“Oh—Okay. I, uh, have to process this anyway.”
Probably for the first time in his life, his nudity embarrassed him. It felt inappropriate somehow, for a conversation of this weight. Disrespectful.
Katherine Miller could have destroyed his life, and yet he wasn’t angry, when once anger had been his immediate and resolute companion, who would have ensured she paid for it one way or another. But he was no longer young enough to use youth as an excuse for that kind of behavior; the crops he had sown were his to harvest, no matter how weary he had become. The person he had been—persons, and there were thousands of him, each one someone else’s conception—was buried in that field, its bones the framework to support a new man cultivated from the bits of him worth preserving. For too long others had defined him while he stood mute, afraid to challenge them. Better to be no one than continue to be a lie.
Stephanie shed the robe as soon as she returned, and sat beside him again on the warm indentation she’d left in the comforter. Apparently, she did not share his concern, and he stared at the gorgeous, rosy peaks of her nipples.
“So what happens now?”
“There’s no way of knowing, but I think she’ll do the right thing and drop the charges. I may have…persuaded her.”
“You mean threatened.” Alex chuckled and gave her a sidelong look. Their nudity was growing more awkward, and he considered grabbing a pair of underwear from the dresser.
“I didn’t. I just told her what might happen if it went to court, especially if people found out the truth. I don’t think she’d hold up in prison.”
“You’re vicious.”
“It’s weird, though. The more I think about it, the more I feel sorry for her. I don’t think she understands consequences at all. She was acting out some personal reality show, and she cast you against your will. I’m not sure she sees you as an actual person.”
“Not the first.”
“Like I told her, I’ll do what I have to do to protect my family. And if you want to press charges—”
“No. I…Nyet. Let’s move on.” He had spent enough time in the spotlight for his personal problems, and this was too emasculating to wrap his head around. Call it a false accusation and leave it at that. “What about you? Are you going to be all right?”
“I don’t know.” She dipped her head toward her chest, her hands limp in her lap. “I wish I did. The girl you fell in love with wasn’t…this. Weak and disfigured. You deserve more than what’s left of me.”
“I didn’t fall in love with one part of you, Stephanie. It was all of you. I married that girl. She’s the mother of my child. She’s right here in front of me.” He swiped his thumb over her cheekbone. “If the most I could ever do again was just hold you every night, I’d take a vow of celibacy. I want to spend my life with you. For better or worse, whatever that life is.”
She took a halting breath. More tears streaked down her face. “Why do you stay? After everything, why?”
“Because living without you is like dying, except it never ends.” His eyes smarted. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You loved me when no one else did. You were all I had to hold on to for a long time.”
Her shoulders shook as though she were about to break into sobs. “I’ve always needed you to save me. Like some helpless fucking princess, always waiting for you to sweep in and take me away from everything. I give all the control to other people. How long have I let my father control me, and he’s fucking dead?”
“You came here, started a new life, did all the things you wanted to. All on your own. You chose what was best and right for you. You saved yourself, and then you saved me without even knowing you were doing it. I’m not trying to put another burden on you that you don’t want to carry. You asked me to marry you, and this is me thanking you for believing in our dream. For believing in me.”
She jerked her tearful gaze away from him. “When you finally have everything you want, you spend so much time fearing it’s all going to disappear one way or another. You were right about that. I’ve always been afraid of the way you make me feel. Of loving you this much.”
“One thing I can promise you is that I’m not going anywhere. Ever.” He bowed his forehead to hers. “It breaks my heart,” he whispered, his throat scratchy, his voice cracking, “to see you like this and not know what to do.”
Stephanie blotted her face with her hands. When she raised her head, her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. “Then you finally understand how it feels to love you.”
He understood something else too. That from this point forward, they had banished secrets from their relationship. No more blockades between them constructed by their independent, lonely torments. “I’m sorry, Steph. I am so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to apologize. I want…I want to go back to that park. To the waterfall and the flame.” She floated her fingertips over his cheeks, his lips, down his throat and chest. His body rewarded him with a fledgling erection growing harder by the second, throbbing at the sight of those dark blond curls, that glorious pink slit. “I want to make love in the sun, and watch the stars come out, and I want it to be with you.”
“You are with me, devochka. You have always been with me.”
“My first love,” she whispered against his lips.
He ached all over for her. She had gotten into him and yet he could not have enough. “Then let me love you, Stephanie. Please. Like you did for me.”
She pressed her hands into his shoulders and with determined strength shoved him onto the bed. “My only love.” Stephanie straddled him and eased herself onto his cock, enough to take in the head, to pump it a few times and release him.
“O Bozhe,” he gasped, squirming beneath her. He sank his teeth into his lip. Slick and tight, she lowered herself down his shaft, swaddling him. Alex spread his legs and, bucking his hips, slid deeper into her. She hunched forward. With his hands on her ass, he thrust harder, her breath scorching his neck, his shoulder, heavy with pleasure and her breasts a delicious weight on his chest. He curled a fist in her hair and plunged his tongue into her mouth, worked his lips over her neck and throat, biting, licking. She pushed back with each lunge, then sat up straight again, hands flat on his chest, pinning. Reclaiming power.
