What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (10 page)

“Maybe talk about me?”

Of course. “I’m doing this song with you, so I care at least a little bit about your career. I sure as hell don’t need the attention.”

She pursed her cupid’s-bow lips, accentuating the cleft in her chin. “Are you in trouble, Sashka?”

He chugged his Coke. “You could say that.”

“I’m not home much, but I see news. Rape? Not Sashka I know.”

“I didn’t do it,” he said softly.
That I know of.

She laid a hand over his, her fingers cold and damp from the martini glass. “I know. I testify for you if needed.”

“Thanks.” Alex laughed and squeezed her fingers. “It’s all been a little too much, and my wife hasn’t been feeling well on top of it, and…she and my daughter aren’t living at home right now.”

“Oh, Sashka. Why do you not tell me these things right away? Now I understand why you are so grumpy. Bartender!” Natasha held up two fingers to the bearded and tattooed young man all too eager to serve her. “Your best vodka, and it better be Russian!”

“I’m on medication, Natasha. I shouldn’t—”

“Pshh. I take care of my Sashka.” She opened her purse, shook something into her palm, and held it out to him. Round pills in a multitude of colors.

“Ecstasy, Natasha? Really? I don’t do that shit anymore.”
Strictly cocaine these days. A man needs standards.

She hitched her shoulders. “Suit yourself.” She dumped several pills into her mouth and knocked them back with a swig of her martini.

***

After enough vodka, she managed to entice him onto the dance floor. “They’re playing one of my songs, baby!”

“So I hear.”

“Show me what you got!”

“Not much these days.”

Natasha raised her arms over her head, her belly and thighs taut, her hips undulating. Alex’s gaze drifted over the swell of her breasts, the curve of her collarbone. His pants tightened. He hadn’t boasted a legitimate erection in two weeks. He slipped his arms around her waist and swayed with her, keeping his feet mostly inactive and concentrating his movements in his hips.

“Ooh, that’s it, Sashka.” Natasha draped her arms around his shoulders, their bodies rocking together.

She ran her tongue over sumptuous lips he found increasingly impossible to ignore. He cupped her firm ass with one hand.

“What’s on your mind?” She knowingly pressed closer to him, grinding.

He took comfort in the fact that his hard-on was bound to shrivel at any moment no matter how horny he was. “Just thinking.”

“About me?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Natasha smiled, her rose-petal lips designed to mimic those between her thighs. Mephistopheles assuring him the most indulgent of pleasures, and all he had to do was sell his soul.

“I never did get to show you
my
stick-handling skills.”

She let Brandon kiss her in public. Maybe I’m the only one who
doesn’t
know what else they’ve been doing.

That brief kiss was mutating suddenly, startlingly, even as he recalled it, forming an
idée fixe
whose only evidence was the kiss itself. That, and how happy she had looked. The twinkle in her eye that had been missing for weeks. To have your deepest wish granted was to see your dreams destroyed. Perhaps she had been happier with him as a memory of teenaged infatuation than as her real-life husband.

Nothing now persuaded him from this preoccupation bordering on obsession. They were having an affair.

“I hate to disappoint you”—he disengaged from Natasha and stepped back—“but I’m going home. Alone. Call me in the morning.”

“Sashka!” Natasha stood in the middle of the dance floor, fists on her hips. “She’s not good enough for you, baby!”

Maybe I was right. We’re too broken to be together.
Alex waved and hobbled away. The club was two blocks from Natasha’s hotel, so he didn’t feel bad about ditching her.

His occasional driver, whom he’d kept much busier his first time around in Buffalo, had agreed to fetch him. Halfway home, Alex speed-dialed Stephanie’s cell from the Mercedes’ passenger side.

Five rings before she groggily answered, “Hello?”

He should’ve known she was sleeping. She never let the phone ring more than twice. “Hi, baby.”

“Alex, it’s late.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice.” That much was true. He hadn’t been able to get the image of her on Father’s Day, defeated and despondent, out of his mind.

She sighed softly. Sadly.

“How is Anya?”

“She’s fine. But…she misses you.”

His heart ached so gravely, he wondered if it was finally killing him. Each time he tried to visit, Anya was in daycare or Stephanie conveniently absent with their baby in tow.
With Brandon, probably.
He tamped down the simmering rage. “Natasha got into town this afternoon.”

“Really.”

The resentment in her voice delighted him. “
Da.
We’re recording and shooting here. Anyway, maybe we could all have dinner. Bring your friend if you want.”

“My—Who?”

Shouldn’t have said that.
“Talk to you soon.”

