by A. J. Norris
Stephanie’s last memories of him in a tuxedo were from their junior prom. Tonight was, for better or worse, not going to end with the same fireworks.
Time slowed to an arthritic crawl as she watched them dance. Seeing him with someone wasn’t supposed to hurt, and yet the pain felt like someone cutting out her heart with dull scissors.
A string quartet on the stage performed “The Music of the Night” from The Phantom of the Opera. Stephanie retreated to the food stations and salivated at the sight of a chocolate fountain. Instead, she examined the other options—the usual finger foods and canapes—before opting to nibble a stuffed mushroom. The hell with it. She shoved it into her mouth and meandered down a darkened hallway where she presumed the bathrooms were. Maybe she’d have one last cry before leaving with her tail between her legs. So much for a taste of his own medicine. She couldn’t even think about him without bursting into tears.
In the room to her left was a giant framed mirror over a black marble vanity, on which sat vases with orchids in precise arrangements. A bridal room. The woman in the red gown was gesticulating at Aleksandr, who leaned against the vanity with an expression that pretended to be nothing other than ennui.
Until mockery supplanted it and he was snapping his fingers and thumb together to mimic a mouth opening and closing. “Blah, blah, blah. I fuck you a few times, I take you to this stupid ball because I need a date, and now you think you’re my girlfriend? Sorry, sweetheart, but nyet. I don’t want one. You and every other suka out there think you’re the one who will ‘tame’ me. You’re all the same.”
Suka. Bitch. Stephanie wrinkled her nose in disgust. Her Alex respected women.
Her Alex was a phantom haunting an abandoned corridor of her heart. He did not exist in this world.
As much as she wanted to show solidarity with the poor woman, her mind decided to dwell on Alex’s statement of fucking her a few times, and Stephanie caved to unadorned, wretched jealousy. The man had been with hundreds. And okay, maybe envy reared its ugly head more than she cared to acknowledge, but—
She pulled out her phone and faced the wall when the woman swished past her in a full-blown Scarlett O’Hara flounce. Stephanie peered over her shoulder into the room. Aleksandr was staring into the mirror as though searching for something he’d lost. His fingers twitched on the marble. He extracted his wallet and something else from an inner pocket. A tiny plastic bag containing white powder. He poured it onto the vanity and with a credit card arranged it into two equal lines, then fished out a bill, rolled it up, and with a finger pressed to his other nostril snorted both rails.
“Oh, Alex,” she whispered, and tasted salt in the corners of her mouth. Some naïve part of her had deemed the stories untrue, a last-ditch effort to preserve her fantasy’s integrity.
Alex was gone, and he was never coming back.
Aleksandr tipped his head back and sniffed a few times, then wiped the marble clean and pulled his mask down. Stephanie resumed her intimate association with the wall. He didn’t know what she was wearing, didn’t know she was there at all. But the nearness of his body in his unwitting brush past her in the dark raised a chill up her spine.
There wasn’t enough alcohol in all of King County for this.
She started toward the ballroom; a large, dark figure blocked her path, and her heart slammed into her chest wall. He was wearing a shimmering red mask, ornamented with stripes of sparkling black and red mesh, that concealed half of the scar on his cheek. A devil’s mask.
“Looking for me, or hiding from me?” Those intense eyes, their pupils now dilated, gauged her for the likeliest response. She feared it was all but exuding from her in waves of futile lust.
“I thought you wanted me to leave you alone. And I don’t—”
He took her hand and led her to the dancefloor. He wasn’t known for his patience. Never mind that he was high.
“Dance.”
The breathtaking minimalism of Stephanie’s dress revealed curves Sasha still dreamed about when his mind had free rein to wander where it pleased. He’d known it was her the instant he passed her in the hall.
Why her? he’d asked himself many times over the years, but the answer required no contemplation. Because she was like no one else.
“What about your date?”
Sasha smirked as they assumed a traditional ballroom stance. “What about yours?”
