Firebird (The Firebird Trilogy #1) (12 page)

He rolled her onto her stomach and pushed the covers away so he could straddle her lower back. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, edging all the way down her spine, licking where he had kissed. His cool breath seeded her flesh with delicious goose bumps. She arched her back, lifting her ass a little, and he eased into her. They moaned in a powerful burst of frictional pleasure, bodies tailored to each other in a rhythm they alone knew how to dance.

Alex grasped her hips, kissed her neck and ears as he ploughed her in time with their clipped breaths. She pushed back, ensuring she’d receive every inch of his silken cock. Stretching over her, he fit his fingers between hers, then spilled into her with a raspy moan and a deep, hard thrust. She drank him like the last beads of water in a desert.

“Good morning,” he whispered with that cheeky smile.

For a little while that did not last long enough, he laid his head on her shoulder and she twirled his hair, absorbed in the vividness of its texture, in the scent and weight of him, the sound of his breathing. In the fragility that had always haunted their relationship. She did not examine this perfect joy for too long, lest it crumble beneath her dissection. She concentrated instead on Alex’s somnolent toying with her nipple and the pleasant soreness between her legs, an anamnesis embedded in her skin.

After they showered and dressed, Stephanie accompanied him to the door. They stared at each other, Alex in his rumpled suit and his hair in uncharacteristic disarray. In the gravid silence, each dared the other to speak first.

He scratched the back of his neck. “I didn’t ask if you were on…”

“I’ve been on it for years. Ever since…”

“Yeah.” He blinked away the thought. “I’m clean. I get tested, and I use condoms. I just wanted to feel all of you.” His unexpected blush was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. “So I’ll call you tomorrow? Maybe we can do something after the team meeting. What do you like? Flowers? Sunsets? Long walks on the beach?”

She laughed as he laced his fingers with hers. His eyes were her eyes reflecting to infinity back into herself, bemused and frightened and all the things that were the best parts of love, even the second time around. He took a breath as though he meant to speak, but the kiss was unwilling to wait any longer, and neither of them was inclined to disagree.

“I think you owe me another run.” Alex smiled and glanced at the wreckage of the picture frame. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

“No worries. Good luck today. I’ll be watching.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to score one for you.” He squeezed her hands, then let himself out.

Stephanie skipped—literally skipped; dear God, she was becoming every woman she’d ever mocked—to her office and switched on her Surface Pro. The vintage Pooh bear Alex had bought her on her seventeenth birthday sat on a corner of her desk, banished by Joe to the office when he’d declared her “too old” for stuffed animals. He hadn’t asked where it came from. She stroked the nubby fur, the green ribbon around its neck.

Then she opened a new document, set the digital recorder beside the keyboard, and began to type.

Chapter Eleven

“Steph, this story is fantastic. Award-winning stuff.” Dave gave her his proud-papa smile. “This should be national. How did you get him to open up like this?”

Stephanie folded her hands in her lap. Dave was a journalist too. He’d notice her body language and verbal cues if she wasn’t careful. She had to maintain eye contact. Hold it too long, however, and its meaning transformed. Contrary to popular belief, practiced liars looked their victims dead in the eye. “Volynsky was an exchange student in my junior year of high school. We reminisced and, uh, bonded—” by fucking her until she forgot her own name
,
“—over that, and I got him to talk to me like a friend.”

“I couldn’t have asked for more. Congratulations.” He rose from his desk and circled around it to shake her hand. “I’m promoting you to senior staff writer.”

Stephanie froze for a split second, her mouth hanging open in shock. “I…wow. Thank you, Dave. So much. I have to admit, that’s unexpected.”

“It’s overdue, and you’ve earned it. Listen.” He cocked his head toward the door. “If Shawn gives you any trouble, let me know right away. My hands are kind of tied with him because he’s the CFO’s grandson, but if things get bad enough, I’ll take it up with the executive board.”

Good old nepotism. With this one now out of Shawn’s grasp, Gramps would ensure him a promotion in no time. “I will.”

“We’ll make the formal announcement this afternoon. Now get out of here and give me another great story.” He clapped her on the shoulder.

“Thank you again, Dave.” Buoyant, Stephanie returned to her computer. She’d be getting an office. Her name on the door. And Shawn would have to report to her. She leaned back in her chair and smiled.

***

During the brief meeting to announce her promotion, Shawn had scowled at her and clenched his jaw. And as a token of his ill will, he ambushed her at her computer, having helped himself to her chair while she used the bathroom.

“What do you want?”

Shawn swiveled in the chair like a bored child. “Did your man call in a favor or something?”

