The Audition (7 page)

“You taped me? Are you going to make me listen to the entire program?”

“Yes.” His response is instantaneous. “You made five mistakes as you played your program.”

My brow furrows. I remember two. Five? I’ll need to listen to the recording to figure out where I erred.

“So,” he continues. “Your challenge, to make this game interesting, is to listen to your program, while I punish you. At the end, you can tell me where you went wrong.”

Talk about a test that’s set up perfectly for me to fail. But I don’t voice my sass. “Yes Sir,” I mutter instead.

“Spread your legs, Allie,” he orders. I obligingly move them apart, but he tsks in disapproval. “Wider.” I inch them further apart until my inner thigh muscles are screaming in protest. “Good girl.” I wonder if he’s going to buckle my legs in place as well, but he doesn’t. “Just keep them there,” he orders instead.

Oh, this is going to be hard.

A sharp swat interrupts my musings. “This is the riding crop,” Nikolai says, as he taps away at the front of my thighs. Smack, smack, smack, thwack,
ouch
. “You’ve felt it before, of course, but I thought I’d get you warmed up.”

I’m very, very glad that I’m blindfolded, because otherwise, there’s no way I’m going to hide the roll of my eyes.

I hear his footsteps, and trace his movements by the position in which the crop is hitting me. When he’s off to the side, he hits my fleshy mound, and I jump and move. “Back in position,” he instructs. I bite my lip and obey, the stinging impact of that blow still warm against my skin.

The pressure of the swats increase, and he hones in on the vee of my thighs, hitting me just to the side of my pussy. I groan and whimper and twitch, but I mostly stay still.

“Do you like that,
myshka
?” His fingers swipe through my pussy, and then, they are at my lips. I obediently clean them, sucking my juices in my mouth. “Because your pussy is telling me that it loves this.”

Yup. My body is a traitor. My pussy gushes when he wills it, and my head nods dutifully in response to his question.

Slowly, as he crops me, my mind empties. I’ve heard of the beautifully floaty sense of subspace. I’m not sure if that’s what I’m experiencing, but everything is muffled and I relax completely.

In the background, I hear Mozart. In the foreground, the steady sound of the crop striking my skin. Everything else recedes.

“Hot to the touch.” He sounds like he’s holding on to control by a mere thread, one that could snap any minute. The tips of his fingers run over the skin of my thighs. “Bright, angry red. How are you doing?”

“I like it,” I whisper. “Mark me some more.”

He growls in my ear, and nips my throat sharply. “Good girl. I think you are ready for the flogger.”

I shiver, a full body tremor that wracks through me.
Nikolai is going to whip me.

“Beg for it, Allie.”

“Please,” the words fall from my lips like uncontrollable drool. “Please. I want the flogger. I want you to possess me. I want everything.”

“Then,” his voice is a dark promise, “everything you shall have.”

The flogger flicks down on my breasts, and a thousand shards of savage pain pierce my skin. As the sharp heat fades, warmth is left behind. Warmth and strange, inexplicable pleasure. “Please,” I beg again. “More.”

“Shut up, Allie,” he says indulgently, kissing my lips for a brief second. “You still need to be listening to the music.”

Right. I should pretend I’m playing his insane game, when all I’m doing is allowing myself to sink into the complete, hedonistic pleasure of this moment.

The flogger swishes from side to side, and each time it caresses my breasts, fierce ache is left behind. Fierce ache and fiery longing. The strokes move systematically down my front. My breasts, my stomach, my mound, and my aching thighs.

My legs tremble from holding my position, but I don’t move. I’m making moans and keening sounds that I’m not fully aware of. I’m in a place of perfect pleasure and if this is what punishment involves, I will be bad every single day.

When he is done, he undoes my blindfold and frees my arms, and I buckle, but his body is there to lean on. He lifts me into his arms, and I snuggle against his shoulder. “That was so nice,” I breathe. I’m aroused, and my pussy is dripping, and in a minute, I’m going to be wriggling against his body, hoping he will fuck me hard. But in the moment, I am completely content.