She gave an almost embarrassed shrug. He envisioned running his tongue along her bare shoulder, tasting the sweet cream skin that shone even in this diffuse light. How much would she let him get away with? Her proximity alone compelled him to test the limits, prod the boundaries of her resistance.
“I don’t bring him to work-related events. He needs too much attention.”
“Not everyone understands the dedication to one’s job.”
“But you do.” Her eyes twinkled. Her mask was the same shade of blue.
Sasha let his attention settle there before falling to her sweet pink lips. Color flared in her cheeks, and he smiled.
“Why do I get the feeling you tell women anything they want to hear?”
He chuckled and whisked her across the floor. “Don’t pretend you know me, Stephanie. You don’t, not anymore.”
She stiffened. “And you’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t want me to.”
“Have I?” His last round of texts to her had been less than friendly, and he had told her to leave him alone. Their game was getting difficult to keep track of, and more than a little unkind. “Either way, I’m not interested in mixing business with pleasure tonight.”
“Are you okay?” She squinted at him, then dropped her gaze and chewed on her lip. “I shouldn’t even bring this up, but I saw—”
Of course, she had. Her reporter’s nose had led her to a story that could land him in the league’s substance abuse program and make her a star. Until now, as far as the commissioner knew, all the anecdotes were just that—tales told by unreliable witnesses. She was anything but. “I’m fine, as long as you don’t bring it up to anyone else. And you know who I mean.”
“Alex—um”—she jerked her head—“Aleksandr…”
Flustered. For some reason, it troubled him. Which meant the coke wasn’t working, because by now he should’ve stopped caring about anything. Already the depression was sidling up to him, and he had nothing to show for it.
“It’s not my place, but I’m a little worried about you. I just…you’re right. I don’t know you. Forget it.”
That saddened him more. He dipped his mouth to her ear. “What happened at my apartment. I didn’t mean to…”
Her sharp inhale was a knife in his gut.
“Remind you of him.”
But he was the one thinking of her father now. Of the weekend her parents had come home early from their getaway, and before she had gotten Sasha out of the house. Her mother had beaten a hasty retreat to the kitchen, unwilling to defend her children or herself and leaving Stephanie to face the full brunt of her father’s wrath as she and Sasha emerged from her room, disheveled and fragranced with epic teenage sex. Her father’s face purpled with rage.
“I told you no one was allowed over this weekend! Especially him!” Spittle flew from his lips. Sasha had placed himself between him and Stephanie. “Did you touch my daughter? In my house?”
“Dad, please—”
“Leave her alone.” Sasha was several inches taller than Mr. Hartwell, but that—and everything else about him—seemed to infuriate the man further.
“Shut your fucking mouth! I’ll have you deported, you filthy son of a bitch!”
Intimidation from an American cop might have worked on an exchange student from Western Europe. But Sasha was Russian, and the Russian police force had practically invented corruption.
“Alex,” Stephanie whispered, “just go. I’ll be fine.”
A lie and they all knew it. He turned to her to protest, long enough for her father to grab him, spin him around, and slam him up
against the wall. Sasha thumped the back of his head and winced. His eyes watered.
“Get out.” Hartwell pitched him toward the door.
Sasha, rubbing his head, silently pleaded with Stephanie to go with him. He shot her father an enraged glare. Blood trickled down the back of his neck.
Hartwell slammed the door shut, but Sasha could hear everything behind it.
“I can smell him on you, you whore!”
“I love him!” she screamed.
A crack, skin on skin; a whimper. Sasha swiped at his eyes and ran down the steps, his mind a sewer drain receiving every dark and ugly emotion until he was drowning in them. Then one separated from the rest and floated to the surface, like the film on rancid milk: incandescent rage. Anything that might befall Hartwell in the line of duty would be a memory of Heaven compared to what a pissed-off, lovesick boy whose great-grandfather had spent time in a Soviet gulag might have perpetrated on him.
