Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (11 page)

The corded muscles in his arm twisted like snakes as he accepted the small plate from her. But then he set it aside and said, “You are very selfish girl. I can see that now. But you still make my dick hard, so I will make you new offer.”

H
E waited for her reaction
, but wasn’t surprised when it didn’t come.

I ain’t afraid of nothing,
the old Sirena had insisted from the start.

She’d made a habit of boldly staring him down back then, and this new version of his siren—this Thel, as she called herself now—also met his eyes, refusing to cower.

He’d thought he’d like this part more. He’d been imagining the look on her face when he finally found her for years now. And he had relished the thought of her pleading with him to forgive her for leaving the way she did. To spare her his wrath.

But there’d been no pleas for herself, only for her family. Leave them out of this, she continued to beg, which made it difficult for him. Because this was not how it was supposed to go.

He’d wanted to drag her out of the wedding kicking and screaming. But she’d come with him willingly. He hadn’t been expecting that. Or the small house, fit only for a demented, book-obsessed forest troll, not his siren.

This was where she’d grown up? Where she lived between lovers? Looking around the place she called home, he easily understood why she’d left, but not at all why she’d returned to the family she kept secret from him.

There was that,
da
. But he also had to admit there was something else standing between him and his original plan for revenge.

The return of the unexpectedly powerful emotions that sprung up between them the moment they laid eyes on each other again in Virginia. As if only six minutes, not six years, had passed since they saw each other last.

He wanted to hate her. But not as bad as he wanted to fuck her.

Right now, the compulsions felt like one and the same as he looked down at her from his great height. In fact, it was all he could do not to bend her over the counter’s turquoise surface and take her a second brutal time, until she screamed her apologies so loud, the entire complex would hear.

But he couldn’t stop thinking of her house. The “crazy” mother who seemed to already know everything about him. All those books. So many, they seemed to live and breathe inside the house with a life of their own.

He’d understood then why she hadn’t wanted to be the name on her birth certificate when he met her. Not Thelxiope Okeanos, but someone else. The someone he’d made her.

“My brother tells me you wish to be Sirena again,” he said, introducing the new subject with a grim tone. “He says you have applied to many programs, perhaps hoping I would allow it.”

She threw him an irritated look. “It’s been six years, Bair. I was
hoping
you’d have moved on by now. Found some other pet.”

Her answer turned his blood to lava, and he had to grip the wooden lip of the counter behind him to keep from grabbing her. She’d really thought he’d just “move on” like she’d obviously moved on from him?

No… “That is not how it works between us. You made me promises. Promises you did not keep.”

“
Sirena
made you promises,” she answered. “Thel’s just trying to get by.”

“But you wish to be Sirena again?”

This time she didn’t answer, just looked up at him morosely. “If you’re asking if I’d like to sing the kind of music I love for audiences again, then the answer is yes. But you obviously already know that or we wouldn’t be having this really strange conversation under these really fucked up circumstances, would we?”

Oh, how he wished to punish her for her insolence. To show her again and again how much power he still had over her.

“I have a question for you, Sirena,” he began on a snarl.

But she interrupted him, folding her arms. “No, no more questions. Not until you answer mine about my family.”

Ignoring her, he brought his phone out and said, “My question is, would you like to sing this?”

Then he pushed play on the recording Alexei had sent him.

At first his wife just kept her arms crossed over her breasts, as if protecting herself from what he’d unleashed. But as the song went on, she leaned forward. And eventually she took a step closer. Getting closer to the song. Getting closer to him.
A siren entranced
, he thought to himself.

“That was beautiful,” she breathed when the song was done. “But the girl’s voice—it’s too young for that aria. They need a more mature voice for the part.”

“This is from
Chrysanthemum,
an opera my brother is producing.” He put the phone away in his back pocket. And he relished the way she unconsciously reached out to it before stopping herself. Like he’d taken some kind of treasure from her.

“It was written by two prodigy children and they would like for you to play the title character’s part. They want an opera singer with a southern accent, and they think you will do well in this part.”

Her eyes shuttered, and he could almost hear the sound of her heart sinking as she said, “So that’s what this is all about? My punishment? You wanted me to hear a part that would be perfect for me. Then tell me I can’t have it?”

Yes, actually that had been his plan exactly. This song was the perfect punishment—he’d known as soon as he heard it. Not being able to take this quintessential part, unlike any she’d ever been offered in her German program—would haunt her. Possibly forever. On her deathbed she’d think of this song, then think of him. The man she’d betrayed. The man who’d kept it from her.

