Smoke Signals

by Catherine Gayle

  He backed up a step. I wanted to follow. I wanted to take what he’d started and push him toward its inevitable conclusion. Because if I couldn’t get him to fuck me—to really, truly fuck me and forget about his slow come-on—he would maintain the upper hand, and I’d never get any semblance of control over my life.

  But then he said, “I asked Tallie about her doctors because I think we need to go to one. For you,” he added when I merely blinked at him.

  “I don’t need doctor.”

  “You do.”

  I shook my head and made my way back toward the living room. No doctor could help me. All they would want to do is test for STDs and pregnancy, and stick things up in my pussy that would hurt as much as fucking only without the benefits of fucking. They’d pry into my past, and they’d tell me I just needed to relax. That I was clenching from stress. Maybe that I needed more lubrication. Like any of that had ever done a damn thing to stop the stinging, biting pain of having something ripping me to shreds over and over again.

  I didn’t need a doctor telling me I was crazy and it was all in my head, or at best that it was simply a bit of discomfort and I was exaggerating, and those were the only things they would tell me. I knew. I’d already seen a doctor about it when the pain had first started.

  I just had to cope with the pain. Frankly, that was something I’d already been doing for years, so there was no reason I couldn’t keep doing it now, with Razor.

  “Tori—”

  “No doctor. I’m fine.” I plopped down on the chair that Tallie had vacated, bypassing the sofa because I couldn’t handle him sitting next to me right now. If he touched me, I’d lose it.

  He sat on the arm of the chair and tipped my chin up toward him. “You’re not fine. I want to help you. You were in pain when I was inside you, and that’s not normal. It’s not okay. And I refuse to put you through that, so until you can handle sex without being in pain, we’re just not going to have sex.”

  I blinked back my tears in frustration. “But you’re husband.”

  “I am your husband. And I’m not denying that I’m an asshole, but I’m not that much of an asshole. I’m not going to cause you pain if I can help it. But there’s no reason we shouldn’t go to a doctor to find out what’s behind it and see what we can do about it.”

  “Doctor says it’s in my head. Make it up. Just uncomfortable.”

  “Then we’ll keep seeing different doctors until we find one who’ll believe us and help you. Because you and I both know it’s not just in your head. Or are you going to try lying to me about that?”

  He looked like he might kiss me again. Could I take advantage of the situation and redirect him? And maybe then I could get him to forget about it long enough to just fuck me. Get it over with. I could mask my pain better this time. I’d done it countless times on camera, and they’d never had to reshoot because I wasn’t convincing enough.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I reached for his cock, rubbing him over his pants. His dick was already big and hard, and it jerked to life at my touch. Razor groaned, and I fumbled to open his fly. I almost had it undone, but then—in a single move—he picked me up, took my seat, and settled me sideways on his lap with his cock pulsing against the outside of my thigh and my knees draped over the arm of the chair.

  “I don’t understand,” I said in a huff. “You’re hard. Cock is ready. You want to fuck. So fuck me. It’s fine.”

  He shook his head, slowly. Deliberately. “It’s not fine, beautiful.” Then he pressed a kiss to my forehead that made me want to scream in frustration. “I am hard. I do want to fuck you. But I can’t do it. I can’t be inside you and know I’m hurting you. I can’t take pleasure and know it’s torture for you. I won’t. Someday you’ll understand. Someday I’ll get through to you, and you’ll know you’re a thousand times more valuable than the sum of your parts. You’ll believe that your worth isn’t directly related to how wide you spread your legs. Someday, you’ll take control over your body again, and you’ll own it. And maybe then, you’ll see how beautiful you are to me. Maybe then, you’ll be beautiful to yourself.”

  “I’m not…” I started to shake my head, without a clue what I intended to say, but he put a hand on the side of my face, cupping my ear. He brushed the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone, his touch barely there, and buried his fingers in my hair.

  I couldn’t breathe because of the vise squeezing my chest, stopping my heart as surely as it stopped time.

