and wet, glistening, the inner lips visible between the outer ones, dark pink, swollen.
He bit her right cheek.
Hard.
She cried out.
He bit the left — harder.
His teeth leaving indentations in the firm flesh.
Then he licked each bite, his tongue flat and wet, soothing the marks he’d made, and his saliva ran over her skin in thin rivers.
He spread her cheeks wider and licked her from her pussy to her ass — one long, slow stroke, his tongue flat, collecting her wetness and carrying it up.
She buried her face in the pillow and screamed.
He tongued her pussy from behind — pushing between the swollen lips, finding her entrance, pushing his tongue inside her, tasting her, fucking her with his mouth while his hands held her ass open and his thumbs pressed into the firm flesh hard enough to bruise.
She was dripping — onto his chin, onto the sheets.
He moved up.
His tongue found her asshole and circled it, slow, gentle at first, then pressing.
She went rigid.
“I don’t — I haven’t—”
“Breathe.”
She breathed.
He pushed his tongue against her hole — not inside, not yet, just pressure, circles, his saliva softening the tight ring of muscle.
She whimpered and then groaned and her hips pushed back against his face.
He licked her there until she was shaking, then pulled back and turned her over.
She was flushed from her forehead to her navel.
Her breasts were heaving, the nipples dark and hard and wet from his mouth.
Her eyes were glazed.
He kissed her mouth.
She tasted herself on his lips and moaned.
He went down.
Her pussy was bare and swollen and soaked.
The outer lips full, the inner lips protruding slightly, dark pink, glistening.
Her clit was visible — a hard bud at the top, peeking from under its hood.
He licked her from the bottom of her slit to the top, one slow stroke, and her back arched off the bed.
He ate her fast.
His tongue on her clit — flat, fast, relentless, the rhythm unvarying.
His hands on her thighs, pushing them apart, holding her open.
She came in under two minutes — hard, loud, her thighs clamping against his head, her hands in his hair pulling him into her.
He didn’t stop.
She came a second time forty-five seconds later — shorter, sharper, her whole body convulsing, her heel digging into his back.
He pulled back.
She was gasping, sweat on her forehead, her breasts heaving.
He undid his jeans and pushed them down and his cock was hard and thick and she looked at it and said “Christ” and reached for him.
He caught her wrist.
“Turn over.”
She turned.
On her hands and knees, her ass in the air, her back arched, her black hair falling over one shoulder.
He grabbed her hip with one hand and guided himself into her pussy with the other — pushing in slow, feeling her stretch around him, hearing the sound she made as he filled her, a low, broken moan that came from somewhere below speech.
He fucked her.
Not slow.
Not careful.
Fast and deep and relentless, his hips slapping against her ass, the sound filling the empty penthouse.
She dropped to her elbows and her face hit the pillow and she screamed into it.
He slapped her right ass cheek — open palm, sharp — and she cried out and pushed back against him.
He slapped the left.
Harder.
The mark bloomed red on her bronze skin.
He gripped her hips with both hands and drove into her, setting a pace that left no room for thought, only sensation.
Her pussy was tight and hot and soaking, her wetness running down her thighs, and he felt the pressure building — six months of it, six months of discipline and denial compressed into a single ascending curve.
She came.
Her third — her pussy clenching around him in rhythmic spasms, her whole body shaking, her knuckles white on the sheets.
He felt it and kept going — through the clenching, through the aftershocks, through the moment when she went limp beneath him and the only thing holding her up was his hands on her hips.
He pulled out.
She collapsed onto her stomach, breathing hard, her ass still raised, her legs trembling.
He turned her over.
She was boneless, dazed, her eyes unfocused.
He lifted her legs — one on each shoulder — and entered her again, face to face, his weight over her, his arms braced on either side of her head.
Slow now.
Deep.
Each stroke measured, deliberate, his cock pressing against her cervix on the deepest push.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down and kissed him and the kiss tasted like salt and sex and six months of waiting.
She came again.
The fourth — slower, deeper, rolling through her body like a wave, her mouth open against his neck, no sound, just breath and the flutter of her pulse against his lips.
He came.
The release was blinding.
Six months of pressure uncoiling from the base of his spine, pouring into her, his body locking, his vision going white.
At the edge of the white, the HUD flickered.
* * * EVOLUTION CP: +14 * * * EVO STAGE: DORMANT → AWAKENING SKIN BRANCH: 0 → LEVEL I (3%) * * * PARTNER NODE: TEMPORARY — NO BOND ESTABLISHED * * *
The numbers pulsed and faded.
The first CP in six months.
The tree was drinking.
He collapsed beside her.
They lay in the dark, breathing, the city outside the windows.
She turned her head.
“What’s your name?”
“Lukas.”
“Lukas what?”
“Just Lukas.”
She laughed.
A low, tired, satisfied sound.
She curled against him, her breasts against his ribs, her leg draped over his thigh, her toes tracing his calf.
He lay still and waited for her to fall asleep.
She did, within minutes.
Her breathing slowed.
Her body went heavy against him.
He opened the HUD.
* * * EVOLUTION CP: 14/day (TEMPORARY — NO BOND) * * * DEFICIT STATUS: PARTIALLY ADDRESSED * * * NOTE: TEMPORARY PARTNER YIELDS DIMINISHING RETURNS * * * RECOMMEND: ESTABLISH PRIMARY BOND * * *
Fourteen CP.
The first drop in a dry well.
The tree had registered the encounter and granted the minimum — temporary partner, no bond, diminishing returns.
The next encounter with Katarina would yield half.
The one after, a quarter.
The ring wanted a partner, not a model he’d picked up at a party.
He looked at the ceiling.
The city light made patterns on the plaster.
Beside him, Katarina breathed and her breasts rose and fell and her bare body was warm against his.
He thought about Eliana Roth applying the glow serum in her bathroom on East 71st, and the warmth in his blood shifted register — from spent to hungry, from satisfied to strategic — and he closed his eyes and let the deficit warning pulse.