Her Russian Beast: 50 Loving States, New Mexico (2 page)

Dear oldest daughter, you can’t keep bringing these sad animals home,
her mother would say when she and Trevor showed up at the door, him carrying yet another dog some cruel person had left on the side of the road.

Their little house lay on the very outskirts of the small Virginia town they’d moved to when she was seventeen. Which made the road right outside their home the perfect place for folks from the surrounding bigger cities to dump aging or hurt pets they no longer wanted. She’d felt compelled to start rescuing those poor dogs, sometimes going as far as to nurse them back to health before taking them on to the local shelter. Her younger brother, Trevor, had been the perfect assistant for her unofficial fostering service. Big and mentally disabled, his kindness continued to know no bounds, even after the age when most boys became cruel with raging hormones.

And now here was a man everyone called The Russian Beast, hurting bad from something—she could tell—and fighting demons only he could see. She stepped closer to him on instinct.

But then he asked, “How much?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have been to these fights before. I know how it works with Cyrus’s ring girls. Especially the ones he lets room here.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, you want to have sex with me.” She threw him an apologetic look. “Yeah, Cyrus told me that’s a good way to make extra money down here, but I’m still…” she searched for the right words to describe her current mental state and could only come up with, “…not quite there yet. Maybe next time.”

His dark eyes flickered with angry confusion. “Next time I can have you? This is what you are saying?”

“Yes, maybe next time,” she answered. “Like I said, I’m still working up to it.”

“You are being serious? You are not like Cyrus’s other ring girls? You do not take fighters into your bed after the fights?” he asked, obviously not believing her.

“So I’m assuming you’ve been in this room before?” she asked, her tone dry. “With all the other ring girls?”

He just continued to stare down at her, his unrelenting gaze heavy as stone. “My brother tells me my English is good. Better than his when he was my age. But I do not understand you.”

She tilted her head up at him. Liking him. Liking the way he made her laugh, even if it wasn’t anywhere near intentional on his part. “I’m saying it sounds like you’ve fucked a few girls before me in this bedroom, Beast. Is that clear enough for you?” she asked.

He actually seemed to consider her question. Then surprised the hell out of her when he quietly confessed. “Sometimes the fighting is not enough. Sometimes I need more.”

“More,” she repeated. “For the demons you mean?”

He nodded, looking wary like he expected her to run or something.

But when she continued to stand there, waiting to hear what he’d say next, he surprised her again by asking. “Sirena. This is your name,
da
, little ring girl?”

“Yep!” she lied with a pleasant smile. “Sirena Gale. My passport got stolen a few days ago, so I figured that was life telling me to start over. So now I’m Sirena Gale, ring girl-slash-nurse maid. At least until I find the funds to move on.”

He frowned. “Your passport was stolen, but you are not upset.”

She shrugged. “It’s cool. I came over here to be somebody else for a little while. Now I can be.”

“But you are not ready to sell your body?”

“No, not yet,” she answered with another shrug and a smile.

Her answer made his glower go even darker. “I do not like being teased.”

“You should reconsider your position on that, Mr. Beast,” she replied with a grin. “Teasing’s kind of fun under the right circumstances.”

Now he regarded her with a suspicious glare. “Do you know my real last name?”

“It’s not Beast?”

His square jaw gritted back and forward. “You are teasing me again.”

She grinned. “You got me.”

But he didn’t smile back at her. Like at all. “No, I do not have you.
Yet
.”

T
he girl standing
in front of him, so close but so far away, was not making this easy for him. With her sultry eyes and her teasing voice. But his erection was pounding now inside his shorts, and he was done with her games.

“Tell me this, Sirena,” he said. “You guessed the truth about me having to fight, but do you really understand about me now? What has to happen if you do not get out of my way and let me return to the circle?”

He got a brazen satisfaction out of watching the girl visibly swallow in response to his question, her throat working up and down. And just in case she had any remaining illusions, he told her the hard facts of their situation without any softness whatsoever.

