What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “Thank you.”

  Alex scooped up her clothes and messenger bag. “I’ll be in the waiting room. You’ll be fine, baby.” He kissed her cool forehead. “See you in a little bit.”

  He sat in the back of the room, by the windows, and speed-dialed Jacob.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me. We’re going to be a little late. I had to take Stephanie to the ER.”

  “Is she okay? What happened?”

  “She had trouble breathing during her game. She’s getting X-rays now. How is Anya?”

  “She’s fine. Sleeping.”

  “Thank you again for watching her. I planned to have a sitter by now, but you know, it’s our first kid, and no one seems good enough—”

  “Hey. We got this. Go be with your wife. You’ll get here when you get here.”

  “Da. Thanks.” Alex tucked the phone into his pocket. The TV volume was too low to hear, and no one had turned on the closed-captioning. Restless, he fought the compulsion to pace, not wanting to disturb the other patients and their families. He checked his social media accounts but lost interest after a few minutes, and stared out the window. The doors shushed open and shut. Paramedics maneuvered someone on a gurney, covered in a bloody sheet, toward the ER. Doctors and nurses swarmed the dying victim and vanished into the unit. If his own experience hadn’t solidified his hatred of hospitals, this did. The industrial, antiseptic stink of it. The squelch of slip-resistant shoes on tile. The mournful wails of pain, of loss. So many lives began and ended here.

  The automatic door swung open, and Stephanie trudged forth, her fair skin whiter than ever. She was clutching papers that she handed to him with a weary exhale.

  “So…”

  “They saw something.”

  He stuffed the papers into her bag. She heaved it onto her shoulder as though it weighed a thousand pounds.

  “What? What do they think it is?”

  “I don’t know. I have to get it biopsied.” Her palm was clammy as Alex held her hand on the way out to the valet, her shoulders hunched. She shuffled along beside him.

  “It could be anything.” Like what? What else could a spot on her lung be?

  “Yeah.” She blew out an incredulous sigh.

  The valet brought the BMW around beneath the portico. Alex tipped him, then assisted Stephanie into the passenger seat as though she’d become suddenly brittle, subjected to so much stress that she might break with the slightest taction. “It’ll be okay.”

  She said nothing, just slouched against the door, arms tightly folded over her chest and her hands balled into fists.

  ***

  Stephanie

  Alex was in the gym room overlooking the pool, while Anya slept in her bassinet near the windows despite the bass-heavy electro house pouring from a Bluetooth speaker. His back to Stephanie, and wearing only soccer shorts and sneakers, he performed hammer curls with his dumbbells. Keeping his upper arms immobile, he bent his elbows and curled the weights as close to his shoulders as he could, biceps fully engaged and bulging. He held them in place for a beat, then slowly lowered them to his sides, straightening his arms. Sweat dribbled between his trapezius muscles and disappeared beneath his waistband. Stephanie ran a finger down his back, massaged his delts, and squeezed his luscious ass.

  He gave her a saucy little shake and set the weights down. “Hi, baby. Oh—don’t hug me. I stink.” He laughed.

  “There’s a scent produced by fresh sweat that women find very attractive, you know. It carries a pheromone.” She kissed the dip in his throat. “I can’t wait to steal you away for a few days.”

  Alex slithered his fingers into her hair. His lips brushed hers. “And what, moya lyubov′, do you have in mind?”

  “You’ll just have to wait until we get there.”

  “Mmm. I like surprises.” He replaced his weights on a three-tiered steel dumbbell rack. He’d organized his equipment in precise rows, as though one stray object would disassemble the house into a jumble of non-Euclidean geometry fit for a Great Old One. One idiosyncrasy he’d have to get over with a kid in the house, especially when she learned to walk.

  Alex wheeled the bassinet out of the gym and into the kitchen. Stephanie unpacked the Thai food she’d picked up for lunch—an apology for shutting down on him last night when they’d left the hospital—and arranged it in bowls.

  “I got a call today,” he said.

  Please not another scandal.

