Once again I ended up slamming the laptop shut in midconversation to keep Stefan from bugging the hell out of me. “Would you stop that. And how can I be in over my head?” I added reluctantly. “I’m not a virgin. I’ve had sex seven times”—six and a half, I admitted to myself, but that was need-to-know information only—“and Ariel is a research colleague and e-mail friend. That’s it.” I finished the rest stiffly, slightly embarrassed as it wasn’t strictly true, in my mind anyway, and I also knew Stefan was more than aware of it. He was also aware as much as I was she couldn’t be any more than that, although we had different reasons for that knowledge. I waited for the teasing, but it didn’t come—not exactly.
Stefan had one of the towels wrapped around his hips. It hid the ugly scar on his thigh that had come from a bullet from Jericho’s gun, which had broken Stefan’s thighbone like a brittle winter branch. He limped sometimes now in cold weather or after a long day because of me. He’d taken a bullet trying to save me. That I’d done the same for him didn’t matter as it wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be the same. Chimeras are hard to kill. People are not. He didn’t seem to notice when he limped.
I never failed to.
“Yeaaaah. Seven times. It’s impressive. I’m getting the number tattooed on my arm I’m so proud.” He sat back down on the bed. “But you’re a virgin.” He held up a hand when I started to protest. “An emotional virgin. You haven’t been kicked in the teeth by someone you love yet and Pinky there looks like a girl who could rip out your heart, play tennis with it, stick it back in your chest, and continue to lead you around by your di—um . . . nose. But the first time is the worst. Once you get past that, it gets better.”
“She doesn’t seem as if she’d do that. She’s been helpful.” In ways she hadn’t planned on being. “And who’s to say I wouldn’t like being led around by my no—dick.”
“Fine. You’re a cursing machine now.” He put the gun back on the table. “Then be extra careful. The nice ones don’t play rough, but they don’t give your heart back either. And growing a new one takes a long time. Trust me.” He stripped, pulled on sweatpants, and slid under the covers of his bed for the night. “But don’t trust me much.” He stared at the ceiling. “Between being based at a strip club and Nat . . . to hell with it, I don’t know shit about women. Or maybe I don’t know shit about myself. Either way, just be careful.” He turned over, then yawned with an exhaustion that covered body and soul. He’d found out Anatoly had died, we’d lost our home, and now he was thinking about the past. And the past was Natalie. All of that would exhaust anyone.
Natalie was the woman Stefan had loved. Or, as he’d said, as much as he was capable of loving. Searching for me, blaming himself, putting away his morals to make as much money as he could in the Mafiya—it had all meant there wasn’t much left over for Natalie. She’d known it too. She’d left him and, as far as I knew, he hadn’t tried again. If he had an itch to scratch, as he’d phrased it, several of the strippers liked making a little money on the side.
“The side of what?” I’d asked, but that was when I was new to the real world, barely rescued. The Institute didn’t spend much time on procreation beyond the very basics. They didn’t describe the way it made your brain explode in the best possible way, the almost painful but beyond-pleasurable feeling of ejaculation. It felt as if your life were draining away in a rush of warmth and ecstasy, and you were happy to go with it. If that was what happened with only your body, I couldn’t imagine if there was emotion involved. What poured out of your body was warm; what poured out of your heart if someone ripped it in half when they left you would be an ice-cold river of sharp razors and broken glass.
Why would anyone want to repeat that experience? Or risk it to begin with? I looked at the laptop for several seconds before pushing it away across the bed. Then I went to the bathroom, emptied the ice into the sink, and filled the bucket with water. Carrying it to the door, I used my penknife to slice the carpet. Just as I thought. Cheap hotel equaled cheap or no insulating rubber or wood threshold. There was at least an inch between the bottom of the door and the floor. I went outside and quietly poured the water all the way up that nonexistent threshold. Back inside, I closed the door, I went to my backpack for my small case of tools, and knelt before the TV. “Sorry.” I sighed with real regret. “I know it’s your life or ours, but we need the light.” And as with all no-tell motels, that was all we had—a single lamp and the bathroom light.
After unplugging the television, snipping the cord, stripping the insulation to find the hot wire, usually the black one, I folded the grounding wire back out of the way. Counting my blessings there was an outlet by the small table by the smaller window (in case you brought your own extra lamp—God, I hadn’t missed these crappy rooms), I plugged the TV cord in and rested the tip of the black wire in the water that had run a few inches under the door onto the concrete floor that had been under the carpet. There. It wasn’t a pipe bomb, but it would do . . . and it wouldn’t kill.