What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

“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.

He brought her to the edge several times, then switched the rhythm and pattern as she slid his palms up and down her thighs. Now drawing lazy circles around her clit, now giving it furious flicks of his tongue, now sucking until she was writhing and twitching, her screams incoherent and rapturous.

Her chest was heaving as she collapsed back onto the sheets. She coughed—deep, braying—and stared up at the ceiling. “Holy shit.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Just…wow.”

“Thank you. And you’re welcome.”

She snickered and elbowed him, then twisted a lock of his hair around her finger. “I love you.”

Anya wailed with hunger.

“So much for post-coital bliss. I’ll get her.” Stephanie tweaked his ear and grabbed her robe, wrapping it around herself as she left the room.

He
was going to enjoy it, at least for a few minutes. Alex stretched out and relaxed on the pillows, banishing thoughts of the people who believed he hadn’t earned this happiness, who conspired to snatch it from him when he’d begun to stop believing that himself.

She returned with Anya and a bottle and perched on the edge of the bed. The night of Anya’s birth, the nurse had ordered she stay in the room to facilitate bonding, despite Stephanie’s exhaustion and her insistence that she wasn’t breastfeeding. She begged. The nurse pushed back. Only when Stephanie broke down in frustrated tears did Alex step in and demand to see the nurse supervisor. Under normal circumstances, Stephanie never let him fight her battles. He wasn’t about to let them deprive her of the sleep required to recover, and one night wasn’t going to destroy the bond between her and Anya.

They had won, though he hated to think it was only because the nurses found him physically threatening. He hadn’t raised his voice, but his wife in tears aroused a side of him he’d abandoned on the ice, except when it came to his family. A side best left unprovoked.

He laid his chin on her shoulder. “Hey, you know what tomorrow is?”

“Sunday?”

“And your first Mother’s Day.”

“Already?” She set the bottle on the nightstand and eased Anya onto her stomach over her lap. Stephanie gently rubbed her back. “Seems like you just got here, little girl. And I suspect your father is up to something.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Alex kissed her cheek. “I’m just saying, don’t make any plans tomorrow. And on that note, I need to go on a supply run.” He headed to the en suite for another quick shower. “Do my girls need anything while I’m out?”

“I think we’re good. Oh—something chocolate, please? I don’t even care what it is.”

“You got it.” He started the shower but peered into the bedroom one more time. Stephanie, having successfully coaxed a burp out of Anya, was rocking her and murmuring words too soft for him to hear. The loss Stephanie had carried inside her for so long, one he’d felt no less acutely when he learned of it, had found its miraculous cure. The what-ifs and could-have-beens resolved the moment of Anya’s birth, that miscarried ghost lain to rest. The dreams they might have invested in it were now Anya’s for the taking, and with her genes, he had a feeling she’d settle for nothing less than greatness.

***

Stephanie

Anya had cried briefly, sharply, then stopped moments after Alex got out of bed. He hadn’t returned, but as Stephanie dozed off again, a racket arose from the kitchen. Mother’s Day. She smiled and rolled over, grabbing one of his pillows to cover her head.

The thump of Alex’s heavy, careful footsteps up the stairs, and his singing drifting down the hall, roused her again. He was carrying a tray bearing a long-stemmed rose, a huge Boston crème donut, and a large iced latte. Her all-time favorite breakfast. He’d tucked an envelope beneath a napkin. She sat up so he could place the tray on her lap, and he climbed back into bed beside her.

“Anya’s asleep.” He kissed the corner of her mouth and put an arm around her shoulders. “Enjoy, Mama.”

Stephanie leaned against him. “You are the sweetest.” She broke off a chunk of donut, licked the chocolate frosting, and popped the dough into her mouth to savor the rich, vanilla custard filling. She wiped her hands and edged her finger along the envelope’s seal until it opened. The scent of Alex’s cologne wafted from the folded purple stationery inside.

Dear Anya,

I’m writing this letter because I want to tell you that you have the most incredible mother in the world. I fell in love with her the second I saw her—it might sound silly, but it’s true. We were only sixteen, and even so, I knew I was going to marry her someday. That kind of thing doesn’t happen much anymore, but if you take anything from it, it’s that you should never stop believing in true love. Your mama and I spent many years apart after I had to go back to Russia, but here we are now, married and with a new baby (that’s you!). I’m even in the process of becoming naturalized. By the time you can read this, I’ll be a US citizen.

Your mother hasn’t had the easiest life, but she has the kind of strength most of us can only wish for. Your papa was a real jerk once upon a time, yet she gave me another chance, even though it was hard for her to trust me again. She loved me when I needed it the most, for reasons we’ll talk about when you’re older, and that’s what I’m going to do for her every day for the rest of our lives. Thanks to her, this Russian boy became something more than just a hockey player. He became her husband, and now he’s your father, and there’s nothing in this world I could want more than my two beautiful girls.

I know there will be days as you grow up when you and your mama don’t see eye-to-eye—just remember that everything she says and does is because she loves you. Someday you’ll thank her for it. I know I do.

I love you, baby girl. And you, Stephanie. You are my heart and my soul, my breath and my life.

Love Always,

Papa

She laid a hand over her heart and looked up at Alex, who brushed a tendril of hair from her forehead.

“Happy Mother’s Day.”

Tears blurred her vision. Alex kissed them away as they fell.

“I’m not done with you yet. You have a date at the spa. Massage, facial, nails, lunch, the works. So eat your breakfast and get out of here. You need a day off.”

Stephanie sniffed and with a hand on his cheek drew him closer to kiss him. He brushed his tongue against hers, flashed a sly grin, and pulled away.

“As much as I’d love to practice making you a mama
again
, you have somewhere to be. I’ll be downstairs so you don’t get distracted.”

Her fingers tingled with the desire to touch him. She ran them over his biceps, drank in the blended fragrances of deodorant, arboreal cologne, and fresh laundry that created his unique scent. “Too late.”

The latte jiggled on her lap, but Alex caught it before it tipped over. “Remember,” he whispered in her ear, “Mother’s Day lasts all day.” He held the straw to her lips. She took the plastic cup from him and watched him hobble out of the room. He may have lost his old swagger thanks to the limp, but his ass was as enchanting as ever.

Stephanie switched on the TV, the channel set to TWSN. Some sports talk and opinion show she’d never bothered to watch because she couldn’t stand the two blowhards who hosted it.

They were talking about Alex.

“Even if he’s innocent,” one of them was saying, “what were the Gladiators thinking, hiring a twenty-seven-year-old kid as an assistant coach? Sure, he has seven years of playing experience, but does that translate to coaching ability? If this was anyone other than the Gladiators’ former captain—and granted, he led them to a Stanley Cup—would we be seeing him at the NHL level rather than the AHL or even juniors?”

“Maybe it
is
favoritism, but we haven’t seen him in action as a coach yet. The Gladiators’ special teams can’t get much worse when they’re already ranked twenty-ninth in penalty killing and twenty-sixth in power plays—”