187

Nadia
I’m in love. I want to be a burlesque dancer. They are everything.
I watch the way the women hold their own on the stage. They dominate. They are sexual-
but empowered. Beautiful and demanding of our attention.
This is exactly what I need. This energy. Taking back my sexuality. Giving it on my terms.
I want to be up on that stage deciding exactly how much skin I show. Giving access to my body on my own terms.
Owning the audience.
We sit at a table sipping soda water with lime and dropping dollar bills in the dancers’ buckets when they sweep through the audience requesting tips.
Flynn drapes a casual arm across the back of my chair and keeps glancing over, like he’s more interested in what I think than the actual show. For a guy who doesn’t do commitment or girlfriends, he’s so damn attentive.
He always seems to have his finger on my pulse, knowing what I need. When I’m starting to freak out and when I’m having fun.
Flynn
I study Nadia’s profile as we sit at a table at Rue’s to watch the show. I’ve seen the show beforeor many variations of it. I used to work at Rue’s taking the cover charge at the door a few nights a week.
Watching Nadia take it in is far more entertaining. The dancers are on stage doing a group dance. Tonight they are a troupe of five women and one drag queen, but it varies week to week. They have individual pieces and a few group pieces. Their art involves lip sync, dance, strip tease and performance art. They’re not super polished, but it doesn’t matterit’s their raw presence that makes the crowd love them. That and the sexual nature of the show.
Nadia clearly loves everything she sees. Her expression is rapt and full of light. She radiates pleasure and life.
I’m in love.
Wow. First time for everything, right?
I mean, this has to be love. The way I feel with Nadia is like nothing I’ve experienced before. She makes me feel like a different person. A better version of myself.
I don’t want to drink or smoke around her.
I want to write songs.
Now she has me thinking I might even man up and put some effort into making the band into more.
After driving back to Rue’s neighborhood, we stopped in at a pizza joint to fill our bellies then came in here to get a table. I ordered a Coke and Nadia’s drinking Sprite. She said she shouldn’t drink because she’s on anti-anxiety meds. I don’t have any urge to touch alcohol or weed around her.
I feel the need to stay sober around Nadia. It’s not just because I feel protective but also just because I don’t want to miss anything. Not a single nuance or word she utters. I want to absorb it all. She is light and unicorns. And yes, sometimes puddles, but I would take a thousand rain showers and mud puddles and punches in the jaw for a night like this.
The dance ends, and she cheers, looking at me to see if I’m as enthusiastic as she is. “I love it,” she tells me. “I want to join them.”
“What?” I lean forward to make sure I heard that right.
“I want to join them. I want to be a burlesque dancer.”
I absorb that. It makes sense. The dancers own and control their own sexuality. They’re on stage. They’re in charge. In control. After what Nadia’s been through, it makes sense that she’d crave that sense of ownership and control over her body and how it is viewed.
“Awesome,” I say, determined to make sure it happens. Even if it means talking her through a dozen panic attacks to get her there, I will make sure she gets on that stage if she wants to.
“Do you think I could?”
“I’m sure you could,” I say. I’ll help make it happen if she needs me, but I have little doubt she could arrange it all on her own. All she needs is a little encouragement and a nudge. “Talk to Danica. Maybe they have classes or something.”
She nods. “When I show her my costume ideas I will ask her.”
“Perfect,” I agree.
I can’t imagine it wouldn’t work outso long as Nadia doesn’t have a panic attack on stage. But I would be with her to make sure it didn’t happen.
As I contemplate all the untapped potential lurking within Nadia, I suddenly understand what she meant about me blocking my own success.
If I believe she can do anything she wants toand I dowhy wouldn’t I believe the same of myself? I haven’t done much with my life, but it doesn’t mean I can’t. Nadia sees potential in me, which is more than I see in myself.
“Let’s go back to your place.” Nadia’s lips at my ear. She’s turned on by the show. I love it. I didn’t expect her to want to return to my place, but I’m down. I’m more than down. I’m freaking ready.
I throw a tip on the table and stand up, grabbing her hand. Her smile is wide as I lead her out the door. We jog for the van, just like we did last time. Like we can’t wait to get our hands on each other again. I am definitely in love.
Totally and completely in love.
Nadia
“You sit here.” I point to the armchair in the middle of Flynn’s living room. I want to do a striptease. I want to be like those women on stage tonight. Sultry and seductive. Holding all the power.
Flynn drops into the chair, his eyes darkened with desire.
“I need stripping music,” I tell him.
