Quick. Fast.
Act Twenty-Two
Maybe it’s only a minute before we reach the exit, but the trek is the longest of my life, with my stomach tossing, my muscles constricting, my heart speeding—there is no reprieve when you’re falling for a guy. It’s the worst and best carnival ride.
After he pushes through the door, we enter the narrow hallway, walls lined with framed Aerial Ethereal posters. The elevators are in sight which’ll bring us to the lobby of The Masquerade.
Make it to the elevator without stumbling, Thora.
I can do this. Share the company with a six-foot-five Russian-American man. Muscular, brawn—all power. Five years older, who’s a perfect flirt and an even better kisser. I imagine all of him possessing me, controlling most movements, leading the charge—pushing
into
me.
Thora.
I can almost hear my own breath.
Stop panting.
Five steps into the carpeted hallway, I’m about to try my hand at small talk again, just to break the quiet. He drops his gym bag though. And he clasps my hips, his gaze peeling off every thin article of clothing, stroking my skin.
I keep him at a foot’s distance, even though I can tell he wants me closer. “I’m…sweaty,” I throw it out there.
He tilts my chin. “So am I, myshka.”
I let him tug me to his chest, one of his hands warming the back of my neck. The longer he just stares through me, the heavier my breathing becomes. He’s eye fucking me. My legs tremble, the spot between my thighs pulsing for a harder pressure. For
him.
I’ve never ached for that this much.
I lick my lips. “Why do you call me myshka?” I’ve known, but I want to hear him say it.
“Because to me, you’re little.” His hand drifts from my hip to my lower back, pushing me right up along his body. No room between us. He’s not even hard and the bulge in his shorts presses against my abdomen. He looks at me knowingly—knowing that I can feel him, knowing that he’s outsized me, knowing that his dominance is beginning to melt my bones.
With his height and size, compared to mine, I can’t even begin to fantasize how big he is fully erect. How small I’ll be.
He lowers his head to kiss me, pausing a breath away. I unconsciously buck against him, and his chest collapses in arousal. When his lips touch mine, the intensity bursts, and he grips me hard, pressure building everywhere as his tongue dances. As his hands roam. His thumb skims my nipple, the leotard thin, and he continues the back and forth rhythm over the barbell piercing.
My nerves prick, and I stand on the tips of my toes, aching to be even closer.
He hears my silent plea, lifting me up around his waist, my legs split. He’s right. Every part of me is little to him. My limbs, my size, my lips, my eyes—and every part of him is large to me. His arms, his shoulders, his jaw, his thighs.
I feel myself become wet.
My lips swell behind the force of his aggressive, non-stop kiss, the kind that blinds me. I want his hands everywhere. All at once. He explores the bareness of my arms, of my neck. My mind is combusting into a million thousand shards. I can’t…I break the kiss and rest my forehead on his shoulder, panting for breath.
“I just…” I try to collect myself.
He holds the back of my head protectively, caringly. His breathing is as heavy and staggered as mine. I feel him studying my movements, fluent in body language. I’m still a novice, but if anyone is going to teach me, I’d want it to be him.
I can’t stop thinking about our size difference. “We’re not going to fit together,” I say
aloud.
He cups my face to look at me. By his strong, unshaven jaw, I’m deeply aware of his age again. “Physically or metaphorically?” he asks with raised brows.
My lips part, slightly wishing I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Physically,” he answers off my expression. “I’ll be able to fit deep inside you. And when I do, you’re going to be entirely full of me.” Sex. His voice is sex. Everything is liquid sex. He kisses my forehead, my body shuddering one last time before he gently sets me on my feet.
I’m rethinking my “slow” proclamation, but I remember the last time I had sex. After the fourth date. It was lackluster, and while I doubt that word belongs to the attraction I have for Nikolai, I want to solidify something more permanent before we take that step. I want this to be different. Better than that.
He leads me to the elevators, arm around my shoulders. “Can you be back here around seven?” he asks me.
“Yeah. Are we practicing again?” I frown as he pushes the button on the wall. It lights up while we wait.
“No,” he says. “I’m taking you out.”
My body responds with those anxious flutters and tightened muscles again.