  Alex kneaded her shoulders. “Tell you all about it while we eat. I’m going to take a quick shower.” He pecked her cheek and headed upstairs. Stephanie carried the bowls to the kitchen table. Houses this big came with the standard formal dining room, but they had not yet found much use for it with little time to prepare or host dinner parties and with their families scattered across the country or on the other side of the world.

  Anya remained asleep; she didn’t do much else at three weeks except poop and pee, which happened hourly, it seemed. Combined with her eating every couple of hours, Stephanie and Alex had bid a painful goodbye to sleep for the foreseeable future.

  Alex slid into a chair and twirled rice noodles around his chopsticks. He hadn’t bothered styling the still-wet hair pushed back from his face. Without his usual regimen for taming it, the longer top coiled into waves as it dried.

  “No plans for the rest of the day?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe do some stuff around here. So the call, da? From an old friend in Russia. How do you feel about finally making the trip?”

  “Guess I should meet my in-laws sometime.” Although, Alex had informed her, they didn’t speak a word of English.

  “And they’re dying to meet you and Anya. Anyway, my friend. She’s a pop star back home. She wants me to record a song with her for her new album, and shoot a video.”

  “You’re a regular Renaissance man. So this is someone you knew from school?”

  “Da. We met in secondary. Had music classes together, and my mother gave her voice lessons.”

  She made a slight noise in her throat. “So you were close.”

  Alex set his chopsticks down and crinkled his nose. “I know that look.”

  “I didn’t give you a look.” All her expertise at interpreting expressions, and she couldn’t control her own.

  “Baby.” He folded his arms.

  “Oh, come on. I have a right. Russian women are gorgeous.”

  “And yet, instead of going home, I married my American love.” Alex closed his hands over hers on the bistro table. “Listen. We went to senior prom together. We were friends. I didn’t start…you know, until Buffalo signed me. Honestly, I didn’t want to go, but Natashka and my parents insisted. Thought it would help.”

  “Cutesy nickname and everything.”

  “Stefania, you’re being silly.”

  “What’s her full name? So I can Google her.”

  “Nataliya Pisarenkova.” His mouth twitched. Trying not to laugh. “Stage name Natasha Pisare.”

  “Stop laughing.” Stephanie slipped a hand out from under his and poked at the noodles and shrimp in her bowl. “Why didn’t you ever mention her?”

  “Why would I? I practically forgot she existed until I went back home.”

  All jealousy would do was imply that she didn’t believe him. Did he ever return to those earlier, unsullied pages of his life story? Wish he could smudge the ink and write over the traces of her, a palimpsest, to see if the outcome changed?

  “Someone is having deep thoughts.” His eyes gleamed with mischief.

  “Sorry. I do need a project to work on while I’m on leave. Not that I don’t love taking care of Anya, but—”

  “You don’t have to justify it to me, devochka. Do what makes you happy. If you want to go back to work, I’ll be here. Training camp is months away.”

  “You’d be okay with that?”

  “You get back to work, I get to bond with my little girl before I’m on the road again, everyone’s happy. And in the meantime
, I’ll work on the nanny situation. But let’s go to Russia, okay? I’ll teach you some basic phrases so you can get by.”

  She had picked up a few from living with him for nearly a year, albeit mostly curse words. Stephanie squeezed his fingers. “Okay. Call your parents. And what’s-her-face. We’ll go in a few weeks. It’ll be worth it to see you in a music video.”

  “We’ll have fun. You’ll love it. Now come here.” Alex crooked his finger, his lips curving into his trademark sexy smirk.

  Stephanie sat on his lap and draped her arms around his neck. He settled his hands on her waist, kissed the soft skin of her upper arms. His lips quickened the desires she tried to suppress with another three weeks before she fully healed. But dear God, it was an uphill battle with a husband like this.

  Anya warbled her alarm that someone had better fix her messy diaper.

  Alex gently kissed Stephanie’s forehead. “I’ll change her.” He gathered the baby from her bassinet and carried her upstairs. “Bozhe moy, child!” drifted his voice from the nursery. “Where does all of this come from?”

