Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (14 page)

T
HEL didn’t know
how long she was out there on the balcony, her mind racing with the implications of what had just happened between her and Bair. She hadn’t just refused him, she’d screamed at him. Actually yelled at Bair Rustanov, one of the most dangerous men she’d ever met—something she hadn’t done in the entirety of their relationship.

Not because he’d crashed her sister’s wedding. Not because he’d manipulated her into becoming his kept sex toy again. Not because he’d fucked her like an animal before she was even able to get the bread bowls all the way out of the bag. All those reasons for finally losing her shit with him would have been valid.

No, she’d screamed at him with hysterical tears burning in her eyes because he’d asked her to get a breast reduction. Which, if you looked at it from his point of view, probably didn’t seem like that big of an ask in the scheme of their relationship.

Still, the anger burned like a Rammstein song inside her chest, rendering her unable to go back inside. Unable to pretend she didn’t care what he thought of her or her breasts. Which she shouldn’t, because what Thel had done to her body during the six years they’d been apart was none of his damn business.

Still, anger and shame swam around her stomach. Sharks without a meal for a very long time. So long that the setting sun stole all the natural light from the city, bathing the street below in a blanket of neon-lit shadow. So long it started to drizzle, just like the man on Dexter’s radio said it would. So long that Bair actually came out to get her.

“You cared for this man who bought these breasts for you,” she heard him say behind her. A statement not a question.

And she found herself huffing out a bitter chuckle. Wow, he’d just given her the perfect excuse for her behavior. “Yes, yes I did,” she answered truthfully.

“But he did not care for you back. Or else he would not have let you go.”

This time she didn’t bother answering. Let Bair make up stories about her and some other guy.
Drive yourself crazy if you want to, Beast,
she thought to herself, remembering how’d she given up reasoning with him about these things less than two years into their completely fucked up relationship.

“Is he the one you left me for?” he asked from underneath the balcony’s eaved shelter.

She looked over her shoulder at him. Left him. Wow, she’d never thought of it that way. More like she’d run away from him. But she guessed Bair, being a complete psycho when it came to her, saw things a little differently on that front.

“No, he’s definitely not why,” she answered, turning back around to face the street again with a tired sigh.

She’d hope to end the conversation with that, but he came out from under the eave to stand beside her. Offering himself up to the cold rain, as he said, “I am trying with you, Sirena. This weekend I decided I would try, but if you care for this much for another man. Still. I cannot—”

“I had cancer.”

The three words she’d been refusing to say all this time, through so many weekends of punishment, came tumbling out of her mouth.

“I had breast cancer,” she told him. “That’s why I…” Their two ways of phrasing her departure tugged a war inside her chest, and she eventually settled for… “didn’t stay.”

He turned and she could just imagine the look on his face. All the angry questions. But before he could ask any of them, she said, “No, don’t say anything. Let me tell you. Just let me tell you the story…”

So that was what she did. With her eyes trained on the street below, she told him about the lump she’d found while he was away in Russia. About knowing it was bad and finding her sister. About the chemo, the doctors deciding to take both her breasts only to have more cancer cells appear a couple years later. About the miracle trial at the hospital where her sister worked, and how she ended up being one of the first people cured by a treatment based on genome-mapping.

“These breasts…” she told him, flapping a hand at her new Double-D chest. “They came from a plastic surgeon in D.C. who does pro-bono work for women who’ve been through breast cancer treatment. There aren’t many plastic surgeons as kind as him on the planet, so yes, I care for him. Just like I care for my oncologist, and the all the people on my team who worked tirelessly to cure me, because I’m convinced they’re angels. So no, these breasts ain’t originally mine. Hell, I even had to get the nipples and aureoles tattooed on, to make them look more real—which was why I didn’t want you getting too up close and personal with them. But I don’t care if they don’t exactly look natural, I’m keeping them. Because I earned them. And I’m not letting you or anybody else take them away from me.”

Silence. Deep, painful silence.

And for all her brave words, Thel just stood there, hands closing and unclosing around the rail. Wishing she had the guts to look over at him now.

I ain’t afraid of nothing.

Ha! She could barely stand to stay there, and it was taking everything she had not to run off the balcony, screaming.

