Marco studied him in silence for a few moments; then he said: “You never told me why you took your bandages off. Were they too tight?”
“I didn’t take them off. She took them off.”
“Who’s she?”
“The woman who owns this house. Katya Lupescu.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.”
Todd smiled. “No more explanations,” he said. “You’ll meet her later. I gotta go.”
He left Marco standing at the door with a befuddled expression on his face, and headed out into the light again, climbing the slope towards Katya’s house, aware that he was behaving like a man who’d just been given a new lease on life.
He didn’t call her name as he entered this time. He simply made his way through the rooms of fake relics.
The sound of running water came from the room adjacent to the bedroom. Apparently, Katya was still running her bath.
He paused and looked around the bedroom. There were several enormous posters on the wall, which he had not noticed until now. Framed posters: one-sheets for movies, many decades old to judge by the stylized graphics, and the yellowing of the paper they were printed on. The same image dominated all seven posters: that of a woman’s face. She was represented in two of them as a waif, a child-woman lost in a predatory world. But in the others she’d matured beyond the orphan, and these were the images that reminded him of the woman he’d met last night — an exquisite femme fatale glowering from the frames as she planned her next act of anarchy. There was, of course, no question who the woman was. Her name was on the posters, big and bold. The Sorrows of Frederick, starring Katya Lupi. The Devil’s Bride, starring Katya Lupi. She is Destruction, starring Katya Lupi.
What the hell was he to make of this new piece of evidence? Of course it was possible that Katya had paid to have seven posters representing fictitious films printed on aged paper and framed to look like objects of antiquity, but it wasn’t very likely. Was it possible this Katya Lupi — who bore such a resemblance to the Katya he knew — was hardly the same woman at all but a granddaughter, with an uncanny resemblance to her older relative? It was a more plausible solution than any other he could think of. Certainly the flawless woman he’d seen naked minutes before, her face without so much as a wrinkle upon it, could not be the woman who’d starred in these movies. There had to be some other explanation.
He was about to call out and announce his presence when he heard a soft intake of breath echoing off the bathroom walls. He went quietly to the door, and glanced in. In a large, old-fashioned ceramic bath, half-filled with water, lay Katya, her legs spread, her hips lifted clear of the water so that he could see how her fingers slid inside her. Her eyes were closed.
Not for the first time this afternoon, Todd could feel the head of his dick tapping out the rhythm of his pulse against the inside of his pants. But he had no desire to interrupt Katya’s game. He was perfectly happy to watch her: her face in ecstasy, her breasts clearing from the water as her body arched, her legs lifted up and straddling the sides of the bath. The mysteries of who she was and how she came to be here suddenly seemed absurdly irrelevant. What the hell did it matter? Look at her!
“Did you bring it?”
He’d had his eyes on her cunt; but when he looked back up at her face she was staring at him, her expression fierce with need.
“The Teroarea. Did you bring it?”
He was mortified with embarrassment, but plainly she couldn’t have cared less. She had other priorities.
“Yes,” he said, showing her the switch. “I brought it.”
“So use it.”
“What?”
She lifted her hips even higher, spreading her legs to give him a full view of her sex. It was ripened by her own touches; but also, he knew, from the anticipation of his return.
“Touch it,” she said. “Lightly.”