by Lust, April
“That girl is some kind of hot,” Doc says in a low voice. “I get blue balls just watching her move.”
“How long has she been doing this?”
“Since the first day you brought her here. There’s a few days when I don’t catch her but I’m pretty sure it’s every day. And she definitely does it when you’re not around.”
My mouth twists into a frown but I can’t tear my eyes away from Natalia. Her dance is a sad, mournful dance. She is expressing loss and loneliness with the way she moves her arms as if she were trying to hold someone or something that keeps escaping her. I don’t have to ask why. I know exactly why. Because she misses her life, because she feels cooped up.
Because I kidnapped her.
Doc chuckles but says nothing. He has no idea what he’s talking about but it’s not my place to tell him that. Natalia wouldn’t dance out in the open like that if she didn’t want anyone seeing her. She’s doing it with one intention in mind: she wants me to catch her.
Well after her little show with the newspaper clippings, I’m not going to give her the time of day.
“I need cigarettes,” I mutter under my breath, turning away from the crack in the wall. “And I’m getting some eggs. We never have any fucking food around here, and that’s a Goddamned shame. We should be eating like kings. After all, we’re planning down to take down the head of the Russian mafia, aren’t we?”
Doc stares at me. “Uh, I didn’t know you could cook, boss.”
I roll my eyes. “Fuck off,” I mumble. “I’ll see you later. I’m out.”
Doc’s smirking when I turn around to look at him. “How domestic.”
I feel like punching him, but I know that won’t do any good. He’s onto me, and it’s only a matter of time before the other guys figure out just how much Natalia’s starting to fuck with my head.
Chapter 14 Natalia
I wake to find Beast’s arms around me. He’s warm and smells like soap. I think back to the previous day, when we were arguing about the photographs. I know I need to get back into that drawer to figure out who that man is. I can’t stop thinking about it, and even had strange dreams about it the previous night. I dreamt he was coming for me, gun in hand, ready to take me to a shallow grave. I woke up several times in the night to a horrendous cold sweat that soaked through the sheets and chilled me to the bone. The only way I could stay warm was Beast’s warm body, pressed against mine all night long.
I want to slip out of bed and reach into the drawer while he’s sleeping, but I know I’ll only wake him. He’ll stop me, we’ll get into a bastard of a fight, and then I’ll never find out the truth. But the thing is, I know the second he leaves me alone in the house I’ll go searching for them.
Beast shifts, groaning softly and opening his eyes. My heart sinks as I realize he’s awake and probably has been for a long time.
“You’re awake? Did you sleep well?”
Beast ignores me. His blue eyes are blazing with lust. “I’m starving,” he growls. “Come here.”
I can’t help but moan softly as he dives for my neck, biting it. Another few seconds of that, and I forget all about how we fought the previous night. I forget all about how he told me I had to obey his rules. He takes my wrists in his and pins me to the bed, and I writhe beneath him. I want to bathe in his darkness, become the devious motorcycle queen he deserves.
There’s always been a part of me that wanted to be bad. It’s exactly why I joined the Nine Muses Dance Company in the first place. Every single one of our productions is meant to be dark and mysterious, gaining attention from the most prestigious of dance critics.
Oddly enough, I’ve often daydreamed about hooking up with a man like Beast. In high school, I’d always been fond of the bad boys, the rugged men too tough to tame. I would observe them during breaks in class, loving the way cigarette smoke looked as it spilled from their mouths. From what I’ve observed from Beast, he only smokes when he’s stressed out about a mission. So far, his missions have involved going after the mysterious man in the black and white photographs and coming home needing stitches. He’s also come home drunk smelling strange, though it’s never of perfume. We’re not dating, but I feel better knowing he’s not prowling the streets for sex.
I’m daydreaming so heavily that I forget I’m supposed to be moaning. He’s teasing me with his fingers just below my waistline, but I’m so chilly I can barely feel it. Outside, it’s begun to snow again, a light snow that won’t stick. I pray for it to stop, just in case Beast has to go out later.
“What’s on your mind, pussycat?” Beast’s hot breath tickles my ear and a small shiver of lust crawls down my spine.
“I’m just thinking about you.”
“Are you, now?” Beast’s face is tense, and I pray he won’t say anything else. But when he opens his mouth again, he says, “Not still thinking about those photos, are you?”
I blush, not wanting to confirm his suspicions. “No. I already told you I’d stop trying to figure it out. Wasn’t that enough? Don’t you believe me?” It twists my gut to have to manipulate Beast like this, but I don’t want him knowing how I really feel. I don’t want him thinking that all I’m doing is biding my time, waiting for him to leave so I can start snooping all over again.
Beast stares at me for a long time, letting me squirm under his gaze. I’m deadly afraid something in my expression will give me away, but finally he sighs and pulls me close. We continue kissing as he mounts me beneath the sheets, but I can barely feel anything this time. Now I really am distracted. Why did I just lie to him? Is it because I’m afraid of what he’ll do to me if I tell him the truth? He can’t really do much. He’s already kidnapped me and taken me away from my old life. What else is left? An argument? Locking me out of his room?
