Act Twenty-Three
“Sorry about that,” Nikolai states. He pockets his cell, one that has been buzzing since we sat down. We’re on the balcony patio of Rush, metal torches flaming along the railing. It adds to the heat of the summer, my hair down, the pieces curling by my face, the rest probably frizzing.
Despite the view of Vegas being gorgeous tonight, I feel dazed by my surroundings and my own body. Camila helped me pick out a teal empire dress with a silver Aztec necklace, and so that’s what I’m wearing.
“It’s okay,” I say. “My phone isn’t behaving any better.” Just as I say it, another text pings. This one from my Mom.
Tanner placed first in science wars! Be sure to text him. – Mom
I already did with about fifteen emojis. My brother called me lame. But my parents have been proudly group texting photos of his project all night. And the buzzing won’t end. I thought about turning off the notifications but stopped after the guilt set in.
After I pocket my phone, I stir my straw in my tequila sunrise, a drink I’ve grown accustomed to, no more choking on the liquor.
“Everything okay?” He nods to my phone and then leans back in his wooden chair, red wine his choice of beverage.
I meet his gray eyes that seem to say you can tell me anything. He looks supremely handsome tonight: black slacks, black button-down, his hair pushed out of his face, the longer strands a bit higher than the base of his neck.
One of his arms stays on the table, his hand near me. Like if I reach up, he’ll thread his fingers with mine. It’s tempting to test the waters.
But I stay still, legs crossed and hands in my lap, more rigid than him. “My brother won a science contest. It’s a big deal for my family…” I trail off when his phone buzzes on the table, lighting up. “What about you?”
I stare at him for a long second, and he keeps my gaze. I can tell his interruptions don’t derive from good news. He lets me see that in his stormy grays.
“Timo,” he finally says, pocketing his cell. “My cousins are texting me about him. He’s…stuck on some three-card poker table. Down a couple hundred and won’t get off. I’d like to say this isn’t the usual. But it is.”
My heart sinks. I think I’ve known this all along about Timo. I just hoped it wasn’t true.
He reaches for his wine. “I’d take him out of Vegas if I thought it’d help, but he was this way in New York.” He takes a larger swig of his drink.
No holding back, I reach out and place my hand on his, beside my knife and fork.
He doesn’t seem too surprised, and I wonder if he was waiting for me to do it. He traces the lines in my palm, his eyes flitting to mine, a smile behind them. It warms my soul.
He says a few words in deep Russian, and he even kisses my fingers.
“What’d you say?” I ask with a growing smile, one I can’t suppress now. The pull between us is mellow, but hot, like magma that slowly rolls down volcanic rock.
“I said, you’re very beautiful.”
He could have his pick of any girl in Vegas. It’s hard to believe he’d fall for me. “What do you see when you look at me?” I ask in a whisper.
He’s quiet for a moment, soaking in my features.
And his expression only floods with more and more intensity, the kind that says I am attracted to you on many, many levels. It shallows my breath.
“I can’t describe my demon,” he tells me with rising lips. “I just feel her.”
I scowl. “And I’d say you avoided the question, but I think I can read you now.”
“You can?” His brows rise in surprise. “What am I thinking then?”
His penetrating eyes descend to my lips, to my collarbones, to my breasts, creating a sweltering trail. All the way until the table blocks the rest of my frame.
My eyes widen. You want to fuck me.
It’s clearly the answer, but I struggle to say it out loud. I open my mouth, close it, open it, close it.
He smiles into his sip of wine, knowing the effect he has on me and possibly every girl he’s ever encountered.
“And now?” he asks, setting down his drink and looking at me with the most sincerity, the most genuine sentiments, traversing into me, like a gunshot that propels clean through.
I can’t put words to that expression. “I don’t know,” I say softly.
“I admire you.”
“That’s funny,” I say, “because I admire you.”
He tries to hide a smile. “Why is that?”
“You raised your siblings. You realize that, right?”
He lets out a short laugh. “Not well enough.”
