Page 69 of Cruel Lies

That's when I kiss her.

Slow. Gentle. My mouth offered up to hers, where she can choose whether or not to take it. Chlorine and wine, the softstraw of her hair under my hand, her velvet skin against my fingertips.

I've wanted this for so fucking long. Ever since that night in the lounge, when this smart-mouthed stranger told me my entire gender could get bent. The intensity with which I've wanted it has concerned me. I've wanted many things in my life, all of them with a white-hot need, but this,her?That kind of wanting needs a different name.

And despite all that build-up,having heris even better.

Her arms come around my neck. Her legs find my waist under the water and I catch her, one arm banding low across her back. She's weightless and she's warm and she'spressedagainst me. The kiss goes deeper, hungrier, her fingers in my wet hair, a broken little noise climbing up her throat.

I could have her here. Her breath, the arch of her, the way she's stopped thinking—all of it says yes. Making love in the last tank suspended over the ocean, and it would be extraordinary.

It would also be a mistake I would never forgive myself for.

So I stop.

I gentle the kiss down, slow it, press one last soft one to the corner of her mouth, and then ease back until there's an inch of water between us. She chases it halfway before she catches herself, and God, the look on her face… dazed, flushed, kiss-swollen, furious with confusion…

"Why are you stopping?" she whimpers.

My heart is going like the octopus downstairs trying to get out of its tank. "Because," I growl, "when I take you to bed,kotyonok, you're going to believe every word I say first. Every single one."

I get her out of the water before she prunes. There's a stack of towels waiting for us. I wrap her in one and dress her in my shirt. It swallows her, the sleeves dangling past her hands, the hem to her thighs. Objectively absurd, but when she looks up at me from inside it, hair damp and half-asleep on her feet, I feel that wanting grow another two sizes.

"I have to be back by eleven," she murmurs into my collarbone.

"You will be. The car's already downstairs."

"Mm." She frowns and closes her eyes. "This is a very confusing date, Mr. Akov."

"Is it working?"

She doesn't answer. She's asleep, or near enough, one hand fisted loose in the front of my—ofher—shirt, breathing slow against me.

Eventually, I carry her down. She wakes enough to walk to the car under her own power, in my shirt and her heels and nothing else. I get her settled and give the driver the nod. Then I stand on the curb and watch the taillights go until they turn and I can't see them anymore.

When she's gone, it's just me and the glass and the Ferris wheel and a great deal of quiet. I take out the third phone and dial.

"Uh-oh," says Navi. "Who died?" It's late and I don't call him this late for good news.

"Slushay menya," I snarl. "Vnimatel'no."

Listen to me. Carefully.

He listens as I rattle off the things he needs to hear.

"Zapishi adres," I tell him.

Write down the address.

And then I say it. Numbers, a street, the borough. A brownstone with two pairs of children's rainboots by the door.

Heraddress.

"Ponyal," Navi says.

Understood.

I hang up. In the tank behind me, a pale, enormous, sharp-toothed shark swims into the kelp forest and is swallowed up.