“Why?” One word. Gruff and angry.

“Why did I get cancer? Cuz shit happens, I guess…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She raised her head to look over at him with a sad smile. “I wasn’t supposed to be sad, remember?”

But the look he pinned her with…raw and ragged, eyes crazed as the rain plastered his long dark hair to his face. “You think I am monster,
da
, but haven’t I always given you the things you needed? I would have given you doctor. I would have arranged for best doctors. Anything, everything you needed. But you did not tell me. You ran. You left me. Why?”

She shook her head. “Because I had cancer, and what we had in Germany—it wasn’t healthy for you or me. We were warped, and I couldn’t go on with you like that. I couldn’t deal with you and the cancer.”

“But I could have helped you,” he snarled, slamming a meaty fist into his palm.

“I didn’t want your help,” she answered.

“Why not? Because of way I treat you?” he yelled, voice incredulous with anger. “Who cares if you have a disease that can kill you? Who cares?
You should have told me
!”

“No. I couldn’t tell you…”

“You know I would have helped you. No matter how bad it was between us, you
knew
that. You should have—”

“I didn’t want you to see me like that, okay?” she yelled back, hands raised and balled into frustrated fist. “I didn’t want to become the
sick
dog you found in the Greek basement. I didn’t want to be your pet anymore, but even more than that, I didn’t want to be the girl you kept around just because you felt sorry for her. How would I look, huh? Wasting away in our bed like some charity case while you found some other girl to Fight or Fuck. Maybe somebody Alexei picked out for you. Because you have needs, right?”

“Do not accuse me of this. I did not ever cheat on you. Not even when I was in Russia and you were Germany. I would not have done that, you are stupid girl,” he spit out, his face ugly with rage. “Stupid,
stupid
girl.”

He probably expected her to try to argue with him on that point, but she just nodded. “Yeah, I am. You were right about me from the start, Beast. I’m a stupid girl. A vain and stupid girl. My mom used to work in the cancer ward, so I knew. Knew what I’d become. What I’d look like, and I didn’t want you to see me that way.”

She wrapped her arms around herself as she realized, “No matter how bad you treated me, I always knew you wanted me. Truly wanted me. Unlike those high school boys who told me I made their dicks hard but would never bring me around to meet their parents. I hated the way you tried to control me, but I liked how you
saw
me. And if you could have seen me when I was going through that first round of treatments. The tubes, my hair falling out, the needle tracks, the scars where my breasts used to be...”

She gulped down a sob. “You wouldn’t have wanted me. And I wanted you to want me. Always. Sometimes when I was on the bathroom floor, sick as a dog, that was all that kept me going. Remembering who I used to be with you. That I used to be an opera singer named Sirena Gale. And one day I might just get to be her again. No…”

Raising morose eyes to him, she confessed, “I couldn’t…I couldn’t let you see me that way. That’s not the only reason I left, but that was a big part of it.”

He took in her words for a long time, his sharp face harsh with censure.

“If I’d seen you like that. With the tubes. And the hair. And the scars…” He swiped his chin back and forth. Once. Twice. Then he said, “If I’d seen you like that, I still would have wanted you.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Believe me.”

Her denial seemed to incense him. He came toward her so vicious and fast, she backed away on primal instinct, only to have her back hit the wall that separated their balcony from the next suite’s.

Which left her with nowhere to go when he got up in her face and snarled, “You were mine, Sirena.
Mine
. I would have wanted you. I would have forced myself not to take you, because I am not the monster your write about in your diary. But I still would have wanted you.”

She shook her head, refusing to believe. Afraid to believe. But then he drew her into his arms, refusing to not let her believe.

“I would have wanted you,” he said again, his voice raspy with unchecked emotion. Then without warning, he grabbed the front of her rain-soaked dress and ripped it apart with one yank of his large muscular hands.

Thel gasped when the wet rain hit her naked chest. “What are you doing?”

“Showing you…how much I wanted you then. How much I want you now. You think that disease meant you did not belong to me? You were wrong. You are mine. Mine.”

He lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his thick waist as he pushed her down on his length. The state of his erection shocked the hell out of her. You’d think after that story…

But as if to refute her assumption, he growled,
“Mine”
as he locked her into his black stare, and slowly started fucking her against the wall.