  “Don’t,” he said. His voice had become deep and harsh, and the blue of his eyes matched. “Please, stop telling me you’re not beautiful. It’ll never be true, and it kills a piece of me every time.”

  I didn’t trust my voice, so I gave him a reluctant nod. I doubted I could manage to do what he’d asked of me, but he hadn’t insisted on my promise.

  He kissed the end of my nose. “Good. Now, will you let me take you to the doctor? They might not be able to help, but it’s worth a shot.”

  I nodded again. Maybe the doctor could convince him that it wasn’t as bad as he thought.

  “Okay. One more thing.”

  I flickered my eyes up to meet his. At this point, I couldn’t imagine what else he intended to throw my way.

  “I think you need to move into my bedroom. Tallie saw you go down the other hall to put away your purse. If people believe we aren’t sharing a bed…”

  He didn’t need to finish that statement.

  But if I was in his bed, the likelihood that we might fuck would only increase. Maybe I could change his mind about the doctor, and then I could start to repay all his kindnesses. And if we were fucking, it wouldn’t be as difficult to convince anyone that we had married for love.

  “I’ll sleep with you,” I said as decisively as I could. I added a firm nod for good measure.

  He studied me, his eyes roving over my face, taking in every feature. Then his lips touched mine again.

  The tenderness of his kiss shattered me. I might never be whole again, no matter what Razor thought.

  THE FIRST COUPLE of nights Tori spent in my bed, I woke up several times to find her fingers surreptitiously attempting to free my cock from my boxer briefs. There was no point in pretending my cock wouldn’t have been more than happy to play along. There was also no point in denying that she definitely knew how to use her hands.

  But none of that mattered. I had no intention of taking our physical relationship beyond the point of kisses and cuddles until she’d seen a doctor and we could find a solution to her pain. Not only that, but I still meant what I’d told her on our first night together—if she didn’t come, I didn’t get to come, either. No hand jobs or blow jobs just because she had it all fucked up in her head that sex was the only thing she was good for.

  Still, the combination of her warm body beside me as we slept and waking up to her determined efforts was doing a number on me. I was horny as hell all the time, and no matter how many times I dragged her hands away from my cock, she kept going back when I least expected it.

  I’d taken to rolling over her, holding her hands still at her sides, and kissing her senseless every time she did it. Yes, it made me harder and more desperate to be inside her, especially when she wiggled underneath me and tried to grind herself up against me and said things like, “Fuck me, Razor. Please, fuck me,” all the while sounding like she meant it. But I couldn’t do that, so I kissed her until I couldn’t take it anymore and then begged her to go back to sleep.

  The day after she’d gone shopping with Tallie, I’d made an appointment for Tori to see Dr. Rodriguez next week, but that was the soonest the OB-GYN had been able to get us in. In the meantime, Tori and I were both doing our best to keep busy.

  We’d gone together to check out a few ballet studios in town, and we’d found one she liked. She was set to start classes next week, and the studio owner said Tori might be invited to take part in some local performances. Until we got her green card sorted out, she couldn’t do professional work, but
nothing would prevent her from participating in community productions.

  She was also spending more time with Tallie while Hunter and I went up to the Thunderbirds’ facilities to work out.

  Hunter was in Tulsa since Tallie was about to pop at any moment and she wanted to be near her father. I was here because of Tori. But it wasn’t just the two of us around this summer. Most days while we were in the gym, Dmitri Nazarenko was also in the gym, working with some of the team’s trainers. Dima’s hip surgery had taken place a few months ago after a nagging injury had slowed him down all of last year, and now he was in the process of rehabbing it to get ready for the start of the new season. I wasn’t exactly close to either of them—hell, I didn’t think anyone on this team was close to anyone else—but it was nice to have some company for the monotonous reps of bench presses, box jumps, and other shit we all had to do.