We live in the information age; I’m going to find out who the man in the photographs is, one way or another.
Beast continues to move inside of me, but he can that I’m distracted. He tells me he can’t finish and needs to take a quick shower.
Frowning, I nod. That’s not exactly an ego boost. I’ve never been with someone who can’t finish inside of me. But something feels off between us, anyway, and I’m not sure I’d want to continue making love, even if Beast hadn’t put a stop to the whole thing.
I’m not sure why this is bothering me so much. It’s not like we’re in a relationship together. But, damn, Beast is gorgeous. He’s got this brooding, sexy look that he gives me whenever he’s chewing something over in his head. I’ve never met a man as attractive as him before. The tattoos don’t help. I find him even more alluring because he’s covered in ink, and occasionally blood.
Who cares if he kidnapped me? That’ll certainly be an interesting story to tell our grandkids.
Now I know I’ve gone too far, and my thoughts are in la-la-land.
Beast rises from the bed, his back arching like a cat. He stretches for a few seconds before getting up and walking towards the shower. I want to follow him and touch him while he’s dripping wet and naked. But I also want to stay here and to snoop some more.
I wait a few heartbeats before grabbing my sweatshirt, which contains my identification and wallet, and sneaking over to the dresser. I always make sure to keep my wallet on me, just in case I get murdered in the dead of night and the police are trying to identify my body. At least they’ll be able to know who I am so they can alert my parents, not that they’d care much. I feel as though ever since they adopted me, they’ve been waiting for me to disappear. I felt it when I was younger and performing as their toy dancer, and I feel it even more now. Each time I catch a glimpse of the news from Doc’s television in the kitchen, I see no information about a missing person. Wouldn’t Manhattan be crawling with cops if my parents had alerted the press I was missing?
This only leads me to one, very unfortunate conclusion: they couldn’t care less that I’m gone.
When I was younger, after training for ballet recitals, I used to pretend I was a very
small mouse fighting for food in my parents’ home. I would hide out in cabinets and closets, listening with my ear pressed to the door as they talked about me. They analyzed my dancing skills, debated if it were worth it to spend all this money on me, and spoke about the future. My parents always wanted me to be a star. To some degree, I wanted that, too.
I’ve always loved dance; it’s in my bones. In fact, it’s in my nature to curve my foot up to my cheek bone, to arch my back, to pirouette in the lunch line. The girls at school and I were always practicing our dance moves absent-mindedly, which caused many of our fellow students to make fun of us. Later, during puberty, it was even worse. I couldn’t even stretch without some nerdy guy staring at me like he was about to cream his pants. That didn’t make me feel any better than the teasing had, though I had to admit I kind of liked feeling so powerful. At least back then I wasn’t invisible like I am now. And even still, I feel invisible when I’m around Beast.
Shaking my head, I try to forget everything running through my mind. They’re not going to help me achieve what I want, which is freedom. Reaching into my wallet, I pull out the black and white photo of a man with a full head of hair. It’s been cut in half, and his left arm is reaching out to hold the hand of a toddler. He’s smiling in this photograph, and looks to be in his late thirties, early forties. This is the only remaining piece of evidence that I ever had a father who grew up in Russia. I have never seen from or heard of the man. My parents are closed-lip about the adoption services. They explain to me that revisiting such memories will only hurt me, and that it’s better to leave things like this to rest.
But I’m restless and I want information. Now.
The drawer eases open at my touch and makes no sound. From within the bathroom, I hear Beast drop a bottle of shampoo. He mutters under his breath and proceeds to pick it up.
The drawer is still open, the manila envelope where I left it, hidden beneath pairs of his wife-beater tank tops.
I ease the paper into my shaking hands and open it up. There are hardly any photographs that give away the identity of the man. Except one, at the bottom of the pile. This is a recent article from an American newspaper, and it has a clear picture of the man in the other clippings. I take a look at his arm and realize it’s covered in tattoos—the same tattoos that are covering my father’s arm. When I compare the two photographs, the resemblance is uncanny. With my hand shaking, I read the caption under the photo, and it says, “Abram Pestov, head of the Russian mafia, suspected of numerous crimes but never convicted.”
As much as I don’t want to believe it, I know I can’t ignore the truth any longer. The man in the photos is my father, Abram Pestov. That’s the man who’s after me.
Instantly I break out in a cold sweat, unsure of whether to flee or fight Beast. I want to beat the truth out of him, strangle him until he confesses that he’s been trying to kill my father this whole time. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to bear it if that happens. I’ll die if I don’t at least get to speak to him one time.
I’ve got scattered memories of us from when I was a child. I recall someone, a male, pushing me on a rusty swing-set, singing a Russian lullaby. Of course, I can’t remember any of the words. All I remember are the man’s strong arms gripping the chains, pushing me back and forth until the sun went down. From what I recall, he at least spent some time with me, though memory is not nearly as clear as reality. The reality is that he abandoned me in an orphanage and never looked back. The reality is, if Beast says Abram is trying to kill me, he’s probably right. But what does that mean for me? Do I just stand by and let the man who took part in my birth die at the hands of my kidnapper?
