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

She flicked his earring. “I think you’ve got this daddy thing down already.”

He smiled down at Anya, who gurgled and stared at him with crossed eyes, then beamed at Stephanie, his cheeks aglow. “We’re going to have the best life.”

Chapter Two

Alex

Alex’s hands were shaking as he punched in his attorney’s number. The news had spread, plague-like, to every sports website, propagating the allegation as if he’d already been tried and convicted. The euphoria of Anya’s birth was tainted as he crashed back to reality, confronted with the idea that his new career had ended before it began. Both the league and the Gladiators were maintaining radio silence. This
was
his do-over; he did not have the energy for a third, and where could he go to outrun the gossip anyway? Some third-world Latin American country where no one had ever heard of hockey?

He’d been introduced to the league’s policies on sexual assault and domestic abuse during his top prospects orientation camp the summer before his first season with the Gladiators. Most of that orientation, however, spotlighted the large financial leaps they’d make in the transition from juniors to the big leagues. Each preseason, in two different seminars presented by the league and the Players’ Association, they discussed the issues again, usually with an ex-cop but not in any depth. The sessions occurred after a practice or between games, with most guys still in offseason mode. There was so much to cover, common-sense stuff: don’t drink and drive, don’t text and drive, don’t hit women. The guys didn’t pay much attention, and the presenters skimmed over important things like repercussions. Sometimes the team brought in a former player who had battled addiction or gone bankrupt. They had never brought in a survivor of rape or domestic violence.

So the new seminars began, ones focused purely on those issues, but still no survivors recounting their experiences as part of the process. The players required their messaging packaged in and branded by someone who resembled them—a fact as embarrassing, if not more so, than not talking about it at all. A bunch of dumb jocks who took nothing seriously, not that he hadn’t been one of those guys for most of his career.

He plucked a pencil from a coffee mug with ‘New Dad’ and Anya’s birthdate printed on it, a gift from his manager. “Hey, Ed.”

“Sasha.”

“The media coverage is already getting out of control. My wife gave birth a week ago, and instead of being with my family, I have to deal with this bullshit.”

“Listen, you still haven’t been charged with anything. They’re investigating an alleged incident, that’s all. The prosecutors have postponed grand jury proceedings because they have nothing to go on. Any DNA evidence is long gone, so whatever they might come up with will be purely circumstantial. Those cases rarely end well for the prosecution.”

Alex drummed the pencil on the desk. Chewed on the eraser. His jaw hurt from clenching it all the time. “Why did she wait so long?”

“There are a number of reasons people wait to report. Humiliation, shame, self-doubt…There’s a perception that other people will judge, blame, and question them. Gossip about it can make that worse, and when there’s a celebrity involved, many people dismiss the allegations outright.”

“But I didn’t do it.”

“We know that. The problem is that she’s convinced you did. Listen, I’ll talk to the media and make sure they get their story straight. You just do what you’ve been doing. No public statements. Do not try to contact her. Stay in touch with the police, talk to them when they ask, but not without me. All right?”

“I don’t want to lose my family, Ed.”

“You’re not going to lose anything. I’ll be in touch soon.”

They disconnected. Alex left the phone in his office and walked down the hall to peek in on Anya as she napped. To marry Stephanie had been salvation; to become
Papa
had been rebirth.

I’m really a father.

One of the most important lessons he planned to impart to his daughter was how a woman ought to be treated, and in doing so to atone for his sins against them, even the ones he had never committed. If he did right by Stephanie, Anya would never settle for anything less than a man who honored and adored her. Not that he was remotely ready to imagine her being a grown woman. He’d keep her like this as long as possible, innocent, her daddy the only man in her life. Someone toward whom he could channel the protective urges Stephanie rejected in the sad irony that they made her feel unsafe. A terrible lie planted by her own father, a weed whose roots Alex had failed to destroy. Whatever he must do, he intended to teach her—and Anya—what a father was supposed to be.

Stephanie was in the kitchen making ham and cheese sandwiches. He came up behind her and slinked his arms around her waist. She’d been perfect before, but the way she filled out her clothes, the extra curves of her hips and her plumped breasts, drove him wild. “Baby, I said I’d do it.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’re going crazy not working, aren’t you?”

“A little. Another eleven weeks? How do people do it? Ugh.” She rubbed her temple. “I sound like a horrible mother. I mean, I guess we can do some of the projects around the house, finish planning Matt’s reception, maybe start that book we talked about? And power naps. Sometimes I’m so tired, I can’t feel my arms and legs.”

“Maybe I can help.” Alex kissed her neck. They hadn’t made love in over a week and couldn’t until she had fully healed. Though they had been experimenting with extended foreplay during his dysfunctional phases, he ached at the thought of not being inside her.

Stephanie twisted around and tugged at his bottom lip with her teeth. She worried the tip of her tongue at the corners of his mouth, where the skin was thinnest and most sensitive, then opened his jeans and massaged his cock through his underwear. So he wasn’t the only one who found the wait insufferable.

“Do you want to take this upstairs?”

“No.” She peeled off his shirt and cast it to the floor, lunch forgotten.

And his erections were so capricious, he might lose it before they got there. She slid his pants and underwear down, closed her fist around him, and stroked. He snarled a hand in her hair.

“Put it in your mouth.” He breathed in quick, sharp pants, praying he’d maintain it long enough to get off. “
Sosi moi khuy.
Please, baby.”

“Close your eyes.”

He heard her pump a bottle and rub her hands together. Then she was kneading his balls, her palms as slick as the mouth that engulfed him.

