"That's the one thing that frightens you, isn't it?"
What's the matter with you?" Devra asked.
Arkadin, behind the wheel of a rental car they had picked up in Istanbul, grunted irritably. "What're you talking about?"
"How long is it going to take you to fuck me?"
There being no flights from Sevastopol to Turkey, they'd spent a long night in a cramped cabin of the Heroes of Sevastopol, being transported southwest across the Black Sea from Ukraine to Turkey.
"Why would I want to do that?" Arkadin said as he headed off a lumbering truck on the highway.
"Every man I meet wants to fuck me. Why should you be any different?" Devra ran her hands through her hair. Her raised arms lifted her small breasts invitingly. "Like I said. What's the matter with you?" A smirk played at the corners of her mouth. "Maybe you're not a real man. Is that it?"
Arkadin laughed. "You're so transparent." He glanced at her briefly. "What's your game? Why are you trying to provoke me?"
"I like to extract reactions in my men. How else will I get to know them?"
"I'm not your man," he growled.
Now Devra laughed. She wrapped slender fingers around his arm, rubbing back and forth. "If your shoulder's bothering you I'll drive."
He saw the familiar symbol on the inside of her wrist, all the more fearsome for being tattooed on the porcelain skin. "When did you get that?"
"Does it matter?"
"Not really. What matters is why you got it." Faced with open highway, he put on speed. "How else will I get to know you?"
She scratched the tattoo as if it had moved beneath her skin. "Pyotr made me get it. He said it was part of the initiation. He said he wouldn't go to bed with me until I got it."
"And you wanted to go to bed with him."
"Not as much as I want to go to bed with you."
She turned away then, stared out the side window, as if she was suddenly embarrassed by her confession. Perhaps she actually was, Arkadin thought as he signaled, moving right through two lanes as a sign for a rest stop appeared. He turned off the highway, parked at the far end of the rest stop, away from the two vehicles that occupied parking slots. He got out, walked to the edge, and, with his back to her, took a long satisfying pee.
The day was bright and warmer than it had been in Sevastopol. The breeze coming off the water was laden with moisture that lay on his skin like sweat. On the way back to the car he rolled up his sleeves. His coat was slung with hers across the car's backseat.
"We'd better enjoy this warmth while we can," Devra said. "Once we get onto the Anatolian Plateau, the mountains will block this temperate weather. It'll be colder than a witch's teat."
It was as if she'd never made the intimate statement. But she'd caught his attention, all right. It seemed to him now that he understood something important about her-or, more accurately, about himself. It went through Gala, as well, now that he thought of it. He seemed to have a certain power over women. He knew Gala loved him with every fiber of her being, and she wasn't the first one. Now this slim tomboyish dyevochka, hard-bitten, downright nasty when she needed to be, had fallen under his spell. Which meant he had the handle on her he was searching for.
"How many times have you been to Eskis?ehir?" he asked.
"Enough to know what to expect."
He sat back. "Where did you learn to answer questions without revealing a thing?"
"If I'm bad, I learned it at my mother's breast."
Arkadin looked away. He seemed to have trouble breathing. Without a word, he opened the door, bolted outside, stalking in small circles like a lion in the zoo.
I cannot be alone," Arkadin had said to Semion Icoupov, and Icoupov had taken him at his word. At Icoupov's villa where Arkadin was installed, his host provided a young man. But when, a week later, Arkadin had beaten his companion nearly into a coma, Icoupov switched tactics. He spent hours with Arkadin, trying to determine the root of his outbursts of fury. This failed utterly, as Arkadin seemed at a loss to remember, let alone explain these frightening episodes.
"I don't know what to do with you," Icoupov said. "I don't want to incarcerate you, but I need to protect myself."