A date
, I realize. I’m going on a date with the devil.
Act Twenty-Three
“Sorry about that,” Nikolai states. He pockets his cell, one that has been buzzing since we sat down. We’re on the balcony patio of Rush, metal torches flaming along the railing. It adds to the heat of the summer, my hair down, the pieces curling by my face, the rest probably frizzing.
Despite the view of Vegas being gorgeous tonight, I feel dazed by my surroundings and my own body. Camila helped me pick out a teal empire dress with a silver Aztec necklace, and so that’s what I’m wearing.
“It’s okay,” I say. “My phone isn’t behaving any better.” Just as I say it, another text pings. This one from my Mom.
Tanner placed first in science wars! Be sure to text him.
– Mom
I already did with about fifteen emojis. My brother called me lame. But my parents have been proudly group texting photos of his project all night. And the buzzing won’t end. I thought about turning off the notifications but stopped after the guilt set in.
After I pocket my phone, I stir my straw in my tequila sunrise, a drink I’ve grown accustomed to, no more choking on the liquor.
“Everything okay?” He nods to my phone and then leans back in his wooden chair, red wine his choice of beverage.
I meet his gray eyes that seem to say
you can tell me anything.
He looks supremely handsome tonight: black slacks, black button-down, his hair pushed out of his face, the longer strands a bit higher than the base of his neck.
One of his arms stays on the table, his hand near me. Like if I reach up, he’ll thread his fingers with mine. It’s tempting to test the waters.
But I stay still, legs crossed and hands in my lap, more rigid than him. “My brother won a science contest. It’s a big deal for my family…” I trail off when his phone buzzes on the table, lighting up. “What about you?”
I stare at him for a long second, and he keeps my gaze. I can tell his interruptions don’t derive from good news. He lets me see that in his stormy grays.
“Timo,” he finally says, pocketing his cell. “My cousins are texting me about him. He’s…stuck on some three-card poker table. Down a couple hundred and won’t get off. I’d like to say this isn’t the usual. But it is.”
My heart sinks. I think I’ve known this all along about Timo. I just hoped it wasn’t true.
He reaches for his wine. “I’d take him out of Vegas if I thought it’d help, but he was this way in New York.” He takes a larger swig of his drink.
No holding back, I reach out and place my hand on his, beside my knife and fork.
He doesn’t seem too surprised, and I wonder if he was waiting for me to do it. He traces the lines in my palm, his eyes flitting to mine, a smile behind them. It warms my soul.
He says a few words in deep Russian, and he even kisses my fingers.
“What’d you say?” I ask with a growing smile, one I can’t suppress now. The pull between us is mellow, but hot, like magma that slowly rolls down volcanic rock.
“I said,
you’re very beautiful
.”
He could have his pick of any girl in Vegas. It’s hard to believe he’d fall for me. “What do you see when you look at me?” I ask in a whisper.
He’s quiet for a moment, soaking in my features.
And his expression only floods with more and more intensity, the kind that says
I am attracted to you on many, many levels.
It shallows my breath.
“I can’t describe my demon,” he tells me with rising lips. “I just feel her.”
I scowl. “And I’d say you avoided the question, but I think I can read you now.”
“You can?” His brows rise in surprise. “What am I thinking then?”
His penetrating eyes descend to my lips, to my collarbones, to my breasts, creating a sweltering trail. All the way until the table blocks the rest of my frame.
My eyes widen.
You want to fuck me.
It’s clearly the answer, but I struggle to say it out loud. I open my mouth, close it, open it, close it.
He smiles into his sip of wine, knowing the effect he has on me and possibly every girl he’s ever encountered.
“And now?” he asks, setting down his drink and looking at me with the most sincerity, the most genuine sentiments, traversing into me, like a gunshot that propels clean through.
I can’t put words to that expression. “I don’t know,” I say softly.
“I admire you.”
“That’s funny,” I say, “because I admire you.”
He tries to hide a smile. “Why is that?”
“You raised your siblings. You realize that, right?”
He lets out a short laugh. “Not well enough.”
