The Last Dance (16 page)

She turned off the light and climbed in bed with him. “We should go to your apartment. There is not enough room in my bed.”

Roman stroked her hair. “You always sleep on top of me anyway. It matters little where we stay.”

He had a point. She pulled back her head. “I never loved Pavel, if that is what you think. You’re the first man I have had recreational sex with in almost a decade.”

“Isn’t all sex recreational?” Roman asked.

“No. Sometimes it is work, sometimes recreation, sometimes stress release.”

“You left love off the list. I’m glad. I hate romantic women. Lying is tedious.”

She stroked his scarred chest. She loved the way his skin felt. “Have you never been in love?”

“Never.”

“I have. It was wonderful. I highly recommend it. Everyone should do it at least once.”

“I’ll take your word for it, angel.”

Memories of Lev flooded her. It had been good between them. She didn’t miss him anymore, but she missed being in love.

“What was his name?” Roman asked. His tone was clipped.

Georgina smiled. He was jealous. “Lev.”

“He was Russian?”

“Yes. I met him here. He had the face of an angel. He had curly blond hair and bright blue eyes. He was beautiful, but I didn’t notice at first. He was my accompanist. He played for me every day for hours, but I never even looked at him. I didn’t even bother to learn his name.” She sighed. Telling the story brought it all back, every memory, good and bad. She even could smell the cologne he wore. Memories were funny, the way they could stay hidden for years but then come back clear as the day you made them.

“What happened? How did you fall in love?” Roman’s deep voice pierced the silence.

She did not realize she had stopped speaking; she was too busy reliving her past. She was there; her mind had transported her back. “My partner at the time was an ass. He delighted in telling me I was too fat to be a dancer. The truth was he just wasn’t very strong. He was quite scrawny.” Georgina stroked Roman’s solid bicep, “Shame you aren’t graceful because you would be an amazing partner. I would never have to diet with you.”

She kissed his chest, above his heart. “Anyway, I fell out of a hold. More to the point, my partner dropped me. I fell really hard and Lev ran over and picked me up. And for the first time I saw him. And later that day we made love on the piano. It was instant after that. We were in love.” Georgina sighed. God that was a long time ago. She wondered what had become of him. Professionally he was doing well. He worked for the Bolshoi now. He had moved to Moscow after they broke up. She had no idea if he had married. She could not stand to know it. The jealousy would have killed her. He probably had. He wanted children and a wife. She had wanted to be that wife and give him children. She would have even given up her career for him. She had loved him that much.

“Did he break your heart?”

“It was complicated. I think we broke both of our hearts.” She realized the ache in her chest was not there, the one she always got when she thought of Lev. It was like she was talking about a stranger’s life.

“What happened with him? Why are you not together?”

Her body went rigid. She could not explain what happened with Lev without talking about Pavel, and she did not want to bring him into this. She was over it. There was no use trudging it up. “It is a long story. But it is over now. I have moved on.”

“I have all night, angel. Tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”

She let out a stream of air. This story did not paint her in the best light. There was no way Roman could hear it and not think less of her. She shook her head. It didn’t matter. It only mattered what Roman thought if they were in a real relationship, which they weren’t. Whatever this was between them had a shelf life. She would retire and move home and Roman would… God, she could not even think about what Roman would do with the rest of his life. It didn’t include her; that was all she knew. Like Lev, she would not keep track of Roman, because she could not bear it.

“Pavel happened,” she admitted.

Roman tensed. “You had an affair with him.”

God, it was complicated. There was no simple yes or no to that question. “We had sex, yes. That is why Lev ended it.” She didn’t want to give details; they only hurt.

“Why? Why would you do that? You said you loved him? Why would you cheat on him?”

Georgina scrunched her eyes together, fighting against the hot pressure that was building behind her lids. “I didn’t have a choice.” Her voice came out in a strangled whisper.

“He raped you? Tell me.” Anger permeated his deep voice. His tone would have been terrifying had it been directed at her, but it wasn’t.

