Smoke Signals (4 page)

Not that he was forcing me to stay. The door wasn’t locked, and he wasn’t blocking my path. In fact, even though his hand was on me, the way he was touching me was too light to keep me where I was. It was more the thought behind why he’d reached for me that kept my feet rooted in place.

It was like he cared.

Like I mattered.

Maybe even like I mattered to him.

There wasn’t any good reason for me to hold any sway over him. I hadn’t mattered to anyone but myself in so long that I wasn’t sure what to do with the fleeting thought other than kick it out of my head as fast as possible. It was dangerous to let myself fall into a trap like letting myself believe anyone cared about me as more than a vessel for slaking their sexual needs or fantasies.

Staying here and listening to the wild things coming out of his mouth might be even more dangerous, because despite the fact that I knew there was no chance he would follow through and marry me like he’d suggested, now I was thinking about it.

Desperately.

Desperation changes a person.

Leads them to do things they never would have dreamed of before.

I knew that as well as anyone.

I pressed my eyes closed so I wouldn’t make the mistake of looking into his, and I reached for the doorknob. “I should go,” I said for what must have been the thousandth time since I’d made the enormous mistake of targeting him.

“Don’t go. I’m serious,” he said, and my feet felt heavier than before, like heavy-duty magnets clamped tight to a steel floor. He gave me a smile, but not the cocky one from before. “I know it’s crazy. I know
I’m
crazy for suggesting it. But I mean it. Marry me.”

“I don’t understand. Why you do this?” I asked, refusing to open my eyes again. The only thing I would see if I did would be those sparkling blue eyes imploring me to take his hand and jump over the edge of insanity with him. I was doing well enough on my own in terms of making senseless decisions.

“I have my reasons,” he said. A non-answer. “The same as you have your reasons for hitting me up like you did.”

“You don’t know me. You don’t know…” There were so many things he didn’t know. Too many to get started with now, if all I intended to do was walk out that door, take the elevator down to the casino, and find some other man to be my John for the night.

But I didn’t open the door. I didn’t even budge.

“You’re right. I don’t know you. So tell me.” He still had my hand in his, and he tugged, drawing me a step closer to him. No force to it, though. Just persuasion. It was too easy to fall into the trap of trusting him. I’d trusted Rick, and where had that gotten me? But Razor was different. It was too easy to pretend that his touch might mean more than every other man who’d ever put his hands on me before, and that was a terrifying thought. His finger brushed under my chin, tipping it up. “Look at me, Viktoriya,” he said, and for some stupid reason, my eyelids fluttered open.

And for an even more idiotic reason, I opened my mouth and started talking. “I have sold sex. Many times. Just not like this.”

He didn’t even bat an eye at my confession. “Then how?”

“Porn.” No point in beating around the bush. If I was going to tell him, I might as well rip off the Band-Aid and get it over with. “I made more than hundred porn movies.”

“Okay, I’m confused. Why can’t you do another shoot to get the money you need? And if you’ve been working, I don’t understand why you can’t just get a green card.”

I shook my head. “No green card. It’s too hard to get green card. I had visa. I was dance student. Ballerina. When my father died, there was nothing left for me in Russia. No money coming for food. Place to live. Visa was for school, but I have to work. I danced at strip clubs. Made money, but not enough. And too risky. Too close to school. Someone might see.”

Then it all came flooding out of me. Once I’d started talking, I couldn’t seem to make the verbal onslaught stop, and my tears started again as soon as the words left my lips. I tried to back away from Razor, but he kept a firm, soothing grip on my hand.

“Then man saw me and said I could make lots of money if I do porn. So I did. Every weekend, flew to Los Angeles, and make lots of films, then go back to school. But someone found out and told provost. It was big no-no. Provost said I violated terms of student visa. Kicked me out of program. Have to go back to Russia. Agent says no more porn. Can’t get me work without documents, even though I worked all along without green card. Said go to Nevada. Be hooker to get money. Then go back to Russia.” But I couldn’t go back to Russia. Not ever.

“Prostitution can’t be your only option,” Razor said.

So naïve. He’d never had to sell himself to survive. He couldn’t possibly understand.

“I have sex for money,” I said emphatically, making it as clear as I could. “That’s what I do. I fuck, you pay. Got it? So you don’t want marry me. You’re nice man, you try help, but no one can help. I should go.”

“You should stay,” he said, which only made me cry harder. His voice was gruff, and his eyes were intense.

“I’m porn star,” I repeated. “I fuck men on camera. Oral, anal, DP, three at once, gangbang, tied up, beat up, toys, machines, flogged, whatever they want, over and over again. That’s what I do. It’s my job. So you want to fuck me, fine. Fuck me and pay. Want to film? Pay more. But
you
don’t marry me. You marry nice girl.”

“What if I don’t want to marry a nice girl?” He gave me a dark look, his clear eyes fogging to match the midnight sky. “Or what if I think you’re a nice girl who’s had some ugly shit done to you, and I want to give you the chance to be the nice girl you are? What if you’re a nice girl by day and a dirty girl by night, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for?”

He wasn’t going to give up.

I realized my jaw had dropped, and I slowly closed my mouth. “I don’t understand.”