“Alex, have you been following me—”

He disconnected. As usual, his mouth had overridden his brain. “
Blya
,” he muttered. He contemplated heading back to the club, picking up Natasha, and having some real fun in her hotel room. Giving the media exactly the fuck-up they were waiting for and Stephanie the reason to divorce him.

He slumped back. His phone chimed.

“Sashka!” Natasha sang. “Why do you walk out on me? Now I have to take one of these silly Americans back to my room, and they are such
beasts
.” She giggled.

“Or you could, you know, sleep alone for once.”

“Aleksandr Volynsky, infamous man-whore, is implying I’m a slut?”

“Not implying, baby doll.”

“I see sexy pictures of you in magazines and internet. My Sashka has grown up! In
so
many ways. Whole world gets to see you in your underwear, but Natashka does not?”

He chuckled. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll do breakfast.”

“There better be mimosas. Sleep tight, handsome. Dream about me.”

“Right.
Póka.
”

He dozed off for several minutes and woke to the driver barking at him. He tossed him some cash, then stumbled out and staggered up the front walk, patting himself down until he located his keys. The vodka had made his dick as limp as fresh pappardelle, but he craved a woman’s body beside him nevertheless, the curves and scent and softness in which he had taken so much consolation.

He dialed Stephanie again, surprised she answered.

“Alex. Stop calling. Are you drunk?”

“A little.”

“Then we have nothing to say.”

“I do. I—”

Anya burbled in the background, the sound enough to sober him. He closed his eyes against the hot tears that dribbled down his cheeks. He might lose watching his beautiful little girl grow up. Her respect. Maybe even her love.

“Can I say something to her?”

“Of course.”

He heard Stephanie adjusting her, then tiny breaths into the phone. Alex wiped his face. “Hey, baby girl. It’s Daddy. I’m going to see you again real soon.”

She cooed and gurgled.

“I love you, Anyechka. Stephanie.”

“What?” A fractious groaning of the word.

“When can we talk?”

“I don’t know. I have some things coming up, and—”

“So do I. What’s more important?”

“I—Okay. Maybe we can have dinner, sometime after Matt’s wedding. We’ll talk about it when you’re sober. I need you to sign something anyway.”

Acid gurgled in his throat. He slumped onto the couch. “Wh-what? Are you divorcing me?”

“No! Alex…no. It’s not that. We’ll talk.”

“Good night, Steph.” He took a deep, quivering breath. “I love you.” Because that was also true and, God help him, always would be.

“Good night, Alex.” Her voice cracked, but she ended the call before he could say anything more.

Chapter Ten

Natasha sat at a table in the ninth-floor restaurant overlooking Lake Erie, nursing a mimosa and a stack of pancakes drowned in maple syrup. Across from her, a man in his early twenties wearing the bedraggled clothes and baseball cap of someone about to embark on the walk of shame, his scruffy face sagging with exhaustion.

“Shoo.” She waved him away from the table like a foul odor. “My date is here.”

Alex rolled his eyes. The man rose, scrubbed a hand over his face, and looked up. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hi.” Alex slid into the warm chair as her boy-toy shuffled away. “I’m not your date.”

The bright sunlight streaming in, reflecting off the lake, imbued her pale skin with a yellowish cast and emphasized the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. She’d lived as hard as he had, but her career hadn’t yet broken in the States, so her exploits had not become international tabloid fodder.

“I have to go slumming because you leave me alone at club.”

“What part of ‘I’m married’ do you not understand?”

She stuck out her lower lip and stabbed her fork into the pancakes. “What is this crap, anyway? Give me
blini
,
please
.”

“You have to slow down, Natasha. You’re going to end up dead. If not the drinking and drugs, one of these guys is going to do something to you.”

“If only I had good man to take care of.”

“Don’t guilt-trip me. I’m your friend. I’ll always be your friend, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“
Da
,
da
,
Stephanie
, blah blah blah.” She massaged her temples. “Enough of this shit, Mr. Serious. Let’s go to studio.” She tottered out in high heels and a lacy pink dress that barely reached her thighs, her ass swinging to and fro. His dick was willing to entertain the notion, even if his brain recognized this train wreck as a glimpse into what his life might have become and how deeply, tragically Russian it was.

They arrived at the “arts campus” in a one-hundred-fifty-year-old former convent constructed of brick and housing the main studio on the second floor. He knew fuck all about recording. She’d emailed him the lyrics with musical notation weeks ago, and he had practiced until he felt comfortable with his verse and the shared chorus, but pop music wasn’t part of his repertoire, outside of drunken karaoke. He had been training, as time permitted, with the director of a local opera company in preparation for a small role eventually. He played classical piano. He did not share vocal booths with damaged pop princesses.