I frown and shake my head. The waiter comes around and takes our orders. A salmon dish for me, and chicken for him.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him, the flames creating shadows over his strong features in the dark. He looks like a devil dressed in black at first sight, but coming to know him, he’s the god that everyone describes. “Katya is sweet and friendly.” I think about his brother, the one who offered me mints and stole Skittles for his little sister. “Luka is generous and kind.” And Timo—magnetic. There are no just words to define him. I smile, staring off. “And Timo is…captivating, more full of life than anyone I’ve ever met.”
When I look up at Nikolai, his brows are furrowed, overwhelmed. He combs his fingers through his hair, turning his head as he processes my words.
He lets out another short laugh, this time in disbelief. “When people first meet my siblings, they see the worst in them.” Lines crease his forehead. “Katya is too naïve. Luka is too irresponsible. And Timo is…” He shakes his head. “Timo is chaos.”
“That’s rude,” I state.
He laughs into a bigger smile. “Where did you come from?”
“I think the same thing about you, you know.” He’s given me so much in a short amount of time. Determination, motivation. I am overflowing with better, brighter sentiments.
“According to you, I came from hell.” There is light behind his gunmetal eyes.
Technically that was John, but that thought has definitely impacted me. I struggle for a response. He’s distracting. Everything about him—his unshaven jaw, his soul-bearing gaze, his masculinity. I can’t concentrate, even if I was good at bantering.
I mutter, “Demons are from hell.” It sounds lame.
“Thank God for that.”
Maybe I’m not so bad at this. I stir my straw, the ice cubes melting. There are so many mysteries to him still. Stones left unturned. “Can I ask you something personal?” I wonder.
He stays relaxed. “Sure.”
“What happened with your family?” I pause to clarify. “I mean, your parents and other brothers are at Noctis, but it’s a new show. You said you haven’t seen them for six years, so…”
He lets go of my hand on the table, and I almost regret bringing it up. He sighs heavily like the past bears down on him, a weighted pressure that I can’t even begin to understand.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to—”
“No, I can,” he interjects. He rubs his jaw in thought, of how to start. He must not explain this often. “When I grew up, we were traveling with Nova Vega and then Celeste mostly in North America. All together. It’d been that way until my parents were recruited for Somnio, to oversee the Russian swing. It would go on a five-year tour, through Asia, Europe and South America.”
He stops for a second, staring faraway at the memory. It’s not often that he wears this look. It strangely pulls at my lungs.
“My closest aunt and uncle, Dimitri’s parents, were recruited for Infini, which would go to New York for three years and then move to Vegas. So my extended family would be split for the first time. We all couldn’t be in the same show, the same place, and unfortunately, Katya, Timo, and Luka had no choice where they ended up.”
“What…?” I breathe.
His jaw locks for a second, and he breathes through his nose. “My parents,” he starts. “They wanted sta
bility for the younger kids. They were ten, twelve and thirteen at the time.” He looks up, at the night sky, blanketed with stars. “It left Peter, me, and Sergei with a choice. Somnio would pay better. Somnio was more elite. And it’d award us more freedom.” When he takes another long pause, sipping his wine, I digest every syllable, every word.
“You were the only one who chose to be with them,” I realize. At twenty, he decided to take on his parent’s responsibility instead of living his own life. It’s not only admirable—that is courageous. There are tears in my eyes that he can’t see. He’s staring out at the city.
“Peter was eighteen, he wanted to travel,” he says. “Sergei was twenty-two, he had no desire to stay with our younger siblings. I wasn’t going to leave them and hope that our aunt and uncle would pay attention. They have five kids of their own.”
“So when Somnio ended…”
“Noctis began,” he says. “So did Amour and Viva.”
It cemented the fact that they’d be apart much longer than they might’ve intended.
Maybe that’s why Kayta is so upset. She could’ve been counting down to Somnio’s closing night, in hopes that her parents would return then.
“Do you miss them?” I ask as he turns back to me.
