Bad Russian 04

by May Ball, Alice

  I shoot a look in his eye, and his face straightens. He knows that I won’t tolerate any bullshit. I’m angered by the idea of him, or any man, having any lewd thoughts at all about my princess.

  I’m impatient to get back to her. I set plates, mustard and condiments on a tray with linen napkins. Cutlery and chopsticks, in case she wants some of my pad Thai or king prawns. I call out from the kitchen area, “What do you want to drink? I have still lemonade, some herbal cordials? Or Coke?”

  “Just water.”

  She’s sitting up on the bed with the sheet wrapped around her. She is magnificent, every gorgeous inch a princess. Her eyes shine at the sight of the sandwich and fries. The way she’s holding the sheet, I think my beautiful woman is self-conscious.

  I’ll teach her, show her that she has nothing to be shy about. It’s a turn-on, though. Every curve, every fraction of skin that she tries to hide, I want to nibble her there, immediately.

  The local artisan bakery makes fantastic steak sandwiches. She tucks into hers hungrily. It excites me to see her with an appetite.

  She rips into the sandwich and eats eagerly. After she swallows the first bite, she looks up at me. “This is so good, Nikita. I am absolutely starving.”

  “Need to keep your strength up for round two.”

  She pauses and looks in my eye. “Don’t even think it. Anyway, lover boy, I have to be at Deke’s to start my shift.”

  “You don’t ever need to go there again.”

  She adds mustard to the juicy filet steak. “Nice though it is to be here and goofing around in your beautiful penthouse all day, Nikita….” She reaches out. I let her take me by the back of the neck. Our mouths meet for a kiss. Her head makes the tiniest shake. “I have to get to my shift in a while.”

  “Don’t go in.” I scoop pad Thai out the box with chopsticks “This is delicious.” I hold the box toward her to offer some. She lifts her hand.

  “Thanks, no. The sandwich is great, though.” Her smile glows. “I have to go in. I said I would. And, anyway, I want to.”

  “I don’t want you to work there anymore.”

  She laughs. “No?”

  “No. You’re mine now.” I’m going to need her to understand that. I want to give her time. But it’s hard. I can’t stand to think of other men anywhere near her. “I don’t want you in the bar with all those men, their eyes all over you in that ridiculous costume.” My blood pumps thinking about it. “I’m sure they try to paw you.”

  Her smile is mischievous, “I saw you pretty obviously enjoying that ridiculous costume last night. Your eyes were definitely taking in some of the highlights.” She eats eagerly then adds, “The front of your pants agreed, as I remember.”

  It’s true. She has that effect on me and she knows it. Right now my cock is lengthening. Charging up.

  She blinks as she watches. “Anyway, nobody gets out of line there. Sol is always on hand, ready to stop any trouble.”

  I’ll try to let it go. For now.

  While we eat, we sit close. The warmth and the scents of her make the food taste fantastic. I take every chance to brush against her, to touch her. After she eats a healthy bite of the sandwich, she asks me, “Do you show your art to many women?”

  “I don’t show it to many people.” She’s probing.

  “No wonder you’re not famous. How many women have you brought to see it?”

  “That’s a surprising question for an American to ask.”

  She shifts, sitting higher. “What would a Russian woman ask?”

  I move nearer. “With no hesitation, she would say, ‘Nikita, How many? How many times, how many women?”

  She rises up. Pokes me in the chest with two fingers. “How many women have you brought up here and fucked, Nikita?”

  I’m holding back the laugh. But it’s hard. “None.”

  She prods me again. Harder. “Tell me the truth.”

  “You know that I wouldn’t lie.”

  “Okay,” she prods me again. Her lips purse. “How many women have you fucked? Anywhere, Nikita?”

  “Same answer. None.”

  She falls back onto her heels. “That was your first time?” A laugh cracks out of her throat. “I don’t believe you.”

  I shrug. What can I say? “I tell the truth, Margot. Always. You must know that by now.”

  She scampers across the covers like a little kitten to kiss me.

  “Both of us? Our first time?” Her eyes flutter. “Unbelievable.”

  “You’re the woman for me. I knew it the moment I saw you.”

  She shakes her head. She’s smiling, but she still doesn’t believe me. She will.

