Pairing Off (Red Hot Russians #1) (23 page)

He placed her on the bed and knelt at the foot, removing her high-heeled silk slippers, like Prince Charming in reverse. She wiggled her frozen, pink-tipped toes as he clasped his strong hands around her feet, stroking and warming, until tingling sensation returned. Lifting one foot, he pressed a kiss into the arch, then moved upward, leaving an incendiary trail along the curve of her ankle. Her calf. The back of her knee.

She gasped softly as his mouth ignited a new point of pleasure.

The carnal exploration continued along her tender inner thigh and beneath the heavy silk folds of her gown as Anton slipped one finger inside her panties. His touch was playful, flirtatious, but as good as it felt, tonight she wanted to pleasure him. Gently she lifted his hands and shifted, moving him onto the bed.

Eager to feel his skin against hers, she tugged loose his red silk tie, unbuttoned his shirt and pushed away his jacket. Carrie smoothed her palms over the contours of his arms, chest and shoulders. He was as exquisite as a marble statue, yet warm and alive; a flesh-and-blood man, whose loving heart made him even more beautiful.

She buried her face against his neck, her head tucked perfectly into the hollow beneath his chin, as his caress smoothed across her clothed form. He tugged at the zipper in the back of her dress, sliding away the lush garment, followed quickly by the rest of her clothes.

Skin against skin. His lips, her breasts, hands touching. She plundered his mouth with feverish, greedy kisses. They explored and pleasured each other, every touch accompanied by words of love, whispered in their native tongues. When she smoothed her fingers down the front of him to grip his cock, Anton groaned contentedly, like a big cat stroked in just the right way.

“Mmm. I like when you do that.”

“You do, huh?” Grinning, she slipped out of his lap and wiggled down to kneel between his legs, placing her hands on his well-muscled thighs. “Then you’re going to love when I do
this.
”

With that, she took him into her mouth, laving him with a lush caress of her lips and tongue. Sucking, tasting his saltiness, taking him deep, as his body jerked in ecstatic response.
“Da,”
he panted
“da...”

When short thrusts of his hips signaled his readiness, Carrie rose and took a condom from the nightstand drawer. She rolled it down the length of his hard shaft, then straddled him. Her body tightened as she let him fill the empty places inside. No longer was she isolated. No longer alone. Now they were two. Carrie and Anton. Together. She moved in slow, rhythmic strokes, serenaded by the guttural sounds of his pleasure. Joy burst within, a private aurora of shimmering light, and she cried out in release, before collapsing on top of him. As she trembled in the wake of her climax, he held her close, whispering tender words she would never tire of hearing. “Carrie,
ya lublu tebya
.”

“I love you too, Anton.”

Whatever questions remained, of that she was sure.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Late the next afternoon, Carrie unlocked the door to her former apartment. As Anton followed her in, her gaze fell on the box with the duffel bag and album.

“The stuff to the right of the door goes in the car. I mean the trash.” She shook her head, shrugging off the sudden uneasiness. “The rest goes in the car.”

“Right, car. Do you want me to take it down?”

“Yes, please. While you do that, I’ll pack up the last of the bedroom.”

She went into the next room, glad to put space between herself, the bag and the photos, and the guilty feelings they raised. Not that there was anything to feel guilty about. She was staying true to the promise she’d made years ago to Dad. As far as she knew, he’d never told Lolly anything either.

Even so, it was a relief when she heard him leave with the boxes.

In the bathroom, she gathered a few stray toiletries and put them in a laundry basket, along with the contents of her sock drawer. She gazed around the now-empty room for anything she might have forgotten. Nothing left. She turned out the light.

Anton was in the kitchen, examining the spice jars that sat in a partially packed box. He held up one. “What is cum-in?”

She brought her spider plant from the living room, plucking away a few of its many dead leaves. “It’s pronounced ‘cue-min.’ You use in it Mexican food.”

“Mmm. I like Mexican food.”

She put Spidey in the box with the spices. Anton scowled at the sad, withered thing.

“We’re bringing it,” she said, before he could comment. She considered the Christmas tree in the corner. “What about that? Do the trash haulers collect them?”

“I don’t know. Bring it too. There’s room at my—” He paused, finishing, “at our apartment.”

When they arrived, she put her clothes in the empty dresser drawers and in the closet, beside his. He’d put the remaining boxes, containing her summer clothes, books and her Russian language lessons in a bright yellow spare bedroom that he used for storage. She returned to the living room. The kitchen things were put away and Spidey sat on the windowsill.

Anton had pushed his desk into a corner. “Tree can go here,” he said, nodding toward the now-empty space.

A few ornaments had fallen off on the ride from Taganka, but Carrie filled the tree stand with water and Anton crawled behind the desk to plug in the lights. A cheerful glow of red, green, blue and yellow lights lit the dreary afternoon. She put the snow globe underneath. He pushed his desk back against the wall, and stood beside her, his hands in his back pockets. “I like it. This place needed a New Year tree.”

“New Year’s is over. This is a Christmas tree.” She adjusted a blue ball that sagged too much and stepped back. Better. “I never got around to buying a star for the top though.”