His
, she repeated inside her head, gazing back at him with helpless awe.

And the breasts he’d mocked earlier in? He laid a reverent kiss on each of them. The look in his eyes so incredibly tender as he informed her, “These are mine now, too.”

But then all kindness disappeared from his face. “Do you understand, Siren? Do you understand there is nothing in this world that will make it so you aren’t mine? No other man gets to have you.
Cancer
does not get to have you. Because you belong to
me
.”

She nodded. Too overcome with emotion to answer out loud.

But for once he didn’t force the issue. Instead, he picked up his pace, moving inside her with the same sharp thrusts he used to employ when he claimed her in front of other men. Like,
Fuck you, Cancer. She belongs to me.

Somewhere in her mind, she knew anyone could walk by below and see them. Understood and didn’t care.

Let them see. She belonged to Bair Rustanov again. And this time when he claimed her in front of the world, in front of Cancer, she couldn’t be any more grateful.

In fact, she pulled Bair down into a claiming kiss of her own as his hips rolled within her. And eventually she came with a scream, no longer caring if the whole city knew exactly what this Beast did to her.

“
C
AN
I go somewhere today after you leave out? Somewhere without Dexter?”

They were lying in bed, Bair casually playing with her breasts. The breasts she’d gotten to cover up the damage left behind by the disease that had tried to claim her, take her from him. In the space of thirty-six hours, he’d gone from loathing to treasuring these breasts, and now he played with them, teasing himself hard again.

It had been a lovely weekend. A perfect one filled with good food, forgiveness, and the kind of make-up sex that can only be had after a relationship divide had finally been crossed.

Which was why his hand stilled at her question.

She turned over inside his arms. “It’s not anywhere bad I’m going.”

“Then why can’t you let Dexter take you there?”

She peeped up at him, “Because I need to go there by myself.”

“That is no answer, Sirena.”

“I know it isn’t. But this is…it’s something I need to do alone. Have you ever had anything you just had to do alone?”

Da
, his entire life after she left him, he thought bitterly. But aloud he said, “I do not like the thought of you in city you do not know all alone. It is not safe.”

She shook her head. That teasing smile he remembered so well, pulling up her lips. “I’ve been taking care of myself for years now, Beast.”

“
Da
and that is time is done,” he answered simply. “Now I take care of you again. You can let Dexter drive you to this place, or you cannot go. Those are your choices.”

“Bair?” she asked on a sing-song sigh, splaying her hands against his chest.

“What?” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

“You know this is a test, right?” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “To see if we really can do this again without the same old shit tearing us apart. Do you want it to go back to the way it was that last year before I split out?”

He ground his teeth, but nonetheless admitted, “
Nyet
.”

“Okay, well then you can’t be keeping me under your thumb anymore. I’m a thirty-one-year-old woman. You’ve got to let me do me this time.”

“I do not know what that means,” he grumbled, disliking all the colloquialisms she’d been using in arguments lately. Disliking that they argued at all. Back in Germany, this conversation would have been over at his first
nyet.
Back in Germany, she wouldn’t have even dared to ask this of him.

“I think you do know what I mean,” she said with a frank look.

Yes, he did understand. Her meaning, if not her words. And he understood even more what saying no to her now would do to the fragile shoot of the relationship they were trying to rebuild.

In the end he let her go.

He fucked her three times before he finally gave in—but he did as she asked.

When she pulled him down for a kiss before getting into an Uber, he wrapped her in his arms, ensuring anyone who came anywhere near her would get a whiff of his Tom Ford Private Blend cologne—but he let her go.

He even let the Uber get all the way around the corner before he picked up the phone and dialed Dexter.

“Right behind her,” her bodyguard answered without greeting. “I’ll text when I know exactly where she’s at.”

About twenty minutes later a text vibrated on his phone:
Got eyes on her a coffee shop in the Mission District. She’s sitting in a booth at the window. Waiting for somebody, maybe. Will text when they show up.

Yet, three hours later, it was Bair who texted Dexter.
“Is she still there?”

“Yes, and nobody’s joined her yet. She’s just been sitting there.”

