Making Promises (12 page)

All sorts of things fell into place, and Shane’s expression softened.

Mikhail looked away from him. “Don’t pity me,” he bit out, sniffing to hide the fact that he was near tears.

“Don’t insult
me
!”
Shane snapped back. Did Mikhail think his words in the dressing room were just that? Pretty words with no heart? “Those are really old, aren’t they?”

Mikhail glanced at him—an improvement over the knot he’d tied his face in—and then looked away. “Da. Ten… no, eleven years.”

“What are you? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-five.”

Shane took a chance and took a step forward. He missed the closeness, the warmth. He needed to be back to that place between them before he left. “You were a baby,” he said softly. “How did you get out?” Mikhail shrugged, and Shane inched forward again. They were standing a foot or two apart, and Shane just watched Mikhail’s expressive face—his defensiveness would slip, and he would be naked, and then he’d pull it up again, and he would be angry. So much emotion bottled up in a compact, cynical, muscular body.

“My mother,” Mikhail said, after his anger dropped and he was…

just bare and vulnerable. “She… she was nurse.” His accent was much 62

thicker. “She brought me clean needles, condoms….” He shrugged and almost made it look insouciant. “I was the only disease-free junkie in St.

Petersburg, da?”

“Good to hear. She got you into rehab?”

Mikhail gave a humorless laugh. “After she got me stoned and into an airplane for the Promised Land, yes.”

Shane nodded neutrally. “I bet it was horrible.”

“I don’t remember,” Mikhail lied thickly. He looked away like he was pretending they weren’t standing close enough to feel the other one breathing.

“How did you start?” Shane cupped his elbow gently and brought up his arm for a closer inspection. Yes, the veins had been ravaged—they were pitted and had probably nearly collapsed. But the skin was unblemished around them now.

“I was dancer. It… it is common, in dance. You get hurt, you get rid of hurt so you can dance some more. One day, you can no longer dance because the thing you did to dance has ruined you.” Another one of those lying shrugs. “And then you are turning tricks in alleys so you can do the thing that ruined you and so your mother does not starve.” Shane met his eyes and nodded so Mikhail would know it was understood. He’d been a junkie and a prostitute, and there was no glossing over that. And then, while Mikhail was glaring at him, daring him to show compassion or pity or anger or disgust, Shane brought that tender flesh up to his mouth and kissed it.

The sound Mikhail made was beyond pain, so Shane kept kissing the scarred, once-ravaged skin, running his tongue over the line of abused vein and then bending, moving his mouth up that strong bicep, up to Mikhail’s smooth shoulder, up to his neck and the strong, clean line of his jaw. He stopped when he got to the ear and used his nose to brush some straying curls back. Then he put his lips there in the hollow and whispered, “You are still my hope, and now, I’m your promise.”

“Don’t promise things,” Mikhail whispered back in the broken voice of a lost child. “It’s not nice.”

Shane pulled back and captured that pointed chin in his fingers. “It’s only not nice when you don’t keep it.” He closed the distance between them again and gave a brief, hard kiss against the sulky, lush mouth, and Making Promises

just when Mikhail relaxed enough to open up and give him access, Shane pulled back and started rooting through the pouch at his side.

While Mikhail stared at him in outrage—and disappointment—

Shane wrote hurriedly on a receipt he didn’t care about and then thrust the paper into Mikhail’s unresisting hand.

“That’s my cell number. And my home number. And you’ll probably throw it away—but that’s not the point. The point is, I’m going to leave before I end up doing you in the back of the damned GTO, but you can call me and bitch me out about it if you’re so inclined. The point is, I’ll be seeing you—if not this week, next week. You think that”—he nodded toward Mikhail’s arm, resting at his side now—“is going to make me want you any less—or think any less of you—then you’re as deluded as you think
I
am. Now give me a kiss goodbye and let me know you’ll miss me, and I’m going to get in the car and go to my hotel like a good knight in shining armor, okay?”

He was half expecting the crack of the hand across his cheek—and he enjoyed it more than he thought he would.

“I’ll
eat
that number before I use it!” Mikhail said, putting it into his own belt pouch with more care than Shane thought he knew.

“I’m sure you will,” Shane replied mildly, wincing as he rubbed the bruise forming on his cheek.

“And if you think I’m just going back to my tent to moon over you, you’re insane!”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Shane said, nodding. Oh, God he was beautiful. His eyes were sparkling, and his cheeks were blotchy with anger—and he wasn’t defensive or miserable or sad. He wasn’t expecting to be rejected or offering to settle for a night or a minute or a quickie in the back of the car. He was absolutely possessed with his own worth, and that’s exactly how Shane wanted him.

“I’m going to fuck some stranger!” he threatened, and Shane had to gasp for a moment before he conceded to himself that this was a valid threat—and a valid consequence when courting someone with Mikhail’s damage. He’d have to deal with the possibility, that was all there was to it.

Mikhail must have heard the intake of breath because he looked up into Shane’s eyes and said, “I’ll fuck ten of them!” spitefully, and with a little bit of wildness, and Shane’s eyes narrowed.

“You do that,” he growled, and then he grabbed Mikhail’s shoulders and turned him back against the car. “You fuck as many random strangers as you need to and get that all out of your system.” And then he mashed his mouth against Mikhail’s, and Mickey opened for him immediately—

angry, aroused, passionate—and Shane plundered. He held his palms against the smooth skin of Mikhail’s shoulders and trapped him there firmly, making no bones about the fact that he was bigger and stronger, and for all Mikhail’s quickness, Shane could outpower him in a heartbeat.

