Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1)

by Jennifer Loring

  “Where are we going?”

  “Well, we should probably eat dinner. I feel like dancing too.”

  “You still like to dance?”

  He rose from the couch and did a little hip-thrusting, arm-pumping move. I can be Alex again, if it will make her happy. Anything to make her happy.

  She burst into laughter. “Can’t wait to see that.”

  “Steph,” he said as they walked into the hallway, “I’m sorry for, uh…before the road trip. It was a lot to process.”

  “I know. I should’ve told you a long time ago.”

  “I would’ve done the right thing. Whatever I had to. Although as far as my parents are concerned, I was still a virgin when I came home from America.”

  She laughed a little, and his heart lightened. “I wouldn’t have asked you to make that kind of sacrifice. Your career was just starting.”

  “If you hadn’t…it hadn’t…What would you have done?”

  She poked the Down button. The elevator dinged and opened. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Your father never found out?”

  “No. God.” Her voice was teeming with tears. “He would’ve killed us both.”

  “Did it…hurt?” He flinched as he said the word. He could not bear the thought he’d been responsible for inflicting pain on her, however circuitous. It had been his baby, after all, though he was stupid for thinking of it as such. Barely more than an embryo, and her body hadn’t been ready. But adulthood and having the money to care for a family magnified the loss.

  She sighed, but not because she was exasperated with him. He could tell the difference. “There was cramping, and bleeding, and then it was over.”

  “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

  “I was just as responsible. We had sex more than once. We both weren’t thinking, and teenagers do dumb things. Especially when they’re in love.”

  And they had been so in love. “I know it was a long time ago, but…” You are some kind of masochist. “I shouldn’t even ask. Never mind.”

  “No. Ask. Please.” She glanced away. “I owe you that.”

  “Did I make you happy when we were together?”

  She blinked and stared at the floor as the elevator doors opened. “The happiest.”

  He suppressed the compulsion to kiss her. Instead, he loosely clasped his fingers around her hand, the way a friend or a casual date might. They walked out the rear entrance and into the parking lot. Alex pressed Unlock on his key ring, then opened the obsidian roadster’s passenger door. “So,” he said to alleviate the tension, “it occurs to me you’ve never been in my car.”

  “I’m almost afraid to sit in it. There are houses that cost less, you know.”

  “She’s a beauty, da?” He slid into the cockpit and retracted the roof. “If you get cold, the seats are heated.”

  “Fancy.” Stephanie relaxed into the Nappa leather seat and ran a fingertip over the black ash-wood trim. “Look how far back you have to push the seat,” she said with a sunny laugh.

  Grinning, Alex buckled up, put it into first, and rumbled out of the parking lot. “You try being very tall. I’m surprised I don’t have post-concussion syndrome from all the times I’ve bumped my head.”

  “What’s this?” She tapped the Music Register.

  “It holds ten gigs of music from my collection. There’s Bluetooth too, if you want to listen to your own music. There are twelve speakers in here. I don’t usually let people touch anything, but go ahead and play with it.” He laughed and cleared his throat. “That sounded dirty.”

  Stephanie giggled. She raised her face to the open roof, to the stars sparkling above and a half-moon suspended in the infinite black expanse. The wind whisked its fingers through her blond hair. Tonight, it sang, she comes back to you.

  “I won’t let you go again,” he said, his voice lost in the thumping bass and the noise of the Mercedes flying down the highway.

  ***

  Stephanie

  Alex led her through a dim alley and into a dimmer hole-in-the-wall that must have been a Prohibition speakeasy in a former life. They bypassed the upstairs bar in favor of the downstairs, which held the dance floor. The place was already drawing a substantial crowd; she and Alex claimed an empty table with a banquette on one side. He sat beside her instead of across from her, hip to hip so they could examine the menu together. Alex extracted a pair of metal-frame glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on.

  “You,” he said with a smile, as he scanned the selection, “are staring at me.”

