Captive Heart (4 page)

******

             
Things fell more and more into place as the weeks went by. Saskia's profits from the Azul banner ads remained modest, but steady. The rise in traffic to her blog and videos coincided with the release of a new line of makeup foundations by Fresh I.D., a company specializing in them. They contacted Saskia, pushing her to actively promote their foundations in her Youtube videos. She drew the line at blatant promotion, but they seemed amenable to her counter proposal of simple ads on her Youtube page. It had to be handled carefully, but the potential for more money and attention motivated Saskia to continue.

             
Saskia had gotten into beauty blogging to be more than a corporate shill, however. She took her job seriously, and making a living, however modest, only increased her motivation. Her articles and videos were getting better, and she didn't need the praise of her real-life friends and online followers to know it. Days passed and her confidence grew. But when night came and she slipped into that solitary, uncertain world of the sounds upstairs, she often doubted herself, knowing she was in too deeply in a situation she could not control.

             
When the greatest feeling of success came and caught Saskia unaware, it did not come from big corporate sponsors, and it certainly did not come from learning to control her newfound nocturnal proclivities. It came the day she sat down and actually paid attention to the comments on her latest Youtube video. This latest video,
SaskiBlue's Hair Extension How-Not-To's,
showed how much more comfortable she had gotten with her comedic side, and she thought it struck a good balance between entertainment and solid advice regarding clip-on hair pieces. But her confidence could not have prepared her for four pages of comments, most of which were positive and some from as far away as Norway. Saskia's video channel now had followers in eight countries and in both the eastern and western hemispheres. One couldn't buy the feeling of personal achievement that came with something like that. Companies like Azul and Fresh I.D. sure as hell couldn't bottle it and sell it.

             
Saskia had put some seriously long hours into filming and editing that video, to say nothing of the long hours spent scouring some of New York City's more out-of-the-way beauty shops to find interesting hair accessories. She had Mr. Podolski's navigation abilities to thank for that. His encyclopedic knowledge of the city's retail establishments was a little scary at times. By the time all was said and done, it had actually felt like as much work as a real job. She decided that this triumph needed celebrating. Suzy and Kayla had done far too much of the cooking of late. On that Wednesday when her hair video reached four pages' worth of comments, Saskia decided that she would be doing the cooking for them this time.

             
Mineo's Meats and Produce was four blocks from the apartment building, and the owner had a fondness for Iowans on account of his granddaughter attending Iowa State University – information for which Saskia, again, had Leo Podolski to thank. Despite Claude Mineo wanting to talk her ear off, as usual, the walk to the store and back left Saskia feeling even better. Suzy and Kayla were going to be in for a treat when Saskia introduced them to her mother's shepherd's pie.

             
As on top of the world as she felt, four blocks carrying two full bags of groceries left Saskia's arms almost numb by the time she entered the foyer of her building. She reached for the elevator call button automatically, her mind elsewhere. Her mind was brutally snapped back to reality, however, when the bell chimed and the door opened before she could touch the button.

             
The man behind the door appeared like a messenger from some hellishly beautiful other world. The dank interior of the elevator stood in sharp contrast to the regal inner light that seemed to burn within him. Saskia did not need the tailored suit to identify the intense Latin man who met her with such mild surprise. By his bearing alone, she knew who he was.

             
He stood five inches taller than Saskia and looked at least two years older. But his youth, combined with the confidence that seethed from him, gave him an air that approached immortality. Saskia had thought herself a confident woman. Her confidence lacked the sheer physical weight of his, however: the difference like that between a candle and the sun.

             
Ruby had described him as Mediterranean, but he looked Latin. Yes, definitely Latin, with sharp features that transcended ethnicity. His ebony hair lay slicked close to his scalp. The black lines of his eyebrows shifted just slightly, his mild surprise blurring to something else? Could it be something like awe?

             
Dare she hope it was desire?

             
With her senses overwhelmed, Saskia's numb arms betrayed her. The grocery bags fell from limp fingers, banging against the old mosaic tile floor like artillery fire. Saskia couldn't even drop to her knees to go after the can of corn that rolled toward the elevator door. Doing so would only humiliate her further. She already felt like the clumsiest thing in the world before this vision of grace and control.

             
Her upstairs neighbor – the man behind all the noises at night and all the chaos in her soul – stooped and swept up the rolling can without looking at it, without taking his eyes off her. He stepped out of the elevator and into her space. Saskia drew back a step automatically, their movements as synchronized as lovers who had danced a decade's worth of waltzes in each other's arms. Never taking his eyes from her, he let the can roll from his fingers into the more upright of the two shopping bags. His voice came to her like calm thunder from a sky, crackling with electric light.

             
“Allow me.”

             
Like that, the handle of bag slipped from his hand to her own. His hand touched hers ever so briefly, affecting her entire body as sure as any sounds from his room ever had. Then he circled around her, the final flourish of the waltz. He did not look away from her, just let his vision glide to a new target as his trajectory changed. Saskia found herself alone in the lobby again with only the simultaneous closings of the lobby and the elevator doors to mark his passing.

             
Saskia stood there, mutely processing what had just happened; struggling to process any kind of rational thought at all. What motivated her to move at last was the absurd fear of him coming back to find her still standing there like a helpless fool.

