Above and Beyond (11 page)

Ramon was having absolutely no luck with an escape plan.

His personal favorite had been busting down the gate and making a run for it in one of the Buldova’s sports cars. That might have just been because he’d always wanted to drive a Lamborghini, but to him, it had also seemed like the simplest and most effective strategy he’d thought of yet.

With the addition of the new gate, that plan was strictly off limits. He’d told Zeus to get this gate specifically because someone could have crashed a semi truck into it at 60 miles an hour without damaging it. He hadn’t figured that installation would happen so soon, but when Ramon woke up today, there was a crew of 20 goons and enough heavy machinery to put the gate in place before noon. Which was precisely what had happened.

Things seemed bad enough before an entire truck full of barbed wire showed up. Some of the thugs asked Ramon how to string it up to the top of the walls, and Ramon begrudgingly showed them. The family estate was already beginning to look like a military fortification. He wondered what had Zeus so scared that he was willing to go to such drastic measures so quickly.

The barbed wire would make escape over the walls a lot more difficult too. Not impossible, but he’d have to find something to cut the heavy wire and clear it out of the way. He supposed that one of the heavy rugs in the hallway could work too, but that trick never worked as well in real life as it did on TV.

Zeus came out to inspect their work early in the afternoon. Ramon ran him through their progress so far, pretending to be please with how quickly things had come along. He told Ramon that around dinner time, the closed circuit TV people would be arriving, and he wanted Ramon to help them put their cameras in place. Ramon cursed himself for mentioning that he’d thought the previous camera situation was inadequate. He hadn’t suggested any changes in his report, as he thought the cameras were an unnecessary addition to the recommendations he’d already made, but Zeus was apparently taking every measure that he could.

Ramon worked through the afternoon with the henchman to transform the estate into a stronghold. With every hour, his chances of escape with Lena diminished. Every improvement rendered some plan completely hopeless. He’d have to go back to the drawing board tonight.

He hadn’t seen Lena all day, which might have been easier in the long run. He’d wondered if he’d be able to keep up the ruse of antagonism once the were face to face. It wouldn’t be easy, that's for sure. But he missed her so much that it hurt. All he could think of was that he wanted to be with her now, to be laying in bed with her, talking and laughing and pretending that they were both anywhere but here.

Around six o’clock, an unmarked windowless van pulled up outside the finished gate and was allowed inside. Ramon walked up to the driver, thinking it was the surveillance company, but the driver abruptly drove off without giving him any consideration. Zeus was out by the garage, and personally waved the fan inside. Ramon had gotten used to shady and suspicious things, but even among all of them, something about that van, about Zeus handling something in person, it gave him the creeps.

It was after dinner and Lena still hadn’t talked to Ramon. She had some freedom to move around the house, and did not spend the entire day locked into her room as she had feared that she might. Without Ramon, though, she wouldn’t be happy anywhere.

From time to time she looked out the window to see him working. She wished that there was something she could do, but Ramon was right. She needed to act like nothing had changed, and if she went around looking like she was up to something, it wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous.

She sat on the couch, not paying attention to whatever was on the TV. She started to wonder what she could do to make a difference. There was a clatter in the kitchen and she remembered that she still had two allies in the house besides Ramon. She stretched her legs and got off the couch to go see Tia and Michaela.

Michaela was hunched over low to the ground running in circles around the big island in the middle of the kitchen. She nearly bowled Lena over, not seeing her standing in the middle of the aisle.

“There’s a mouse!” she shouted. “Help me kill it!”

“No! Don’t you dare hurt it you evil old witch!”

Lena hadn’t noticed Tia. She was on her hands and knees under a table with a big plastic bowl. She was sitting stock still, apparently hoping that the mouse would run to her and she would be able to trap it humanely.

“You always put them in the woods and they always come back!” Michaela shouted as she pushed Lena aside and continued to scurry after the mouse that she claimed was there. Lena did not see it. The two old women went back and forth, shouting at each other, calling names and casting rodent based aspersions. Michaela continued to clamber around while Tia didn’t move a muscle. If it weren’t for her eyes darting around the darkened corners of the kitchen and her mouth moving at a million miles a minute, she would have looked as though she was frozen in time.

There was a strange tickling feeling that ran up the back of Lena’s leg. She was too scared to move at first, and when the sensation moved up to her shoulder, she slowly turned her head, terrified at what she knew she would see. When she finally locked eyes on a tiny little creature about the size of her thumb, she didn’t see how she could be afraid of it. It had little black eyes that seemed to stare into hers and beg for salvation. Its tiny chest puffed and heaved and Lena thought that its little heart might explode right there. Tia and Michaela did not notice that their prey had escaped, and Lena crept silently out of the kitchen to the pool. The mouse stayed on her shoulder the whole time until she held out her hand for it. The little creature scampered into her hand and waited patiently while Lena lifted it to a crawling vine that spilled over the top of the compound wall.

Lena stood, watching, as the mouse looked at the vine, then back at her. Seeming to make up its mind, it clambered up the vine, over the wall, and into the swamp.

When she went back to the kitchen, Tia and Michaela had retired for the night. She sighed, hoping that she’d have a chance to talk to them later. She looked around for Ramon, but could not find him. Crestfallen, she walked up to her room with a hung head and a heavy heart.

She lit up when she saw Ramon sitting outside her door, one foot crossed over his knee, a newspaper held out in front of him.

“I didn’t know you could read,” she teased.

“Good evening, Ms. Buldova. I see that you’ve managed to ignore your curfew.”

Their interaction stopped at that. Both of them knew that it had to. Both of them knew that any more risked both of their safety and could spoil their chance at changing Lena’s fate. Ramon opened the bedroom door for her, key in hand, ready to lock it behind her and shut her out from the only things in the house that she cared about.