  “Glasses, uh, look good on you.” Clark Kent with better specs and more stylish hair. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans.

  “I look like an asshole.” He snorted with disdain and tucked them back into his pocket. “I’m a bit farsighted. If only I hadn’t masturbated so much.”

  She choked on a sip of water, scrambled for a napkin, and covered her mouth.

  Alex snickered. “Normally I’d have a salad. I have to maintain my figure.”

  Her turn to laugh. How easy that was too, with him.

  “But I’m dying for pizza. Split one with me? I’ll feel better about myself.”

  “Sure. Want to do the margherita?”

  “Excellent choice.” Alex flagged down the server and ordered the pizza along with a glass of ZYR straight up for himself and a cosmo for her. Even his forearms, sinewy and sprinkled with fine black hair, were sexy.

  Christ. Get it together.

  The drinks arrived a few minutes later. “A toast,” she said. “To new beginnings. What do they say in Russia?”

  “We don’t really have one word for ‘cheers.’ Sometimes we say ‘Budem zdorovy.’ It means ‘Let’s stay healthy.’”

  “I’ll drink to that. Budem zdorovy!” Stephanie clinked her glass with his. “How did your English get so good, anyway?”

  “I binge-watched TV during summers.”

  She scowled.

  “I’m serious. The best way to learn American English is to watch your TV shows. Also, I wanted to impress my peer language partner if I ever saw her again. You’re impressed, da?”

  “Very.” She laughed.

  Alex took a vigorous gulp, then set the tumbler down. “Do you ever think about it? I mean, what it would be like if things had turned out differently.”

  Only every day. “I try not to dwell on it too much. I don’t know how we would’ve made it work, being so young.”

  “The baby, or us?”

  “Um…” Stephanie sipped the tart cocktail to occupy her mouth with something other than speaking. Buying time to find the right words. “We worked pretty well, but we were kids. Maybe it wouldn’t have always been that way.” Whatever helps you sleep at night.

  “I don’t mean to keep bringing it up. But family is everything in Russia, and I didn’t know how close I came to having one.” Alex shrugged. “Who am I kidding? I’d be a shit father.” He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes.

  The server placed their pizza in the center of the table. Alex slid a piece onto Stephanie’s plate first, then his. By the time he was working on his third, she was still taking dainty bites from her first. When had she become that girl?

  “I don’t know who you’re trying to impress,” he said, “but I remember how you can put away pizza.”

  Stephanie snorted a laugh that forced him to set his slice down lest he dump it all over his crisp white shirt. She pressed a napkin to her mouth. “Oh my God. Of all the things you remember.”

  “Don’t feel like you can’t be yourself around me, that’s all. Now eat some more like I know you want to.”

  “Fine, you got me.” She slapped another slice onto her plate.

  The pizza gone and the plates cleared, Alex glanced at the DJ in a booth overlooking the floor. LED lights strobed on and off, back and forth, in a sweep of colors, and the floor sparkled. The air itself pulsed with rhythm, with pheromones exuded by the primeval sensuality of bodies oscillating in an anc
ient mating ritual. Already the provocative atmosphere vowed to carry her away, abetted by the alcohol and, most of all, by being with Alex.

  “Time to dance. Come on.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  He pouted. “Really?”

  “Go ahead without me. Maybe I’ll get drunk enough to change my mind.”

  With all the self-assured swagger in the world, Alex became the bar’s cynosure as soon as he stepped onto the floor. Being the tallest man in the room, he was already difficult to ignore, but he was also the most beautiful. Not a self-conscious bone in his magnificent body. Stephanie counted the seconds before women flocked to him and his gyrating pelvis. Nine. How could they resist that smile? Those eyes. That accent even if, as he’d once insisted, no one liked Russian accents. She’d countered that he sounded like a sexy movie villain.