I frown and shake my head. The waiter comes around and takes our orders. A salmon dish for me, and chicken for him.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him, the flames creating shadows over his strong features in the dark. He looks like a devil dressed in black at first sight, but coming to know him, he’s the god that everyone describes. “Katya is sweet and friendly.” I think about his brother, the one who offered me mints and stole Skittles for his little sister. “Luka is generous and kind.” And Timo—magnetic. There are no just words to define him. I smile, staring off. “And Timo is…captivating, more full of life than anyone I’ve ever met.”
When I look up at Nikolai, his brows are furrowed, overwhelmed. He combs his fingers through his hair, turning his head as he processes my words.
He lets out another short laugh, this time in disbelief. “When people first meet my siblings, they see the worst in them.” Lines crease his forehead. “Katya is too naïve. Luka is too irresponsible. And Timo is…” He shakes his head. “Timo is chaos.”
“That’s rude,” I state.
He laughs into a bigger smile. “Where did you come from?”
“I think the same thing about you, you know.” He’s given me so much in a short amount of time. Determination, motivation. I am overflowing with better, brighter sentiments.
“According to you, I came from hell.” There is light behind his gunmetal eyes.
Technically that was John, but that thought has definitely impacted me. I struggle for a response. He’s distracting. Everything about him—his unshaven jaw, his soul-bearing gaze, his masculinity. I can’t concentrate, even if I was good at bantering.
I mutter, “Demons are from hell.” It sounds lame.
“Thank God for that.”
Maybe I’m not so bad at this. I stir my straw, the ice cubes melting. There are so many mysteries to him still. Stones left unturned. “Can I ask you something personal?” I wonder.
He stays relaxed. “Sure.”
“What happened with your family?” I pause to clarify. “I mean, your parents and other brothers are at Noctis, but it’s a new show. You said you haven’t seen them for six years, so…”
He lets go of my hand on the table, and I almost regret bringing it up. He sighs heavily like the past bears down on him, a weighted pressure that I can’t even begin to understand.
“I’m sorry, you don’t have to—”
“No, I can,” he interjects. He rubs his jaw in thought, of how to start. He must not explain this often. “When I grew up, we were traveling with Nova Vega and then Celeste mostly in North America. All together. It’d been that way until my parents were recruited for Somnio, to oversee the Russian swing. It would go on a five-year tour, through Asia, Europe and South America.”
He stops for a second, staring faraway at the memory. It’s not often that he wears this look. It strangely pulls at my lungs.
“My closest aunt and uncle, Dimitri’s parents, were recruited for Infini, which would go to New York for three years and then move to Vegas. So my extended family would be split for the first time. We all couldn’t be in the same show, the same place, and unfortunately, Katya, Timo, and Luka had no choice where they ended up.”
“What…?” I breathe.
His jaw locks for a second, and he breathes through his nose. “My parents,” he starts. “They wanted stability for the younger kids. They were ten, twelve and thirteen at the time.” He looks up, at the night sky, blanketed with stars. “It left Peter, me, and Sergei with a choice. Somnio would pay better. Somnio was more elite. And it’d award us more freedom.” When he takes another long pause, sipping his wine, I digest every syllable, every word.
“You were the only one who chose to be with them,” I realize. At twenty, he decided to take on his parent’s responsibility instead of living his own life. It’s not only admirable—
that
is courageous. There are tears in my eyes that he can’t see. He’s staring out at the city.
“Peter was eighteen, he wanted to travel,” he says. “Sergei was twenty-two, he had no desire to stay with our younger siblings. I wasn’t going to leave them and hope that our aunt and uncle would pay attention. They have five kids of their own.”
“So when Somnio ended…”
“Noctis began,” he says. “So did Amour and Viva.”
It cemented the fact that they’d be apart much longer than they might’ve intended.
Maybe that’s why Kayta is so upset. She could’ve been counting down to Somnio’s closing night, in hopes that her parents would return then.
“Do you miss them?” I ask as he turns back to me.
“Some days,” he says quietly. He finishes off his wine, and a phone rings (not just a text), the default tone. He digs into his pocket and answers the cell in Russian. His face morphs into that familiar anger, his eyes narrow and muscles tensing.