Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,54
off with my teeth. Eventually I lift my head, gagging, and drag sea air into my lungs.
“Again,” Oxana mouths.
“You want a try?” I shout at her, and she shakes her head.
I take the pencil in my teeth again, brace my hands against Oxana’s biceps and pull as hard as I can. This time I feel something yielding. The pencil moves a millimeter or two, and as it finally slides out I feel liquid warmth bathe my neck and chest.
“Fuck,” I say. “Blood everywhere.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie, we’ll deal with it. Sit back to back with me so I can kick this asshole over the edge.”
I feel her shoulders tense as she shoves with her legs, and when I look round Anton is gone. I don’t even hear the splash.
We spend the next ten minutes tidying up. While I wash off the worst of the blood with water from the canteen, Oxana creeps into Anton’s room and finds me a clean T-shirt and combat shirt. I pull these on, then we locate the Napoleon bottle, which is still half full, and take it outside. Oxana pours the remaining brandy over the edge of the platform, and leaves the empty bottle standing on deck. I knot my bloody clothes into a bundle and, using the torch as a sinker, throw them out to sea. Then, with the night’s work completed, we depart the deck. Behind me, Oxana closes the hatch.
“Your cabin’s in the south leg,” I tell her, but she takes no notice. Silently, rung by rung, she follows me down the steel ladder, past Anton’s empty cabin, to mine. I turn on the light, we stand there for a moment, and then I pull back my arm and punch her in the mouth, as hard as I can. She flinches, blinks a couple of times, spits blood and snot into her hand, and wipes it down the thigh of her combat trousers.
“So,” she murmurs, licking her lips. “Are we even now?”
I shake my head, wanting to hit her again, but discover that I’m shaking so much that I can’t. I try to speak, but I can’t do that either, because she’s pulled my face down into the warm place between her shoulder and the slope of her breast, and has locked me there so tightly, with her cheek sealed against my forehead and her hand in my hair, that I can hardly breathe.
“Are we?” she asks, sniffing loudly in my ear, and all I can do is nod. She holds me for a time, and then lifts my face opposite hers.
“It didn’t mean anything,” she says. “It was just sex.”
“It was a shitty thing to do. Really nasty.”
“I know.”
“Do you have a tissue?”
“No. Do you need one?”
“No, but you do. That sniffing and swallowing thing you do is really gross.”
“I’ve got a cold, Eve. It happens. Even to Russians.”
“So do something about it. Jesus.”
She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a crumpled pair of knickers, and blows her nose into them. “OK. Done.”
“And just for the record, have you had a shower since fucking Charlie?”
“Like I said, I didn’t actually—”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“Then have one now.”
“Eve, it’s fuck-knows-what in the morning. I’ll wake Ginge up.”
“I’m sure we won’t. And it doesn’t matter if we do, anyway, now that Anton’s gone?”
“We?”
“I’m joining you. I feel disgusting.”
She narrows her gray cat’s-eyes at me.
“Just don’t speak, OK?”
She draws an imaginary zip across her mouth, but her lips are twitching.
We allow ourselves two luxurious minutes under the hot water. The first to wash off everything that’s happened, the second to begin rediscovering each other. The tiny washroom is not the ideal space for a date, but it’s warm and steamy, and Oxana is strong. Strong enough to lift me up the wall until her face is between my thighs and my legs are over her shoulders and I’m leaning back, open-mouthed and gasping, against the wet tiles.
In my narrow bunk, with her body warm against mine and the smell of her in my nostrils, we huddle under the thin blankets and swap recollections of our first encounters.
“It was that hot, thundery evening in Shanghai,” she whispers. “We just saw each other for a second in the street, but it was electric. It was like looking at myself. That’s why I climbed into your room at the hotel and watched you sleep. To make sure it was true.”
“And was it? Is it?”
“You know the answer to that. You proved it tonight. Are you going to tell me why you