  His admirers understood the way a man danced was the way he made love, and so Alex must be the sexual grand champion. She was practically choking on his testosterone. She ordered another cocktail, guzzled it, and watched the erotic sway of his hips. His ass. Watched everyone flirt with him. Women who had embraced society’s dictates: full makeup, dresses, and high heels. Personalities constructed in pursuit of the ultimate goal assigned to them—getting a man. The kind of women people expected a peacock like Alex to pursue. Not a career-oriented tomboy. Someone like Alex wouldn’t settle for a girl like her, her father had said. And he hated Alex.

  Then she thought about the night at his condo. The taste of him. The smell of him. The way he felt. The way she felt. The magnetic necessity of being together.

  He granted some of the women a dance. Smiling, relishing the attention. Letting them run their hands over his chest, his hips, letting them wriggle all over him. She clenched the glass so hard she expected it to shatter in her fist. Two women sandwiched him, their bodies rippling as one, like an ocean swell. He set his hands on the waist of the woman in front. Stephanie drained the glass. Eyeballed the exit.

  A large body exuding heat and virility was sliding onto the banquette. “You know, you’re having a very interesting reaction for someone who wants to be just friends.”

  “I’m not having any kind of reaction.” She set, or slammed, the glass onto the table.

  “You’re jealous,” he whispered in her ear, his voice, his breath, a cunning tease. He stretched his arm across the back of the banquette. “When are we going to start acting like adults around each other? I admit I was crazy at times.”

  “And now, after a couple weeks away, you’re normal. Do you turn it on and off when it suits you, or just to mess with me? How do I know which one is the real you?”

  “This is me. You know me.” A shadow darted across his face like a cloud over the sun. She could feel the chill. “I have mood swings sometimes. Like anyone. Now come on. You’re dancing with me.”

  “I told you I don’t dance.”

  “I can squat lift over three hundred pounds. I swear to God, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out there.” He clutched her hand and pulled her onto the floor. With a lewd grin, he began bumping and grinding against her.

  “I hate you. By the way, your hands are on my ass.” Where, she was averse to admit, she hoped they’d stay.

  “I think you like me. A lot.” He was showing off now, a six-foot-five Justin Timberlake. Not content to be the center of attention because he was so damned gorgeous, he had to dance better than everyone else did too. “Going to just stand there?” Alex mapped his body to hers, each pivot of his hips electrifying her cells, his firmness and strength and the scent of his cologne beguiling her.

  She allowed herself to rock with the music’s carnal beat. A droplet of sweat trickled from Alex’s neck into his chest hair. She clenched her thighs.

  “This makes me miss Ibiza,” he said with a wistful sigh.

  God only knew what he’d done there. She was better off not knowing.

  “You went somewhere in your head.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You get a look in your eyes. And yes, I did a lot of dumb shit. Sex, drugs…”

  “Why?”

  He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. “Why does anyone? At first, because I thought it was cool. Almost everyone in Russia has at least tried something. Later, I just wanted to feel better.”

  “About what?”

  Alex broke eye contact. “I don’t know. I get sad sometimes.”

  “I’m not judging you, Alex. I just thought I knew you better. Maybe I’ve romanticized the way I remember you.”

  “No. Back then I was…closer to what I wish I was.” He cast his gaze to the floor, his expression dimmed with shame.

  “I didn’t mean to—I care about you and—ˮ

  “Yeah?”

  That goddamned smile. He knows exactly what he’s doing. “Of course I do, you ass.”

  “What’s going on with you, anyway? It’s making me wonder something.” His body swayed with hers, his muscles contracting, then relaxing with each suggestive movement. Where she ended and he began disintegrated. “What excuse would you make this time?”

  The warm pulsing between her thighs had grown unbearable. He laid a hand on the small of her back, urging her closer, swinging his hips with hers in a hypnotic, captivating rhythm. A titillating appetizer. Foreplay. He had become slightly erect. This close, he knew she’d be able to feel him. That her body would beg for him the way it had since the day he’d walked back into her life.

  The DJ transitioned to a slow song. Alex slinked an arm around Stephanie’s waist and wove the fingers of his other hand with hers.

