"No, but you frighten yourself. Tonight,” he informed her. “You will be punished."
"Punished? For what?” She laughed, attempting to hide the butterflies in her stomach behind her derision.
Giovanni turned away from his leading lady, hand frozen mid stroke, no longer playing with herself. “That is what you will have to tell me, my dear."
"I'm not playing your games,” she said. “In fact, I insist you drive me to the airport at once."
Ambrosiano left, ignoring her.
"I mean it,” she cried. “I am not staying here-I'm going back to LA where at least I know what kind of weirdos I'm dealing with."
"Jul-ya,” said Grigori, sinking to one knee beside the bed, shocking her yet again with his passionate attentions to her person. “Doan…"
Doan? What on earth could that mean?
"Doan … tuh…"
"Don't,” she exclaimed. “You said don't."
"Doan-tuh,” he nodded somberly. “Doantuh go."
Her belly clenched. He was asking her to stay-presumably with him. But had he any clue what he was letting himself in for really? Did he know her any better than Ambrosiano? The whole situation was a disaster waiting to happen.
"Grigori, the picture has been called off.” She ran the edges of her hand across her neck trying to symbolize something dead in the water. “No more. Our job here … done."
He took the hand she'd just been illustrating her point with and put it to his lips. “Vrastoya girta, Julya."
This time it wasn't overpowering sex he wanted, though she almost could have wished it were, given the discomfort she felt at having her hand kissed.
"You don't fight fair,” she told him. “You know that?"
His grin washed away her fears, not to mention making her toes curl. This in turn made her think of Ambrasiano's pronouncement concerning punishment. It was going to be a long night, she thought. Long indeed.
Chapter Two
Grigori continued to stroke Julie's hair until she'd fallen into a deep sleep. He was still on one knee beside the bed, occupying the place he'd taken up to implore her to stay. He'd known she intended to leave by the tone of her voice in speaking to the White Lion and also by her mention of Ellay, the American city in which she lived. He knew that her departure would break the heart of the White Lion and also his own, for she was the key to the making of the movie-and also a source of great light and life for him.
Beautiful and energetic, youthful and powerful-in many ways, younger and stronger than him, paradoxical as that sounded. For she was a female born of that shining country, that mystical place which the whole world feared and yet sought to be like. The USA.
Grigori had never made to a woman like this American. Never had he felt so much passion, so much expression. She made him hungry. She awoke his senses. Where he had come from, what he had seen, in the loss of his mother and sister and in the tragic civil war of his country, had nearly made him lose hope. Only in the circus had he seen color anymore, only there had he had any feelings of lust-and even then it had taken two or three women at a time to kindle.
So this was what The White Lion's eyes had hinted at in Krakow. This woman and all her possibilities. But there was much more besides. And Grigori needed now to begin to understand some of those things. He would have to if he were going to help in this situation, if he were to use his strength to bear the burden of making this moving picture.
To do this he would have to gaze into the Maestro's eyes again. Which in turn implied leaving Julie for the time being to find him. This was hard, but necessary. For only the White Lion would understand. He would know what Grigori needed and he would give it to him.
Unabashedly, he walked naked from the room, his cock swinging, the mutual nectar of their lovemaking long since dried upon it. Even now he could take Julie again, but he must attend first to this mission. Perhaps later there would be more time to be with her. He wanted that time. To love her one time more, two times, many times. In fact, he was wondering at this point that he would ever be able to get enough of her silky soft depths, so perfectly made to receive his throbbing erection. Or if he would ever tire of the taste of her breasts, salty sweet, the nipples fresh as youth, or the tiny laugh she made when he tickled her belly or how her eyes spoke so many things to him-protest and wonder and want and the most amazing and beguiling trust as they made love.
It was like Katyana, except Julya was in no way dark. Not in her hair or in her spirit. Could it be she was not doomed by the same curses that haunted his people? And could that in turn mean that a love between them might stand some chance of survival? Oddly enough, he did not automatically rule it out. Undeserving as he himself might be, there were occasions upon which fate gave gifts, not to be refused.
The church back home was evidence of this. Mikhail's world. Golden alters and sweet incense, sloping vaulted arches, decorated with pain staking detail, and the windows, the glass colored by heaven itself, so that the sunlight poured in pure and rich as a rainbow. The gifts of God. Like the Savior's birth.
By the saints, Grigori thought, could this woman be his salvation, just as Jesus was the salvation of Mikhail?
The White Lion was nowhere to be found in the house. Emerging from the rear of the villa, he spotted him on the beach. Up to his knees in the licking tide, still fully dressed, sea foam clinging to his trouser legs, his arms outstretched as if in an offering to the heavens. Giovanni's hair flew in the breeze, creating its own waves, white as cotton. The black silk shirt, puffed with air, billowed like a sail. Grigori had in mind the image of some pagan deity, a god of human tragedy, perhaps, or maybe the man god Prometheus, cursed by the Olympians for his gift of fire to man.
For this act he was punished by Zeus, chained to a rock where an eagle would come each day and pick at his liver for all eternity. Grigori felt strange stirrings in his belly as he thought of that exquisite broken torso, the classical images he'd seen in the museums he had sought out on every occasion in his life, much to the ridicule of those around him. He could not help, however, his appreciation of beauty. Classical beauty. And classical tragedy.
Never had Grigori felt so compelled to go to a man, to ease his pain as he did at this moment. All thoughts of his own plight vanishing from his mind, he thought only of the tortured White Lion. He knew he could never hope to understand whatever deep things troubled the director much less remedy them, but if he could at least offer to give something simple, a pleasure that eluded him, that would be enough. What would the Director want of him, though? The thought made Grigori's heart pound in his naked breast. At once his cock grew stiff again, just as much as it had with fair Julie.
Only now the shoe was on the other foot. With her he had been overwhelmed with the desire to enforce her vrastoya, her capitulation. But here, with this charismatic filmmaker, he was flirting with the notion of surrendering himself. There was something secret about this desire, something forbidden which lent it a primal power.
He touched himself for confirmation. Yes, the shiver down his spine told him, yes, said the sweet surging of unseen fluids, you must go forward with this, you must go to this man and do as he tells you. You must obey, Grigori, you must obey.
The White Lion, tall, lean and scarecrow-like in his expensive clothes, did not acknowledge his approach until he was almost on top of the man.
"Grigori,” he pronounced the wrestler's name, his back still turned.
It came across as command and definition and promise all at once. The Dasklovian, robbed of all strength, fell to his knees. The water came up to his hips, swirling, churning, sun warmed. It was a bath, a ritual purifying. His erect, upwardly curving cock delighted in the wetness, bobbing just at the surface.