“That depends,” she said, rolling the glass between her palms until condensation dripped onto her knees. The ice clinked like a metronome counting down. “You still enjoy Brahms?” His left eyebrow twitched—almost imperceptibly—but she caught it. Caught the way his pulse jumped when she tilted her head, exposing the faded bite marks along her collarbone. The scars he’d never seen, the ones she’d earned after the eviction, when the hunger had been a live wire in her gut.
“So you’re still the same wildcat,” he remarked in a conversational tone. Lena took a deep breath. Every ounce of her self-control was required to keep her from spitting her whiskey-laced saliva into his face. This was her performance. Her composition. She would take it slow. ”Some things just never change” she replied in a calm tone. Her voice was smoky, with a flirting undertone. His fingers flexed against his own glass—white-knuckled, like he was restraining something far more violent than curiosity. The silence stretched, taut as a garrote wire, until he finally murmured, “You always did know how to make an entrance.” The words landed like a challenge. She could taste the bourbon on his breath from three feet away, could feel the heat rolling off him in waves. Her skin prickled. Not fear. Anticipation.
A few minutes later, they were sitting in the living room of his apartment, a bottle of whiskey before them on an elegant mahogany table. He raised his glass and toasted her: ”Cheers! To memories!” ”To memories!” she echoed mechanically. What a slimeball he was! Lena didn’t even want to think about how much alcohol she would have to pour into herself just to keep the past at bay. The whiskey burned going down, but not nearly as much as the memory of his hands on her throat ten years ago. She let the silence linger just a beat too long—long enough for his smile to twitch—before setting her glass down with deliberate softness. “Funny,” she said, tracing a finger along the rim. “I don’t recall you being this nostalgic.” The air hummed between them, thick with the scent of polished wood and the faint metallic tang of the switchblade strapped to her thigh.
”Play for me! Play for me naked! I want to feel the notes you draw from your instrument vibrating inside my body.” Lena readily followed his request. She had the horny bastard right where she wanted him, faster than expected. While she took the bow from the case and treated it with rosin, he stripped off his clothes. Without taking her instrument, Lena approached the Jackal with her bow held high.
His lips curled into that same smirk she’d seen a decade ago, right before he’d pinned her against the Steinway with one hand while the other fumbled with his belt. But this time, Lena didn’t flinch. This time, she pressed the bow’s frog against his jugular with the precision of a concertmaster tuning strings. “Funny,” she whispered, leaning in close enough to taste the fear souring his bourbon breath. “I don’t recall you being this… exposed.”
The Jackal’s laugh caught in his throat as the horsehair twitched against his pulse. Behind him, moonlight glinted off the Stradivarius lying untouched in its case—the one he’d paid fifty grand to have “recovered” after torching her apartment. Lena dragged the bow downward slowly, savoring the way his sweat made the wood slip easier across his skin, until the tip hovered above his sternum.
