Craving BAD: An Anthology of Bad Boys and Wicked Girls

by A. J. Norris

  Her visible collarbone turned him off, but he supposed he owed her a thank-you for the coke, which never failed to make him ravenously horny anyway. Sasha fucked her on the bathroom vanity while, moaning, she thumbed something into her phone. Probably tweeting her friends about who she was doing right now. Snapping a photo of his ass. Wouldn’t be the first time. The entire internet knew how big his dick was, not that he took anything but pride in it.

  His mind wandered, and he plowed her with all the rote enthusiasm of shoveling snow until they had both come. No kissing. Kissing implied caring, and the harsh reality was that he didn’t give a shit. His body craved sex, but his brain had disengaged long ago.

  “You’re leaving already?” she whined from the bed as he dressed, as though her spread legs offered an enticement he hadn’t explored several hundred times on women he could at least stand to look at.

  The thought of sleeping next to her skeletal frame sent a jolt of revulsion through him. “Da. I have to be up early tomorrow.”

  She tried everything in her arsenal to convince him to stay, but he’d seen and heard it all before. I can get more drugs. You can do whatever you want to me.

  He closed the door on her mid-sentence and slunk back to his room, grateful that his roommate was already asleep so he could shower and forget.

  Dave barely glanced up from his monitor. “You’re on the Earthquakes Charities Black-Tie Masquerade Ball. And if you happen to see him—”

  “Got it, Dave. Loud and clear.” Stephanie gripped the back of the guest chair. She was too tense to sit, afraid every movement would reveal what had happened at the bar, or that he’d read it in her eyes. Aleksandr was her secret garden, the fantasy world of a wounded teenage girl, but she was in no position to indulge in anything else, personally or professionally.

  And he was not that sweet boy anymore. Not Alex. The man wearing his face was a stranger.

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Steph. But we want this interview while his being here is still hot news.”

  He’d be news no matter how long he was here, one way or another. Dave clearly wasn’t a hockey fan. The Earthquakes had gone so far as to try forcing into Volynsky’s contract a more stringent morality clause than the standard. They backed off when both his agent and the Players’ Association raised a stink, and what had Aleksandr done? Gotten arrested for assault in the season’s opening week. That alone was enough to raise Stephanie’s defenses.

  Never mind how he had exploded on her in his apartment, as though she’d pulled the pin on a grenade she hadn’t realized she was holding. She had never considered the possibility of a moment in which she would fear him; its truth was heartbreaking, as shattered illusions always were.

  “And besides”—Dave smiled, shrugged, and pushed his glasses up with one finger—“who doesn’t love a costume party?”

  Stephanie suspected Aleksandr very much didn’t love them at all, although she could think of nothing more appropriate for him to attend. He was all façade. A living mask. “I have to wear a gown.” She curled her lip.

  Dave snickered. “Cheer up, sport. It’s one night.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She trudged out of the office and back to her cubicle.

  Shawn, arms folded on top of the partition, sneered at her. “You can’t get the story, can you? No one can crack him.”

  “Watch me.” She sat down and began searching online for a gown she could rent. Her budget didn’t allow for buying one that looked like it wasn’t put together with fabric glue and a prayer.

  “You got something on him? Or are you the one hiding something?”

  Stephanie didn’t so much as glance in his direction. No fuel for the fire he thought he was stoking. Do not engage.

  “You stole that story from me,” he hissed, “and I want to know why. Why would Dave give it to you? Is it his dick you’re sucking?”

  “Not everyone gets their stories the way you do, Shawn.” She tapped the mouse button. Might have a winner on the gown front; this boutique offered styling options too—jewelry, shoes, the works, all for sixty percent under retail. Elegance was simplicity, after all, and she’d rather not picture herself in one of those absurd Tudor-style dresses.

  Shawn uttered a disgusted grunt but no comeback, and sank behind the divider. With a private, victorious smirk, Stephanie clicked to make an appointment.

