The Cost Of The Forbidden

She just lay there naked in bed, trying to imagine how that low voice might sound while making love to her, and she was terribly, terribly tempted to find out.

To just finally give in to the suggestive air they created.

‘Ask away.’

‘Well, I’m assuming, if you’re engaged, that you must love your fiancé.’

She didn’t answer.

‘And fancy him.’

Naomi said nothing.

‘So how do you...?’

‘How do I what, Sev?’

‘You’ve been in New York for three months and in that time I can’t recall him coming over to see you.’

‘He hasn’t.’

‘So,’ Sev asked, ‘how do you manage?’

Manage!

Oh, it was as basic as that to Sev, Naomi thought. An itch to be scratched, a line on his to-do list to be regularly ticked off.

‘Sev,’ Naomi crisply replied, when she would far rather dive under the covers and prolong the call, ‘I’m giving you an official warning now.’

She hung up on him. Sev tossed the phone down in frustration.

Bloody Naomi, Sev thought as he lay there. He was hard for her and had been left hanging. And then he remembered why he’d come to Rome.

She had been brunette.

It was as simple and as messed up as that.

He was over Naomi and her moods.

Sev didn’t need some sanctimonious PA sitting on her moral throne. She was there to run his life, not have him account for it.

Who cared what she thought?

He cared about no one.

Only that wasn’t quite right.

God, but he hated this month already.

Sev hated November.

He always had and he always would.

In Russia it was Mother’s Day at the end of November.

At school, the ‘home kids’, as he and his friends had called the students who’d had families, would sit and make cards for their mothers as the ‘detsky dom’ kids stuck rice onto paper for, well, no one in particular.

There had been four at his table, they had been together since nursery school.

Sevastyan had always been the nerdy one, Nikolai had liked ships and then there had been the twins, Roman and Daniil, who were going to be famous boxers one day.

Some day.

Never.

‘If you don’t have a mother then make a card for someone you care about,’ the teacher had suggested each year.

The ‘detsky dom’ kids’ cards had never got made.

A few years back Sevastyan had found out that he did have a mother, but he now knew that she wouldn’t have appreciated a card with stuck-on rice anyway.

He’d send flowers, of course, but rather than rely on Naomi he would try to work out himself what to put in the note.

Each year it became harder to work out what to write.

Thanks for being there?

She hadn’t been.

With love to you on this special day?

It wasn’t a special day to her.

And there was no love.

November also meant that it was his niece’s birthday.

Her eighteenth! Sev suddenly remembered.

He’d stop at Tiffany on the way to the office Sev thought, then decided not to bother.

Whatever he sent would just end up being pawned or put up on some auction site.

Yes, for so many reasons he hated November.

Sev closed his eyes but he still could not sleep.

He stared into the dark and could remember as if it were yesterday, rather than half a lifetime ago, hearing his friend quietly crying in the night.