  “Why you marry Russian girl?” Dima grumbled at me on Friday afternoon. “Leave Russian girls for Russians. You don’t know how to treat them. Should’ve married an American. Puck bunnies always chase after you. Take one of them home instead.”

  They were always chasing him, too. There was apparently something about surly, bearded guys with bad attitudes and heavy accents that attracted women. Who knew?

  I rolled my eyes despite the anger churning in my gut at his suggestion that a Russian would better know how to treat a woman than I did. I wasn’t the one trying to kidnap her and force her into sexual slavery, like the freaking Russian Mafia had wanted to do. “I think if she’d wanted to marry a Russian son of a bitch like you or Petro, she would’ve done that before leaving Russia.”

  Petro was another of our teammates, Alexei Petrov. He was the prototypical enigmatic Russian that the North American hockey media was constantly talking about. The kid had mad skills, but he wasn’t much of a team player. He partied too hard and didn’t put forth much effort most of the time. He had the potential to be so good that no one could touch him. He just didn’t care enough to play like that all the time. If he actually worked as hard as the rest of us did, it was scary to think how good he could be. Instead, he was playing third-line center on the shittiest team in the league.

  Dima, however, wasn’t anything like most people expected Russians to be in this league. He had been a skill guy once. But that was before he’d had a car wreck that had nearly killed him and his best friend. After a bunch of surgeries and PT, he’d come back to the league, but now he was more of a grinder. He didn’t have the same speed he once had, and his shot had never been the same. But he was as surly and determined as they came. He’d worked hard to turn himself into a hard-nosed defensive forward, a penalty-kill specialist, and a guy who got sent out to take on the toughest situations.

  On this team, he was still on the top line, somehow. Just went to show how bad we were. It was like the Island of Misfit Toys around here, with guys plugging holes in the lineup out of necessity more than them being the right fit.

  The ways Dima was atypical in terms of Russian hockey players didn’t end with the way he played the game, either. Most Russian guys I’d ever played with were confident, maybe cocky, sometimes goofy, and always the life of the party. In fact, maybe they were a lot like me. But Dima was sullen and kept to himself, other than going out with a different woman at every turn, almost never hanging out with the guys, and he rarely had more than three words to say on a given subject.

  Considering that, what he’d just said to me might have been the longest string of words I’d ever heard him utter. I always felt bad for the media guys when Dima got sent out for interviews. They’d be lucky to get enough out of him to fill half their column.

  He glared at me and grunted, and then he bumped up the speed on his treadmill. “She’s ballerina?” Beads of sweat trickled down into the wild mass of his beard, making it glisten like it was filled with glitter.

  I was almost positive he was only talking to me because Tori was Russian. He’d never been this talkative before. Granted, the fact that there were only three of us around might have played into it, too.

  “Yeah,” I said. I added some weights to my barbell. “She’s a ballerina.”

  “Why she leave Russia?”

  “Same reason as you,” I hedged, lying down on the bench press. “She came to the US to dance. You came to play hockey.”

  Hunter came over to spot me.

  “Good ballet in Russia. Better than America. Make no sense.” Dima scowled. Not that anyone could tell from his mouth. His beard prevented that. The crease between his eyebrows was what made his expression clear. “She lying to you. Try to take your money. See dumb American hockey player, trick him into marry her, run back to Russia and be richest girl around.”

  Hunter snorted and took the bar off the rack, placing it in my hands.

  “Something funny?” I ground out, lowering the bar to just above my chest.

  “Not funny. Just agreeing that you’re a dumb American.”

  “I’m as Canadian as you are,” I grumbled.

  “Then why are you always playing for the Americans in international competitions?” he shot back.

  I pressed it up until my elbows locked, then I exhaled, glaring at Hunter. Guys always knew just where to poke. He was right—I did play for Team USA in international competition. I was good enough to get a spot on that team, usually. The chances of me ever making the Canadian team were slim to none, so I’d hedged my bets early on and I hadn’t looked back. But I didn’t want to get into that now. “She’s not after my money,” I said, redirecting the conversation.