Bair frowned, not sure what to do or how to feel as Dexter explained that his siren had been sitting in a window booth all morning. Drinking several cups of tea while she stared through the glass. She was obviously waiting for someone, but so far, she’d not so much as spoken to anyone other than her waitress, according to Dexter who was in a building across the street where he could keep an eye on her without being seen.

Neither of them had a clue what she was doing.

Not knowing what else to do, Bair tried a tactic he’d never used with Sirena before. He texted her,
“I miss you.”

Her text came back immediate and swift.
“I miss you, too. How are you?”

“Fine,”
he answered, already impatient with their small talk, even if her ‘I miss you, too’ warmed his heart.
“Where are you?”

“At a little café called Sophie’s in the Mission.”

Her immediate and truthful answer surprised him so much, it took him a minute or two to come up with a return text
.
“May I come to you?”

“You’re still here?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. Please come.”

B
air was unprepared
for the leap his heart gave when he came through the door of the café just twenty minutes after their text conversation, and found her sitting in one of the window booths.

However, the heavily made up young waitress was less than thrilled to see him. “You planning on eating?” she asked with a surly attitude almost as soon as he sat down.

Before he could answer, his wife slid a $100 bill across the table. “Here’s your tip,” she told the waitress. “Is that enough to earn some good service for him, even though I’ve already been here for a few hours?”

“I forgot how sharp this tongue of yours can be,” he said to her after the chastised waitress skulked away with Bair’s order.

His siren shrugged. “I understand her being a little put out with me, but she don’t have to be rude to you because I’ve been here all day.”

“You should eat, too,” he said, sliding the menu across to her.

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“Waitress would not be so angry if you had,” he answered, keeping his face neutral.

“Okay, fine, I guess I’ll have a hamburger.”

He called the waitress back over and ordered a cheeseburger for her with no toppings. Meat and cheese. The way she liked them. “Everything else feels too complicated,” she’d once told him.

But when he got done giving the now friendlier waitress their order, he found Sirena once again staring out the window.

She’d always been a bit of window gazer, he remembered now. Even going so far as to call it “rehearsal” when he found her staring out of one, lost in her thoughts on a particular song.

But this was different. She was staring at something. Something specific. With a wistfulness that bordered on sadness. He followed her gaze, and found a little mint green town house on the other side the street.

Accusations immediately began to burn in his mind. Who lived in that house? A past lover? A new boyfriend?

But then he remembered all the entries in her diary. A daily accounting of how he used to ask her questions just like these, followed by fucking her until he believed her answers.

You know this is a test, right? To see if we really can do this again without the same old shit tearing us apart.

Resolving himself to pass this test, he moved over in his seat so he could sit directly across from her. Stretching out his long legs, he hugged hers between them. They used to sit like this all the time toward the beginning of their relationship, wanting to stay connected even when they were sitting across from each other in cafes and restaurants.

“Who are you waiting for, my little siren?” he asked, forcing more calm into his tone than he actually felt.

This brought her eyes away from the window and her legs shifted inside his. “You won’t believe me.”

Their past shone in her eyes.
So what if other boys want me, I only want you,
she’d once said to him with a teasing smile,
I only get wet for you.

She’d said this before she’d come to fully understand that other boys wanting her wasn’t something he could abide. She said this, and no, he hadn’t believed her. In fact, he’d ended up using her teasing words against her. What had she called him in her diary?
Generous, but not kind.

But he was trying with her now. He wanted to at least try to pass her test.

So he answered, “Tell me, and we will see.” Tone simple, even if his heart was not.

She looked at him, seemingly trying to discern if he was telling her the truth or not. Then she gave up with a quick suck of her teeth. “Okay, I might as well tell you. Why the hell not? You already know my mom is crazy…”

He frowned. Not understanding what any of this had to do with the strange owl-like woman he’d encountered at her sister’s wedding.

“You are waiting for your mother? She is here in San Francisco?”

“No,” she answered. “I’m waiting for my dead brother to get home.”

T
hel didn’t know
how she expected Bair to respond to that, but he didn’t even flinch. Just sat there, waiting for her to continue.

Another endearing memory surfaced then. That when he listened, he really listened, staying quiet until the end of the story, even if it was about something as silly as a piece of music she was finding difficult to sing.