“Like your grandfather did for you?”

He squinted, his eyebrows riding so low on his forehead, he could’ve joined the Neanderthal display at the natural history museum. “You think I didn’t earn this?”

“I
know
you didn’t, sweetie.”

“Well that makes two of us, then. At least I didn’t have to ride Aleksandr Volynsky’s dick to get where I am.”

“Get the fuck out of my chair,” Stephanie snarled.

He flashed a simpering smile, a chimpanzee baring its teeth. “Whatever you say, boss.” The chair spun around when he hauled himself out of it. “Give Aleksandr my love.”

She sank into her chair, crinkled her nose at the fact it was still warm from Shawn’s fat ass, and rubbed her temples. A conflict of interest, yes. An ethical compromise. If she believed otherwise, she’d shout their relationship from the rooftops.

So what are we going to do about it?

***

Their first official date, and Stephanie had never fussed over an outfit so much in her life. Alex wouldn’t care what she wore; they’d end up naked anyway, but
she
cared more than she liked to admit. She decided on a pair of black stovepipe pants, a tucked-in striped T-shirt, a tuxedo blazer, and flats.

Alex was standing outside the door, his hair coiffed and his black derby shoes polished. He was wearing black corduroy pants and a navy sport shirt with check-print lining on the cuffs. The shirt was fitted, the shape of his body impossible to ignore. She’d been daydreaming about it for the past day and a half.

“Hey.” He kissed her cheeks three times, right-left-right. Things were bound to be a little weird, a little awkward, at first. Chatting in their emotional doorways, plotting the shortest course back to the comfortable space they’d once claimed in each other’s hearts. “I should’ve brought you something. So I’ve already screwed up. I don’t usually go on dates, you know, I just…Well, you don’t want to hear about that. Um…you look pretty.”

“You’re adorable when you’re flustered.”

“Like old times,
da
?” He smiled. “Sorry I didn’t call yesterday. I crashed after the team meeting. I didn’t want you to think…”

“You were having second thoughts?”

“Something like that. So.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s go before I make a bigger ass of myself.”

Alex opened every door for her. His culture dictated he show that kind of respect to his date, to be indulgent and attentive, chivalrous and doting. He’d done the same thing as a kid. He started the Mercedes, and they headed downtown. “To be honest, I was a little afraid to call you.”

“You? Afraid?”

“I didn’t know if it would be weird now. I feel like I did this backward. Not that the other night wasn’t totally amazing.” His cheeks dimpled. “So you said something then…”

Yep. Dropped the
L
-word right in the middle of sex. Total amateur move.
“It just kind of came out, but don’t feel pressured to—ˮ

“No, it was nice to hear, and…” He shook his head and smirked. “
Bozhe moy
. I sound like an idiot. Is it obvious I suck at this?”

Stephanie patted his thigh. Solid muscle. She tried to stop thinking about him with his pants off. “You’re very cute when you suck.”

“Thanks, I think.” He laughed as he turned the car into the parking lot of the AMC Theater.

After the movie, they lay on the hood of the car in a lot near Puget Sound, holding hands and gazing at the stars. The night would not be clear for long. Beyond the Sound, out in the vast black ocean, clouds were coalescing into a storm, and lightning forked toward the water.

“My boss loved the story. Thinks it could even win awards.” She had emailed a preview to Alex, as the official version would not be going to press until next month’s issue.

He kissed her cheek. “Congratulations on your promotion. I’m very proud of you.”

“Thank you. This one guy has it out for me, though. He wanted the story, so he harasses me every chance he gets.”

“What’s his name? Do I need to have a talk with him?”

“Sweetie, no. That’ll just make it worse; believe me. But I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

He brought her hand to his lips. “Remember when we would lie in your backyard and look at the clouds? And watch the sun set.”

“Of course.”

“I used to wish we could be up there together, away from everything. You never expected anything of me.”

She squeezed his fingers.

“I didn’t really know what I was getting into at eighteen. I wanted to play pro hockey and be the next great Russian. But sometimes it feels like…” He scratched his chin. “Like I’m the kid who chose the most predictable Halloween costume. I’m a millionaire for something I learned to do on a tiny pond in Russia.” His dilated pupils mirrored the waxing half-moon. “But I know why I wasn’t happy.” He nestled his cheek against her hair. “I always thought I’d be sharing all of it with you.”

They lapsed into a charged silence until he said, “Here,” and dug a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Please don’t laugh.”