But he didn’t have to, because Mickey’s mouth was open and wet, and he was whimpering in the back of his throat and pulling unhappily at the leather jerkin and the oddly fastened pants and trying to get access to the skin of Shane’s back. For his part, Shane raised his hands to frame Mickey’s cheeks and was stroking his thumbs along that sharp, vulpine jawline.

He wanted a cape and tights and a big “S” on his chest for pulling away.

Mikhail actually whined as he did it, and Shane gave a panting, breathless smile. “You do that,” he gasped, his chest heaving with hunger.

“You do whatever and whoever you have to do—but you just remember: you’ll be thinking of me the whole time, and I’ll be back for you. On a day when you’re Mikhail and not Oberon and I’m Shane and not Robin Hood, I’ll be back, and we’re going to start this again.” With that he put Mikhail firmly away from the car, got in, and turned over the engine. He pulled away in a cloud of red dust, “I Came For You” blaring defiantly from the stereo.

Even if we’re just dancing in the dark…

“Dancing in the Dark”—Bruce Springsteen

MIKHAIL watched the car peel out and fought the urge to stomp his foot like a child. He had been so close… oh God…. He had tasted
so
good.

“Courtship,” he muttered to himself, standing under the twilight sky with his hands on his hips. “Courtship? Who do you think I am? I am no damsel in distress.
Fuck
damsels in distress. Fuck you for that matter. Big stupid cop—think you are all that, don’t you? I’ll think you are all that while I’m getting laid, yes. That’s when I’ll think of you.” Jesus. Didn’t he get it? Everything was all right for those moments of sex. The world was golden, rosy promise, warm human feeling, and kindness when bodies were touching. It was all one could count on—it was all a man needed.

Bitterly disappointed, Mikhail stalked toward his tent. He had sandwiches in a cooler there and soda. Shane had bought him a late lunch, but he burned calories very quickly, especially on days like this when he danced and when he was
looking forward to sex all day.
Bastard.

You are my hope, and I am your promise.

Bullshit.

He got to his tent and sat down on his little fold-out stool propped up in the front. He’d been subbing for troupes at the faires for a couple of years and had managed to do without the hotel room and live in relative comfort just the same. Everything in the tent could be folded up and put in a camper’s backpack, and he was proud of that. It was self-sufficient, and 66

Mikhail enjoyed being self-sufficient. Too many painful things could happen when you depended on someone to be waiting for you with comfort. Self-sufficiency was a virtue.

With a practiced motion he put his ear-buds in and hit play on his iPod. He liked music. All music—classical, jazz, old rock, new rock, rap, pop, metal, strings, brass, and the didgeridoo. He had earned enough money for a laptop when he’d been twenty years old, and his next purchase had been the iPod. It was old, and it couldn’t hold as many songs as he’d like, but he could spend hours picking out what would go on it, and that was something.

Moodily he leaned back against the canvas back of the stool and peered up at the stars. His fingers went to the little pouch, and he pulled out the number and looked at it.

It looked legitimate. Go figure. He knew people—he should give someone those numbers and make the stupid cop a prime victim of identity theft. He reached into the pouch again and pulled out his little vial of oil and pulled off the cork, inhaling lightly.

Involuntarily his eyes closed. He could still smell the oil on the big stupid cop’s skin, under his leather jerkin. He could see his broad, friendly face splitting into a grin—a shy grin—under the autumn sun. He could hear his voice telling him… miracles, if truth be known. A man who would spend a fortune on children who were not his because he wanted to see them smile. A man who would come to a world he didn’t understand and buy clothes to match in order to impress a sister he hadn’t seen in years. A man who would look at him, track marks and all, and call him, Mikhail, a hope.

Stupid man.

Carefully Mikhail put a little bit of scented oil on the receipt in his hand and then replaced the cork and put the vial and the phone numbers back in his pouch. He had a box at home for such things. Then he resumed his contemplation of the sky. The stars were coming out, and since Gilroy was mostly rural farmland, that meant something. It was getting a little bit cool—sometimes an ocean breeze made its way in from the coast—and Mikhail reached inside the tent for the shirt Shane had bought him.

It fit very well, and Mikhail took out a little bit of oil and daubed it on the shirt too. The promise was a lie, of course, but it would be nice, Making Promises

sometime in the future, to remember the lie and pretend it might someday be real.

He put the oil back and was prepared to tip his face to the sky and enjoy his music (Coldplay was the band today—“Kingdom Come” was a favorite song, as was “Clocks”) when a silhouette interrupted his view.

“Go away,” Mikhail said sourly. “I do not wish to speak to you tonight.”

Brett leaned forward and tried to touch lips with him, and Mikhail rolled off the chair, onto his knees in the dust, and came up furious.

“I said go away! You think I want to touch you now? After what you said to that nice man?”

Brett rolled his eyes and shrugged. “It was a Faire hook-up, Mikhail—you have them all the time. And then we have them, and then we have next weekend, right?”

“Nyet.” But it was true, he thought, not liking the way it sounded when Brett said it.

Brett smiled and moved behind him, trying to wrap his arms around Mikhail’s chest. “C’mon, Oberon… let’s you and Puck go make a little music, right?” Mikhail shrugged him off and turned around.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He was going to add, “Not tonight,” but he remembered the way Shane had flushed in embarrassment, had called himself fat, had generally made very little of himself with all of his kindness and his quick words and his beautiful smile. “Not again,” was what he said instead, and he kept his face carefully cold as Brett jerked back, hurt.