She closed her eyes, her body like breakers before a storm, his like splintering glass. He kneaded her firm, silken tits. She had lost most of the baby weight by now, her breasts the first to shed their plumpness. A persistent soft pouch made more obstinate by her convalescence remained below her belly button. It didn’t matter to him, not five or ten extra pounds, not the scar on her back or the deeper ones in her soul. She did not recognize her own power to heal.
She prodded a finger past his lips. He sucked at it, swirled his tongue around it, until she withdrew and began flipping it over her clit. He slinked his hands over her hips and onto her ass, and thrust in time with her strokes. Catlike, she arched her spine and rocked back, hips swinging back and forth as she fingered herself and he fucked her—finally, mercifully. A flush diffused over her chest and up her neck. Her muscles convulsed around him before the release of fluid splashing his cock. She stopped bouncing and cried out—shrieked, if he was being honest, and he was no likelier to be shy about coming—her orgasm jolting through him as though he clung to an electrified fence.
“The way you feel inside me…” she was saying as she swayed on top of him. His turn to gasp for air.
“How do I feel inside you?”
“Like you were made for me.”
He smiled, sighed, and closed his eyes. I was. I know I was.
“Open your eyes, Alex.”
He did. Motionless, a pond the moment before a stone dropped into its center. Breathless as the first swell crashed through him. He was a thousand galaxies colliding. He was a million supernovas, his light too bright to be observed directly. She shared her breath with him, her precious air, when he could not catch his own. She tightened around him; he shot a hot, copious stream i
nto her and let out a wild sound of release and rapture, and with tingling limbs possibly lost consciousness for a second or two.
Stephanie folded onto him. She’d once told him that she kept him inside her after he came so she could feel him softening and then slipping out on his own. He buried his face in her apple-scented hair and trailed his fingers up and down her spine.
“I want to stay like this,” she murmured. “This perfect moment. You and me.”
“We’re going away for a little while.”
She lifted her head, crossed her arms over his chest, and rested her chin on them.
“Just the two of us. I think we need this. You need this.”
“Where?”
“Not Russia.” He chuckled. “I don’t know. What about Italy?”
“Very romantic. But we should wait until she drops the allegation.”
“What if she doesn’t? She’s done enough damage, and I want to get you away from all this.” He fingered a lock of her golden hair. “I want you to remember why you fell in love with me.”
“I never forgot.” Stephanie captured his mouth with her lovely lips in a slow, intense kiss that healed all wounds and cured any illness. “I never will.” She charted a course down his chin, his throat, his chest. Down his belly, which tautened beneath her kisses. Downward still, and with the magic only she controlled coaxed him into a second performance he was all too willing to give.
Chapter Twenty
Buffalo, NY (AP)–The sexual assault allegation against former NHL star Aleksandr Volynsky has been dropped, according to the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation. The alleged victim withdrew her accusation in light of increasing media scrutiny when her identity was revealed and due to a lack of evidence to support an ongoing investigation.
When asked to comment, Volynsky said, “I believed all along that nothing would come of this allegation. There’s no evidence, because I never inflicted any harm on my accuser. While my past actions with women have often been regrettable, that does not mean I would ever commit this crime. Now I can move on and focus on both my family and my new job with the Buffalo Gladiators.”
The accuser, recently identified as Katherine Miller of Niagara Falls, could not be reached for comment.
***
Alex
Eleven hours to Milan. They stowed their bags and got comfortable—much easier to do in first class than in the cattle car behind them—and a flight attendant offered them a pre-departure beverage. Alex had let Stephanie take the window seat due to her limited travel experience. As soon as the plane began to taxi, however, she yanked down the shutter over the porthole window, hung her head between her legs, and sucked in one deep breath after another. Cold air hissed from the overhead nozzle.
“You okay, baby?” He rubbed her back then uncapped a bottle of water.
“Just a little motion sickness. There’s a box of Dramamine in my bag. Can you get it out?”
“Doesn’t that make you sleepy? It’s your first intercontinental flight, and you’re going to miss all the excellent movies and screaming children.”
Her mouth quirked at one corner. “You can fill me in when I wake up.”
Aleksandr dragged her bag out from under the seat in front of her and rifled through it. He popped out one pill. Stephanie gulped it down with a swig of water.
“Thanks.” She pushed her seat back and arranged her travel pillow around her neck. “Wake me up for lunch.”
She passed out minutes later. He squeezed her hand and watched about five minutes of an inexplicably popular action movie before dozing off with her hand in his.
Stephanie, much improved when she woke, ate her entire meal: braised beef short ribs—dreadfully well done—with red wine sauce, parsnip puree, and baby carrots. “This tastes better than it should. I feel like I haven’t eaten in a week.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “But now I have to pee. Excuse me, honey.”
Alex stepped into the aisle to let her pass, grateful for the chance to stretch his back. The seats may have been roomier up here, but he was not an average-sized man by any account. As soon as he sat down, his phone beeped.
Stephanie: Had to sneak away to the bathroom and finger myself furiously until I came, thinking about you. I want you to lick my pussy like you need it to survive.