  Laughing, Stephanie cleared the dishes, then retreated to her office. She typed “Natasha Pisare” into the browser search box and clicked on her Wikipedia page.

  Nataliya Pisarenkova, known by her stage name Natasha Pisare, is a Russian singer, songwriter, and producer. Her music blends dance-pop with electronica. She has gained recognition throughout Europe and on MTV as well as within the club dance scene.

  Blond, of course. Vamp-red lipstick and false eyelashes. The typical tired, boundary-pushing outfits that had become cliché for young pop stars long before Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

  Early life

  Nataliya Pisarenkova was born on 8 July in Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, where she grew up. At age 14, she began taking singing lessons from Yulia Volynskaya, mother of NHL hockey star Aleksandr Volynsky, to whom Pisarenkova was later romantically linked.

  Sure, Wikipedia wasn’t exactly a bastion of reputable information, and she could trust virtually nothing written about Alex, especially now. He had no reason to lie.

  “Learn anything interesting?” Alex peered over her shoulder.

  “Yeah. Says you two were ‘romantically linked’. Contrary to what you told me.” She swiveled toward him and tried to steady the coarse breaths steaming from her nose. “So tell me the truth.”

  “I did.” He scrubbed his stubbly chin, his brow furrowed. “I haven’t seen her in almost ten years, Steph.”

  “Not even when you went home for visits?”

  “She was usually touring Europe. Summer festivals, that kind of thing. We kept in touch, but only through social media and the occasional phone call.” Alex snatched the mouse and clicked off the browser. “We’re married. We have a daughter. Where do you think I’m going?”

  She shook her head. She had no answer for him.

  “Baby.” Alex knelt before her and grasped her hands. “He’s been dead a year. There’s no place for him anymore. Everything he ever told you was a lie, and you proved it. We proved it.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I don’t know why it’s so hard. He was sick too. A different kind, but he couldn’t help it any more than you can. Maybe he would’ve…”

  “Changed? Maybe. But you’ll never know, and wondering is going to drive you crazy. So forgive him if you have to. And let him go.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that easy.”

  “Well, think of it this way: you’re making a choice not to, and you’re obviously not happy with it. He made one too—not to get better, and it cost him everything. His daughter, his granddaughter, and his life. That leaves you with all the power, because you can still make a different choice, but you’re letting him take it from you. Don’t forgive him for his sake. Do it for you.”

  She paged through the files of her memory, snatching at one happy image, one sound she could hold on to, an amulet to summon the empathy required to absolve him. Freedom for them both. He hadn’t been drunk on her sixteenth birthday, when he’d covered her eyes with his hands and steered her outside to the driveway, to her red Honda Civic. New or used, it didn’t matter. She owned a car and, for those few moments, did not think of it as a means of escape from him. Because when she looked at her father through joyful tears, what she saw in his eyes was something even her deep-seated cynicism could not brand as anything but love.

  But the car was long gone, and so was he.

  “Deep thoughts again?” Alex nuzzled her cheek. “Tell me what’s on your mind, baby.”

  She smiled and tousled his hair. “You’re right. That’s all.”

  “I love you so much. Everything we’ve gone through, I’d do it again to be with you. You are worth that and more.” He kissed her wrists. “You are the love of my life.” Kissed each finger. “My best friend. The mother of my child.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been touchy. I’m exhausted.” She wiped at her gritty eyes. The world had gone gray around the edges, her thoughts fuzzy and incoherent. Alex was no better off, with his bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothes in which he tumbled into bed for brief naps throughout the day. His snoring had gotten louder since Anya’s birth.

  “Lie down for a while. I can take care of Anya. And don’t worry about anything else.” Alex stood up and offered his hand. He ushered her to the bedroom, where he helped her strip down to her bra and panties, then tucked her into bed. He kissed her temple. “Rest.”

  She relaxed into the pillows and, in a few more moments, into blessed sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Alex

  Alex pounded his fist on the desk, his fingernails biting into the flesh of his palm. He tamped down the urge to break everything in the room.