Georgina shook her head. “No…it’s so complicated. Just leave it. But Pavel is the reason I lost Lev. I don’t love Pavel; I have no loyalty to him. I never have.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She tried to pull away, but Roman kept her pressed against him. She had already shared too much. All she had left now were her secrets.

Roman stroked her back. “We’re already talking about it. Finish your story. I want to understand.”

Georgina took in a ragged breath. She wanted him to understand too. She had carried her secrets alone for a long time. “Lev and I were very much in love. The happiest time in my life was with him. We were going to get married. The problem with love is it makes you fat. I put on almost twenty pounds. I was going to lose my job. And then I would have lost my visa, and I would have had to go home. Anyway I had to get the weight off, so I made the worst decision of my life. Some of the girls in the chorus swore by cocaine to keep the weight off.”

Shame settled on her.

God, she had been so stupid. “So I started using it. I liked it all right. It felt good, but I loved that I started to lose the weight. I got it in Estonia. I would take the boat over and buy from a dealer there because nobody knew me there. I wasn’t a prima ballerina there. I was a nobody. The last time I went over, there was a new dealer. I didn’t trust him. I could just feel that something was wrong.”

She should have listened to her gut. Her life would have turned out so much differently. She could have avoided so much pain. “I was stupid. Epically stupid. I only had three more pounds to lose, and then I was going to quit. The director used to weigh us every Friday. I just wanted to show him the weight would be off soon. I made the deal and I went home. Everything was fine, and then he knocked on my door.”

“Pavel?” Roman guessed.

“Yeah. He had been tracking me for months. He had posed as the dealer. He had enough to not just revoke my visa but send me to prison. My life was over. My world imploded. After that I lost everything. He told me that if I did not work for him, I would go to jail. He said Lev would go to jail too even though he had done nothing wrong. He didn’t even know I was using. I couldn’t let him be punished for my stupidity. So I agreed I would work for the Federal Security Service.”

Georgina pushed herself off of Roman. “I need a glass of water.” What she needed was to not be touching Roman when she finished the story. She turned on the bathroom light and filled her glass. She stared at the dark circles in the mirror before she switched off the lights. She didn’t recognize that woman. She looked frail and tired, sad.

Georgina sat down in the leather wingback chair beside her bed. She brought her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them to her chest. “Pavel had to test me of course to make sure I would not break down with the first target. So we had sex. I cried while he fucked me, but I never said no. So, to answer your question: Pavel did not rape me. I let him do it. But I didn’t want it.”

Roman sat on the side of the bed. He reached out and stroked her cheek. “I’m sorry, angel.”

The gentleness in his voice undid her. She could not bear it. He was supposed to be disgusted with her. She had brought it on herself with stupid decisions. She had no right to expect sympathy from anyone. Her eyes burned, but there were no tears. Her body had forgotten how to cry. “I told Lev. I couldn’t not tell him. I told him everything.” She took a deep breath. “He cried at first, but then he got angry. He called me a whore and said he never wanted to see me again. He left. I never saw him again.”

“He abandoned you to deal with the Security Service on your own?” Roman asked incredulously. The recrimination was clear.

Georgina’s head snapped up. “What could he have done?”

“He could have been a man. I would have murdered Pavel for having you, but for hurting you, I would have tortured him first.”

Georgina had no doubt he was telling the truth. “But you would have left me all the same.”

“No.” Roman lifted her off the chair and held her tight against him. “If you were mine, I would not let one mistake ruin it. You may have loved him, but he was a boy. A man would have done what needed to be done.”

“There was nothing Lev could do. I hurt him. My mistakes hurt him.”

“There was something he could have done. We both know that.”

Georgina could only shake her head. Lev could not take on Pavel. He was different than Roman, not as strong, not as ruthless.

Roman lifted her and carried her to bed. He climbed in behind her, pulling her tight against his chest. His breath was hot on her neck. “A man takes care of his woman. Always,” he whispered in her ear. His voice was so low she struggled to hear him.