That had been his plan from the start. Bring her here, play her the song, tell her this part she was perfect for would never be hers, and then offer her a new job cleaning the apartment they were currently standing in for the diva who would be given the part. That had been his original plan.

Revenge. Absolute and cruel.

But then she had touched him last night. And he’d fucked her against the wall like an animal barely restrained. Only to wake up this morning, hard as steel, wanting her all over again. Even though she was old by Rustanov pet standards, and still an ungrateful cunt who’d yet to apologize for anything she’d done. Fucking her had not been part of the plan.

But he’d done it, and now he found a new plan forming in his head. “You understand Sirena belongs to me?” he asked the woman who’d earlier insisted it had been Sirena who’d made him promises. Not her. “She cannot take this part unless I allow her to.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I get it, Bair. Well-played.”

“So the question becomes what are you willing to do for the part. Who you are willing to become?”

She tilted her head, champagne eyes flashing with confusion. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying I can have this part? Like, that’s still on table?”

“You can have this part,
da
. But only if you are my pet.”

“You want me to be your pet again.” She looked away, seemingly making some kind of invisible calculation in her head. “For how long?”

“For as long as you want to be Sirena or until I get sick of you. Whichever comes first,” he answered, tone flat.

Her expression tightened with indecision. He could almost see her mind working, trying to figure out a way around his pet provision.

Nothing spoke more to her low opinion of him now than the terrible silence that followed his offer. And his heart twisted in pain, remembering the way she’d pulled him down for a kiss after agreeing to be his pet that first time.

Eleven years later, she said nothing. Absolutely nothing. For so long, he nearly took it back. Cruel words forming on his tongue.

But just as he was about to open her mouth, she said, “I have two conditions.”

“You are in no position—”

“I know, I know,” she said, cutting him off with an impatient wave of her hands. “I got two conditions anyway. My family stays out of this. If I do something wrong, you can’t use them to punish me. That song chewed a hole clear through my chest, but I can’t do this again with you if I think there’s any possibility of them getting hurt.”

“Fine,” he answered, not bothering to tell her the truth she couldn’t possibly know. His family, as cruel as they were reported to be, even in their worst era, had strict rules about harming innocent women and children. Pets could be punished however a Rustanov wished. The other women and children in their family:
Nyet
. Otherwise, his cousin Nikolai’s non-Rustanov half brother, Fedya, would have been killed the first time their mother cheated on her Rustanov lover. Just to make a point.

“What is other condition?” he asked.

A little of the wind came out of her sails at his easy agreement. Perhaps she actually preferred to think of him as a monster who would hurt innocent women and children. Maybe that had made it easier for her to sleep at night after leaving him.

In any case, it took her a moment to recover, before she said, “I-I don’t want you touching my breasts. They’re a little—the surgery—it won’t feel good if you touch them. So don’t.”

That condition was even easier to agree to than the first. As much as he’d loved playing with her breasts before, he had no wish to touch the reminder that she’d taken another man into her bed. Let another man mold what had what had belonged to him from the moment she agreed to be his pet.

Da
, it was easy to answer, “Fine. I will not touch.”

“Okay,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Okay, then I’ll be your pet again.”

They both seemed a little surprised in that moment. Him that he’d made the offer at all. Her that she’d accepted it.

Either way, he knew it was a bad idea. He was deeply aware of this, even as he picked up the piece of toast she’d made him and started chewing it with nonchalant remove. He knew this wouldn’t end well. How could it? But still he was determined to finally break her hold over him, even if he was destroyed in the process.

“
M
S. Gale
! Ms. Gale! A moment please!”

It took Thel a few seconds to realize the voice was calling after her, even though she’d just spent the past six weeks finalizing the script in Montana with the director and the opera’s teen composers, who everyone called The Twins.

The Twins were a long story out of Chicago. Two high-functioning autistic children, one an Asian-American boy named Kenji, the other an African-American girl named Sparkle. They’d first met at Rise Academy, a boarding school for autistic children, where they’d begun composing their English language opera together. That might have been the end of it, but their parents met and fell in love. And their father, Suro, just so happened to be the executive director of security for Rustanov Enterprises—the CEO of which, Alexei Rustanov (or Alexei the Awful as she still called him), had decided to bankroll this new work production for the Santa Fe Opera’s renowned summer program. He’d even gone so far as to put Thel and the director up in Montana during the spring, so they could work on the script while The Twins attended boarding school.

