I needed those women.
Not this sick addiction for her body, her skin, her smell, her smile, her fucking lying lips.
She never wore shoes in summer. Yeah right. She always let her hair dry naturally. A little harmless Southern girl. She doesn’t fool me. Not for one cotton pickin’ second. I’m not
Robert. She’s no good.
And yet I want her. So bad.
Fuck!
I should stop thinking about her. I should stay away from her. I should go out and bury my cock in other bodies. Eventually one of them will immunize me against her. Surely that cannot
be too difficult to do.
Not for the man who won the title of Ivan the Terrible.
CHAPTER 13
Tawny Maxwell
By the time I woke up it was nearly six o’clock in the morning, but the long sleep had cured me somewhat, and I felt much stronger both mentally and physically.
I washed and dressed quickly in the sweats that Theresa had brought. They were a little big, but they would have to do for the meantime. I put my hair in a plait, and opened my bedroom
door.
The apartment was dark and still. Ivan’s door was firmly shut and there was no noise from within. Quietly, I passed his door and, picking up the set of keys that were in a silver bowl by
the front door, let myself out into a corridor.
I stood for a moment taking in my surroundings. It was quite spooky that I totally could not remember passing through any of it. There were only two doors with numbers on them on that
floor, Ivan’s and another on the opposite end of the corridor. I passed a lift and made for another door that looked like a fire escape.
I opened it and ran down two flights of steps to the ground floor. I exited out into a classy lobby with a highly polished floor and granite walls. There was a large vase of fresh
flowers at the reception desk. A man in a cheap grey suit was standing at the glass front looking out. He turned around when he heard the door open.
‘Hello,’ he greeted, his tone polite, but his stare was full of suspicion.
‘I’m staying temporarily at Apartment 5. Just going for a jog,’ I felt compelled to explain.
‘Have a good run,’ he said formally, as he moved to hold the door open for me.
I thanked him and ventured out into a dark and mostly deserted London. Unlike Bedfordshire, there was no snow at all in London. It was just cold. I turned left and began to jog down the
empty street. The cold wind whistled around my ear. I made a few turns, all the while carefully memorizing road names and landmarks, and eventually ended up in Brook Street. I ran down
it until I came to Grosvenor Park.
There were other joggers and people with their dogs. They smiled at me or called out greetings. I passed the familiar American Embassy building and ran further up the road until I got to
Hyde Park where a group of people were practicing Tai Chi, their movements slow and graceful. I kept going until I reached the Serpentine Lake before my lungs felt as if they were on
fire, and I turned around and started to retrace my steps.
The morning sun was beginning to filter through the buildings and London was coming alive with pedestrians and morning traffic. Almost everybody was dressed for a day in the office and
not as friendly as the dog walkers and joggers I had passed on my way out. By the time I got back I was drenched with sweat, but feeling absolutely exhilarated.
I let myself into the apartment and I could tell immediately that Ivan was up and about. His bedroom door was yanked open suddenly and he stood at the doorway in his pajama bottoms,
shirtless and frowning. My eyeballs nearly exploded. Whoa! I’ll be dog-gone! Who knew that underneath all those perfectly tailored suits the icy English Lord had a chest full of tats?
Designs like you would see in Chinese landscape paintings decorated his pecs. Like dragons or flying beasts, the inked creatures flew down the powerfully developed muscles of his upper
arms.
It was shocking to think that half-asleep and grumpy as a grizzly, a man could ooze raw sex appeal like that, but before he could think I was a special kind of stupid I dragged my eyes
back up to his brooding face.
‘Good morning,’ I said cheerfully.
His eyes moved arrogantly over my hot, sweaty face. ‘What’s good about it?’ he asked moodily.
‘I don’t know. The sun is shining? We’re alive?’
‘Of course you’d have to be a morning person,’ he groaned disgustedly.
I smothered a laugh. ‘And of course, you’d have to be a mean sow in the morning.’
He threw me a filthy look, and was about to turn around and disappear into his room again when I spoke up.