He calls up “Sexy Back” on his phone, and it starts playing through a speaker in the kitchen.
I prance around the room finding the beat. I stop and swing my hips, sinking to a squat, then rising again.
Flynn groans in approval, his thumb resting on his lower lip.
I remove my clothing piece by piece until I’m in nothing but my panties. Some of my moves are sexy. Some are silly. It doesn’t matter because Flynn appears to be enthralled by everything I do. At the end of the song, I straddle his waist, undulating my hips over his hardened cock.
I lower to my knees at his feet and unbutton his pants. His manhood bulges against the thin fabric of his boxer briefs. I free his erection and fist it. I’m going to give him the best blowjob I know how.
I open my lips, but as my mouth gets close, unwanted memories flood my mind. Fear makes my muscles seize. My throat closes. The mechanical whirring of gears clangs and rattles in my ears.
I jerk back, suddenly that other girlthe broken one.
I’m going to be sick.
I run for the bathroom.
“Nadia?” Flynn charges after me, his voice laced with concern, which only makes it worse.
I shut the bathroom door, trying to lock it, but he twists the handle before I do. I jump back as it flies open.
“I’m sorry.” I shake all over. My body’s in trauma, even though my mind wants to stay with Flynn.
“Hey,” he says softly, stepping into the small space with me. “It’s okay.” He opens his arms but doesn’t make any demands.
I was ready to crouch in the corner and hide, embarrassed over my breakdown, but it seems so much simpler to just enter the circle of his embrace.
When I do, he tightens his arms around me. “You don’t have to run and hide from me.” He rocks from foot to foot, slow dancing with me around the bathroom, his lips on my hair. “We’re in this together.”
I let out a rough sob.
“I signed up for this, remember? I knew it wouldn’t be easy.”
“It was earlier,” I complain.
“Yeah. And this time it wasn’t. That’s okay, too.” He massages the back of my neck.
“I wanted to…” I can’t even talk about giving head. The memory of being repeatedly forced is too much in the forefront of my brain.
“It’s cool. Everything’s fine, Peaches. Let’s go to bed. Are you staying the night?”
Am I? I didn’t think that far ahead. Tonight, I’ve blissfully lived moment by moment, and they were all great until now.
But Flynn’s inviting me to spend the night with him.
Flynn Taylor, the guy who doesn’t do girlfriends. The king of casual sex. The unrepentant player.
He wants me in his bed tonight. And not for sex.
I lift my head and nod.
“Want a toothbrush?” He opens a cabinet below the sink and produces one still in the package.
I give him a weak smile. “Thank you.”
He just gives me that easy grin and puts a line of toothpaste on his toothbrush then mine. We stand at the sink and brush our teeth together like an old married couple.
It feels easy. The trauma starts to slip off me, like a jacket I can take off when I come inside from the cold. My heartbeat calms. The sweating in my palms goes away. I still feel queasy, but I try not to think about it.
I watch Flynn brush his teeth, his muscles flexing against his shirt. He makes even the most ordinary action look sexy.
We both spit and rinse our mouths out, and Flynn heads to the bedroom while I use the toilet. When I get to the bedroom, the lights are off. He has the covers open, and he’s lying in bed propped on one elbow, waiting for me.
I climb in beside him, and he rolls to wrap an arm around my waist. For a while, I listen to the sound of his breath, wondering what he thinks about me now. He didn’t seem disappointed. I think I’m more disappointed than he is.
As if in answer to my wondering, he murmurs, “You’re strong, Nadia. And brave. You will shake this.”
I roll over in the dark and rest my head on his shoulder. “I was drugged most of time,” I tell him, my accent thicker with emotion.
It seems easier to talk about it in the dark. I can almost smell the nauseating scent of cigar smoke, but I inhale Flynn’s scent instead.
“It washow do you say it in Englisha blessing and a curse. Both.”
“Yeah?”
“Blessing because my memories are all fuzzy. I can almost pretend it was nightmarenot real.”
Flynn strokes my cheek but otherwise doesn’t respond, leaving the space open for me to go on.
“It’s a curse because when they do surface, I get confused and scared. I have a strong reaction.”
Flynn makes a rumbling sound.
“It took my brain chemistry a long time to adjust after I got free. Some of my depression was chemical. I wanted to scrub my brain of all of it, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“But when you asked me to go to a party with you, I asked for the anti-anxiety medication my therapist wanted me to try. And it does help.”
“There’s no shame in using medication, for the time being or permanently. Whatever it takes for you to regain your life, Nadia.”