Alex snickered and crossed his legs, the crotch of his silk-cotton shorts tightening.
Alex: You’re lucky I have so much self-control. If not, I’d be in the bathroom, fucking you like a beast right now. And then they’d throw us off the plane. :)
Stephanie emerged from the bathroom and resumed her seat, her expression one of perfect innocence. She folded her hands in her lap and offered a sweet smile.
He let his gaze fall on her hands. He’d watched her masturbate enough times; she’d have used her right index finger. Hungering for a taste of her, he raised that finger to his lips and skimmed his tongue over it, eyes locked on hers. “Was it this one?”
Stephanie’s quiet sigh bordered on a moan.
“You’re feisty. I can’t wait to get to the hotel so you can have your way with me.”
“Me neither. Because I can’t stop thinking about you in tiny underwear.”
Once Alex had let slip that he and Stephanie were heading to Milan, his manager had arranged a last-minute gig with a hot new Italian underwear designer. Alex had relayed the woman’s message that next time she intended to get Stephanie in on the action, like Posh and Beckham’s Armani shoot. He leaned over and, cupping her cheek, whispered into her ear, “I may be wearing some right now.”
“That is so unfair. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“But it gives you something to think about for the next seven hours.” He kissed her cheek and reclined in his seat.
Stephanie thumbed something into her phone. His beeped again.
Stephanie: I literally can’t concentrate on anything, with the flashbacks from last night in my head. The way you fuck me is completely unreal.
He cleared his throat. His cock strained against his shorts and micro hip briefs—tiny underwear indeed.
Alex: I can’t wait for you to get naked so I can kiss and lick every part of your body. You’re everything to me.
Stephanie looked up at him through her lashes. “I love you,” she mouthed.
Stephanie: And when we land, I want what’s mine.
***
Stephanie
The housekeeper had turned down the sheets on the king-sized bed in their Milanese suite and scattered rose petals on the pillows. Enveloped in a delicate rose perfume, Stephanie’s thoughts converged on Alex’s gentle, unhurried thrusts, on each kiss, each breath. The contact of their skin, the seamless fit of slopes and curves.
He sighed against her ear. “I love you,” he whispered as she cradled him between her thighs. Alex melted onto her, their heartbeats synchronous, their fingers and mouths intertwined. For the next week, virtually no commitments to anything but each other. And thank God for Nicole’s willingness to babysit Anya.
“Early day tomorrow.” He kissed her again. Slow, soulful, his tongue teasing hers. “You don’t have come to the shoot if you don’t want to. It’s not exactly how I envisioned our anniversary, but…”
“I get to watch you pose in tiny underwear. I wouldn’t miss that for anything.”
“Think of the billboards. My crotch, fourteen feet high.”
“I like your crotch right where it is.”
“Mmm. Naughty girl.” His cheeks dimpled. “I’m taking you somewhere special tomorrow night.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. That is…” Alex rolled her nipple into his mouth, suckled, and release. Her skin tingled and tightened with heat. “If I let you out of this room. Or even this bed. I think you might have cured me.”
She laughed and bound him in her arms, his warm body perspiring against hers. “I think the Cialis is working.”
“Two months to make up for, and only a week away from home. You are in for i
t, moya lyubov′.” His grin broadened. He flipped her onto her stomach and pinned her by her wrists, his cock a steel rod on her backside, the incongruity of cool sheets and his body heat a magnificent torment. “My God, woman, the things I’m going to do to you.” Alex nudged her thighs apart with his knee. He ran a hand down her spine as he inhaled a husky breath. “My amazing, beautiful wife.”
Then his hands and mouth were everywhere: her shoulders, her back, her hips and ass, her legs and between them. Every inch of her sparking flesh, just as he’d vowed.
***
Stephanie woke first. Alex, snuffling a stray rose petal, was sprawled on his stomach in the middle of the bed, one leg kicked out from under the comforter. She plucked the petal from his face, caressed his thigh, his ass, and covered him back up. After a quick shower, she sat on the edge of the bed and fiddled with his thick black hair. He grunted and lifted his head, his face scrunched like a cranky child’s. Squinting, he scanned the room as though he’d forgotten where he was.
“What time is it?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
“Tim to get up, you sexy beast. Let’s see those tiny underwear.”
“I’d rather…” Beginning at the hem of her shorts, he kissed the length of her thigh, then licked it all the way back. “Do this.”
She tossed her head back and sank her teeth into her lip. “Get in the shower.”
Alex cackled. Stephanie opened her eyes in time to catch a glimpse of his naked ass as he rounded the corner into the bathroom.
A sultry haze laden with the threat of rain congealed over the Alps rising in the north. In the city, the combination of searing sunlight and baking asphalt brought to mind LA’s hottest summer days, the air thickened with the pungent smells of exhaust, cigarette smoke, sweat, and roasting coffee. Sweat gathered at Stephanie’s hairline and was already dribbling down Alex’s neck. Thankfully, a car waited to take them the short distance to the Via Montenapoleone fashion district, but the concentrator hung from her shoulder just in case.
What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) Page 20