“Fight or fuck, Sirena. That is only choice you will ever have with me.”

Her eyes widened slightly, but she remained where she was. And he had to admire her for not fleeing like a small animal. As most girls would do given a set of similar choices.

Now it was he who stepped closer to her, head dropping so he could get a better look at her as he said, “You lie about your name. Are you lying about other thing?”

“Other thing?”

“When you say you aren’t afraid of me.”

“No, I ain’t lying about that,” she answered. Voice soft but fierce.

“Perhaps,” he said, bringing his large hands up to her waist. “You should be scared of me.”

“Hmm,” she said, tilting her own head to once again meet his gaze square in the eye. “But I’m not.”

“You should be,” he said, even as he tugged her closer, pulling her body flush with his so she had no choice but to feel what was going on behind his fighting shorts. The pulsing erection that had apparently replaced his need to fight.

But… “I’m still not scared,” she informed him.

“You should be.”

“But I’m not.”

And before he could answer, she curled her hand around his neck and kissed him, sipping at his sweat, lust, and rage like a curious cat.

He froze, the Darkness inside of him not quite knowing what to do with this bold girl’s kiss. But then his Darkness exploded into flame.

He kissed her back. Savagely lifting her head higher as he gave her lips rough claim. Kissed her and kissed her until everything around them disappeared: the grimy basement room, the noise of the fight taking place on the other side of the door, the wild sadness that had been dogging him for the past year.

Kissed her until she understood.

She wasn’t a whore, but tonight she would give her body to him. Tonight she would become his possession.

H
e woke
the next day to the sound of an angel singing. Had he gone to heaven?

Of course not. He didn’t believe in heaven. And even if he did, he doubted such a place would let him in.

Nonetheless, he could clearly hear the angel singing in this room. He sat up and found her by the space’s only window with a white mug in her hand. She seemed to be watching the feet of pedestrians pass by as she sang.

It was a soft song with a strange vernacular. He was only able to catch a few of the English words. Something about summertime and living easy. Although it was not summertime, nor from the looks of her unheated basement room did her living seem easy. But still he recognized the song as opera—beautifully sung, which was surprising since he was fairly certain she couldn’t possibly have any formal training.

“You sing like angel,” he told her when she was done.

“Oh, I didn’t know you was up,” she said, startling at the window. A sultry smile lifted her lips, and to him it sounded like she was still singing when she said, “Thank you for the nice compliment, Beast.”

He sneered as he looked around the cold room. She was the only pretty thing in the small, gray place with a solitary mattress, a cheap dresser drawer, and a sink for washing up. It reminded him of home. The one he’d shared with his grandmother in Siberia. And he hated it.

“It is fact not compliment,” he told her, tone harsh as the gray winter morning outside the window.

“Oh, even better then,” she answered, laughing. “A fact from you feels exactly like a present come early on Christmas Eve.”

And he once again found himself squinting hard at her. She was still not scared of him.

Even after last night.

“The last ring girl must have had a real steady clientele,”
Sirena had joked, pointing to the basket of condoms on top of the dresser drawer as he carried her to the bed.

He didn’t laugh as he plucked one foil package out of the basket. Couldn’t laugh at the thought of Sirena eventually becoming like the last girl and pointing other men to the basket.

The Darkness threatened and he had to blank his mind in order to deal with this silly girl who didn’t know any better than to be scared of him in her tiny room.

He’d taken her hard the first few times. Brutal, his desire for her not allowing for any of the prettiness women liked. But she’d received him each time. Her lush curves pillowing his heavy body, making him think of that place in which he didn’t believe as he spilled into one condom after another.

But it was never enough. He kept pulling out, only to immediately rise again. Wanting her. Needing her back beneath him…

They’d spent nearly the entire night fucking. Him unable to stop rising for her. Her murmuring English words in his ears as he pushed his big body into hers.

“Yes, baby. Fuck yes. Just like that. So good…I ain’t never…oh…make me feel…make me feel.”