I nestle closer to him. “You’re so wise for your age. Why is that?”
“My mom struggles with mental illness. She was hospitalized a lot when I was growing up… for depression.”
“Gospodi, that must have been hard. I’m sorry.”
I feel him shrug beneath my head. “It was all right. There was a lot of love. Our family was crazy and chaotic, but we took good care of each other. Story took care of me and Dahlia when our mom couldn’t function.”
“Dahlia is the sister in Wisconsin?”
“Yes. She and her high school boyfriend went together and are still making it work. She turned out the most normal of all of us.”
Hearing Flynn’s warm rumble sloughs away more of the residual trauma in my body.
“Adrian had to look out for me, too. Our mom died of cancer, and our dad became an alcoholic.”
“That’s why it’s hard for him to take a step back now.”
“Da. Also…My kidnapping changed him. A lot. It made him feel helpless, and now he overcompensates. He had to become something else in order to get me back.”
“A member of the Russian mafiya.”
“Da. He has blood on his hands now.”
“Yeah. I’m sure Oleg does, too. Probably way more.”
“Does it bother you? Your sister being engaged to a bratva member?”
“Honestly? No. That guy is one hundred percent a teddy bear with her. I guess my only worry would be that something bad would happen to him, and she’d be left alone.”
We’re quiet a while longer. The mechanical gear sounds stop completely. The anxiety of trying to make it all go away isn’t here, either. For the first time, I actually feel brave enough to try to look at what triggered me.
Forced oral sex. That was it.
“There was a guy who came every night. The same guy,” I tell Flynn. I feel like puking, but it’s not worth holding it in. Keeping these stories inside me is what makes them too much to manage.
Flynn goes still.
“He smelled like cigars and liked the rape thing. Even though I was chained, he still had to hold me down or choke me. And he always used me. I was his… don’t knowpreferred slave. He liked to gag me with his…” I trail off because now I really don’t want to finish the story.
Flynn says nothing, but there’s more tension in him than usual. I don’t sense the same spacious allowance he usually offers.
After a moment, he says, “I get why Adrian is the way he is. I’m not violent, but I would definitely kill that guy if I had the chance.”
“Me too,” I murmur. And it’s true.
Adrian was hunting the leader of the sex trafficking ringKat’s father. I didn’t care about him. I never met him.
The man I want dead is the mudakwho haunts my nightmares. Maybe in the law’s eyes, he’s the least culpable. He wasn’t selling me. He was just buying. I don’t carehe’s the one I remember most. He’s the one who actually raped me-over and over again. And after what he did to me, he doesn’t deserve to live.
“So he’s still alive? Adrian didn’t get to him?”
The whirring gears start up, but I don’t resist. I let them play in my head. A soundtrack to my torment. Except this time, I recognize the torment as something different than victimhood. This time it feels like rage.
“Nyet. I would like to find him. And if I did, I would put gun to his head and pull the trigger myself.” I feel sick saying it, but there’s also something steadying about admitting my desire for violence.
“I’d bury the body for you,” Flynn says.
I feel laughter somewhere in my chest. It doesn’t come out. It feels far away, and yet it registers enough to lighten my mood. I throw my leg over Adrian’s hips. “Would you?”
I suspect we’re playing Flynn’s storyteller game right now. Concocting a story that would never happen but is fun to imagine. It’s strange pillow talk, yet I’ve never felt closer to another person in my life. This conversation is exactly what I needed.
“I’d drive the getaway car. I’d tie him up and hold him in place. But only if you’re a good shot.” There’s teasing in Flynn’s voice, as if he sensed my shift in mood.
“I’m not,” I admit. “I actually don’t know how to shoot a gun. So you’d better not hold him in place in case I screw it up.”
“I would beat the shit out of him first, so he was incapable of moving, and then you could shoot him.”
I try to picture it. It’s really too absurd to imagine. I could see Adrian doing it. Or any of his bratva brothers, but me and Flynn? It feels as fantastical as it sounds. I like to pretend, though. “I would like to pull the trigger. I think I could.”
“If you couldn’t, I would finish it for you.”
Pressure lifts off me in rolling waves. I’m me again. Not that lost, broken me, but the real me. Solid. Grounded. Built of sturdy bones and covered in peaches and cream skin.
I want to thank Flynn. I also want to try again. To erase the presence of the cigar man in the room. In our sex life. Under my skin.
I crawl down under the covers, straddling Flynn’s legs.
“You don’t have to, Nadia. I don’t care if my dick gets sucked or not. I’m good.” He reaches for me. “Let me taste you.”