She met his gaze as she stepped through the open door. That was all that it took. Their resolved crumbled. Ramon glanced both ways down the hallway and nodded. Lena grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him into the room, closing the door and locking it behind them.

             
This time, Ramon did not hesitate and did not resist. Any fear that he had of Zeus was now gone. Any fear that he might be taking advantage of Lena was gone too. He saw her now. She was strong, and Ramon wanted nothing more than to be with her.

              He leaned in and met her kiss with tender passion. They lingered, drawing breath as one. He felt Lena as though she was an extension of his own body. He held her head in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs and pulling her close as they kissed.

              Her hands moved quickly to free him of his pants, then worked up from the bottom button of his shirt to the top and then pulled it from his shoulders down to the floor. He tugged the hem of her tank top and pulled it over her head and felt the tips of her breasts brush against his chest and fill him with insatiable hunger. He pulled her shorts down and ran his finger along the lips he had tasted just the day before. He wanted to do so much more than that to them now.

              Their bodies fit together beautifully, their skin shared a common buzz and their hands moved all around, joining them to each other. They kissed deeply and Ramon found himself lost in Lena’s embrace. He moved by instinct now, pushing his leg between Lena’s and spreading them apart so that he was pressed up against her.

              She opened her mouth to breath or moan or cry out, it was impossible to say. Ramon pushed her down onto the bed and climbed on top of her,

              Lena had fucked many times, but she had never made love before.

              From the first time that night that Ramon had touched her skin, love was all she felt. His fingers seemed to know exactly where she needed them. He felt his way across her body and filled her with pleasure that she did not know a man could bring her. In the last week, her only apprehension about sleeping with Ramon had been her fear that it would be like it had been with Damien. But this, this could not have been any further from that.

              She found mind going quiet and then disappearing all together. When she moved, it was though her body was moving according to somebody else’s command. Someone who knew what they were doing. But it was her all along. She followed pleasure and found it at ever turn, Ramon giving it to her in any way that he could.

              When he climbed on top of her and she felt his cock brush between her thighs and come to rest pressed against her mound, she knew that she was ready, she knew that she wanted it.

              She reached down and found him, hard but soft at the same time. Her fingers wrapped around his cock and she pushed his head down so that it met her entrance. There was a second’s pause as Ramon pushed against her, and then slipped inside.

              Lena cried out in ecstatic pleasure.She never wanted this to stop. She never wanted to let Ramon go. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him into her, moaning his name and uttering mindless obscenities that Ramon repeated back to her in kind.

              The bed creaked as they rocked back and forth in lover’s unison. If somebody had been walking down the hall lending a careful ear, they would have heard the quiet squeaking, the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, and a steady low thump of Lena’s headboard bumping against the walls. They might have heard a moan or two, but they would not have been able to make out the sweet and dirty things that the lovers whispered in each others’ ears.

              Lena, as happy as she was with what Ramon was doing to her, wanted to do something to him. She rolled her hips and pushed him onto his side, then climbed on top of him with a grin. She sat up high on her knees so that Ramon could see her long and lean body, straddling his cock, and her sweet face, smiling down at him.

              She lowered her hips as she guided his cock into her. She did not stop until she sat flush on Ramon’s lap and he was completely inside her. Then she began to move. What began as an unsteady, irregular motion became gradually more fluid until Ramon and Lena were like clockwork. She gasped for air, from exertion and because her chest had grown tight with the rest of her body. A heat rose from between her legs and consumed her. She felt her chest burn and then her cheeks. She held her breath. She pushed her legs harder. She felt it again. That low, almost undetectable shaking that gave way to an earthquake.

              When the world came back into focus, she was laying on top of Ramon’s chest, clutching him, rogue quakes still rocking her body from time to time. His arms were wrapped around her and she was warm from the heat of his body. He smiled at her, and she was happy.

              Ramon could have stayed there with her all night. He never wanted to leave her arms, and Lena would have been perfectly happy to keep him.

              But he had no choice. He would steal out into the night. Their love had to be a secret. They had already taken too great a risk going this far. If somebody had noticed that he was gone, if someone had thought to open the door and look for him here. There would be no saving either of them.

              He sat up and looked down at Lena. She had a radiance that lit even the darkest corners of her bedroom so that to Ramon it seemed to be daytime. Her chest rose and fell in soft, slight puffs and her sweet breath mixed with the scent of sweat and earth. Just standing up out of bed broke Ramon’s heart. He leaned back down and he kissed her on the forehead.

              “I’m sorry,” he said.

              “I know.”

              “Sleep well, I will see you tomorrow.”

              “Sweet dreams.”

              They kissed a final time and Ramon went to the door. On the other side, there were footsteps.

              He turned on his heel and went for the balcony door. It was locked. The key as up in his room. He turned to Lena, panicking. She pointed to the closet door and Ramon dove inside, closing the accordion door behind him as best he could. He slid to the ground and managed to sit amid a collection of shoes and stuffed animals, Lena’s dresses and blouses hanging above his head. Through the slits of the door, he could make out shapes and shadows, but little more. He held his breath, hoping that the footsteps would merely pass and fade away.

              But if things had gone his way lately, he wouldn’t be here, hiding in a fucking closet. Naturally, the footsteps grew louder and he heard a knock on the door. Maybe it was Tia, or Michael. That might actually be a good thing. They could really use their help right now.

              He watched Lena’s shadow move across the floorboard, creaking. Realizing that she couldn’t open the locked door, he fished the key out of his trouser pockets and slid it across the floor. The shadow grew momentarily closer, stopped, shrank, and stood back up before returning across the bedroom and going to the door. There was another knock, more impatient, and the sound of Lena unlocking the door. The silence that followed seemed to last forever.

              The bedroom door creaked open.