Hiromi’s apartment was maddeningly far away.
She lived on a long, thin island that stretched beside Manhattan, linked to the rest of the city by a subway line, a ferry, and a cable car.
The last is what we took, pressed close to each other in the nearly empty tram. She said it was the most romantic way to get there, but I didn’t want romance; I wanted to complete this conquest, take this prey between my teeth.
We arced up, over the water, and back down at a stately, infuriating pace. I hadn’t had sex since before Peter’s fall.
I would devour her.
“This island is where New York used to store its undesirables,” Hiromi said, looking down. “A smallpox hospital was at the south end. A lunatic asylum up north.”
“Which one are you in?” I asked.
She smiled—I didn’t have to worry about what she wanted. Her pupils were large, her lips full, her pulse fast in our interlaced fingers.
We wanted the same.
Don’t lose yourself, Veronica always said. The first rule for lovemaking with ordinaries: stay present, in control. Never let go.
“The smallpox hospital is a ruin. The asylum is apartments, but they’re too pricey for me. I’m in the Landings.”
“What was that? A leper colony?”
“It was always apartments.” She ran her index finger along my bottom lip. My pulse matched hers. “Let’s save the rest of the travelogue for morning.”
Hiromi unlockedher apartment door, dropped her bag, kicked off her sandals. I slid the jacket from her shoulders.
The door slammed behind us. Hiromi jumped.
“Sorry. It always does that. But you never flinch, do you?”
I kissed the question away, tossed her jacket, unbuttoned her paint-spattered dress. It had been too long. Her lace bra wouldn’t undo. My hands were unsteady.
Hiromi pushed them aside, finished the unfastening for both of us—her dress, my waistcoat. She pressed me against the door. The metal cold against my overheated body.
Our kisses deepened, tongues touching, sparking, fluttering with our breath.
“Jess,” she breathed, and the room spun for a moment—only Sebastian called me that, now that Peter was dead.
She lifted the crow skull from my neck and placed it gently aside.
More undoing. My linen trousers around my ankles. Hiromi hooked my underpants with her thumbs, pushed them down, and turned toward the bed. To the right of her tailbone was a tattoo—the innards of a watch.
I reached for it, but she was already on the bed. The apartment was tiny.
The windows were shadeless and crowded with plants and bowls of candy. Lyon’s surveillance man hadn’t followed us out of Mixed, but he would know the address. He could’ve gotten here before our stately tram.
But a telephoto lens wouldn’t capture much through that clutter, in this dark. We were too entangled, intertwined in the blackness. My mouth on hers, her hands in my hair. Both of us naked on our knees on her bed. I wasn’t sure either of us was breathing.
Our bodies pressed together, she nibbled at my bottom lip. I wanted to feast on her, to taste every inch of her skin. To scream.
“Shhh,” Hiromi said.
Had I screamed?
She gently bit my neck, my shoulder. Her mouth covered my breast, her tongue teasing my nipple. Heat and wet and sparking nerves.
She ran her hand down my side, brushing past the ripple of my ribs, the swell of hipbone. The pressure of her palm, the heel of her hand, her fingers everywhere, but especially on the nerve endings thrumming between my legs.