  “What are you really doing, Alex?”

  “What?”

  “You know what. This. Everything.”

  “It’s called flirting. Loosen up a little. You’re the envy of every woman here.” He gave the tip of her nose a playful nip.

  “You are such an arrogant shit.”

  That one clearly hurt. He glowered at her and to her chagrin put a couple of inches between them. “I’m teasing. Lighten up, da? You take everything as a challenge to your dignity or something.”

  “I’m scared, Alex.”

  “Of what?” His expression tempered into one of concern. He folded his arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head.

  “Of the way I feel when I’m with you.”

  “How do you feel?” He pulled back enough that she could see his verdelite eyes glittering.

  “I don’t really know how to explain it. But I like being with you. And I don’t know if I should.”

  He tilted her chin up. “I was so angry because I thought you were rejecting me for your fiancé’s sake. But now I get it. You thought that even if we did sleep together, I’d leave. That’s what I do. And I’d do it to hurt you. Am I right?”

  “It’s hard not to think that.”

  “You thought the same thing that night after the prom. But I didn’t leave.”

  Stephanie rested her hand on his cheek, his stubble like a cat’s tongue on her palm. She drew her thumb over his cheekbone, over his lips, and he kissed it. Over his chin and jawline, his throat. There was a rough edge of stubble where his razor hadn’t reached. Tom Ford cologne, a complex scent of tobacco leaf and spice essences. Beneath that, fresh sweat. Clean cotton. She resisted the urge to lick his skin.

  “Can I kiss you?” His words were barely audible above the music.

  “You’re asking?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. I do have manners.”

  “Oh?” She laughed. “All of a sudden?”

  “Yes. I should warn you, though. First—” a roguish smile, “—Russians love to kiss.”

  That explained a lot.

  “Second, if you like it, I may take that a certain way.”

  “What if someone sees us?” With one hand on the back of his head and the other on his shoulder, she drew him closer. They had always belonged to each other.

  “I already gave you the story.” He swept his
thumbs over her cheekbones. Soft, closemouthed, yet enchanting in its subtle eroticism, the lingering kiss foreshadowed what was to come if she let it. He slowly, lightly drew the tip of his tongue over her lower lip. Then placed his teeth there and pulled back, pausing at the end before giving her another gentle kiss.

  “Wow,” she whispered. She felt the familiar, resentful stares of those who had invested so much in attracting a man like Alex only to see him fall for a short-haired woman in jeans and riding boots. And just a pinch of self-satisfaction that she hadn’t had to change a damned thing.

  “Come on.” Alex gave her a perceptive smile and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll take you home.”

  Chapter Ten

  Stephanie unbuckled her seat belt. “I had a good time. Thank you.”

  Alex laughed a little, his lips curving into the sexy smile that had literally charmed the pants off dozens of women. “That’s questionable, but you’re welcome.”

  “Do you want to come up? You left your jacket and tie…” What a stupid pretext. Her nerves danced.

  “I did, didn’t I?” Alex exited the Mercedes. Like a perfect gentleman, he came around to her side, opened the door, and offered his hand.

  Adrenaline kicked in on the short elevator ride. They stood side by side, silent. The air crackled. By the time they reached her floor, she was shaking and dropped her keys.

  “Why are you so nervous?” he said behind her, so close she could feel his body heat. She had no answer; they’d committed to nothing. She unlocked the door and flipped on the light. Alex remained in the kitchen, his shoulder against the wall and arms folded over his chest.

  “You can come in, you know.”

  “It’s late. There is one thing, though. I asked you something back at the bar, and I didn’t get to find out the answer.”

  Her heart galloped. She set his tie on the counter and opened the closet where she’d hung his jacket.

  “Milaya.” He caught her wrist and laid her hand over his chest. His heartbeat thumped against her palm. “If you want something, just say so. Because you are much too clever to use my jacket and tie as an excuse to get me up here.” He bowed his head and parted his lips over hers. ”So tell me what you want.”