It was a moment of strange clarity, and of terror because in it he became aware of his own capacity for violence. Some part of him feared that had been the reason she turned her back on him. So well acquainted with it already, she had somehow glimpsed it in him.
Stephanie knocked on his bedroom door later that evening, having sneaked out of her room to see him as she often did. Sasha opened it but said nothing until she was inside and he had locked it behind her. He gingerly touched the plum-colored bruise high on her cheekbone, the skin around it swollen and red.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “What does it look like?”
“Bruised. Swollen. Let me get—”
“No. Later, maybe. Just…” She wrung her hands. “How’s your head?”
“Fine. Just a little bump. I’m sorry, Stefania.” Sasha gathered her to him. “He does this because of me.”
“He was doing it long before you. You’re just a convenient excuse.”
Was that meant to make him feel better or worse? He led her to the bed and sat with her. “No one should hit you. I see it too much in Russia. I…” If he beats you, it means he loves you. A sixteenth-century mentality that had worsened under the Putin regime. Forty percent of all violent crime occurred within families. Sasha shook his head. “I don’t want to see it anymore.”
Stephanie laid her head on his shoulder and let out an exhausted sigh.
“You can’t go back there.”
“Where am I going to go? Especially after you leave.”
They’d work it out somehow. They had to, because love always found a way. At seventeen, the world dazzling with promise, anything was possible. “I love you.” Careful not to touch her injured cheek, Sasha kissed her, awakening the hunger deep in his belly. “I keep you safe. At least for tonight.”
Stephanie got up and strayed to the window, where silver and shadow dappled her skin. She began to cry.
Sasha squeezed his eyes shut to keep his own tears in check, then joined her at the window and hugged her. “Don’t cry,” he murmured. “Not tonight.” He pushed a lock of hair from her face, skimmed his fingertips over her other cheek. He peeled off his shirt, each cell a tiny battery needing contact with her skin. He was a seventeen-year-old boy; he did not know how else to comfort her except through the most intimate act he could think of.
And she accepted it—greedily, frantically, as though his love was the one thing keeping her alive.
On the dancefloor, Stephanie shuddered and closed her eyes. “I try not to think about him.”
Her father still lived, however, and for that, he ought to count his blessings. Sasha drew her closer. Bozhe, she felt incredible, as if his arms had been made for nothing other than her. “You never told me why you stopped talking to me.”
Every part of her—her body, her breathing, even her eyes—froze. “I think that needs to wait until we’re…on better terms.”
He weighed several options for plausibility, but nothing quite fit. Another ploy to get him to sit down for her interview? To make himself vulnerable. But she had answers he required. The keys to doors locked for nearly a decade.
“So if you want to know why, Aleksandr, you need to give me something in return. Quid pro quo.”
He grinned down at her. He’d sat through The Silence of the Lambs with her more times than he could count. “All right. We’ll work something out. But answer me one question now. Think of it as a security deposit on our agreement.”
She tilted her head.
“If there were no consequences, if you weren’t engaged, would you kiss me? Willingly kiss me.” If nothing else, he must know this. That a future had existed for them, once upon a time. Maybe still did in some parallel universe.
She let go of him; for a moment, he expected her to slap him. Instead, she raised his mask until it was sitting atop his hair. “How many masks are you wearing?”
Sasha almost came back with one of his usual defensive, smart-ass remarks. Then Stephanie traced her fingers over his cheeks, his lips, and he could say nothing except her name.
“Is he still under there somewhere? Or was that just another mask?”
His chin trembled in defiance of his will to show no emotion. The truth was that he didn’t know. He had no idea who the real Aleksandr Volynsky was any more than she did. “What does it matter? You made your choice.”
“You’re right.” She lowered her hand and backed away. “It doesn’t matter, because you’ve made your choice too. Good night, Aleksandr.”