“Some days,” he says quietly. He finishes off his wine, and a phone rings (not just a text), the default tone. He digs into his pocket and answers the cell in Russian. His face morphs into that familiar anger, his eyes narrow and muscles tensing.
He shouts something and growls in irritation. He repeats a couple of the same words, over and over, and then he shuts off the phone and rises quickly, pulling out his wallet. My pulse throbs in worry. Our food hasn’t even arrived, the date ending early.
“What’d you say about Luka—being generous?” He shakes his head, tossing a few bills and then extending his hand for me. “He’s generously wearing on me.”
“He stole something,” I assume, as I rise and take his hand.
He leads me out of the restaurant, in such a hurry that I have trouble keeping up with his lengthy stride. “He’s sitting in jail,” he says, so lowly that I wonder if I heard wrong.
“What?” My eyes bug.
He hails down a cab. “He’s in jail.”
Okay, I heard right. My pulse kicks up—and I wonder what he could’ve stolen. Or if it was something worse. We slip into the taxi together, and Nikolai leans close and suddenly kisses me.
It’s a new kind of kiss.
Soft, gentle but more full. His hand is lost beneath my hair, clutching me, and I inhale with him, my arms on his. His lips brush my cheek, then my ear, to whisper, “In case I forget, know that I loved tonight, with you. No matter what happens from here.”
He’s about to turn on his protective setting, the one where he’s all severe. The warm sentiments buried low beneath.
I touch his rough jaw, my hand small. “What happens from here?” I ask softly, my words sounding more sexual than I ever believed they could.
He tucks my frizzy strands of hair behind my ear. “I’ll tell you a truth myshka,” he whispers, his lips closing over my cheek before touching mine. And very lowly, he breathes, “It’s all a mystery to me.”
* * *
I stand with Luka by the jail’s tinted glass, double doors. He hardly says a word, his gaze literally planted on the ugly brown carpet. We wait for Nikolai, who fills out paperwork at the front desk, out of earshot. Apparently Luka tried to shoplift a four-hundred dollar snow globe.
“Who sells snow globes in July?” I ask aloud.
Luka finally smiles, albeit a weak one. “It was a collector’s item or something.” He’s not even sure what he stole? He inspects my outfit for the first time: the teal dress, the glitzy necklace and my mascara and pink lipstick. His face contorts with remorse, especially as he looks to his brother. “You were on a date?”
“Sort of,” I say, trying not to make him feel worse.
He buries his face in his hands. “Shit…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He’s really lucky that he only has to pay a fine this time. “Why the snow globe?”
“Huh?” he frowns in confusion.
This can’t be an odd question. Right? I mean, everyone would ask this. “Out of everything you could steal, why that?”
“Oh…” He sighs and shrugs, his shoulders tense. “It just seemed harder to steal than the deck of cards.”
I guess he takes things for the thrill and excitement, the adrenaline rush maybe. Which is strange, considering he’s surrounded by death-defying apparatuses. “A television would’ve been hard to pocket,” I ponder. “Way more useful than a snow globe.”
“Hey,” he says with a growing smile. “That snow globe is four-hundred dollars.”
“Totally overpriced.”
He laughs, for real, and Nikolai glances back with a withering glare like he should in-no-way be cracking jokes. This is probably true, but my strong suits aren’t giving punishments. If Tanner was ever in trouble growing up, I baked him cookies.
“You’re a porter for Russian bar, right?” I ask, remembering that he’s in Viva with his sister. I wonder if it’s not all that exciting for him.
“Yeah.” His smile fades. “I was supposed to be in Amour, you know. But they found out that Timo was turning eighteen around the show’s premiere, so they switched us.” He stays quiet for a second.
“Why would they do that?”
“Have you seen Timo?” He raises his brows at me, stuffing his hands in his jeans. “He’s so good at what he does. And he picks up new disciplines in half the time as everyone else.” He shrugs again. “Look, I’m not jealous or anything. He deserves that act in Amour. I’m just, honestly, bored.”
“Do you like any of the other apparatuses?”