So she began telling him the whole story with a tentative heart. “My brother Trevor got hit by a car when he was sixteen. It was my fault because I left the door open after I came home late that night. It was my nineteenth birthday and I’d been out drinking with my other loser friends who’d stayed on in Greenlee after high school. Mama didn’t ever care about me staying out late, but locking the door when we came in was the one rule we had at our house, because Trevor would get to wandering outside if you didn’t watch him. He had some mental disabilities. Give him a knife and some wood and he’d make you all the bookshelves you could ever want, but he couldn’t figure out how to work the lock on the front door. So it was our one rule, and I broke it…”

She shook her head, still so angry at herself.

“That’s why I ran away from home. I couldn’t take living there anymore. Couldn’t stop thinking about how Trevor would still be alive if I hadn’t left that door open. If I’d just remembered to lock the door behind me…”

She broke off, the emotion of it getting to her now, the same as it had gotten to her back then. Like an old wound that healed over, but still sent pain shooting across your nerve endings whenever you dared to press on it. Trevor was and probably always would be that old wound.

She waited for Bair to come at her with some questions. But he continued to sit across from her with his legs around hers. Patiently waiting to hear the rest of her strange story. So she forced herself to continue.

“Anyway, my mother—she, ah—it’s hard to explain. But she talks with spirits—future, past, and in-between. And they tell her things. That’s how she knew about all my stuff with you. And that’s how she knew where Trevor…I guess you could call it ‘ended up’ in his next life. He’s an 11-year-old Asian kid now, and he lives with his two moms in that townhouse across the way. So, I…ah…came out here to see about him.”

Only when she finished her explanation did Thel dare to look up at him. Jesus, this weekend! First she’d told him about the cancer, and now…now this. He’d asked for Sirena, the newly created girl he’d met in Greece. But he was getting more Thelxiope than she ever dared to share with him, or anyone else for that matter, before.

She waited for the shift. For his legs to fall away from hers when he came to the conclusion most folks would. That her mother was crazy and that Thel might as well be, too. After all, she not only believed her mother had these gifts, but she’d also taken the time to come to the house of an 11-year-old boy who looked and sounded nothing like her brother.

Bair’s stone-cold eyes flicked to the window. He was probably trying to decide if he should leave right now or have her committed first, she thought to herself ruefully.

But then he asked, “Have you seen him yet?”

Thel let out an expulsion of breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Yeah,” she barely managed to get out, her voice cracking. “He and his moms went somewhere earlier. He’s not mentally challenged now, but I could see Trevor inside him, because it looked like he was asking his moms all these questions. Just like Trev used to do with me and Willa. I knew it was him the moment I saw him. I’ve been waiting all this time for them to come back. I know it’s crazy, but I just want one more glimpse before I leave San Francisco. Just one more…”

Again, he seemed to consider her words carefully, and Thel watched him until their waitress interrupted with two plates of hot food.

Bair looked up at the young waitress as if he’d forgotten they’d even ordered food. But then he took out his wallet and put another $100 on the table.

“More tip,” he told her. “We will be here for maybe much longer time.”

Thel’s heart just about exploded then, and she gazed at her Beast with shining, adoring eyes as the happy waitress said, “Take your time!”

“You believe me,” Thel whispered after the waitress left with the swiftly pocketed hundy.

Bair’s mountainous shoulders lifted with a bored shrug. “I grew up in Siberia and my grandmother was a devout Buddhist. She had one strange story, which I will tell you now. Her great-grandfather used to be white Siberian tiger, but he fell in love with her great-grandmother, a young Buryat girl who lived in the village closest to his forest. Soon after, a hunter shot and killed my great-grandfather and his dying wish was to be with the Buryat girl he loved. At the same time a fifteen-year-old boy in the village died of influenza. The Buddha decided to be kind. He passed the tiger into the dead boy, and her great-grandfather came back alive on his deathbed with no memories, except that he used to be a tiger. He took her great-grandmother to wife, but they soon found his human life came with a curse. He and the rest of his line could only have one child. That is why my grandmother only had my mother, and why my mother only had me. My grandmother told me this story about her ancestor nearly every night when I was a little boy. So you see, she made your story easy for me to believe.”