  She tells me, “Okay, first, you need to understand. I have a life plan, okay? And it doesn’t involve lying around in scandalous debauchery with dark and mysterious Russian artists, no matter how hot they might be.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Because, as far as I know, there’s only one way to get paid for that sort of a thing, and I’m not about to go into that business. Besides, I like where I’ve got my life headed, Nikita. I’m going to get my MBA, get some experience, start a social media agency.”

  “No need. You will be my muse. I will pamper you and you will inspire me.”

  The sheet slips from where she has it tucked under her arm. The flash of her breast and her tummy electrify me. She sees my face.

  “Don’t look at me.”

  I pull her to me. “I want to look at you. You’re beautiful. I want to look at you all over. Every little part of you. All day and every day.”

  Her head tips down to nuzzle by her shoulder. “There aren’t many little parts, Nikita. They’re mostly over-sized parts.”

  My head shakes and I can’t help smiling. It’s like hearing a ballerina complain that she’s too poised. Before I can say anything or reach out to her, she hides her face behind the last of the sandwich.

  “Your artworks really are amazing.” She wants to change the subject. It’s okay. “I never experienced anything like them before.”

  “I’m thrilled. If you are the only person who ever sees or experiences them, all the work, every hour will have been time and effort well spent. It will be worth it if no other person ever understands them.”

  Her head leans on my arm. I slip my arm around her so her head is against my chest. I feel the vibration of her voice, “They’re not hard to understand though.”

  “Except you have to not try.”

  She nods, “That’s it. That’s it exactly.”

  Nobody else has understood that about my work. Ever.

  “I make my art purely for the effect that it has on the viewer, but you have to go with it.”

  “Mm. A little like you, my dear Russian. My tortured genius.”

  I squeeze her, “Don’t say that. I’m not tortured. Or particularly a genius, come to that. I see what needs to be said and I say it.”

  “In a way that nobody else can.”

  “Seriously, though, how many people have you shown your work to, here, like this?”

  “Here? Only you.”

  “But you’ve had shows, right?”

  “One. A tiny pop-up show. It was only a few paintings in a Manhattan walk-up gallery. None of the sculpture or the sound art.”

  “You have no idea about marketing at all, do you?”

  “Marketing?” I pull a face, “That’s what the galleries are supposed to do, if I could ever get one of them to understand my work. Understand it the way that you do.” My hands clench. “I’m an artist, not a used-car salesman.”

  She pinches my side. Then punches it. “Okay, Michelangelo, no need to get pissy about people who do business and sell things.”

  “Yes. Okay. You’re right. I didn’t mean it like that. It just is not a world that I know.”

  “You give too much power to the galleries that way. You need to create demand. Make them come to you.” She sounds so wise.

  “Are you going to be my agent as well as
my muse?”

  “I wish, Nikita. But I don’t know how to do either of those things. All I know is what I’ve learned about marketing and social media.”

  “And Martinis.”

  She smiles. My heart lights up. I want to make her smile a thousand times a day. Every day. Forever.

  My phone rings. I ignore it.

  “See who it is, Nikita.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “See who it is.”

  Reluctant, I find the phone. The call cuts off before I can get to it. But the screen told me the call was from Marcia Schtuppenhaut. “Curator of the Hooper Flewitt gallery.”

  Her eyes widen. “Even I’ve heard of that. Call her back.”

  “Just for you.” I’m setting up the dial-back. “Of all the times to call. These damned galleries hardly ever have the decency to return my calls. Now…”

  “Nikita. It’s fine.” She smiles and I melt. “Make the call.”

  After a snappy response from Ms. Schtuppenhaut’s PA, then a long hold, the drawn-out, tired sounding voice of the curator informs me, “We’re planning a show called ‘Art on the Far Horizon.’ Would you send us a few paintings so we can choose one to consider.”

  I hate the arrogance of these people. She phrased it as a question, but she pronounced it like an order.

  “I have a lot more than paintings. The sculptures and the audio pieces–”

  “Just a couple, please, Nikita. Send them today?”

  I try my best to sound charming, though I’d rather strangle her, given the choice. “Marcia, my work is better experienced in installations of a few pieces together.”