A horrible thought crosses my mind. I’m going to have to choose between Abram and Beast, two men I love but don’t understand. And what’s that going to get me? Am I really fool enough to think Beast won’t be distracted by the next pretty girl he has to “protect”? And if my father’s been trying to kill me all this time…well, what’s stopping him? As one of the most famous ballerinas in New York City, he could have easily taken me out during a performance. Theatres generally don’t have metal detectors, and it would have been easy to hire a thug and have him sneak in with a gun.
I shivered as I stared at the photos again. Maybe Abram hadn’t killed me because he hadn’t wanted to hire a thug. Maybe he’d been waiting all along, like a cat playing with a mouse, until he could do it himself.
I’m sure plenty of people would be wondering how exactly I could love either of these people. Unfortunately, love is a complex concept, one that I’ve barely been able to grasp. I love my father because he is related to me, though he’s trying to kill me. I know it sounds fucked up, but there it is. I’d be surprised if I didn’t love him – he’s my father.
And Beast? Do I really love the man who kidnapped me, who pressed a gun to my back, and silenced me with a black leather glove? I fear I might love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone else in my whole life. But does that mean we can be together? Or are we destined to always be apart due to the circumstances of our situation?
There’s no way for me to get answers to any of these questions. Should I try to ask Beast? He would no doubt turn me away. He’d respond in that gruff way he does when he’s being emotional but feels the need to hide it. The streets have beaten murder and revenge into his blood. He’s not a typical man. But I’m not a typical woman. I’m capable of understanding even the darkest recesses of his mind. Every fear and every dark thought he’s had, I’ve had, too. The only question is, how do I reach him?
Chapter 15 Natalia
Beast’s been in the shower for quite a long time. I’m just starting to wonder if he’s okay when I hear the door open. Steam cascades over my body like a lover’s hands, and I glance over at his body, glistening with droplets.
I had closed the drawer a few minutes ago, tucking the envelope back where I found it. He won’t suspect a thing. I’m a master sleuth, something I learned from my friends in high school. There was one girl I knew quite well, a petite brunette named Margaret. She was always getting into the bad habit of stealing from her friends. I remember in car rides home inspecting the contents of her purse only to find iPods, headphones, and loose cash. Sometimes there would be diamond and gold jewelry tucked into the innermost pockets.
“What are you planning on doing with these?” I would ask, my eyes wide like a doe’s. I was still the perfect prima donna my parents had raised, though I was interested in Margaret’s passions.
“Just keeping them until someone realizes they’re missing,” she said, shrugging. “I might sell the gold to a dealer in exchange for weed.” And with that comment she proceeded to light up a cigarette, making my car smell of cloves and French vanilla.
My parents warned me not to hang out with girls like Margaret. I know their heads would spin if they ever found out I was hanging out with a man like Beast. That made me want to roll my eyes. I’m so sick of thinking about them, but it’s like an involuntary reaction. I can’t help it.
“Natalia, what’s up?” Beast stare at me with his hand resting on the open door to the shower. I can’t tear my eyes away from his body – it’s so muscular, and the soap suds just make him even hotter than normal.
“Just cold.” I try to smile but it felt forced.
“Are you mad, baby?”
My cheeks burst into flames at the pet name. It’s the first time he’s ever called me something in a way that doesn’t reek of sarcasm. I know I shouldn’t be happy about hearing it, but I can’t help it.
“How was your shower?” Leaning forward, I embrace his shoulders, tracing his dark tattoos and pecks.
He grins and grabs me, kissing me fiercely on the mouth. His face is warm and wet, and the droplets in his hair drip onto my face. “It was good.” Beast smirks at me, water droplets running down his Godlike face. “Would have been even better if you were there to help me wash.”
“You’ll just have to make sure you’re really dirty later. Then I�
��ll hose you down.”
Beast laughs, and I can tell he’s letting his guard down. “I’m going out briefly with Doc. Got to pick up a few things for breakfast.”
“How domestic of you.” I crack a smile, staring into Beast’s icy blue eyes.
I expect him to laugh, but his eyes turn steely and unreadable once again. “I’ll see you in a few,” he says, sternly pushing me out of the room. He proceeds to lock the door behind him.
I’m left alone in the hall with the darkened lights and my now darkened thoughts. It’s still early in the day – I should be dancing. I decide to head back to my room to practice. The table and chairs Beast originally placed there have now been folded up and moved into the closet. It’s easier for me to practice with an open space. Once I tried practicing with the furniture still in here, and I bashed my toe against the plastic chair. I’m not even sure why it hurt so much. Perhaps I’m not getting enough calcium on my bones. That’s not too hard to imagine. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember when I was last outside. Am I doomed to be stuck in this warehouse forever?