  One million or I release the sex video we made. Remember that? People see it, and they’ll believe that woman’s rape story.

  “Bog,” he moaned. A night he did not remember clearly, but a spectacular lack of judgment either way. An excuse to try some of the kinky shit to which most of his partners were not amenable. A little souvenir of those wild hours, masturbatory fuel for the rare occasions he was without a woman. He’d found out he had been traded that day. Stephanie had not yet reappeared in his life, a life that had not yet mattered again.

  He almost fired back, Go ahead. See what I care. But this was exactly the sort of thing he must scour from existence. God forbid the media or his accuser’s lawyers get their hands on it. He could say goodbye to coaching anywhere ever again.

  We need to talk about this. Don’t do anything until then. Call me.

  Alex crept into the master suite, shed his clothes, then climbed into bed and curled himself around Stephanie. He glanced at the baby monitor. So far so good. His dick was cooperating too, but for it to continue doing so, he must cleanse everything else from his mind.

  He slipped an arm around her and massaged one pale, satin mound. She moaned and pushed back against him, her beautiful ass hardening him more. Red streaks from his fingernails marred the skin between her shoulder blades. He smiled, thinking of the bites and furrows she left on him whenever they had sex. Beneath the sweet California-girl exterior was a naughty devushka indeed, asserting the sexuality once stolen and manipulated.

  Alex wet his palm and ran it up and down his cock before positioning the head between her buttocks. “Can I?” he whispered and nipped her earlobe.

  She didn’t open her eyes, but a shrewd smile lit her face. “Can you what?”

  He chuckled. “Can I fuck this gorgeous ass of yours?”

  “I don’t know, can you?”

  “You know it turns me on when you get pedantic.”

  Stephanie shook with laughter.

  Alex, grinning, worked the head of his cock into her. He loved anal, and it had nothing to do with sublimated Gulag culture or watching too much porn, or wanting to wield the power differential over women. He had first experimented with it because, being Russian, he was curious by nature. An eighteen-year-old rising star did not decline
the sex offered to him every night in whatever form it took. After that, it was a matter of simple enjoyment. No one told Western women they needed to be “saved” from such deviant activities the way Russian doctors and psychiatrists did Slavic women. It became that much more exciting when one’s partner wasn’t clenching with horror. “Tell me if it hurts. I won’t do it hard. I just…” Alex gently rocked his hips. “I want to come inside you.” He growled and bit down on her shoulder. “You feel so incredible.”

  “So do you.”

  Alex moved her leg up, opening her more, then reached beneath her thigh and divided her swollen lips with his finger. The pearl they hid was slick and tumid, eager to be claimed. He inched into her with slow, short thrusts and strummed her clit.

  “Oh…” A wild quaver shuddered through her. “Oh God…Alex…”

  “Haaarder,” he cawed, and she erupted into a giggling fit. He pulled out long enough to toss her onto her back and kneel between her folded legs, which she gathered closer to her chest, offering him her succulent ass. But his true objective was to taste her mouth, and so when he had buried himself in the ruckle between her milky cheeks, he bent over her and drew her tongue between his lips. Gentle thrusts still, but faster. Hungrier.

  The baby monitor emitted a soft burble.

  “Please, God.” He laughed. “I’m so close.”

  Stephanie clutched his hips and pulled him into her. When she bit her lip, his cock required no further incentive. His veins alight, he emptied streams of heat into her with earth-shaking force, his mind blanking on everything except the sensations running riot through his body.

  She was gazing up at him with those blue eyes as Anya’s contented gurgles issued from the monitor. Something hot and fathomless spread through his chest. “I love you,” he said, the words almost guttural, springing from a place so deep he hadn’t known it was there. The sudden urge to kiss her everywhere, to make her feel even a fraction of what she did him, consumed him. He explored each inch of her, her skin gleaming with sweat, her flesh velvet on his lips and tongue as he advanced downward, over her thighs and below the golden knoll between her legs. She was glistening. He parted the seam with his tongue and she jolted, coiled her fingers in his hair, and raised her pelvis to his mouth.