             
She started cooking dinner for the gals later than she had intended. For the first time ever, Saskia used her dildo while it was still daylight and with no sounds to guide its use save those of her own unconquered lust.

             
Fabio De Lucca's nerves and wits had reached preternatural levels of sharpness by the time the taxi in which he rode pulled up in front of the Greek restaurant where he had intended to have his supper. He paid the driver and disembarked with none of his usual good will. He was not angry, far from it. But it was taking all of his considerable willpower and concentration not to let his mind return again and again to the mysterious woman in the apartment lobby, the one with the bags of groceries.

             
Fabio's quest for an anonymous address in which to conduct his unorthodox lifestyle had not gone as planned. The Bronx might be as far from any place in New York as it could be from where people knew him, but it did not guarantee anonymity. For some reason he had managed to move into a building where people were up in each other’s lives like some kind of TV sitcom. He avoided it all, the cliques and the intrigues. He knew where those got you, oh yes. But at least a few people there knew his face, and he knew they whispered. So far he had been lucky, but sooner or later those whispers could be very bad for business.

             
He knew someone had recently moved into the apartment beneath him, but he did not know who; and he had not cared. The groceries carried by the young woman today indicated that she lived there. She had to be the new resident. But what a resident she was...

             
Fabio sat down in his usual booth so angrily that a few of the restaurant's patrons turned their heads his way. He smiled, played it off as unintentional, but inside he was a dynamo of fury. Losing control in public was not like him. Losing control
ever
was not like him, not as a mere matter of personal pride but as a crucial point of his career and identity.

             
Both careers. Both identities.

             
One subject Fabio knew and knew well was women. He had made them his life's work, in a way. He knew when one was in lust with him, knew when one word would be all it would take to make one surrender to him whatever he wanted. Or make her beg him desperately for whatever
she
wanted. He had it down to a science, could see it in an instant. He saw it in that girl today, those enormous blue-green eyes, so unschooled and so innocent, giving away so much to him that she never intended. Her falling under his control would be a foregone conclusion, should he wish it. That was not the problem.

             
The problem was that for only the few seconds of eye contact that they had shared, Fabio De Lucca felt his own iron will falter.

             
It might have been how very different she looked from all the other women who came and went from Fabio's world. Simply put, she looked real. Those curves, those breasts... the way her lips parted when she took in the sight of him. She was not just another average woman on the street to be ignored. She carried with her an intense organic property: raw life in a dead, paved over, concrete world. Even now, Fabio could not think about her without lust getting the better of him. Just looking at the woman for a few seconds had gotten him agonizingly hard. Had she noticed? What a disgusting fool that would make him look! He could not even try to analyze what attracted him to her now without getting aroused all over again.

             
He had gone out to dinner to relax. It was nice to get out of his regular haunts and be away from people. In some ways it was crucial, easing his transition from his daytime life to his nighttime one. But now he could not get past the distraction. He found his food ashen and without taste. The headspace required to enter his other life eluded him and all on account of that woman, the new tenant. She was to blame. But if there was one thing Fabio De Lucca's experiences had taught him it was that assigning blame never did any good.

             
Tonight's client was an important one. All of his clients were important in their own way, but this one moved in spheres of power even he could barely reach. His discretion was vital, his reliability crucial. Yet he could not go before the client like this. How had this happened? A pair of great tits and a can of corn rolling across a tiled floor should not be able to do this to a man like him! He did not just need to figure out
what
had happened to him, he needed to figure out
why
.

             
Fabio's own cell phone seemed almost like an alien object to him as he dialed the number. He had never had to make a call like this. It was crucial that he never do so again. “Dominique,” he said to the woman who answered. “This is highly irregular I realize but there has arisen... a conflict. I'm afraid tonight will have to be postponed.”

             
His client, powerful and used to having her way in her own sphere, temporarily forgot with whom she was dealing. She bristled at the disruption and demanded to know why. That brought Fabio out of his mess just enough to remind her who he was and what he was capable of.

             
“If I say it must be postponed, it must be postponed! I would not do so if I did not have a good reason. I am disappointed that you would not realize this by now.”

             
It was enough to make Dominique remember. She immediately grew contrite. That was fortunate because he could not have gone much harder on her without his current state showing through. “All is forgiven, Dominique. Your patience will be rewarded. When next we meet you will be given all that you require and more. And Dominique? Never demand an explanation from me again!”

             
He ended the call. The satisfaction garnered from bullying Dominique was fleeting. It did not begin to solve his problems. Briefly he wondered if such a confrontation with the woman from the lobby would go the same way. It was nothing more than a hunch, but somehow he suspected that it would not.

             
This new tenant, what was different about her?

3

             
Saskia did not see the man upstairs after the encounter with the groceries, but the embarrassment lingered for a long time. Her one and only meeting with the man who unknowingly controlled her sexual fantasies, and all she had done was to make a complete fool of herself. Not that it mattered. Ruby's description had not done him justice. He was hot as hell and way out of her league. Saskia didn't let that keep her down, of course. Lots of men in the world were out of her league and plenty more would go crazy for a shot with a girl like her. Nevertheless, dropping her groceries in front of the hot mystery man was an experience she could have done without.