“I can’t.” It’s true; my thighs tremble as I say the words. My fingers squeeze his ass.
“Do I need to tie you up?”
Now I freeze. My body falls completely still. Only my chest moves, rapidly rising and falling with my breath.
He lifts his head and breathes something in Russian into my ear. The tone is soft but the language is guttural, harsh, and incredibly sexual. I have no idea what he’s just said to me, but I’m on fire.
He moves his hand and presses his thumb against my swollen, aching clit. Stiffening, I suck in a breath, trying not to move. I’m rewarded with low, satisfied praise.
“Good girl.”
Still not sinking deeper inside me, A.J. lowers his mouth to my nipple again. He begins to suck it at the same time he rubs slow, gentle circles around my clit with his thumb.
My moan of pleasure is broken. My eyes slide shut. It takes every ounce of my concentration not to move, to resist the incredibly strong urge to flex my hips and arch my back, to buck against his hand.
“Perfect,” he whispers, and slides farther inside me.
I feel myself stretch around him. I feel the heat of him, the hardness, the pulsing vein that runs the length of the crown to the base. I’m so close to orgasm I have to bite the inside of my mouth to keep myself still.
“Open your eyes baby.”
I do. His nose is inches from mine. His face is strained, and his eyes are both soft and thrillingly hard. It’s obvious that going this slow is as difficult for him as it is for me. I wonder why he’s doing it.
“Tell me again.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
It can only be one of a few things. I moisten my lips. “I’m yours.”
He slides in another inch.
I gasp, struggling to remain still. My fingers dig into the muscles of his ass.
“What else?”
“All of me belongs to you.”
He presses in farther, another few inches, huge and hot, and I can’t stop the groan that slips from my lips. My thighs shake with the effort not to wrap around his waist.
“And what else?”
“And . . . and . . .”
He waits, breathing shallowly, watching me with hooded eyes. He’s balanced on one elbow, still massaging the bundle of nerves between my legs. I can tell he can’t last much longer, either. I know now what he wants me to say, and what he’ll do when I say it.
A sliver of lightning briefly illuminates the room in a jagged pulse of white. It’s raining so hard it sounds like gunfire.
On an exhalation, looking into his eyes, I whisper, “I love you.”
With a growl like an animal’s, he shoves all the way inside me.
I cry out. My body bows against his. My eyes fall shut. My head tips back against the pillow. A.J. starts to thrust into me, deep and hard, over and over, one big hand beneath my head, pulling my hair, the other gripping my thigh, holding me open as he plunges inside.
So this is what I’ve been missing.
That’s the last coherent thought I have before I come, screaming his name.
There are moments that brand you.
There are moments that alter you, that you recognize, even as they’re happening, will leave you different afterward than you were before. It’s these life-changing moments that make you who you are, more so than the family you were born into or all the experiences you had leading up to them.
For better or for worse, once you’ve lived through such a moment, you can never go back.
As I lie sweaty and sated in A.J.’s arms, my head resting on his chest, our legs entangled and our frantic heartbeats finally beginning to slow, I know that this is one of those moments. I’m different from the girl I was just this morning. I’m darker. More dangerous. In fact, I’m capable of anything.
Because now there’s something I’m willing to lie, cheat, steal, or die for to protect. Something I don’t want to live without.
Or someone.
And it’s time for him to share. There can be no more walls between us, not after this.
“Tell me everything, A.J. Start from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
His chest slowly rises with his deep inhalation, lifting my head. His right hand is on my scalp, fingers entwined in my hair, the left trails slowly up and down the arm I have flung across his chest.
“I was always bigger than the other boys. Even when I was little, I was always the giant of the bunch.” His voice is slow, almost sleepy, neither sad nor happy, just matter-of-fact. “My earliest memory is of fighting. I don’t know what it was about, but I was fighting a boy a few years older than me, and winning.” He pauses. “Mostly I remember the screaming.”
“The other boy’s?”
“The crowd. People were standing around us, watching. Cheering me on.”
“How old were you?”
He thinks silently for a moment. “Maybe four or five.”
I picture a child, barely more than a toddler, fighting bare-knuckled in the street, surrounded by a rabid crowd of onlookers. It doesn’t seem possible.
“Where was your mother?”
There’s a shrug in his voice. “Fucking some john.”
We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the rain. Bella is nestled at our feet, dreaming. Her paws twitch in a dream run.
“I never knew my father. Don’t even know his name. I doubt my mother knew who he was, either. It was common for the prostitutes to get pregnant in the slums; johns paid more when the girls didn’t insist on protection. There was the threat of HIV and everything else, of course, but they always paid more if they didn’t have to wear a rubber. I don’t know why.” He pauses again, and his voice turns dark. “Some of them paid more for a pregnant whore, too.”
Pressing a kiss to his chest, I close my eyes.
“The brothel I grew up in was run by a woman named Darya, but everyone called her Matushka. Mother.” His snort is derisive. “A wolf had more maternal instinct than that old bitch. Her girls had to work when they were sick, pregnant, on the rag, beaten up, starving, everything. There were even girls who were dying of AIDS who were still turning tricks. As long as you were breathing and could spread your legs, you were worth something to Matushka.”