He nodded. “It needs one.” He went to the kitchen and took out a box of aluminum foil. “When I was a kid, my sister broke the star for our New Year tree. We didn’t have money to replace, so I made one.” He tore off several strips and rolled them into wands, then twisted the wands into a lopsided star. He secured it to the top of the tree and smiled proudly. “Ugly, yes?”

She nodded, laughing. Definitely ugly, but somehow perfect.

Anton’s gaze shifted to the snow globe beneath the tree, then back to her. “You are happy?” he asked softly.

“Yeah.” She moved closer, into the crook of his arm, and laid her head against his shoulder.

“It’s not big place,” he said, almost apologetically, “and I’m not the neatest guy.”

True, nor did Russian men have the reputation for eagerly pitching in around the house. There were papers piled beside his computer, video games and socks scattered on the floor. On the kitchen counter, a forgotten mug and a brown-spotted banana. Before they brought over her food, she suspected his refrigerator had contained bottled water, beer, expired sour cream and a few science experiments in foam containers. “I’ll cook dinner and do the food shopping,” she offered.

“I’ll wash dishes,” he said, smiling at his generous contribution. She waited for him to volunteer for another chore. He didn’t.

“I took
two
jobs,” she reminded him.

“Oh...right.” His smile faded, but he seemed to be considering it. “I can do laundry?”

Fair enough. Now for the real test. “Who cleans?”

He grinned like a schoolkid, eager to share the right answer. “We hire service.”

Bless his messy little heart, he was trying. Carrie was happy to show her appreciation.

* * *

Two days before Christmas, Irina called to ask if Carrie would bring an American dish to the family party. She decided on the sweet potato and pecan casserole their housekeeper used to make. It was always one of her favorites. She found a recipe online and, after practice Christmas Eve afternoon, cooked and pureed sweet potatoes as the pecans roasted in the oven.

Anton finished at his computer, and took a seat at the counter. The timer buzzed, signaling that the pecans were done. She salted them and popped one into her mouth while it was still hot enough to crackle on her tongue. Anton did the same. “You’ll make Uncle Boris happy. He likes things with nuts.”

She stirred a cup of brown sugar into the sweet potato puree. “Uncle Boris exists? You made him sound like such a character I was beginning to doubt he was real.”

“Of course he’s real. He is my mother’s older brother. He was visiting other family at New Year and couldn’t come to our wedding. Why would I make him up?”

“To mess with me.”

He gave a sly grin. “If I wanted to mess with you, I can think of better ways.” He dipped a spoon into the puree, tasted it and brought his spoon back for more.

She moved the bowl out of reach. “He won’t hate me, will he?”

“No,” he said, quickly. “Not hate at all. Distrust, maybe? For all his life, he heard not very nice things about Americans. Like what your parents heard about us, I think.”

“Great,” she said with an uneasy laugh. “Erasing sixty years of Cold War prejudice all comes down to me charming Uncle Boris at a Christmas party. No pressure there.”

She poured the sweet potatoes into a ceramic baking dish painted with an elaborate blue pattern they’d gotten as a wedding gift. Anton said it was called
gzhel
. Whatever it was, she was glad to have it. Her pans had stayed with her furnished apartment. His consisted of a few nasty-looking cookie sheets, two saucepans and one dented skillet. She put the empty bowl on the counter between them. “Does he speak English?”

“Not a word.” Anton spooned a sweet potato-covered pecan from the bottom of the bowl. “Just drink vodka with him and don’t mention gypsies or glories of capitalism. He’ll love you. How could he not?”

An hour later, when the casserole was finished and Anton had left on a run, Carrie went to the back bedroom to find her Russian language materials. Silly as it was, the prospect of spending the evening among Anton’s non-English-speaking relatives was a little unnerving. One of the lessons dealt with holidays. Reviewing it wouldn’t hurt.

Her boxes were in the corner, beside Anton’s mountain bike. She opened the top two. Both held summer clothes. She set them aside and opened the larger of those which remained. The oversize binder containing her Russian class materials was right on top, below it were her workbooks. She lifted them from the box.

Underneath was the teal-and-black duffel bag.

She gasped and jumped back, as if the bag might come to life and climb out, seeking vengeance. She clutched the binders close, heart racing. How had the bag ended up here?

She peered into the box, wanting to run but knowing she couldn’t. The photo album was here too. Anton must have been confused about what she intended to throw away and put everything in together. Had he looked through the album, seen the pageant photos? Dear God, she hoped not. She sat back on her heels. No matter how much she wanted to walk away from those painful memories, they seemed destined to follow.

She could throw them away again, though she couldn’t shake the fear that tomorrow morning they’d show up in the refrigerator, beside the milk. No. She wouldn’t do anything today. She closed the box and left the room.

* * *

The Belikovs’ apartment overflowed with furniture and relatives. Many had Anton’s dark Romany coloring, but there were enough fair-skinned, blond spouses and children that Carrie blended in. A long table with mismatched chairs stretched from the dining room into the living room. A makeshift buffet along one wall held serving platters and an ornate painted samovar. Tchaikovsky’s
The Nutcracker
played on the stereo.

