“To practice every day before work at Phantom, audition for any openings that come up,” I say with a satisfied nod. I like this plan. It seems solid.
He tenses more. If the alcohol is doing anything, it’s making him even more touchy-feely than he already is. His large hand stays firm on my legs. But he’s still rigid, commanding. All masculine and man. What anyone would expect of a lead male in a show about love.
He checks on his brother with a quick glance before focusing one-hundred percent on me. “It’s unlikely that Amour will ever have another opening. What happened with my old partner…it’s rare.” He hasn’t ever mentioned Tatyana before now. I can tell it’s a sore subject, so I won’t surface it any more than he has.
“There are other shows besides Amour,” I say. “There’s Infini and Viva. Seraphine is traveling, but they’ll be in Los Angeles around May. Plus there are other troupes if Aerial Ethereal isn’t hiring.”
The charm drains from his features, leaving gunmetal eyes with no shine. “High Flyers Company isn’t safe, Thora. They hire riggers as contract employees, pay them close to nothing, and give them days to learn how to harness artists before beginning shows.”
“I think I’ll be alright in my discipline.” Riggers sometimes have an artist’s life in their hands since they fasten harnesses and work the wires.
“Aerial silk,” he guesses my discipline right. “But if you’re in group acts with intricate choreography and a new apparatus that needs a harness, you’ll be asked to wear one. You’re risking your life with High Flyers, so please be smart and don’t even entertain them.”
“Emblem & Fitz Circus,” I say, one that’s based in London. High Flyers is AE’s direct competition, since Emblem is known for their carnival shows. Elephants. A ring leader.
“That can’t be the circus you’ve fallen in love with if you’re here,” he says. “It’s apples and oranges.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” I ask, about to retract my legs from his lap, but he holds tighter.
“I’ll train you.”
My lips part. “What?”
“I want to train you.”
“You’re drunk,” I breathe, half hoping he’s not.
“I’m nearly sober.” He adds, “Every January, AE has auditions to find new talent, regardless if a show is new or not. Most contracts are renewed and cancelled every new year, so you have a better shot to fill a role then.”
January.
That’s seven months away from now. He’s willing to train me for seven months. “You don’t have time,” I say. “You have a new partner—”
“If I don’t train you,” he says each word like it’s uniquely important, “you will fail, Thora. You’re not good enough. I can’t put it more plainly than that. I’m sorry.”
I want to be the better person and not accept it—knowing how much he has on his plate. But this is a dream offer. He has so much experience, the kind that I need to survive in this industry. “Why help me?” I ask softly. I expect him to say, I don’t have an answer.
“I admire your courage. I know what you’ve given up to be here. I know the kind of artist it takes to land a role. I know that you won’t receive one on your own. And I imagine you, myshka, two years from now, working at Phantom with the same aspirations, the same dreams, in the same place where you are now. It’s wasted courage. And wasted love. You shouldn’t have to waste those things.”
I’m speechless.
And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand—for no other reason than to see your success—it’s powerful. And rare.
He wipes beneath my eye with his thumb. “I’d rather feed your hunger than watch you starve, and you’re foolish if you say no.”
I shake my head, another tear slipping. “I wasn’t going to.”
He cups my jaw, tilting my head up so I stare right into him. “Good.”
* * *
4:54 a.m.
My head spins. Buzzed. No wait—I teeter, sans heels, on my bare soles. The sidewalk hot, even in the summer night. Definitely beyond buzzed. I drank past my limit. They just kept comin’ and I kept grabbin’. I think I was dazed and confused by Nikolai’s offer.
“It was a real offer?” I ask him, his hands firmly on the crook of my hips beside me. I think I slurred a bit of that. But he smiles in my foggy vision and mutters out a response. I only caught: …again… I’ve asked it multiple times?
I’m the sloppy drunk.
And judging by his roaming hands, he’s the flirty one.
It’s everything I imagined in life.
