Black Knight, White Queen by Jackie Ashenden Page B

back, his eyes closed and the expression on his face… It was abandoned, full of pleasure. Release. Jesus, he was even almost smiling.
    “That’s…”
    “You?” Izzy said, adding some shading near his throat. “Yes. It is.” She glanced up at him, a glint in her eyes. “That’s you losing control.”
    The intimacy of the picture made him uncomfortable and yet he couldn’t seem to stop looking at it. “Today?”
    “Yeah. I watched you. You looked…amazing.” Her voice had roughened. “I just wanted to draw you. Capture that look on your face.”
    “Why?”
    Her pencil slowed. Stopped. “Because you never show emotion, Aleks. You’re always so detached. And yet when all that drops away you look…well, you look like that.” She tapped the picture with the end of her pencil. “It’s like you’ve got all this heat inside you that you’re afraid to let out and I don’t understand why.”
    He slid a hand under the blue silk at her back, stroking down her spine. “Control matters in chess. Emotion has no part to play. It’s logic. Strategy. Play too angry or too happy and you lose concentration. Your focus. And that can lead to mistakes.”
    She leaned back against his hand, into his touch. “But life isn’t chess, Aleks. Just because those people couldn’t handle your temper, doesn’t mean you have to keep every other emotion locked up forever.”
    No, but it was safer. Because then when everything you’d come to love was ripped away from you, it didn’t hurt as much. “It’s got nothing to do with that.”
    “Hasn’t it?”
    He didn’t want to answer that so instead he took the pen out of her hand, picked up the book from her knees and opened it, leafing through the pages, looking at the art she’d created. She had such talent. Images of her trip filled the pages, temples and gardens and markets. Farmers with bullocks, a woman in a boat full of flowers, a priest with his hands clasped together, eyes closed.
    But there was one face in particular that didn’t seem belong to the sketches of Thailand. A face that seemed to appear regularly in the pages. A woman with long hair and a distant expression, as if she were seeing things that the viewer couldn’t even contemplate.
    Izzy had gone still, her gaze on the open page, one with the woman on it.
    “That’s Angie,” Izzy said, though he hadn’t asked, had already worked it out. And in her voice he could hear the pain.  
    However she might run from her sister’s death, her sister was still with her. Was still close. A wound that would never heal. A pain that felt somehow familiar to him.  
    He closed the book abruptly and put it on the couch next to her. Reached down and pulled her up into his arms. “I’m hungry. We should get something to eat.”
    “Nice subject change there. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
    Aleks kissed her. “Food, Izzy.”
    She gave him an exasperated look. “Okay then. Shall we go out?”
    “I was thinking room service.”
    “Oh, no, let’s not. I didn’t come to Bangkok just to spend hours in a bloody hotel room. I want to go somewhere else.”
    He didn’t. He’d been to Bangkok a few times before and it was just like any other city, big and dirty and full of people. “Where?”
    The glint in Izzy’s eyes became wicked. “Tell me, Mr. Grandmaster chess player. Have you ever been to Patpong Road?”
     
     
    Aleks didn’t want to go—Bangkok’s touristy red light district held no interest for him whatsoever—but he had to admit, watching her as she walked beside him through the busy, crowded street made agreeing to her suggestion worthwhile.
    She wore her blue silk sarong and trousers, hair loose over her shoulders like a cloud, the neon lights painting rich colour over her pale skin. The expression on her face was so bright, full of avid curiosity and excitement. She glanced at him, grinning, and reached for his hand. The gesture was so unexpected he didn’t have time to pull away. A simple,