  He had been someone else once, before pro hockey. Someone who protected. Someone who sacrificed. He’d had to kill that foolish boy to save his own heart, by pretending he didn’t have one. A tin man who didn’t want it back.

  Sasha laced his skates while Coach offered the usual pep talk no one listened to, though most of them had been playing long enough to fake it. They had been their former teams’ offerings in the expansion draft a couple of years ago, the skaters that hadn’t been protected, the guys their general managers believed expendable. That kind of a hit to one’s self-confidence took time to wear off even for a professional athlete, so the Earthquakes’ continued struggles didn’t surprise him. They still, however, frustrated him to no end.

  He thought about Stephanie again, about the things he possibly should have told her back then. That he slept too much and ate too much, when he wasn’t doing the complete opposite; he couldn’t think straight because he was trying to ward off the growing nebula of desolation inside him that murmured he’d be better off dead and that, above all, was why he had begun fucking the endless cavalcade of women. Why he’d tried spice at fifteen, no different from so many Russian kids, and later decided drugs were only slightly less fun than women but a whole lot less complicated.

  “Chto ne tak s toboy?” Mama had shrieked, tearfully, too many times. What is wrong with you?

  He did not know, and perhaps didn’t want to. For a Russian, it was easy to sweep those “Western problems” under the rug. Being with Stephanie during his exchange year had given him the strength to hide the wrongness well enough that he could pass it off as adolescent irritability, but at twenty-five he had no such excuse to fall back on.

  Stephanie’s abrupt silence after he returned to Russia had shattered him in a way that sickened him to admit. He’d locked the memories in a steel box, buried them in quicklime, and constructed a fortress around their gravesite. He had become the antithesis of everything she remembered, if she cared to, for his own safety. The corpse she’d dredged up was a zombie, a horrific composite of those last pieces of “Alex,” of the shared experiences—good and bad. Of her pain and his fury.

  Tonight, the men on the ice paid the price. Hit after hit, skirting the line of legality more as the game wore on. He needed to antagonize someone into a fight so he could do to them what he wished he could do to himself. For the first couple of periods, no one would bite. Six-feet-five, two hundred twenty pounds, and short-fused, he hadn’t lost a scuffle in years.

  Halfway through the third and tired of waiting, Sasha crushed Vancouver’s known instigator against the boards, slamming his shoulder right between the numbers on the back of his sweater. His target naturally took offense.

  “You ready to go?” he barked.

  “I’ve been ready all night.” Sasha flung his gloves onto the ice and whisked off his helmet. They circled, fists up, in the dance that brought the crowd to its feet. Both benches tapped their sticks in encouragement.

  He saw the over-swing coming a mile away, ducked out of it, and followed with a gut-punch that left his opponent breathless and vulnerable to the KO. Sasha’s knuckles connected with the left side of his head, and the podonok dropped like a puck bunny’s panties.

  “Number Nineteen Seattle, five minutes for fighting and a game misconduct. Number Forty-Eight Vancouver, five minutes for fighting.”

  “It was a clean fucking hit!” he shouted at the ref, but he knew as well as anyone that there’d be an in-person hearing and probably a two-game suspension. He skated off the ice to the crowd’s jeers and stormed down the tunnel toward what he least wanted: the opportunity to stew
alone in the locker room with that zombie feeding on him from the inside.

  He had a habit of pushing things too far.

  Stephanie, chewing on a fingernail, watched the game from the press box while scribbling stats on a legal pad. Vancouver was a three-hour drive, so Dave had no problem sending her up.

  Aleksandr was playing angry. Not that there wasn’t always an edge to his game; opposing players feared that as much as his raw talent. He’d once sent a guy to the hospital—unintentional, but intent didn’t matter to the poor sucker lying on an ER gurney with a busted jaw. The idea that she was responsible for his current belligerence, while requiring a certain level of self-importance unfamiliar to her, dropped into her stomach like a stone down a well. She kept replaying that illicit kiss in the bar, at first to torture herself with remorse for betraying Joe.