But now they were all officially back in Santa Fe for the first week of rehearsals with her and the rest of the main cast. Eventually the chorus, which was made up of young singers from the Santa Fe Opera’s various apprentice programs, would be joining them for four weeks of staging in the rehearsal hall, and then they’d move onto the main stage.

Over the past few weeks, Thel had truly felt like she was back where she belonged, doing the job she’d always been meant to do. Yet she still hadn’t gotten used to being called by her old stage name again. Probably because up until she’d been flown to Montana in late April, she’d spent six months working her old cleaning job at Greenlee Memorial, just like before.

Bair had kept his word and let Thel go for those six months, allowing her to return to her old life as if nothing had changed. But the day before she was due to leave for Montana, a black car had shown up at the house, like a harbinger of her certain doom.

“So I guess we won’t be taking you to the airport,” said Sawyer, who’d come over with Willa and their newborn baby, Eve, to give her a ride.

“No, I guess not…” she had answered, feeling like one of Marian’s ghosts was passing straight through her.

Bair had hired a large black man named Dexter to oversee her every move this time. Quiet, but affable enough. Gay, but too busy for a boyfriend, he’d told her on the way to the small airfield where a private jet awaited their arrival. He was technically co-head of security for Rustanov Enterprises and didn’t do “the bodyguard thing” anymore. But he’d taken this assignment as a special favor to Mr. Rustanov. Which Mr. Rustanov, she didn’t know. Nor did she bother to ask.

The fact was, no matter how amicable this new guy was in comparison to the dour Germans who used to “protect” her in Berlin, he was the same old thing in new clothing. Someone sent to keep tabs on her.

Dexter was another reason she hadn’t gotten used to being called Sirena Gale again. He insisted on calling her Mrs. Rustanov.

In fact, Dexter was waiting for her now in front of the venue. Prepared to whisk her away as he did every weekend to join his boss wherever he happened to be in the world. Chicago, Prague, Bruges, New York—she’d been escorted off private planes and into hotel rooms in all of these cities since returning to the role of Sirena Gale.

Which was why she was more than happy to delay her departure by talking to whoever was calling after her. She turned around to see Sola Ramirez, the young Stage Director intern who’d been serving as the director’s right hand all week.

“Hey, Sola!” she said, smiling at the pixie-haired Hispanic woman. “What’s up?”

“Hi, Ms. Gale. I was wondering if you could come in tomorrow for an extra rehearsal with Dana and her dog. We’re a little concerned about the transfer during the ice skating scene, and wanted to make sure it’s even possible before we nail down the blocking.”

Dana was the young autistic singer who’d been handpicked to play the role of Chrysanthemum “Santhe” Flower in the opera’s first act. Like Thel, she was an opera natural, even without much training. However, because of her spectrum condition, she needed to have Maria Callas, her therapy dog, with her at all times. So The Twins had written it into the production. However that meant transferring the dog from Dana to Thel during their transformation song, which would take place while the two were pretending to ice skate. So no, Thel wasn’t surprised Sola and Brian, the director, wanted to add an extra rehearsal to make sure Dana and Maria Callas were good to go.

But before she could so much as open her mouth to answer, a deep voice said, “No, Mrs. Rustanov does not ever work on weekends.”

Alexei Rustanov inserted himself into their conversation, glowering at poor Sola. “You should have asked the real director about this before approaching our lead.”

The emerging director, so authoritative when bossing a bunch of singers and techs around in their rehearsal room, seemed to shrink a little under Alexei’s green glare. Thel didn’t blame her. Like his brother, Alexei was also 6’6” and built like a mountain. And though this was only supposed to be a little side project of his, he’d taken time off from his empire to come check on the production.

Which put everyone but The Twins and Thel on edge. The Twins didn’t mind because they were too obsessed with their magnum opus to be the least bit intimidated by Alexei or anybody else. Thel didn’t mind because she despised him too much to care what he thought of her.

To her, he’d always be the douchebag older brother who sent her to fetch him another glass of vodka while advising Bair in nearly accent-less English, “Keep a firm hand on this one, Brother. If you do not control her, another will.”

Feeding Bair’s sick paranoia with tidbits like, “I have not found the American black girls to be so loyal, Borya, which is why I no longer abide them. Make sure this one knows what happens to Rustanov pets who try to go astray.”

So no, she didn’t go out of her way to try to impress the older Mr. Rustanov like everyone else did whenever he dropped in for one of his surprise visits. She could still remember his cold green stare the afternoon Bair fucked her in front of him. Shortly afterwards, she’d watched him and Bair exchanging good-byes in front of the building. Alexei going so far as to clap his younger half brother on the shoulder, like he completely approved of everything Bair had just done.