  A long sigh from the other end of the phone. “Bring us some things to see and we’ll talk. Come quickly, though, can you?”

  I hang up, snarling. “Those asses. Philistines. Heathen. How can they treat my art like they can buy it by the pound? Like it’s just so many planks or crates of paint.”

  “Don’t go. Tell them where they can stick it. They really aren’t understanding you, Nikita.”

  “I need the meeting. Much as I hate the galleries, there’s no career in art without them.” I hug Margot, squeeze her and kiss her. I can’t stand to be apart from her, not for even an hour.

  “I will be back in ninety minutes at the most.” I tell her to wait. “Make yourself comfortable, my princess.”

  Hugging her close and deep, I kiss her before I throw clothes on. I call Ellis to collect three paintings and have them delivered to the gallery immediately. I grab my laptop and then embrace Margot one more time. I try to set a positive attitude in my mind for the meeting.

  I tell her, “Now that I found you at last, it could mean more than one important turning point.”

  The image of her, wrapped in my silk sheet, tugs at my heart as I ride the elevator down.

  In the cab, an awful feeling comes over me that I made a mistake. But I don’t know what it was.

  Chapter Eleven

  Her

  MY HIPS AND THIGHS are tender as I’m changing in Deke’s locker room. I try to cover it, but when I reach into my locker for my hairbrush, Claire’s eyebrow lifts.

  “Somebody’s got lights in their eyes.” She looks at me, nodding. I know that look. She wants to know what I’ve been doing. Even worse, I think she can see it, written all over me.

  “Has a certain mysterious artist been putting his big masterpiece to work? Has somebody been stretched out like a canvas?”

  There’s no way I’m going to get any peace, I can see it. I’m trying to keep the giggle out of my voice. “I saw him.” I don’t want either of us getting late out onto the floor. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “From the look of you, I’d say I’m going to need fireproof clothing. But still,” she wags a finger as she heads out to the showroom, “Leave out no detail, no matter how filthy and sordid.”

  My eyes take a moment to adjust to the low light. Deke’s is busier than usual with afternoon trade, meaning that I don’t get much chance to talk to Claire.

  I’m serving a table of four gents with a lady friend, about an hour into the shift. Claire passes the table and she gives me a meaningful look and a tilt of her eyes.

  When I straighten up from taking the order, I see him.

  In the far corner, same place as before. Darkest part of the room, watching with a face full of thunder. Chills trickle down the insides of my thighs.

  While I wait at the bar for Seb to fill the order, Claire stands at my side. “He doesn’t look happy.”

  “He told me to wait for him.”

  She looks at him again. Nods as she tells me, “I would have waited.”

  I’m surprised by an unexpected pang in my gut when she says that. My voice is as light as I can make it, but my lips stay tight when I tell her, “He said he would be an hour and a half, tops. I waited more than two and a half hours.”

  Clair draws breath to say something, but she changes her mind when she catches the look in my eye.

  I tell her, “He didn’t want me to come back to work.”

  “What, ever?”

  I nod.

  “Does he want to keep you as a sex-slave?”

  “Kind of.”

  I see Claire chew her lip as I take the silver tray to serve my customers.

  Then I make my way over to Nikita’s table. My breath is tight. Shallow.

  “Sit down.” His eyes blaze. My stomach feels hollow. I’m excited and afraid. “Join me.”

  “I can’t. It’s against the rules.” My knee quivers.

  “I need to talk to you, Margot.”

  “Yes. I want to talk, too.” My eyes plead with him, but I see no mercy. “I’m due a break in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Take it now.”

  My stomach tightens. I should tell him, ‘no’ but I can’t do it, somehow.

  “It can’t be in here. We aren’t allowed to sit with customers.”

  His eyes narrow. “Where do you suggest?”

  I can’t believe how angry he seems to be. It scares me.

  “There’s a coffee bar, right across the street.”

  He’s annoyed when I tell him I have to change out of the uniform and leave out the back way.

  “How long is your break?”

  “Just fifteen minutes.”

  “Be quick.”

  Inside, Dellolio’s is dazzlingly bright. Everything is candy colored, like a shiny, cartoon version of a ’50s diner. And it’s empty. Apart from the large, brooding Russian in the far corner, already nursing a coffee cup.