  And now because that secret garden into which she had sown so many dreams, which had lain fallow and depleted for so many years, was showing signs of life. She would’ve come whether or not Dave requested it; a press pass just legitimized her attendance.

  Where would they be right now if she’d contacted him over the summer, when he was first traded? If she’d been brave enough to tell him why she’d cut off communication in the first place?

  Some roads were better left untraveled.

  Given Aleksandr’s ejection, it was not likely to be a good night for the media. He could easily afford a fine for not speaking to them. But there he stood, his black hair and stubble glistening with sweat. He had stripped down to his performance shirt and compression pants, both of which adhered to every gorgeous muscle like a second skin. His tree-trunk thighs framed a generous bulge, and an unbidden memory of the way he’d felt inside her all those years ago twanged more than just her heartstrings. Stephanie pinched the inside of her forearm before switching on her phone’s voice recorder app. Focus.

  “Aleksandr, you played a very aggressive game tonight,” said a man Stephanie recognized as the Post-Intelligencer’s sports editor. “Were you trying to spark the team, or was this a personal thing?”

  His brilliant, bottle-green eyes searched the room. Then his gaze alighted on her, and she had her answer.

  Stephanie texted Joe that she was spending the night in Vancouver, because no way was she driving the three hours home when midnight had already come and gone. She did not stay in the same hotel as the Earthquakes after Aleksandr had flayed her alive with his eyes; in fact, she’d ducked back into the crowd and scurried away, like a cockroach exposed to light. Bad enough she was all but certain to run into him at the masquerade. She was taking no chances in a hotel.

  You don’t trust yourself around him. And he knows it.

  Stephanie brushed her teeth with such vigor that she spat blood-tinged foam into the sink. He understood that women—a certain type of woman—didn’t say no to him. She wasn’t that woman. She didn’t cheat.

  Except you already did. Stories are what you’re good at, and you gave Joe the one he needed to hear. You wanted that kiss every bit as much as Aleksandr did. Maybe more.

  She climbed into bed and switched off the lamp, then checked her silenced phone for any last-minute emails or messages. A red “1” at the top of her Messages icon. Please be Joe. She scrunched up her face and pressed it.

  Aleksandr: Are you enjoying this? Because I’m not.

  Stephanie stuck her finger in her mouth and gnawed on the cuticle.

  Stephanie: I’m just trying to do my job.

  Aleksandr: Right. If I agree to talk, will you leave me alone?

  Her eyes smarted. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. So much pain. So much emotional wreckage to crawl through just to get her story, if she could reach him at all.

  Stephanie: If that’s what you want.

  Aleksandr: I think it would be better that way. Good night, Stephanie.

  She set her phone face-down on the nightstand and got up to yank several tissues out of the dispenser in the bathroom vanity. Stephanie blotted her mottled face, wiped her nose. More tears clouded her vision. “I don’t have time for this shit,” she muttered and crammed the tissues into the garbage. Aleksandr needed a taste of his own goddamned medicine.

  Stephanie picked up her outfit a few hours before the ball. The gown, a black floor-length halter with a bead-and-crystal neckline, was unfortunately still a dress. Hard to believe anyone would throw down hundreds or thousands of dollars for a piece of fabric with some shiny embellishments, but she was still living in an apartment and paying off student loans. She, or rather the stylist, paired the gown with spike-heeled black ankle boots and sparkling pear cut drop earrings of the finest cubic zirconia—Dave didn’t pay her enough even to rent diamonds. She sprung for an embroidered blue lace mask, in which gleamed fake sapphires that matched those in her earrings, from the costume shop.