The five mistakes I’ve supposedly made in my practice earlier? I never listened, and thankfully, he doesn’t ask. Maybe I’ll tell him tomorrow that I had no intention of listening for them, and maybe he’ll punish me once again.

Tuesday, March 5

I’ve spent the entire night in Nikolai’s bed, ensconced in his arms. It is absolutely lovely. When daylight peeks through the curtains, I don’t want to wake up.

I have to leave today. Last night, I looked up shuttle bus times on my phone, and decided to catch the bus that leaves Boston at two in the afternoon. I want to make sure I have enough time to get to my apartment and rest before my audition, which has been scheduled at nine tomorrow morning.

“Good morning
myshka
,” Nikolai mumbles sleepily into my shoulder. “Any chance you can get up and make coffee?”

I laugh. “What? No ordering me around today?”

His lips form a smile, but his eyes remain closed. “I’ve learned that I should always be nice to the goddess who is making me coffee.”

“Flatterer,” I say accusingly.

“Guilty as charged.” He smacks my ass. “Go make coffee.”

I can’t contain my giggles. “That’s much more like it.”

***

When we are done with breakfast, I go through my program once more, and Nikolai listens carefully. He has a pleased smile on his face when I’m done, and he kisses me. “That was good.”

I wrinkle my nose at him. “Is this some kind of ego-boosting tactic ahead of my audition?” I demand.

Nikolai snorts his disdain of such feel-good tactics. “Stop fishing for compliments, Allie. It was good. You’ve improved greatly in the last few days.”

I know I have. I can hear it in my playing, and I hope I have done enough.  

When it is time to leave, I cling to Nikolai.
I don’t want to go.
“Will I see you again?” I ask him at the bus terminal, realizing how silly that sounds as the words leave my mouth.

“Of course,
myshka
,” he says soothingly. He kisses me, before he turns me around by the shoulder so that I face the open door of the Chinatown shuttle. “You have an audition tomorrow. Go. Be the best pianist you know to be. Do me proud. Oh, and Allie?” He extends his hand towards me, and he’s holding a little ceramic cat in it. My eyes tear up. This cat sat on my mother’s piano all through my childhood years. My mother had given it to him ahead of his own audition to the Philharmonic, so many years ago. The fact that he has kept the keepsake? The fact that he’s handing it to me? I can’t keep my emotions in check.

I turn unbidden and I hug him. I put everything into it, my gratitude for the way he saved me. My still desperate need for him. As much as I want to get into Juilliard, I realize I also don’t want our little interlude to end.

“
Poka
,
myshka
.”

I learned a handful of Russian words from Nikolai.
Zdrastvuyte
. Hello.
Spasibo
. Thank you. When he called my
myshka
, I looked it up. Little mouse. And when he says
poka
, I take comfort in his words, because
poka
is like the French
‘au revoir’
. Though it’s used to say goodbye, a more accurate translation is ‘
until we meet again.
’

***

Wednesday, March 6

The entire four hour trip on the Chinatown shuttle yesterday, I entertained wild schemes of throwing the audition. I could make mistakes; I could
forget
key notes. In my head, I’ve constructed fanciful scenarios where I go back to Boston and live as Nikolai’s submissive, naked and obedient, curled up in the cage in his dungeon.

But these are the desperate schemes of a hopeful mind, and I know I cannot allow myself this kind of indulgence. My fantasies are creepy and borderline stalkerish.

I miss everything. I miss the cage. I miss the spotlight on the piano in the dungeon. I miss kneeling obediently in the kitchen while Nikolai pets me and feeds me morsels from his plate. I miss curling up in Nikolai’s arms. I even miss the stupid Samurai movie that he watched. I found it on Netflix and watched it again, as if that act would draw me back to Boston, where I sat next to Nikolai on the couch, and played at normalcy, and clung to the illusion that I belonged with him.

The last time I saw her, Mara, the professor who had interceded for my second chance had been wearing a printed dress and dangly earrings. Today, her dress is an eye-popping orange, and her arms are covered with bangles that clink together every time she moves. I follow her into the audition space. The same one as before, with the piano in exactly the same spot.