He shakes his head. “It takes so fucking long to learn a new one. It sucks.”
I mentally scroll through all the disciplines while we wait. “I wish they brought back the Wheel of Death.” I’ve seen YouTube clips, and it looked like the most terrifying metal structure that only crazies would jump on. But I heard they retired the act from Infini.
“Timo used to do that.”
“Really?” My eyes widen.
“He said it was easy.”
Damn. “He must be really good.”
“No kidding.”
I sigh. “Well, whatever you end up doing, it has to have a hell of a lot better view than this.”
He scans the holding room, where a few guys sit in plastic chairs, handcuffed and waiting to be booked. It also smells like stale cheese in here.
Luka’s gaze lands on Nikolai, and that regret floods his features again. “Don’t break up with him because of me, okay?”
The panic in his tone actually freezes my muscles. I swallow a rock. “I won’t,” I assure him.
He nods a couple times, trying to believe me.
Act Twenty-Four
I have extra practice tonight, so I can’t go :( BUT I’VE SENT THE BEST REPLACEMENT!!!! – Katya
I click into the text as soon as I arrive at our meeting spot in The Masquerade, beside the enormous fountain of Dionysus: god of wine, and loosely, carnivals. I planned to head over to Coco Roma to buy lingerie. Roger keeps pointing out my “excessively over-worn” costume, and spit flew when he yelled this time.
Since the wires have poked out of all three corsets I own (and tried to impale my boobs), I knew it was time anyway. I just haven’t mentally prepared for a new shopping companion.
Please not Dimitri, I keep chanting the phrase, hopping up and down some as I wait. I’d rather spend an hour with Dionysus, the fountain, than share Dimitri’s company. I try to extinguish the nervous jitters, but they flap around incessantly.
“You ready?” That voice emanates from behind me. I spin on my heels, already recognizing the deep tone.
Nikolai has on nice slacks and a gray V-neck that matches his eyes. The nervous flapping never dies.
He’s going linge
rie shopping with me.
Nikolai.
I’ve been on a few dates with him by now. Slow. We’ve been going very slow at my request. And the gym has been a pool of tension, both of us probably needing a release. This seems like a bad idea.
You’re going lingerie shopping with Nikolai Kotova.
“No,” I accidentally say.
His brows rise, knowingly. “You’ll be fine.”
I’m so not ready for this.
* * *
I sift through the corsets on a circular rack of mostly burlesque items: feather boas, umbrellas and tons of lingerie. But I’m so distracted. Nikolai towers behind me and massages my constricted shoulders. Honestly, he can’t be real. Although, he did point out my nervousness, so his kindness also came with unleashing my anxieties.
I have no idea why I’m internally running in circles and shrieking in alarm. Maybe because Phantom is a temporary part of my life that I’d like to close off from him.
And because it reminds me of the never-ending night. The one where he untied my corset and my drunken-self slept in his bed. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I say softly.
“What’d he say you needed?”
“Something sexier, I guess.” Now he’s thinking about me, wearing close to nothing for an audience. I’m thinking about it too. Everyone is thinking about it.
I am a frozen waterfall. With no hope to unthaw.
He easily reaches over me and pulls out two hangers, my heart thumping too hard. “Try these.”
Try these. What are these…oh. Wow. The first is a white one-piece, that laces in the front, no wires, stretchy enough to move in. It’s not overtly sexual, but the low cut will be more than enough. The second is a rouge lace panty-set, also no wires. It’s pretty, actually.
I slowly turn around to face him, clutching the lingerie pieces to my chest. Should I try them on for him? Or invite him in the dressing room? Or just…I lose my thought as his gaze strokes me in one wave.
“When you’re at Phantom,” he says, “you need to be careful.”
“I’m always safe on the hoop—”
“I’m not talking about the hoop. I don’t trust some of the people there, and I honestly hate that you work when I work.” His whole body is a rigid, stiff fortress. If I was tall enough, I would even contemplate giving him the massage, but in my Toms, my head reaches his shoulders.
Amour Amour Page 20