“This I will take from you.” Nika lifted the baking dish from Carrie’s arms and deftly sidestepped two small children wrestling on the floor. “Papa and Uncle Boris want to teach our men some old card game from their army days. While they play, you and I will drink wine and eat chocolate.”

In the kitchen, platters and bowls of salads covered the counters. Nika made room for Carrie’s dish, then poured two glasses of red wine and opened a tin decorated with cartoon snowmen. Inside were chocolate truffles topped with sprinkles, crushed peppermint and drizzles of colored icing. “My friend makes them. They are such amazing.”

Carrie bit into a milk chocolate with dark chocolate filling; creamy and slightly bitter, slightly sweet. The rich taste spread across her tongue and she detected a subtle cherry flavor. Such amazing was right.

Nika raised her glass in a toast. “This year I will get promotion at work, Sasha will finish university, I hope.” She held up two crossed fingers. “And you and Anton will win in Lake Placid. New Year has already started well.” She took a sip of wine and leaned her tall, slender frame against the small electric range. “You must know, all of our family is very happy to have Anton marry you. More happy than if it was Olga.”

The chocolate seemed to stick in Carrie’s throat. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest.

Nika spoke in a measured tone. “Olga is not bad person, but she was not good for my brother. Anton has generous heart and she took advantage. She lied to him and kept secrets, to protect herself.”

Carrie touched the pearls at her throat, rolling them between her fingers. Whatever she was keeping from Anton wasn’t because she wanted to hurt him. It was because she wanted to protect herself. But from what? From the fact that she didn’t trust him enough to reveal her most painful truths? He’d opened himself to her. Why couldn’t she do the same?

In the living room, Anton, Sasha, Sergei and bald, heavy-browed Uncle Boris played cards at the end of the long table. A short glass of vodka sat in front of each man. Nika drew up a

chair beside Sasha and Anton pulled Carrie onto his lap and introduced her to Uncle Boris. She smiled and made friendly chitchat in careful Russian about the weather. The only tense moment came when Boris praised a police crackdown on protesters in Red Square, and Sasha muttered something about the short memories of people who missed the
sovok
.

Nika elbowed her boyfriend. Carrie gave Anton a questioning look. “Not nice word for Soviet times,” he replied in English.

The baffling card game continued, and she gazed around the modest apartment where Anton grew up. A bookcase covered one wall and was crammed with books, trophies, medals and pictures. She rose to take a look. There was a wedding photo of Anton’s parents. His father had been a handsome young man, but his mother was a dark-eyed beauty, whose looks lived on in her children. Beside it was a school photo of Nika, wearing a big floppy hair-bow, and a snapshot of Anton as a little boy, in front of the apartment building with his dad. Both wore silver hockey jerseys, with the emblem of a helmet and sword. Across it were words she knew enough Russian to read easily.
White Knights
.

“You might like to look at these too,” Nika said, holding a leather-bound album. “I finished this afternoon.”

Carrie opened the book to a portrait of herself and Anton on their wedding day, and caught her breath. “Nika, they’re beautiful.”

She flipped through photos of the bridal brunch at Brigitte’s, Anton drinking a toast with Pyotr and Sasha. At the registry, shivering beside the Gorky Park pond, sharing a piece of wedding cake. In every image, their love shone through.

Did she want to risk ruining it by revealing her deepest shame?

After dinner, she and Anton followed Nika and Sasha out to the balcony. From here, it was easy to overlook the piles of dirty snow along the streets and the old cars parked at the curb. Sasha grinned and lit a cigarette. “Izmaylovo looks better from six floors up, yes?”

The lights below twinkled like a Christmas village. In the distance, cars sped along the brightly lit lanes of the MKAD. But everything else paled next to the spectacular white-and-gold church, glowing in the middle of the neighborhood. One of the most unusual she’d seen, it had scalloped gables and a single dome-topped steeple projecting into the sky like an enormous golden candle. She remembered a sign outside one of the churches she’d visited that described the onion domes as candle flames, or rising prayers. Her lips parted and her hands rose to her face. A chill ran up her spine. Galina’s letter. Everything that came after. Could it all have been the answer to what she’d asked for? A powerful longing stirred in her heart, and she closed her eyes and sent her own plea out into the night.
I’ve made such a mess of things. I want to change. Give me the courage to do what’s right.

At the sound of laughter, her eyes flew open and her cheeks grew hot. She turned, but Anton, Nika and Sasha were caught up in a funny story about a long-ago New Year, and paying no attention to her. Thank goodness. But in the corner of her eye, she caught a flickering green light. She gasped.

Anton looked over. “
Chto
?”

She pointed east. “The northern lights. The aurora. I don’t know the Russian word.”

“Over
there?
” Sasha laughed and gestured with his cigarette, toward the bright lights of the MKAD.

Nika shook her head. “Too much light. And I’ve seen them before. They go on, not just one little flash. Someone was shooting off fireworks from New Year.”