“How old are you?” he’d asked her at one point, beginning to wonder if her many “I ain’t nevers” were a joke.

“Nineteen. No, wait…twenty,” she answered with a smile. “My birthday was in August, but I don’t like that month so I keep on forgetting.”

Twenty. Not even old enough to drink in her home country. That explained her eagerness and wonder with him, if not his own desire at the relatively hardened age of twenty-one to keep possessing her again and again. Never sated. Satisfied for long, pleasure-strung moments, but never full.

He’d fallen asleep inside her, cock still jerking for more.

He hadn’t understood then in the dark of night, and he still didn’t understand now in the dim gray light of day. He never stayed overnight. Especially with whores. The Fight or The Fuck—those were his two options when the Darkness was riding him. And he was always out the door as soon as either was done.

But here he was waking up in this strange American woman’s bedroom. And here she was, smiling down at him, like he’d pleased her beyond belief just by opening his eyes.

“Want some Greek coffee?” she asked. “I can get you some. I also waitress at the restaurant upstairs.”

Four jobs. Four fucking jobs, yet she lived like a dog.

He came to his feet, not knowing what to do with the emotions riling inside of him, feeling the need to fight even though there was nothing in this room to punch. Not even a pillow.

This wasn’t the usual Darkness, he realized. But some other unnamable thing. It made him want to say things to her, do things to her. Do things
for
her.

“I will go now,” he told her, rejecting the weird compulsions inside of him. “Good-bye.”

“Okay, kinda abrupt,” she said with a soft laugh. “But you’ve got to go. I get it.”

Good. She got it. At least one of them did, he thought. He looked around. Where was his bag?

“Your gym bag’s right there.” She pointed to the wooden chair. “I went out and got it from Cyrus after you fell asleep. I had to get up early to clean the basement anyway.”

He stalked over to the chair and snatched up the bag. He didn’t even bother to go through it to make sure his wallet was still there. Cyrus knew his last name. He wouldn’t dare.

Shouldering the bag, he started toward the door, refusing to look at her. He didn’t trust himself not to take her back to bed if he did.

But she once more got in front of him, splaying her hands against his chest. “Wait, before you go…”

She curved a hand around the back of his neck and brought him down for another kiss. This one chaste, just a tender press of her lips to his as she rose up on her tiptoes.

Yet it made his heart roar the same as if she’d used her tongue.

“Thank you,” she said against his lips. Swaying with the effort to stay on her toes.

“For what?” he asked with the strange feeling that he should be the one thanking her.

“I heard that song out on a walk a few weeks ago, just spilling out of somebody’s open window. It’s been stuck inside my chest this whole time. Chewing on me. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t figure out how to sing it. And then this morning it was just there. Cuz of you, I think. So thank you for that, Beast. I do appreciate it.”

She pressed her lips to his once more, then she stepped back, grinning. He didn’t know her, but he felt like he did in that moment. She was that girl, he realized. Pretty, popular, so utterly confident in her every move. Back in Siberia he’d seen girls like her, but never spoken to them and they, in turn, hadn’t so much as attempted to speak to the wild half-Russian boy who even the teachers treated like a feral animal.

But this girl continued to grin up at him, her sparkly champagne eyes twinkling. “See you later maybe?”

This time he didn’t answer. Just left with the answer ringing firm inside his dark mind.

No.
She’d unsettled him so much, he knew even before the door closed behind him that he’d never let himself see this girl again. The one who’d named herself after a creature who lured men to their deaths.

H
er mama Marian
had been telling her for as long as she could remember that her daddy—the guy who’d knocked Marian up less than three months after her arrival at college in North Carolina—was the son of a siren.

“You see, dear oldest daughter, he’d been sent by his mother to repopulate the world with siren singers. This is why so many of the true singers come from single parent homes,”
Marian told her a few days after she got her first period.
“But anyroad, three things are guaranteed for you in this life, my dear. You’ll always be able to swim, sing, and seduce. Do with that what you will.”