He didn’t watch her leave. He retreated to the hallway, to the darkness. Away from these people, the falseness that held up a mirror to his own, and his idiot brain telling him to go after her, as if she were his to go after. He tore off the mask and threw it down the hall.
I need to talk to Danny in the morning. He has to get me out of Seattle, or klyanus' Bogom, I will go to the KHL.
“Aleksandr.”
He spun around.
Stephanie grabbed his face and smashed her mouth against his. She moved her fingers to his hair, gripped fistfuls of it. If ever there was a time to assail the boundaries, it was now. His hands on her waist, he urged her lips apart with his tongue. She did not stop him. She sucked at it, curled hers around it, and in another breath, he was as hard as he’d ever been. His heart pounded as if he’d just done another line of coke. She was the only drug he’d ever needed; the only thing that quieted the demons she didn’t realize had found a home inside him.
“There’s your answer,” she whispered. “Now we both want something we can’t have.”
What did that mean? He nuzzled her cheek, inhaling as much of her floral scent as he could hold, and coiled an arm around her. Aching. The weight of her breasts against him triggered his memory of the way they flushed and swelled when she was aroused, the way her nipples contracted into tight buds. Her skin felt like silk and tasted like Heaven. Khristos, he was going to come right there. “Remember when I used to try counting your freckles?”
Her warm breath fanned his neck. “Aleksandr, don’t.” But she didn’t move.
“One.” He tapped the bridge of her nose. He’d intended it to distract from his hunger, but this game, like all their activities together, had always ended quickly and always the same way.
She regarded him with what he wanted to believe was longing, the same that he felt. When she licked her lips, he was sure of it. “I have to go.”
“Don’t.” It sounded as despondent as he’d feared. “I don’t want you to. Everything I said…it’s all just bullshit, you know?”
“I don’t know; that’s the problem.” She stepped away, silhouetted at the hallway entrance by the ballroom’s gentle yellow light. “Call me when you’re ready to talk. And Aleksandr?” She glanced over her shoulder. “No softballs from me. Fair warning.”
She did it to get what she wants. She knows your weakness; you play your hand every time you’re with her.
She’s good.
His weakness. His tragic flaw. That he had never stopped loving her.
His ch
est ached with the admission. He stumbled into the bridal room, threw the door shut, and locked it. His head buzzed, a honeycomb of workers whose entire function, their reason for existing at all, was concentrated on the female at its heart. He spun the battered promise ring round and round on his finger.
I love you.
You promised, Stephanie. You promised you would always love me.
Sasha did not emerge until he heard the guests beginning to leave.
Stephanie stared at the map of the cab’s flat-fee range to keep herself from getting sick. Why did every taxi sport the same revolting aroma of old carpet, vinyl, and body odor? The cabbie yammered into his cell phone, which she was pretty goddamned sure was illegal in this state, and slammed on the brakes at each intersection. She readied herself to puke out of pure spite.
Well, fuck, Stephanie thought as the cab pulled up curbside and she saw the light burning in the living room window four stories up. She swiped her credit card and climbed out, careful not to catch her gown on the door. She considered sitting in her Honda until the light went out, but Joe was a night owl, and soon it would be too late to use the ball as an alibi for her whereabouts. I was just sitting in the car brooding, because oops, I did it again.
Aleksandr was right. This interview had to be the end of it before someone got hurt. One kiss, especially with alcohol involved, could be written off as bad judgment. More than that and it risked becoming a habit.
A breeze off the Sound shivered past her like his breath against her ear. The association was too great to resist; her wine-soaked brain conjured a tactile memory of that sinful, probing tongue, of the powerful arms holding her so close that his erection had infused her with its heat through their clothing.
“Oh, God,” she muttered, and tottered up the front walk with her head in her hand. The all-too-brief elevator ride was not enough to compose herself. She rummaged for her keys in the clutch. Her head was spinning, she was sweating, and Joe was going to know something was up as soon as he looked at her.