So yeah, she inwardly cheered when Sola reset, getting a little of her emerging director moxie back as she said, “I would have asked Brian first, but I saw Ms. Gale was leaving and I was hoping to catch her. I assumed she’d be okay with this, since it’s in every performer’s contract to do extra rehearsals on the weekend on an as-needed basis.”

“You are mistaken,” Alexei answered with a faint trace of that sneer. “
Most
performers can be called in as-needed. Mrs.
Rustanov’s
contract states quite the opposite.”

“But how about dress rehearsals?” Sola sputtered, her need to help Brian run a tight production overcoming any deference she might have shown him.

Alexei simply stared back at her coldly, “Talk to Brian. He already knows Mrs. Rustanov’s contract requirements. Meanwhile, Mrs. Rustanov has a car waiting for her.”

He put a hand on Thel’s back, and without waiting for Sola’s answer, guided her down the hallway.

“This confusion is because we are in a new place with new people. The girl is young and overeager. You will not be asked to work the weekend again.”

“She has a point about the dog,” Thel answered. “I don’t want to upset Dana, and from what I’ve been reading, you’re technically not supposed be messing with somebody else’s therapy dog.”

Alexei’s brows lowered, bemusement crinkling his eyes. “You have read about this subject?”

“Yeah, Alexei, I’ve read about it. I’m good for doing stuff other than being your brother’s pet or whatever I am to him these days.”

“Wife.”

“What?” she asked.

“You are his wife, Sirena
Rustanov
, even if you don’t professionally use his name. If my wife refused to use my name, as you do my brother’s, I would be very upset.”

“Okay, whatever,” she answered, not even wanting to think about the poor woman he’d suckered into marrying him. “I’ve got to go.”

She sped up to push through the door that led out to the venue’s main courtyard. However Alexei fell into step beside her before she could make it all the way to the main gate.

“Of course you must go, and I would not keep you from Boris,” he agreed. He opened one of the wrought iron doors for her and held it as she walked through.

But then he added, “That is why I would like to have lunch with you the next time I drop by.”

She didn’t break stride as she continued towards the waiting car. “Is that in my contract?” she asked him.

“What?”

“Is having lunch with you in my contract?”

“No, but—”

“Then crazy hard pass on lunch, man.”

Alexei’s teeth gritted and he wore the look of a billionaire who wasn’t used to having his orders questioned. “There are things I wish to explain. About the way I treated you when you were only my brother’s pet. I am a different man now, and—”

“Like you said yourself, I’ve got to go,” she answered, nodding toward the waiting car. “You wouldn’t want to keep Bair waiting.”

He outright glared at her now. “You are different than before,” he informed her.

Yeah, thank cancer for that. Her days of taking whatever he dished out were over. She’d found out the hard way—life was literally too damn short.

“See you around, Alexei.”

She got into the car without waiting for his reply. He could claim to be a different man as much as he wanted, but it would be a cold day in hell before she agreed to have lunch with him to let him “explain” about any of the fucked up things he’d said to and about her in Germany. Besides, she thought with an inner harrumph, she already had enough dread to deal with on Fridays without adding lunch with Alexei Rustanov into the mix.

“Where to this week?” she asked Dexter on a heavy sigh. “Please tell me we’re staying Stateside. I cannot deal with jet lag going into rehearsal on Monday.”

Dexter chuckled. “Today’s your lucky day. The pilot sent me a flight plan for Chicago. Just an hour ahead.”

“Our lucky day it sounds like. Wasn’t that where you were living before you caught this handler gig?”

“Sure is,” Dexter answered, grinning at her through the rearview. “And I’d be straight lying if I didn’t say I had plans to kill a deep dish as soon as I drop you off with Rustanov B.”

Rustanov B was what he called Bair. Alexei was, naturally, Rustanov A. Supposedly there was a Rustanov N in Indiana, presiding over a hockey team he’d bought with Alexei’s support.

“Oh man, deep dish pizza sounds great!” she said, thinking with disdain of all the lovely gourmet meals she’d be eating this weekend. “I wish I could try one.”

“You never know. Maybe you can convince Rustanov B to stop eating so clean this weekend.”

She just chuffed. Like she could ever convince Bair of anything.

The fact that she was in the back of this car proved how little power she had over him these days. But rather than answer Dexter, she settled back into the black leather seat and tried to get her mind right for yet another weekend of stone cold revenge.