At least my sarcasm is internally on point right now. My mind is amused. I think we’re waiting for a cab, his cousins—lots of cousins—and Timo surrounding us.
We’re back in a group.
It’s hot.
I shed my coat and sling it over my forearm. It whips out of my possession and into Nikolai’s. He blazes me with his intensity, searing trails down my corseted waist, pushed-up cleavage and my thighs in black fish-net. He’s thinking about sex. I’m thinking about sex.
We’re all thinking about sex here.
“Those eyes…” I point a finger at him, my breath shallow. “…are bad.”
His lips rise. And all I hear from his response is myshka. My nickname, whatever that nickname means, has never sounded more sexual off his lips. And then his hands fall low to my hipbones, too close to more sensitive places.
He knows this.
Right?
I rest my palms on his sculpted abs. “You’re touching me.”
“I’ve touched you before,” he says huskily.
Truths.
Lots of truths tonight. Barefooted, my head reaches his chest. Literally. His bedroom eyes are things made from sin. “The devil is…very, very…hot.” I wonder if that went smoothly or not.
Probably not.
I feel his lips brush my ear with the heat of his breath. Then he lifts me, so effortlessly that we may as well have been on stage.
I’m closer to his jaw, his mouth…
One of his hands clutches my ass, and my legs hook around his waist. “What am…I doing here?” I say aloud. Did I say that out loud?
“You’re in my arms.” He holds the back of my neck, his thumb putting the right pressure on the right tender muscles. A pleasured sound tickles my throat. I’m not even sure if I contained it.
His cousins begin to shout. I think. I hear a couple car horns and laughter.
“Why am I in your arms?” my drunken, sloppy-self asks.
He tries to hide his smile, but I see it peek from the corners of his lips. “Because you’re little. And I’m not.” He combs my flyaway hairs, and he rests his palm on my cheek, sliding it to the back of my neck again.
His touch electrifies my skin. I shiver. Or shudder. Maybe both.
Timo speaks, somewhere close to us. “You’re a Grade-A flirty drunk…”
Nikolai replies in Russian, and my thoughts fly with the scene. I become fragmented. Like snapshots of a whole night, and I vividly recall only certain moments.
I straddle Nikolai’s lap, my head on his chest while I listen to his heartbeat. His voice vibrates against my ear while a taxi bumps along a road. It takes a lot of energy to look up at him, but I do, tilting my head. He stares down at me, his hand stroking my tangled dirty-blonde hair, no longer in a pony.
“I can walk,” I whisper. Why am I whispering?
“Prove it,” he says deeply.
I place my palms on his chest again and try to lift myself off him, and I recognize that we’re in a taxi again. Where I cannot walk. Even if I tried.
He laughs.
I scowl.
His hand travels up my corset, to my chest, and his humor fades, replaced by a more desirous, hungry look.
Shockwaves course through my body, and a noise, like a high-pitched moan, rumbles inside of me. I can’t discern whether he hears the needy plea—one that I’ve never made before.
Not with anyone.
Not even drunk.
He pulls me even closer to his body, and I’m welded against him. In his care, and his lips close over my jaw. I swear they do.
I’m on a bed.
I’m on a bed. In my corset and stockings. Metallic-colored sheets and comforter beneath me. The corset wire pokes into my skin, and the weight of someone else undulates the mattress, rocking my body. I prop myself on my elbows.
Nikolai is shirtless.
He is very, very shirtless.
Even in the darkness, moonlight creeping through the white curtains, I notice the ridges and lines in his muscles, his perfect set of abs. A body that belongs to an athlete or vampires and werewolves, the supernatural in general.
He hovers over me, his fingers untying the front of my corset where it all binds together. We’re going to have sex. It’s a lingering thought.
We’re both drunk.
That is true too.
My mind soars to new heights. “I’m floating,” I whisper. Or spinning.
“Close your eyes, myshka,” he breathes in a soothing, deep tone. I don’t close them though. His forearm rests beside my head, his body less than an inch from descending into me.
