Chapter 32

32

Eva

We're walking down a hallway, fingers entwined. I should wait to touch him. That would be the more professional choice—to hold off, to draw him out—but our hands found each other when neither of us was looking.

"I don't understand how you convinced them to do this," he says. I killed the guard. Kidding.

I did it the same way I do everything: by telling the truth and by lying. I had Sherri do some recon on the man behind the cameras. I found out his wife died last year. Tragic for him, yes. Kind of perfect for me. I told him about Andrew—the truth is always the most dangerous weapon. I told him that I thought I'd never meet someone again and then, by chance, on a train…

I don't know if he believed me, but I gave him hope—which is more important.

"I could get fired for this," he told me.

That's when I paid him off. Money is a close second to truth as a weapon.

"All I can do is turn off the security system," he said. "Don't let anyone see you. Don't be too loud."

"Of course," I assured him. Then I mused, "How loud is too loud?"

Luckily, there's some kind of event going on in the gardens. Something with galaxy lights and fireworks. As we walk down the hallway, we get glimpses through the windows. Fountains lit like casinos. Couples kissing in the dark. Statues frozen in the middle of doing something awesome, never to do better, never to move on.

I can see that the production value is paying off. I have read my mark correctly. Emotionally, Jonathan is very easy to read. The facts are a little hazy, but his heart is on his sleeve.

He gazes up at the ceiling, enraptured by the sconces.

"How many people do you think have died here?" he says. Oh. Maybe his thoughts run a little darker .

"Le vrai mort ou le petite mort?" I ask.

"Both." His fingers thread deeper through mine.

We reach the door. There's no going back now.

There's a legend about the Hall of Mirrors. It's a little hokey, but I love hokey things. Legend has it that every time you visit, you see your past self—the last you that came there—reflected in the mirrors. As if every time you visit, you leave a version of yourself there.

If you let yourself believe it, you can see it. It can take your breath away.

Jonathan sighs at our reflections, a little forcefully, like he's trying to keep his mind from dreaming. "How much time do we have?"

"Nineteen seconds," I joke.

I take him to the center of the hall. He seems the type to appreciate symmetry. I turn to face him. I catch our reflections. I get dizzy, as if I forget which ones are the real us.

He steadies me. "I feel it, too."

I don't know what he means. Feels what? What do I feel? Hazy? Lusty? Uncertain. Undone.

I open my mouth to say something smart but nothing comes out. I start to feel a little scared. That I'm losing control of my plans already.

Then he moves over me. He puts his mouth over mine as if he's picking up my slack.

We kiss. We both peek at our reflections at the same time. We laugh.

"I'm going to take off my clothes," I say. "Will you help me?"

"Mmm," he tells my neck. He takes my shirt off a little quickly, and then he apologizes: "Sorry. I need to calm down."

I reach up and brush the ends of his hair. He unfastens my bra, slips it neatly off my shoulders; then, keeping his eyes on me, he travels down, fastens his lips to my nipples and sucks.

A wave of intense feeling washes over me. It's seriously like a reverberation of the day I was created. Torn from that heaven, placed in this hell, only to remember that supernal ecstasy when someone sucks my tits.

My pants hit the floor. I didn't feel him take them off.

He's taking control. That was not the plan.

He starts to go down.

"Wait." Even though this feels really, really great and I'm sure it will continue to do so, this is so not the way to assure his undying devotion. I'm not going to make him want me by allowing him to eat my pussy. I have to eat his pussy, metaphorically speaking.

"I have a feeling," I say, delicately running my fingers along his shoulder blades, "that you're the type that likes to control everything." He chose the restaurant. He moved his seat on the train. He panicked when I adjusted his glasses. "But I don't think that's really working out for you."

This is what I mean by starting with the head. Every human being is pretty much the same. We're all miserable. We don't know why. We're drawn to people who promise us the reason.

I run my fingers down his jacket lapel. "I want you to let me take control of your life. Just for a moment. Just right now. Nothing is your decision. Nothing is your fault." Guilt is his weakness. I see it spark in his eyes. It's so fucking easy. It's so fucking dangerous. "I want you to put your life in my hands."

I can see him resisting. I can see him receding. His blue eyes drawing a blank. Until I put his life in my hands, literally. The wave of feeling catches in his throat.

"Don't you trust me?" I say, with my hands on his dick.

He inhales slowly—maybe a little fearfully—and then he kisses me: meekly, worshipfully, like a good boy.

I'm not going to make him get naked in Versailles. I feel like that would run a little too exhibitionist for his tastes.

Instead, I lay him down, very carefully, very thoughtfully, at the apex of the mirrors, and I give him a blow job, an infinite number of times.

I do it with precision and musicality. I start off slow. I draw him out. Then I tantalize. I tease. I wreck him.

I have a vast understanding of the human body. I can light it up like a pinball machine. Sex is a little like murder. There are certain things that kill everyone, every time.

But the secret to good sex is that it should be a little embarrassing. That's how you know you've truly lost control. You should drool. You should feel brain-dead. You should beg for something you don't have words for.

When we've hit all those little achievements, then and only then do I mount him. He said he wanted to have sex once, but in the mirrors, we have sex so many times.

"Fuck!" he says, and then he comes, a little begrudgingly. I can see the expression on his face as it spools out of him, like he wants to spool it back in. "Fuck."

I dismount him.

"Fuck. Me," he says.

I put my clothes back on. He rolls over, gazes at me with hazy, lust-soaked eyes. Outside there are fireworks. My timing was a little off, but no one's perfect.

He takes a deep breath, gathering all his scattered thoughts back into his head. "I changed my mind," he says. "I don't want to separate." He inhales hopefully, eyes on me.

I reach forward. I brush his messy hair back. "I know."

Then I smile.