She unfolded the paper and read it several times, memorizing the words as though the ink would vanish. This was the kind of love people dreamed of.
The kind that’s too good to be true
, she thought before shutting her father’s voice away in the deepest recesses of her brain. “You wrote this?”

“If it sucks, then no.”

She angled herself over him. When she let him up for air, a wistful smile lit his face.

“This will sound incredibly stupid, but I don’t know how to invite someone back to my place without implying we’re going to, you know, have sex.” He swept a few strands of hair from her brow.

“I’ll make it easy for you, then. I want to go home with you.”

“Good. Because I want to wake up next to you again.” He drew her into a lush kiss, the ebb and flow of his tongue a gravitational force in which she was too happy to be caught.

The lock to her key, and the key to her lock.
Soul mates.

“
Ya khochu byt′ s toboy navsegda.
” He grazed his lips over her neck and linked their fingers.

She didn’t need his protection or his validation anymore. She needed nothing from him; she had forged a life of her own, on her own. Yet where she ended and he began no longer mattered. To love him and to be loved by him was everything.

***

Alex muted the dimmers, then kicked off his shoes and entered the kitchen. “Make yourself comfortable,” he called from behind the breakfast bar. He plugged his phone into a Bose SoundDock, and music streamed into the living space. “Something to drink?”

“As long as it’s not a Long Island.”

Alex, chuckling, prepared the drinks, then placed them on coasters and sat beside her. “Pretty tame. Captain and Diet Coke.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“I thought we could—ˮ He cocked his head. “Hear that?”

“Oh my God.” Familiar notes tugged at the strings of her memory. The first song they’d danced to at prom.
Their
song. “I haven’t heard this in years.”

Alex rose and extended his hand, his eyes brilliant with adoration for her, with the recollection of what had come after. “Will you dance with me?”

She gazed up at him, and her first instinct as she pictured him as an anxious seventeen-year-old boy in a tuxedo was to grieve again the lost years. It was difficult not to see him as he once was, not to notice the phantom of that boy over which the man he’d become had been superimposed, a double-exposure memory. “I’d love to.” She offered him one hand and set the other on his shoulder. He whisked her through the open living room, she in bare feet and he in socks, past the windows and their picturesque backdrop, and sang the lyrics. His smile was all the illumination she needed. She could not take her eyes off him, his face more beautiful from its few imperfections.

“Remember our other first date?” she asked.

“Miniature golf. You asked me out because I was too nervous to ask you.”

“Even though you kissed me at the end of our first day of school.”

Alex bowed his head to hers. “I seem to find you irresistible.”

The song faded into a dance-pop tune. After a minute or two of spirited jitterbugging, he twirled her, which with a less inept girlfriend would have been charming. Instead, she caught her toes around her other foot and crashed to the floor onto her tailbone. Pain jolted through her backside.

“Shit! Are you okay?” Alex dropped to his knees beside her.

“Now you know why I don’t dance.”

He was biting his lip to keep from laughing. “Are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine.” She rubbed her lower back and winced. “Surprise. I haven’t gotten any more graceful. Just laugh already and get it over with.”

Alex, his eyebrows already halfway up his forehead, let out the chortle he’d attempted to suppress. He hugged her and gave her a sweet kiss, then helped her stand. “Stay here for a minute. I’ll be right back.” He grabbed his phone and vanished into the dark hallway.

When he returned, he said nothing but offered a captivating smile and led her down the hall.

Candles burned on the windowsill, the dresser, and the nightstand. Soft music with a slow, sexy beat permeated the room. First a love poem, now this. She’d wake up any minute, back in the world where her lost love was a face on TV, a mental photo that had never finished developing. She snaked her fingers into his hair and closed her fist. With her other hand, she gripped the front of his shirt and yanked him closer. Lips parted, brushed, but she pulled back as he tried to kiss her.

He opened his eyes halfway and smiled. “You tease.”

She rewarded him with a gentle kiss. Her hand still in his hair, she gave it a little tug as she allowed him to kiss her for a few seconds before she pulled back again. He finished with a delicate touch of his tongue to her bottom lip.

“Take off your clothes,” he whispered. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back on his hands, eyebrows raised in expectation.

Stephanie chewed on a nail. Like a striptease? After her performance in the living room? That way lay madness. Bumbling, unsexy madness.

“I hope you’re not getting self-conscious on me. Come here.”

Mind reader. She crossed the room and knelt between his knees. “I thought Russian men didn’t like aggressive women.”

“I think it’s fucking hot when you tell me what you want.” He nuzzled her neck. “Mmm.
Ty takaya krasivaya.
The most beautiful woman in the world.”