Georgina drifted off to a dreamless sleep, waking only due to the throbbing of her knee. She was draped across Roman, her head on his solid chest, their hands entwined on his stomach. Their bodies always found this position. Always.

Georgina sat up, careful not to wake Roman. The box of painkillers was empty, so she went to the bathroom. “Thank God,” she said under her breath when she spotted an unopened box. She should buy stock in ibuprofen. She swallowed four, washing them down with handfuls of water from the tap.

Roman stirred when she returned to bed. Without asking he sat up, taking her knee between his large hands, rubbing with enough pressure to dull the throbbing ache.

“Sorry I woke you.”

“I wasn’t asleep, angel.” His voice was tight, pensive.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have photographs of documents for you to give Pavel.”

Georgina’s back stiffened. She hated that Roman knew about this part of her life. “Okay. How big? A memory stick or actual pictures?”

“A memory stick.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Because the drop-off is different. Actual photographs would need to be put in a dead rat and then placed at the drop-off. I don’t want to defrost a rat today.”

“You have a frozen rat in your freezer?”

Georgina nodded. “Yeah, I have several hidden in ice cream containers. Dead animals make the best decoys. People pick up trash; no one picks up dead animals. The only problem is other animals tend to eat them, but you can get around that too if you cover them in Tabasco sauce. Just looks like blood, but other animals won’t go near the stuff. Only humans like their food spicy.”

“I am not going to ask how you get dead rats.”

“I wouldn’t tell you even if you did,” Georgina admitted.

“So, no dead rats for memory sticks or microchips. What do you put those in?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Of course. Now you have me curious.”

“If I tell you all my secrets, then you will have to tell me all of yours.”

Roman laced his fingers through hers and brought them to his lips, kissing her knuckles with the softest caress. “Don’t tell me. You don’t want to hear my secrets.”

Georgina sighed. He was right. She didn’t want to know. She could live with suspicion, but confirmation would undo her.

* * * *

Georgina stirred again an hour later.

“Is it your knee again?” Roman asked, concern flooding him. She had only just taken painkillers.

“No. I’m just hot,” Georgina said. “Those are words I have not uttered since I moved to Russia.”

Roman got up and crossed the room to open the window. The curtains billowed as a gust of cold air blew in. Immediately the temperature dropped. He returned, pulling back the covers, leaving Georgina alone in the bed, naked.

“Come back to bed.” Georgina patted the empty space beside her. She moved to pull up the cover, but Roman stopped her.

“It was cold when I watched you on the video. You were covered in goose bumps. And your nipples.” He reached down to caress her. “So hard.” He relived the video in his mind, the way she’d stroked her pussy as she panted and moaned. The way her hips lifted to meet the stroke of her fingers as she fucked herself with her hand. He had never seen anything more erotic than Georgina pleasuring herself. He could come just thinking about it; he wouldn’t need more than a few strokes of his cock. “Show me again how you touch yourself. Let me watch.” Roman switched on the lamp beside the bed.

“Roman, it’s freezing,” Georgina protested.

“Too hot, now too cold. I remember a fairy tale like that.”

Georgina smiled. Her hair fell to her waist in loose red curls. Pale pink nipples peeked through the flame-colored locks. She truly was the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

“Show me,” he said. “I want to watch.”

Georgina’s eyes narrowed. “Roman…” Her voice trailed off as she reached again for the cover.

Roman pulled the duvet off the bed. “Are you shy now, angel? Is there part of you I have not seen? Or touched? Or kissed?”

The color in Georgina’s cheeks darkened. He loved when she blushed. His favorite color was the shade her skin went when she came. “Roman, it’s cold. Turn off the light and come to bed.”

Roman brushed Georgina’s hair off her shoulders. Her nipples were hard, straining against the frigid air. Gooseflesh covered her arms. “Warm your breasts, the way you did before. Let me watch and then I will warm you.”

Georgina shivered. For a long moment she did not move, but then tentatively her hands went to her breasts. Her gaze locked with his. Inhibitions had been replaced with desire. “Is this what you want to see?” She cupped her breasts, pinching her nipples. The delicate peaks darkened.