There’s a longer, darker pause. “And if you weren’t breathing, there were certain men who would pay special for that, too.”
I lie perfectly still. I want to hear this—I need to—but I know it will gut me. I know it will be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
A.J. exhales through his nose, a hard burst that stirs my hair. “Matushka’s girls were allowed to keep their bastards on two conditions. One: they kept earning during their pregnancy. And two: as soon as they could, the children would go to work. Not like that,” he adds when he sees my horrified look. “At least, not until they were older. Girls had to be ten before they could start turning tricks. Matushka said it ruined their insides to start earlier.”
I swallow. “And boys?”
“Six.”
He says it without a trace of regret or sadness. It’s just a fact of life. I think of my brother at six years old. I can only remember from pictures; I wasn’t even born then.
“And so . . . you had to . . .”
A.J. produces a low, chilling laugh. “No. Not me. I was worth much more than what the chicken hawks would pay. I wasn’t just a fresh little hole to fuck. I could fight. And for the house, taking hundreds of bets on a single fight is much more lucrative than a four-trick-a-day whore, no matter how many of them you have in your stable.”
The bitterness in his voice breaks my heart. I’m suddenly ashamed by my privileged, first-world upbringing, of all the times I complained about clothes or cars or boys. Until now, real life was as real to me as Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Real life was somewhere out there, beyond the safe confines of my pretty little bubble in Beverly Hills.
“So you started fighting for your keep.”
He n
ods. “Earlier than most, because I was big, and always angry anyway. I didn’t understand why I was so different, why I saw colors in sounds and no one else did. I felt like a freak. And because the more often I won, the easier Matushka was on my mother.”
Bella growls in her sleep, and turns over. She settles again, burrowing into the covers, still making a warning grumble deep in her throat.
“My mother was an addict. Heroin, crack, booze, whatever she could get her hands on. When I was ten, she overdosed. On Christmas morning. I didn’t tell Matushka for three days, until after my mother’s body had already begun to decompose.” He adds thoughtfully, “Only fresh corpses were commodities.”
I whisper, “Oh my God.”
“So I told everyone she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. Luckily that week, Matushka had brought in a pair of fourteen-year-old twins from the country. Farm girls. Their father couldn’t afford to feed them anymore, and Matushka paid well for rarities like twins. She could charge three times as much for twins as she could for a single whore. And all my mother’s regulars wanted a turn with the twins, as did everyone else; word had spread. Most of the other whores idled for the first few weeks after the twins arrived. So by the time my lie was discovered, it was too late. Matushka couldn’t make any money on my mother’s remains.”
He turns his face to my hair. His heart beats beneath my palm, banging against his breastbone like it’s trying to break free.
“I paid for that lie with a beating so severe I couldn’t get out of bed for ten days. But I had nowhere to go, so I took it without complaint. The other whores looked after me, nursed me, brought me food and water. Though I don’t think Matushka expected it, I survived. And when I was able to fight again, Matushka put me up against a boy three years older than me. His name was Pavel.”
A.J.’s voice cracks when he says the other boy’s name. I glance up at his face, and his eyes are closed. His brows are pulled together. He seems in terrible pain.
Haltingly, he whispers, “He was the first . . . the first one . . . I killed.”
My heart stops. I rear up on my elbow and stare down at him. When he opens his eyes, they glitter like he has a fever.
“I was so angry. About my mother, about my life. I just went wild on him. I was like an animal. And the sound of the crowd, urging me on, screaming louder and louder the bloodier it became, the colors of their voices, everything so black . . .”
He closes his eyes again, as if he can’t bear to look at me. “When he fell on the ground I stomped on his throat and broke his neck.”
He touches one of the crosses tattooed on his throat, a small one, the closest to his ear. Though he can’t see it, his fingers trace the outline perfectly, as if they’ve done it a thousand times before.
My horror is so crushing I can only breathe in shallow, panted breaths.
There are three crosses on his neck.
“Matushka took better care of me after that. She made a lot of money from that fight. So she moved me into a nicer room and gave me better food, and told me I had a purpose in life. I had value. I could fight, and win, and so I had value. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to. Survival was the only thing that mattered. By the time I was thirteen I was six feet tall, and famous in certain circles. Medved, they called me. The bear.”
I think of Trina calling him a big ol’ huggy bear, and I feel sick.
“I fought almost every week. I rarely lost. When I was fourteen I was matched with a boy my own age. He was too small. I don’t know why they gave him to me, but I knew from the moment I saw him that he’d be number two. He’d be the next Pavel. By then I didn’t care about hurting the boys I fought. I only cared about hearing the crowd scream and getting my money.
“His name was Maksim. He had a face like a doll’s. Before the fight, I mean.”
A.J. traces the other small cross on his neck, the one closest to his Adam’s apple.
I’m shaking. Outwardly A.J. is calm, telling me this horror story in a tranquil, almost detached voice, but his eyes are filled with self-hatred and revulsion, and his face is very pale.