“What does that mean?” I ask softly. “Myshka?”
His eyes search mine, hypnotic, soulful. Ones that tether me here, to him. And his lips close over my cheek before drifting to my ear. “Little mouse.”
Little mouse.
I spin.
And the blackness of the night takes me completely.
Act Fourteen
My head pounds viciously.
I roll over, whirling. A soft, metallic comforter molds my body, like a fluffy pillow. I freeze. This is not my bed in Ohio.
I’m in Vegas.
And this is not Camila’s couch.
My blurry eyes begin to grow and clear. The never-ending night suddenly floods me in choppy, disjointed waves. What. Did I do? I’m on my period. It’s the first terrified thought I have.
Did I have sex?
Those two—sex and menstruation—they don’t mix. I’m going to look down and see a horrific bloody mess, something from a scary movie. Like Saw. The eighth sequel took place in Nikolai’s bed.
Before I agonize any longer, I take a peek. No blood.
No mess.
I pat my body for my phone, and it dawns on me. I’m wearing a men’s black button-down. Bra-less. Or rather, corset-less. No stockings. No—wait, I still have my black underwear on, the bottoms that matched the top.
I find my phone sitting on a pillow beside me. No other body is here.
He kissed me?
Maybe. Did he?
Did we have sex?
I want to turn off my frantic brain. Please. I stare at the ceiling, expecting to have a one-on-one talk with God, but this isn’t the time. And I don’t think He wants to hear me groan about my drunken black-out night.
I just hope it’s not one full of regret.
I check the time on my cell. 9:32 a.m.
Why am I up so early after going to bed so late? What’s wrong with my body? Doesn’t it understand that it needs sleep? I’m about to fall back into the pillow and force my eyes shut.
But a fist raps the door frame.
Nikolai stands with a glass of green slush, wearing black workout shorts and a gray shirt. Strands of his hair fall over his rolled, red bandana. Like usual, it’s distracting and more attractive than he probably realizes.
“How is your body functioning?” is the first thing I say, of all things needing to be said.
“I can handle my liquor,” he reminds me. “I’m assuming you feel like shit.”
I sit up, suddenly aware of last night again, the important parts. I anxiously pull at the hem of his shirt so it covers my thighs. I swallow, my throat dry. “Right assumption.”
His brows pinch as he studies me for a second. Then he approaches with the green mystery concoction. “Drink this.” He passes it to me.
I cup the cold glass with one hand, keeping my thighs covered with the other. He watches me attentively, and I try to speak my questions through my eyes: did we have sex? I don’t think I can say the words aloud.
He has to be reading me right. “You blacked out,” he finally concludes. “At what point?”
“I remember bits and pieces after we left Hex.”
His jaw hardens. “Drink,” he tells me. “You’ll feel better.”
Wait? He’s not going to tell me if we had sex or not? This is killing me. “Did we have sex?!” I accidentally shout it.
Fuck my life.
“No,” he tells me without a smile. Without humor. His seriousness pounds my heart.
“Did we kiss?” I ask softly.
“No, not really.” He picks up a blue plastic AE water bottle off his dresser. “I helped you change into that shirt after you said a wire was hurting you, but I knew you were more intoxicated than me. I wouldn’t take advantage of you, Thora.”
I finally let out a breath.
He gestures to the green slush. “Hurry up and drink that. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
My eyes grow. “What? Where?”
“The gym. Your training starts today.”
“Today?” My head throbs still, a splitting migraine that jackhammers my temple. I shouldn’t be anywhere near an apparatus.
He sits on the edge of the bed, really close to me. “I have rules.”
Of course he has rules. I lean my shoulders against the black headboard.
“No complaining.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I mutter, sipping the green drink. It’s vile. I gag at first, but his look of suck it up, little mouse forces me to drink more of it without flinching. I remember the nickname, and I can only guess he gave it to me for my height compared to his. I also remember his strict anger at the auditions, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from him now. Clearly, he takes work seriously.