“Hell, beautiful,” Razor said. “I don’t understand, either. But here’s what I do know. You need another visa or a green card, or else you’ve got to go back to Russia. Not only do I get the sense you can’t afford to do that, but you don’t have anywhere to go once you get there and no family to help you out. You don’t have the kind of job that will qualify you for a green card. Getting another visa of some sort will take a lot of time and red tape, and you might not even qualify for one—and they’ll make you go back to Russia while you wait for it. The option that’s left to you to stay in the country is to marry an American. And I just so happen to be an American who’s offering to marry you. I’m half-Canadian, too, but that doesn’t matter for this. I play professional hockey, so money won’t be an issue. I can support you. You can come live with me in Tulsa, and you can work on your ballet there, or do whatever else you decide you want to do. We’re in Vegas, so we can get it done right now. That’s what I know.”

“But…” None of it was clicking in my head. My thoughts were swarming with his words—green cards, visas, hockey, Tulsa, Canada, marriage—it was too much. I didn’t even know where or what Tulsa was, and Canada wasn’t close. I couldn’t go there, either. The Tambovs had ties in Montreal. I remembered that much from what my father had told me. I shook my head.

“But what?” He stepped closer to me, closing the distance so much that the heat pouring off his body wrapped around me, intoxicating and terrifying.

“Why would you do for me?”

For a painfully long moment, he didn’t say anything. He simply stared into my eyes, as though trying to see through the front I kept up when I worked. I’d let them look at me all they wanted, but they could only see what I wanted them to—my body, all the external parts of me. Not the inside. Not my heart, my worries, my pain. I kept that all to myself, a massive well of loss and fear that left me hollow and empty. And alone. All alone.

If I let him in, there would be nothing left of me. I wasn’t even sure there was anything left for him to take right now, but if there was, I couldn’t let him have it. I’d already allowed myself to be too vulnerable in front of him, and it had to end. Now.

I willed my tears to stop, and I reinforced my efforts at distancing myself from him, emotionally if not physically.

The corner of his lips twitched down as soon as I’d gotten my mask back in place, only on one side. He sighed. “I want to do it because I can. And because I should. And because maybe—just maybe—it’ll help me repay my mother for all she’s done for me, in some twisted way.” He shook his head, his eyes searching mine, even though I knew he wouldn’t find anything within them. “Let me help you, Viktoriya.”

Everything inside me was a roiling, clenching, confused, petrified mess.

I needed the help he was offering. There was no doubt about it. But could I afford to accept his help when it was clear how much he was trying to get behind my protective walls? If I went along with what he had suggested and somehow he got in, if I couldn’t find a way to guard against his kindness… What would be left of me?

In the end, I knew I didn’t have any other options.

“Okay,” I forced through my teeth, the word tasting metallic, like blood. “I marry you.”

VIKTORIYA INSISTED ON
stopping to get blood tests before we made our way to the chapel. It wasn’t a requirement in Vegas, and I wasn’t going to push her for it. Yeah, I wanted to get her in my bed, but considering the way she’d been earning her living for the last few years, I didn’t think she was going to be too keen to go along with it.

Maybe I should have expected it. After all, she
had
been trying to get me to fuck her—and to pay her for it—ever since she’d first made eye contact in the casino. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she changed her mind, and married or not, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to do anything she wasn’t fully on board with.

The bloodwork came back clean for both of us, so we made our way to the marriage bureau to get our license. I knew where it was since I’d gone with Babs and Katie earlier in the day to get theirs for tomorrow. Amazingly, this place was open until midnight every day of the year—a fact that had tickled my funny bone when I’d been there earlier—so I knew we had plenty of time. Once we had procured our license, Viktoriya and I were off to find the closest quickie wedding chapel.

We ended up at a hole-in-the-wall place with a huge, lit sign out front that screamed “24-Hour Wedding Chapel” into the night sky in bright colors. I chuckled as we walked beneath a bough lit up in neon purples, pinks, and greens that made Viktoriya’s porcelain skin look a garish yellow. No chance my wedding was going to be anything close to Babs and Katie’s tomorrow.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Just thinking about the wedding tomorrow. Comparing it to this.”

“Your friend? He gets married tomorrow?”

An Elvis in full regalia thrust a clipboard and pen into my hands and pointed us toward a waiting room. “Fill this out and bring it back with your license and identification. We’ll have you married in ten minutes or less once you’re done with that.”

I nodded my understanding and took a seat. Viktoriya sat next to me but not close enough that we were touching. She placed her bag on her lap and held it close to her body, wrapping both hands around it.

“Yeah. Babs and Katie.”

Jamie Babcock and I had been rookies together back when I’d played for the Portland Storm. He’d been my best friend since then, even after I’d been traded away and been claimed by yet another team in an expansion draft last summer. And he’d been disgustingly in love with Katie Weber for as long as I could remember. It was high time she finally made an honest man of him. Their wedding was the sole reason I was in Vegas to begin with. Otherwise, I’d be spending my summer at home with Mom and my buddies up in the Toronto area, getting ready for the new season.

Instead I was here. And now, I was getting married, myself.

I was tempted to reach for Viktoriya’s hand and draw her closer to me, but I held back. Baby steps. If I pushed too hard, she would run. I knew that much about her, even if I’d only known her for an hour or two at this point. I picked up the pen and started filling in the blanks. “I’m the best man,” I explained to her. “I hope you don’t mind coming to another wedding when we’ll have only been married a few hours.”