“After that fight, I was notorious. Matushka couldn’t find a local fighter to go up against me, so they started coming in from the city. I just kept growing and gaining weight, getting harder with every fight, and it was easy for me. I was good at it. I was a fourteen-year-old, six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-ten-pound soulless motherfucker who stole and fought and lived with whores, and I thought that would be my life.”
The rain is relentless, drumming against the roof, sliding down the windowpanes like silvery tears. Bella twitches in her sleep. I can’t get warm, even though I’m pressed against the hot bulk of A.J.’s body.
“And then came Sayori.”
He pauses for a long time, struggling, it seems, for words. Or maybe he’s trying not to cry. I can’t tell; his throat works like he’s holding back great, unspoken emotion, but his eyes have gone blank, staring at the ceiling. I think he’s lost inside himself, inside whatever terrible memory he’s about to reveal.
“She was old for a whore. Usually the girls would overdose, die of disease or botched abortions, or be killed by a john by the time they got to be her age, but there were a few who survived into middle age. She was originally from Tokyo, the daughter of a rich businessman and a former geisha, raised to be a dancer. She was spoiled. Stubborn.” His voice falls. “And beautiful. Right up until she took her last breath, she was beautiful.”
Thunder booms in the sky. Startled, I jump. I realize I’m holding my breath.
“She came to Russia when she was still young, followed a man she’d fallen in love with. Turned out he was married. Turned out he didn’t want anything to do with her when he found out she was pregnant. Her father cut her off when she left Japan to find her lover, so she had no one to turn to. And desperation makes whores of us all, one way or another. She took up with some lowlife who eventually convinced her to have an abortion and start selling herself to support them both. That was the beginning of the end. The lowlife abandoned her to another, worse piece of scum, who sold her to a collector who had a fetish for Asian girls. When she got too old for his taste—she was thirty by then—he sold her to someone else, who eventually sold her to someone else, until she wound up on Matushka’s doorstep. When we met, she was forty-four.”
When he stays silent too long, I prompt, “And you were fifteen.”
“She was kind,” he whispers. “After my mother died, I didn’t know any kindness. Sayori was the one who taught me how to read, how to appreciate music, how to make origami.” His voice turns reverent. “Like you, she had the voice of an angel.”
Ghosts, he’d said. When I look at you all I see are ghosts. I try to gather my courage, because I already know how this story will end.
“Why did she take such a special interest in you, do you think?”
“I was the only man she ever knew who never fucked her or fucked her over. That’s what she said. She was like a second mother to me, for a while.” His voice quivers. “So when she got sick . . . I couldn’t say no . . .”
My body breaks out in gooseflesh. My heart pounding, I stare at his face.
Abruptly he rolls onto his side, turning me so I roll with him. He winds his arms around me, pulls his knees up behind mine, and bows his head, so his forehead rests on the back of my neck. His body trembles. His breathing is shallow and erratic.
“When the time was near, she was too weak to help herself. She was wasted away. I think it was cancer, though she never told me. She knew what happened to whores who died in Matushka’s house, and she didn’t want that to happen to her. I told her I’d take care of her, that I’d get her out of there or make it so Matushka didn’t find out until it was too late, but she said no. She said she’d only stayed so long because of me, and she didn’t want me to get into trouble. So the problem, as she saw it, wasn’t so much how to die, but how to leave a corpse too damaged for even the twisted tastes of one of Matushka�
��s special clients.”
I want to put my hands over my ears now. I want to get out of this bed and run far, far away and hide. I thought I knew where he was going with this story only moments before, but now I’m gripped by a terrifying certainty that what I’m about to hear will be stuck in my head on repeat forever.
A.J.’s trembles turn to jerking shakes. His teeth chatter as if he’s caught a death chill. All the little hairs on my body stand on end.
“I used a pillow,” he says, his voice breaking over every few words. “I waited until early in the morning, so everyone was asleep. She kissed me good-bye first, told me I was the best friend she’d ever had. Then I . . . then I . . .”
He can’t go on. He’s shaking so badly he shakes me with him. The two of us make the sheets twitch, the mattress shudder. At our feet, Bella lifts her head and barks.
Then the words spew from A.J. in a broken, breathless rush, like he’s vomiting poison out of his soul.
“When it was over I woke all the other girls and got them out of the house except Matushka she always slept so soundly so she didn’t hear us leaving she didn’t hear me sloshing petrol all over the floor she didn’t hear the match I struck or the sound the petrol made when it caught fire the whoosh and the sizzle and the pop she only woke up when she smelled the smoke and by then it was too late by then the whole house was on fire and when she came out of the house in her nightgown into the street she was on fire too and her face was melting and all her hair had burned off and the smell oh god the smell—”
He bursts into full, body-wracking sobs.
After a moment, Bella begins to howl.
It sounds exactly like the noise inside my head.
Chloe’s still here.
How can she still be here?
How can she be so calm?
She’ll go soon. This calm can’t last. She’s just in shock.
Right?
It’s been at least an hour since I told her. In that time she’s held me, kissed me, wiped my eyes, made me tea, put on music, lit all the candles, fed the dog, and crawled back into bed with me. Right now she’s fitted against my side with her head on my shoulder and her leg thrown over mine. She hasn’t asked me any more questions. In fact, she’s not speaking at all.
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