“Hi, boys. Sashka, that’s our producer and engineer.”

He waved awkwardly at the two men behind the console in the control room before stuffing his hand into his pocket.
I should stick to modeling.

Natasha ushered him into the vocal booth, closed the door behind her, and handed him a pair of headphones. Within that wood-paneled cube, as the backing track played, she transformed. With her eyes closed and mouth to the microphone shield, she became music. To see her in this private moment, her body and soul recalling why she’d pursued a music career to begin with, to watch the hard lines and forced sexuality melt away, banished his anxiety. He understood this love, would have chosen music himself had he not expressed an innate gift for hockey at so early an age.

They performed the song in two takes, and Natasha was beaming at him when they finished. “You’re going to be big star, Sashka! Even bigger star.”

“Oh, good.” Alex hung up the headphones and trailed her out of the booth.

“After I change clothes, we have dinner tonight, and I tell you ideas for video.” She entered the control room to speak with the producer. Alex checked his phone, but Stephanie had neither called nor texted.

“Yeah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I can do dinner.”

***

Why the fuck did I come up here?
Alex thought, but they both knew the score. He sifted through the burning wreckage of his heart for a reason not to do this other than Ed’s voice in his head lecturing him, but came up empty. He peered out the windows at the Buffalo skyline and the lake. Behind him, Natasha switched on the TV to Music Choice’s dance channel. When he turned around, she was sniffing from a dark brown bottle of poppers.

Her face flushed almost immediately; she giggled, fanned herself, and cranked up the A/C. “Here, Sashka. Sniff. It makes you happy.”

“I know what poppers do.” He’d inhaled enough of them during off-seasons in Europe. Not only had they made his dick harder, but they also made orgasms lengthier and stronger. When his entire purpose for spending summers in Europe had been to fuck and do drugs to block out all the noise in his head, he had sniffed plenty of poppers along the way.

He eyed that tempting little bottle. Almost smelled the sweet, fruity aroma from across the room. “Maybe later.”

“I show you routine for video.” She glided her fingertips up and down her sides with smooth, light caresses, stroked her neck and collarbone. Natasha ran her hands down her legs, then pulled off her shirt, leaving it rolled at her wrists. She twisted her right wrist to create slack fabric restraints before standing straight again, arching her back, and lifting her arms over her head. She slung the shirt at him. Then she slowly strode away from him, one foot directly in front of the other to give her ass an enticing swing.

Alex licked his lips and sat on the edge of the bed. When she’d peeled off her skinny jeans, she stroked her bare belly and hips, her lace-covered breasts and crotch. The growing bulge in his pants infuriated him, but he could not find the wherewithal to leave. Like all women, she knew his weakness.

She turned away and spread her feet apart, knees bent. Rolling her shoulders back, she set her hands on her knees and circled her ass in a figure eight shape. He sucked in a breath.

Natasha straightened and slipped off one bra strap, then the other. She unclasped the bra and faced him, holding it to her breasts, then showed him her back again and let her bra fall to the floor. She faced him once more, pressed her back to the wall, and raised her arms over her head, revealing her jiggling breasts in all their augmented glory. Her stiff, rosy nipples begged for a tongue-lashing. He chewed his lip.

Natasha shimmied up and down several times, then pushed away and strutted toward him. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties.

“Stop,” he whispered.

She slinked the lace down her legs and dropped the thong to her ankles before stepping out of one side and kicking them in his direction. Alex caught them with one hand, his attention riveted to the honey-blond hair manicured into a strip above her dusky pussy lips. The one woman he could have had any time and never did. No explanation for that. Stephanie had found comfort in the arms of another; why shouldn’t he? And not a stranger but an old friend.

He rose from the bed and, unbuttoning his shirt, crossed the room. With his hands on Natasha’s waist, he pushed her to the wall and thrust his tongue between her lips. Her palms scorched his bare skin as he attacked her with brutal kisses, hating her for showing up at his most corruptible, hating himself more. He shoved his erection against her; she moaned and clawed at his hair, his back. Her succulent tits squashed his chest. He bent to run his tongue around each dimpled, puckered areola, to suck on each sweat-salted kernel. Natasha threw her head back, her blond hair a butterscotch cascade down her back. Her breasts were nothing like Stephanie’s—the nipples too large, the breasts themselves too round to appear natural.

He swallowed the acid curdling his stomach.