She stopped sucking to pepper his stomach and thighs with kisses, helping him hold back a little longer. When she returned to his cock, she grasped the base and licked him from bottom to tip, her tongue vacillating from side to side along the way. With her attention focused on the head, which throbbed as if it would explode, she fondled and squeezed his contracting balls. His thighs and abs tensed, and he began to shiver with each lick. By the time she was sucking again, her tongue swirling sensuously around him, he could barely breathe. Each touch was a scintilla triggering fifty thousand volts.

Stephanie softened the movements of her hands and tongue, slowed her pace as he thrust and shuddered, his nerves sensorial and his body completely under her control.

Until he withered in her mouth. “Goddammit,” he muttered, and raked his fingers through his hair.

“It’s okay, honey.”

It wasn’t okay. They were twenty-seven years old, and they should be able to have sex like everyone else their age. Alex kicked his jeans and underwear away and steered her to the great room, tackling her onto the couch. He was more than capable of pleasuring
her
, at least. He ripped her shirt open; buttons plinked against the hardwood floor. Her creamy, pregnancy-ripened breasts heaved within a lacy black bra. He slipped one hand beneath her to unfasten it and tossed it aside, then, lying between her legs, sucked on her tongue and her lips. She ran her hands down his spine as he explored her chin, neck, and wrists with French kisses. But he could not stay away from those breasts for long.

She arched her back and pressed against him, clawed at his ass. “Mmm…honey, what are you doing?”

“Sucking on these beautiful tits.”

She froze. “But they—I—”

“I know. I want to taste it. Can I? Before it’s gone.”

She remained silent.

“Is that weird?” He hadn’t considered it until then, only that he naturally desired every part of her. Especially something so rare.

“No, just…unexpected.”

“I won’t if you don’t want me to. I’m going to taste something else soon, anyway.” He tongued the curves of her ribs, the letters of her tattoo.

“I want you to.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’ve never done anything to me that didn’t feel incredible.”

“So you don’t think it’s strange.”

She laughed and ruffled his hair. “Do it before I change my mind.”

Alex hefted her breast and teased her hard nipple with his tongue, then fastened his lips around it. After a few tender pulls, a thin and watery substance trickled into his mouth, followed by a thicker, creamier, slightly sweet fluid. He sucked harder. Stephanie gasped and moved his free hand to her jeans. He unbuttoned and unzipped them and wiggled his finger beneath the waistband of her panties, into her slit. For all they had shared, he could not think of a moment in which he’d felt so bonded to her, so nurtured by her love. And if it was strange to want such a union with his wife, then he hoped never to be normal.

***

Stephanie

They lay face-to-face in bed, enjoying the brief peace in which Anya slept by enjoying each other. Mutually pleasuring each other with their hands and mouths, or simply exchanging long, slow, deep kisses for the first time in months without her belly or her hormones intruding.

She had let Alex suckle her again, when the notion of it as taboo subsided and she embraced the odd, startling sweetness of the act, never mind the bliss his mouth on any part of her body inspired. Profoundly sexual, a lover’s practiced sucking and licking. Yet the emotions flooding her limbic system were more powerful than anything sex alone could produce, creating breathtaking urges to shelter him from the repercussions of the life he’d once lived. From the people who did not understand or care about the real man beneath it all, the fragile creature that was crueler to himself than they could ever be.

Stephanie held him close, his body hard and hot and his breath slowing against her ear. “I want to do something for your birthday,” she whispered. “You missed out, since we were still in the hospital.”

He fit his fingers between hers. “You gave me my daughter. I’m not sure anything can top that.”

“Father’s Day, then. What if we went away for a long weekend? Just the two of us. We can get away from all of this for a little while. I’m sure Jacob and Nicole wouldn’t mind watching Anya for a few days.”

With the Earthquakes rapidly falling apart and no cap space for a big trade that might have plugged at least a defensive hole if nothing else, they had placed Jacob on waivers. The Gladiators claimed him almost immediately. “They thought playing with Sasha might have rubbed off on me,” he’d joked. Now Alex would be coaching him on the second power play unit, which took some getting used to for both of them.

“Well, at least it’ll be after your doctor appointment. Because I have plans for you.” Alex growled playfully and nibbled her neck. “Now that we’ve started our little hockey team.”

She snickered and burrowed her face against his neck. “You make me so happy. You know that?”

“I know I need to kiss you again.” He cupped the back of her head and dipped his tongue between her greedy lips.

The baby monitor lit up as Anya announced her irritation with a high-pitched wail.

“I’ll get her. Don’t go anywhere.” He braced himself over Stephanie and kissed her again. And again. “You,
moya lyubov′
, are delicious.” Alex swung his long legs out of bed and reached for his boxer briefs, then limped toward Anya’s squalling voice.

Stephanie wrapped herself in her robe and padded after him. She stopped in the doorway of Anya’s room, where Alex was lifting their baby from her crib. He laid her on the changing table to check her diaper first.

“Not wet. Are you hungry? Or just lonely? Papa’s here now.” He carried her to the rocking chair beneath the window and sang softly:

“
Sleepyhead, close your eyes.

Papa’s right here beside you.

I’ll protect you from harm,

You will wake in my arms.

Guardian angels are near,

So sleep on, with no fear.

Guardian angels are near,

So sleep on, with no fear
.”

He fingered Anya’s wispy black hair and kissed her forehead. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever done. I love you so much, baby girl.”

She closed her eyes, waved her fists, and yawned.

This was real, his love, maybe the only real thing in the world. His eyes reflected Anya’s innocence, the boy Stephanie had fallen for regained through the tiny person they’d created together in a physical incarnation of that love. None of the Alex who had held himself together with solipsism. No fear that the damaged genetics on both sides might haunt Anya too.