  She supposed most women would feel like some kind of princess in this get-up. But she was not most women, and she felt like a jackass. Thankfully, Joe was working late again and thus deprived of the opportunity to mock her. Stephanie removed the mask, grabbed the clutch with which she’d been matched, and walked out to hail a cab. She’d need all the wine she could drink to survive tonight. But she was getting a story out of it if it killed her because these shoes just might.

  Earthquakes Charities was holding the gala in some mansion in Queen Anne repurposed for such events. Behind the perpetual Seattle clouds, anemic moonlight dribbled like murky dishwater onto the street. Peak fall color and mild temperatures were still luring tourists to the city even as it slid inexorably toward cold, wet winter, the Seattle they pictured year-round. Not wanting to sully its reputation, splatters of rain decorated the pavement. Stephanie hurried through the gated entrance and proceeded down a stone walkway hemmed by manicured hedges. She navigated a set of marble steps and tried not to think about falling because that guaranteed she would. Inside, beyond two Tuscan columns and an oak door, a man was waiting to take her coat. She tucked the coat check number into her clutch and wobbled toward the ballroom, pausing to don her mask. Even from the doorway, a potpourri of perfume, sugar, and flora complicated the air. She popped a Claritin for good measure.

  Exposed brick walls and heavy garnet curtains draped over floor-to-ceiling windows supplemented the ball’s elegant, understated décor—fresh-cut roses and soft, yellow lighting from both wall sconces and candles, and golden fairy lights strung through floor plants in each corner of the room. An expansive hardwood floor enticed couples to dance, an act in which she participated less than wearing dresses. Stephanie plucked the first of many wine glasses from a passing server, then drifted around the ballroom like an unmoored ship. The wife of the Earthquakes’ goalie co-chaired the charity foundation; she’d be the best place to start. If Stephanie could locate her. Everyone here resembled an exotic bird in full mating plumage, which made her the plain, hapless loser trying to woo her chosen target. Another day at the office.

  She found her on the other side of the ballroom engaged in conversation with a couple of WAGs about everyone else’s dresses. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, Stephanie supposed, and she pretended to know or care who had designed what before intruding on their discussion.

  “Melanie, hi, I’m Stephanie Hartwell with King County Today.” She extended her hand. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about this event?”

  “Not at all.” Melanie offered a dazzling smile. “Excuse me, ladies.”

  “Great, thank you.” Stephanie retrieved her phone from the clutch as the WAGs headed for the food station. “Can you tell me a bit about the charity this is benefitting?”

  Poised, practiced Melanie launched into a memorized speech, anticipating she would be the press’s center of attention with the usual suspect so far MIA. They were raising money for Children’s Hospital—always a favorite with hockey players—and a new cancer center. It was so important to give back to the community for their support (I know the taxpayers are regretting it, Stephanie thought), and some of these kids mi
ght become hockey players themselves someday. Stephanie smiled politely. Boring. She needed a tongue loosened by alcohol, but no one wanted to talk about Aleksandr anymore. They were already sick of his larger-than-life personality, the sun around which the Earthquakes organization orbited. She had strayed into this system like an errant star or wayward planet ejected from its original home, and was herself dangerously close to being caught in his gravitational pull.

  She suspected his revenge would be merciless, if not swift.

  Stephanie asked a few more questions, standard stuff: What’s the next event? When is the carnival this season? What are the Earthquakes’ playoff chances? To which she received the expected canned responses.

  You’re really headed for the big time with this crap, Steph.

  “Thank you so much, Melanie. If you think of anything you’d like to add later, give me a call.” She handed Melanie her business card. “I plan to have the story up on our website by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Enjoy yourself tonight.” Melanie floated away on a cloud of royal blue tulle.

  Stephanie stood at the edge of the ballroom, conspicuously out of place, and surveyed the dance floor. None of the men here were what the average person would consider “small,” but one rose above the rest, one dancing with a woman in a puffy gown of black-and-red organza ruffles with a sweetheart bodice. Tall, model-thin, her dark hair secured with a jeweled comb into an updo that left her pale shoulders exposed.