“If I call you with a free hour, you’ll stop whatever you’re doing and train. Except if you’re working at Phantom.”
“Okay.” I can do that.
“No drugs,” he says.
“That won’t be a problem,” I mumble into my next sip. I’ve never even smoked pot. The call of narcotics isn’t strong for me.
He adds, “Don’t show up to training drunk.”
I hesitate mid-gulp and then wipe my mouth slowly with the back of my hand. “Problem…I’m slightly drunk right now.”
His facial muscles never even flinch from their no-nonsense, stern position. “Don’t arrive late to training. You waste my time, we’re done.”
“Fair enough,” I say softly. He’s doing this out of kindness, no other reason.
“No boyfriends.”
My lips part, and my heart jumps. “What?”
“It’s a distraction,” he explains, “and if you’re not one-hundred percent committed to becoming an artist, then you’re wasting my time again.” His eyes smolder hot. “And if you do end up with a boyfriend, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to hear it. That stays out of the gym. Understand?”
I digest all of his words with a heavy frown. I don’t think I misinterpreted the attraction between us last night—but maybe that’s all it was, a drunken night. And I hate myself for fixating on him like that when he’s giving me a handout that I’ve desperately needed.
“You’re glaring,” he says. “I didn’t realize your love life was more important to you than your career—”
“It’s not,” I retort; my pulse speeds the longer we discuss this. I feel like puking.
He lifts my chin with two fingers, his hard gaze pushing through me. That stare—it’s so intrusive. So intimate. That it might as well be a form of sex. Eye sex. Eye fucking. I understand it now. And he says lowly, “Then no boyfriends.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I breathe.
A knock sounds on the main door, the noise dull in this room but audible. Between his siblings and cousins at The Masquerade, I�
��m surprised there aren’t more knocks.
“Is that all the rules?” I ask as he stands.
“Unless I think of more later,” he tells me, basically declaring that he can amend the rules at any time. He holds all the power—as he should. He’s doing you a giant favor, Thora. I’m so grateful that I can’t complain, even if it wasn’t on his list of rules.
“I left Advil on the bathroom counter for you,” he tells me on his way to the door, the knocking louder. When he leaves to answer it, I scan the room for my bag. A couple seconds pass before I remember that my suitcase is at Camila’s—along with a change of clothes, underwear and my shoes.
I exhale, my stomach still queasy. I’m not sure the green juice is helping any. Camila is most likely busy dealing with her extended family, and I don’t want to complicate her day with my baggage—literally. I smile weakly at the pun, and then quickly frown when I realize it has not solved my problems.
Nikolai left the door ajar, and I hear voices escalate in the living room, enough that curiosity propels me there. I edge near the wooden frame.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” the familiar male voice says. “It’s just that I don’t trust you.” I imagine John Ruiz’s surly, unapologetic face.
“That makes perfect sense,” Nikolai replies. “What am I going to do with Thora’s clothes? Steal them? Wear them for myself?”
My clothes. I’m opening the door in a flash, too pleased with the slant of the universe, dipping on my side. My solution just walked into Nikolai’s suite with my suitcase. I creep into the living room, my toes throbbing from the torture I put them through last night.
It isn’t until John sees me that I notice my mistake. His eyes travel down the length of my body, clad in a black button-down. Nikolai’s shirt. And nothing else.
The universe giveth and taketh away.
“I can explain,” I say quickly. “We didn’t…” I motion between Nikolai and me. He stays quiet, domineering, not helping at all. “Do anything—we didn’t do anything. I just didn’t have a change of clothes.” It’s the best excuse there is. Maybe because it’s true.
“It’s not my business,” he says, my hefty suitcase by his side. “But either way you’re still certifiably insane.” He lets out a dry laugh. “You really would rather stay with him than go to a hotel or a hostel. Honestly, Thora, I pegged you as a degree above stupid.”
Amour Amour Page 12