They made an inelegant journey to the bed, Alex stumbling backward and onto it. Natasha straddled him. She opened the bottle again, and fruity, chemical fingers slinked into his nose, broke down his questionable resistance. He inhaled and closed his eyes in anticipation of the euphoric rush, of the racing heartbeat and the bright lights and the sensation that his dick had reached elephant-sized proportions.

What he got instead was a bass drum kicking blast beats in his head in the mother, the father, the entire goddamned family of headaches. His cock shriveled with the sheer agony of a puke-inducing migraine.

“
Blya
,” he moaned and, clutching his head, fell back onto the pillows.

“Uh-oh.” Natasha tittered. “Out of practice?”

Alex rolled onto his side and yanked up the covers over his shoulders. “Shut up. Leave me alone.”

She shut off the TV and the music. He blacked out after that.

***

When he cracked open his eyelids the next morning, momentary panic at the unfamiliarity of his surroundings made his heart crash against his chest. Somehow, he’d been stripped down to his briefs. Then his gaze settled on Natasha astride him, tits joggling as she burnished her crotch against his morning wood. He bucked and watched his cotton-covered dick bifurcate her.

“Natashka,” he moaned.

“What, baby?”

“Get the fuck off me.”

She gaped at him as though he’d sprouted a second head, and stopped grinding. “You don’t mean that.”

“Put your fucking clothes on and go back to Russia.” He shoved her off him, onto the floor.

“Ow!” Legs splayed, she lifted her pelvis and rubbed her tailbone.

He averted his gaze from her glossy cunt, into which plunging his face felt more and more a compulsion. That most Russian men did not enjoy eating pussy had baffled him from the first time he’d ever tasted Stephanie. How could a man and not want to feel his woman beneath him, writhing and contorting in a bliss that required nothing more than his mouth?

Stephanie.
He bit his lip harder.

“Sashka, why do you do this?”

He lumbered out of bed, leaving her sprawled on the carpet, and gathered his clothes scattered around the room. His erection had already flatlined. “Get your ass on the next flight to Piter.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I can tell you to stay away from me. You’re a fucking mess, a mess I don’t need right now.”

She snatched the complimentary robe from the bed, her eyes ablaze. “You turn your back on me—again—because of stupid American girl?”

“She is my
wife
.” He curled his fingers into fists. He’d have to sneak out of the hotel somehow, except a six-foot-five man with a limp did not “sneak” in any sense of the word. Someone would see him, and he had no credible excuse for being there. “I’m leaving before I do something I regret even more. Goodbye, Nataliya.”

A frustrated scream and glass shattering against the wall resonated into the hallway from behind the closed door.

***

Stephanie

“Have a seat, Ms. Hartwell. Thank you for coming in.”

Stephanie sat on a cold metal folding chair at a table within the soundproof interrogation room, surrounded on all sides by austere gray walls. A camera peered down at her from one corner. On the opposite side, a large observation mirror, the entire operation designed to maximize distress and helplessness. A psychological war waged against all suspects, guilty or otherwise. Alex’s anxiety must have ratcheted to eleven any time he set foot in here.

“I’m Detective Lane, and I’m the lead investigator in your husband’s case. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water, pop?”

“Pop,” not “soda”. She’d never get used to that. “No, thank you.”

“All right.” The man sat across from her, legs apart. A subconscious demonstration of his authority. Subliminal dick waving. “Let’s get started. Tell me about your husband.”

“That’s a bit vague.”

“Right, right.” He chuckled. “You’re a reporter. Better get to the specifics then, huh? Okay. Your husband was a known substance abuser, would you agree with that?”

“At one point, yes. We lost touch for a long time, so I don’t know if he was what you’d call an addict, but he did enjoy partying in his younger years.”

“And what substances did he typically use while ‘partying,’ as you put it?”

“Keep in mind, Detective, that Aleksandr and I were not together at that stage of his life. I was living on the other side of the country. I know he liked to drink, and that he was no stranger to cocaine. He spent summers in Europe and did a lot of drugs there too.”

“Despite being a professional athlete.”

“You have to understand how pervasive coke is in that league. It’s not even a suspendable offense unless the player has a habit that requires rehab. As long as he passed his urine tests, he was going to do what so many others were doing, because he could.”

“And his history with women. Would you say that was also ‘because he could’?”

“I know what you’re trying to do.” Stephanie folded her hands on the table and leveled her stare at him. Challenging him. “I also know that if you’ve spoken to witnesses from that night, you’d be aware that Aleksandr was acting strangely. These people have seen him drunk and high before. His accuser refused to leave him alone. Did it occur to you that she might have slipped
him
something, or have you decided he’s guilty despite the complete lack of evidence, because admitting otherwise makes you look incompetent for even pursuing an investigation against him?”