  “She’s lying,” Dima huffed. “Russian women all after something. Maybe she’s not ballerina. Maybe she wants sugar daddy. Better sign bigger contract next time, keep her in diamonds.”

  “If you believe Koz, she’s a porn star,” Hunter said. “I might believe him, based on how she was dressed at Babs’s wedding.”

  I did another rep, glaring at him. “She is. Or she was. Now she’s my wife, and she’s still dancing.”

  “She’s porn star?” Dima laughed, a deep, gut-busting sort of laugh that I’d never have guessed was coming from him if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. “She’s after money. You’re fucked, Razor. So fucked.”

  I kept doing my reps and ignored him.

  “I don’t think she’s after money,” Hunter said. “Tallie’s been hanging out with her. She likes Tori. I think Tallie’s going to adopt her as her next project.”

  “Project?” I ground out.

  “Like she did with my brother. Tallie’ll hound her until they’re essentially BFFs, and then she’ll hound her some more until Tori spills her guts and agrees to do seven thousand things to improve herself. Maybe it won’t be so intense for Tori, though, since the baby’s coming soon.”

  I couldn’t make up my mind about if I liked the idea of anyone else doing the same thing I was doing with Tori. The last thing she needed was people coming at her from all sides. It had been hard enough to convince her she needed to see a doctor. Getting her to talk about her life, her past, was like pulling teeth. Every time I made some headway, she dug in her heels and refused to go any further. I didn’t mind the idea that Tallie was insisting on being Tori’s friend, but I hoped she wouldn’t push.

  Too much.

  A bit of a nudge here and there wouldn’t be too bad. Like when she’d offered up the suggestion of a counseling center without prompting. That was good. I hoped that Dr. Rodriguez would make a similar suggestion when we visited her next week.

  “Russian ballerina porn star,” Dima said, bumping his speed up again, still laughing. “Fuck, Razor. How you do this? How you marry her?”

  I finished my reps and handed the bar off to Hunter, who returned it to the rack. I sat up and reached for a towel to dry the sweat off my face. “Luck, I guess.” I winked at him as I traded places with Hunter. “And give it a rest about Tori doing porn, eh? She did it. It’s in the past. That’s that.”

  Dima could think it was just about sex al
l he wanted. Not that sex was the same thing as love, but letting him believe that would be a hell of a lot better than letting him think it was all about getting Tori a green card and nothing else.

  GREG CALLED ME back later that afternoon, while I was driving home from the gym.

  “It’s not good,” he said first thing after I answered.

  “Well? What?”

  “I’ll get the paperwork started right away. You need to overnight me copies of absolutely everything you can get your hands on. Her passport and student visa. The official marriage certificate. I’ve got copies of your documents here already, but anything and everything related to Tori, you need to send me. Anything the school gave her when they kicked her out of the program. Whatever she’s got about her parents. Names and phone numbers for people she knew while she was going to school—preferably not people in the porn business. We’re going to have to be upfront about that, but I’m thinking more friends she might have had, classmates, other dancers…”

  “Okay, so it’s going to be a lot of paperwork and red tape,” I said.

  “That’s just the beginning. Once I’ve got the process in motion, it’s going to be a huge ordeal. They’ll interview you both, plus other people in your lives. There may be a few hearings you’ll have to take part in. Even if I get the Thunderbirds involved in this, it’s likely not going to be finalized for at least a couple of years. And throughout the entire process, she can’t leave the country. Not for any reason. I’m not sure if she can work or not. There might be a special dispensation we can arrange for. I’ll have to check on that. But the two of you are going to have to put on the act of your lives if you’re going to pull this off. The fact that you got married within hours of meeting each other is going to make this next to impossible to manage.”

  That was one of the very few things I’d spent much time thinking about for almost a week now. “We’re already working on making sure it’s believable to everyone. They can ask questions, but they’re not going to unearth anything other than the fact that we’re crazy about each other.”