“I want to.” I fist his cock, which instantly firms in my grip. “I really need to do this.”
“Turn around, then,” Flynn urges. “Sixty-nine. Sit on my face.”
I laugh because it’s not something I’ve ever tried.
I’d had sex before I was enslaved. A few boyfriends. But I guess there’s still a lot I don’t know. Flynn probably knows everything.
It’s embarrassing, but I change position, kneeling over his face. Even though it’s dark, I squeeze my eyes shut tight, willing the memories back, chanting in my head, This is Flynn, this is Flynn, this is Flynn.
He grips my thighs and tugs me down to his mouth, his tongue parting my flesh. I moan at the contact. My clit is already sensitized from our earlier round, and my ass jerks at the zing of sensation that shoots straight to my core.
Flynn works me with enthusiasm, sucking at my labia, tonguing me in at least five different ways. It makes it easy to surrender to the sensation. To forget the thing I’m most afraid ofmy past overtaking the present.
It’s easy to open my mouth and take the head of Flynn’s cock into the pocket of my cheek. As I grow more confident, more secure, I angle it straight back. I’m on top. I’m in control. No one will choke me. This is for Flynn.
This is also for me.
My pleasure matches his. Giving and receiving at the same time.
I sink into the moment. There isn’t the desperate edge to reach a finish line that we had before. There isn’t even a proving to myself that I can do this.
I’m already doing it. I already have done it.
There’s no pressure to perform. I can actually slow down and enjoy. I take my time, licking around the head of Flynn’s cock, flicking my tongue along the slit. When I take him deep into my mouth again, he groans against my flesh and starts licking with more animation.
Happiness slips in.
A slice of glory.
I haven’t orgasmed yet, but the feel-good hormones have already rushed to my brain, bathing it in pleasure. Love. Bonding.
“Nadia?” Flynn’s voice is deep and raspy with lust.
“Da?”
“Can I fuck you, babe? I want to get on top and fuck you good.”
“Yes,” I breathe. “Pozhaluysta…please.” I scramble off him and turn around on the bed.
He gets up on his knees and meets me in the middle, looping an arm behind my back and kissing me with the gloss of my juices on his lips. “Just say no if it doesn’t feel good, okay?”
I nod my head. I already know that won’t happen. I’m so ready for him. I want to feel everything he wants to give me.
“Lie down on your belly, Peaches,” he murmurs.
When I do, he grabs a pillow and lifts my hips to slip it under them. Then he climbs over me. “Spread your legs, sweetheart.”
I hear the snap of a foil wrapper as he puts a condom on, then he stands on his knees between my thighs and lowers his body over mine. His cock nudges at my entrance. I tip my ass up to take him.
He goes slowly, but I’m so wet and ready, there’s no resistance. Especially after our first session. He feeds his length into me, inch by inch until his loins hit my ass. The head of his cock strokes my inner walls in the perfect place.
It feels wonderful.
Perfect, even.
He blankets my body with his entire form, sliding an arm under my ribs, so he’s holding me in an embrace as he snaps his hips to drive into me.
“I’m right here,” he murmurs against my ear. “Are you good?”
“So good,” I breathe, opening my legs even wider.
He nibbles along my neck, the seductive tenderness balancing out the animalistic force with which he fucks me. It’s a little wild and rough but still very personal. Intimate. Our two bodies work in concert to drive us both to the precipice.
I start to cry out, and Flynn slows, brushing my hair back from my cheek to see my face.
“Don’t stop,” I moan. “Please. I need more. Please.”
“I’ll give it to you, sweetheart.” He slides the hand underneath me down between our legs and finds my clit. One pinch, and I’m shrieking, hurtling over the edge into oblivion.
I shatter and come back together. Shatter again. I spin. No, the room spinsI float.
I’m flying, like the wish from the rainbow grasshopper was granted to me instead of Flynn.
Or maybe he’s flying, too.
He hasn’t finished yet, though. He waits until my muscles stop clenching and squeezing around his cock, and then he rises up on one arm to brace himself above me and pounds into me. “Are you okay?” he pants, still thinking about my comfort.
“Da, da, da!” I want him to come. To feel as glorious as I do.
And he does. He slams in deep with a shout and drops to hold me tight again.
Tears prick my eyes because it’s so wonderful. It was so easy and wonderful and perfect.
I knew Flynn would be the guy.
But now, I don’t know what to do.
Now, I’m completely lost.
Because I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen head over heels in love with this man.
The player.
The guy who doesn’t want a girlfriend.