Everything is exactly as it was a few days ago, but I feel entirely different. I have changed in the last week. The version of me that died when my mother did, six years ago – she is reborn again.

And I realize I can’t throw my audition. It would be wrong on so many levels. It would be a betrayal of the highest order.

Plus, Nikolai will kick your ass.
My lips twitch at the thought of serious, controlled Nikolai Zhdanov doing any such thing, and I sit down at the piano stool, turning the pages of music until I find my prompt.

I’m about to commence my program, when there’s a small commotion in the hallway. I hear the sound of excited voices, and the handle turns and the door swings opens.

It is Nikolai.

Every single person there is instantly star-struck. The Chair rises to his feet with a wide smile of greeting, and vigorously shakes Nikolai’s hand. Mara’s eyes have gone very round. There’s a palpable sense of excitement in the air, and it strikes me what a celebrity Nikolai is in the tiny world of classical music.

“Would you mind if I sit in?” Nikolai asks. His eyes meet mine briefly.

I roll my eyes at the way the metaphoric red carpet is rolled out for him. They find him a chair. Someone fetches him a cup of coffee. While all of that is happening, Nikolai comes towards me. I can’t take my eyes off him. “What are you doing here?” I ask softly.

He grins. “I came to watch, of course. You didn’t think I would miss your audition?” His eyes narrow, as if he knows I’ve been contemplating failure. His voice is low. No one else can hear him. “Do me proud, Allie.”

I’m so touched that he’s here. Not a morning person, he would have had to wake up at four in the morning to drive to New York. I’m almost overwhelmed by emotion, but I keep it in check, letting it build inside of me. I’m going to need it soon. It’s almost time to play.

This time, I’m entirely immersed. I draw on the emotions and the discipline that Nikolai has helped me find.
I am music.
I am, every poignant painful note of Chopin’s concerto, every bit of wild dissonance of Ginastera, every calm soothing note of Bach. I put it all out there. Every emotion. Nothing held back. I owe this to the man who watches me carefully as I play to be the very, very best I can be.

There’s silence when I’m done. Throats clear. No one speaks. It is as if I’ve left something in the air that makes speech impossible. Mara, the woman who interceded for me the first time around, openly dabs at her eyes.

I take this all in, but in reality, I only care what one person thinks. I look at Nikolai with a question.
Was it enough,
my expression asks him.

He holds my gaze for one long instant, each of us trapped in a world that only we share. Finally, he nods. There’s pride and warmth in his eyes. I have done enough.

***

“Thank you,” I tell him, when his groupies have finally let him go. He gives me a slight smile and I wonder -
what now?
Where do we go from here?

I hand him the ceramic cat he pressed into my hand on the bus. “This is yours,” I mutter.

He shakes his head. “Your mother gave it to me when I auditioned at the Philharmonic,” he says with a smile. “On the start of your own journey, it seems fitting to pass it on to you.”

“It’s hardly the same thing,” I protest. Juilliard has hundreds of students. There’s only one principal pianist at the New York Philharmonic.

“It’s an important first step, Allie,” he replies. His fingers brush my hair back from my face, and tucks a strand behind my ear.

That touch gives me the courage to speak and ask the question I really want to know the answer to. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? “I want to be the principal pianist of the Philharmonic one day.” My voice is bold. “I want your former job.”

His lips twitch. “It’s a hard road.” There’s a gleam in his eyes. He knows where this is going.

“I’ll need plenty of tutoring.”  Nikolai will be hard on me if I fail, and nice to me if he approves of the effort. Strangely, I can’t decide which version of him I will prefer. Both rouse lust in my body.

He smiles openly. “You will indeed,” he purrs. “Many long hours of strict discipline, I think.”

Heat pools in my sex as I contemplate his discipline. So much pleasure. “Will you coach me, Nikolai?”

He holds his hand out towards me, and I entwine my fingers in his. “I think we might be able to work something out,” he says smoothly. “Shall we continue this negotiation in a more private place?”

Though I’m dancing about with glee on the inside, only a little bit of it breaks through. My voice is a whisper of wonderfully compliant sound. “Yes Nikolai.”