Cross Kill

Seventeen

Stella Mesic drove fast and well. Bax didn’t touch her until she had wound her way through the complacent streets to the freeway entrance. Traffic was slight. The wind whispered over her car. Bax said softly, ‘I want you to take off your pants.’

She laughed, a short, uncomfortable bark, but what Bax had said was calculated to stir her blood and he saw her go tense, then settle back and breathe deeply. After a moment she lifted her rump and there was the unmistakeable scrape of cotton on her skin and the soft snap of elastic. Neither of them said anything until a few kilometres had passed and Bax had the taste of her flooding in his mouth. She trembled more than once. He felt her fingers on his neck, tangled in his hair. The car was scarcely moving. ‘How did you know I’d go for that?’ she said, pulling him upright.

‘I just knew.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a common fantasy.’

‘No way. It’s you and me, Stella. Everything starts with us.’

They no longer met at his place, he couldn’t chance the compound again, and she said motels were tacky, so she’d taken out a short lease on a flat in South Yarra. They could scarcely stand up when they got out of the car, and in the flat they were at each other before they reached the bed.

When they were resting Stella said, ‘Let’s see what this has done for your face.’ She turned his chin right and left. She frowned. ‘Slightly more relaxed, maybe.’ She touched her fingers under each eye. ‘A bit less strained? Maybe.’

Bax felt bands loosening inside him. It only happened when he was with her. He began to feel slowed down, looser, valued, inclined to lovers’ talk. He murmured some things against her neck. She flexed sleepily. The slow, stretching quality of her movements reminded Bax of a cat. She had rounded arms, swollen lips and legs the colour of honey, and it all paced like a restless creature in his groin.

‘So what’s Victor up to?’

‘Not now.’

‘Now, Stella.’

She groaned and sat up. ‘He’s still arguing with us. Nothing gets resolved. He wants to go one way, we want to go another. Same old story.’

Bax turned his lean trunk around. He stroked her stomach absently, then something about the conjunction of his well-shaped hand and her gleaming flank caught his attention. They both watched the hand, saw it flex, the fingerbones articulating with style and intent. ‘Can he carry it out, though, that’s the question.’

Stella arrested his hand with hers. ‘You know the old man was grooming him? I mean, not just sending him to the States but paving the way so he could step into his shoes?’

‘How does Leo feel about that?’

‘That’s the whole point. Leo gets some cash and a couple of flats from the estate, but Victor gets all the rest, giving him all the power. As for me, I’m just a woman, Leo’s wife, old Karl didn’t give two hoots about me. Called me a hooker once.’

Bax rolled away and hoisted his rump up the bed until he was looking down at her. ‘You think Leo might fold, give in to Victor?’

‘I’m sure of it. He’s always half looked up to him, half resented him.’

‘Well, you’ll just have to keep working on him.’

‘I’ve been working on him ever since we got married. Before we got married. He would’ve caved in to his father if I hadn’t kept pushing him. Often it works, but he also tends to go with the flow. I can’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. Victor thinks big, and Leo’s listening to some of it’

Bax turned the pillow onto its narrow edge, rested it against the wall, sank his back into it. ‘How big is this big talk?’

Stella curled two fingers together. ‘He claims he’s like that with the casino people in Las Vegas. Says they’ve paid off bent officials here in Australia, meaning if our family invests with them, we’ll make a killing from legalised gambling.’

Bax turned her chin toward him. He didn’t blink, didn’t give anything away, just stared at one cat’s eye and then the other. ‘How do you feel about that?’

The slightest flinch, the slightest hesitation, and he would have jacked the whole thing in. But her hand clasped his wrist, then slipped around his neck. ‘It’s all hot air.’ She kissed him. ‘If it isn’t, then he’s subjecting our assets to an unacceptable degree of risk.’ She kissed him again and pushed his head down. He found the hollow inside her thigh joint, the area he’d told her he liked most. It was fairly stubbly today. He burrowed, lapping at her.

Later, when they were rocking together, she stopped him sharply, clamping the hair above his ears in her fists. ‘Think, Nick. Think.’