Bad Russian 04 Read online

  Contents

  Nikita

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  ©

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue i

  Epilogue ii

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  © Alice May Ball 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is purely coincidental.

  All the people portrayed in this story are over the age of eighteen, and entirely imaginary. If you think that you know some of them, or that you may be one of them, then you should consider writing fiction yourself.

  Cover Design by Signs of Desire for TzR Publishing

  Prologue

  Him

  NOW, YOU ARE MY muse.

  Your curves inspire all of the force and passions that drive my art. Critics call me, ‘The most important artist you never heard of.’ What the fuck do they know? Now that I found you, my work will blow them all away.

  Each swing of my hammer to the chisel, every sweeping slash of my brush will be driven by a thought of you. Penetrating images. The milky riples of your flesh. The roll of your ass. The crack of my hand. The red slap.

  You’ve filled my dreams. My imagination has followed you down dark passages into hidden alleyways. Cornered you. Watched you raise your face to plead with your eyes. Seen you show your throat. Peel your lips apart.

  Pressed you into the wall. Parted your thighs and your gushing petals. Driven through your last resistance. Taken your precious purity. Broken you in two.

  You have always been my inspiration, but I never knew you. Until now.

  Finally, that curvy little temptress is going to get what’s coming to her — and I do mean ‘coming.’ If she thinks she can flirt and tease me and turn me on like that and get away with it, she’s coming up to a rude and shocking awakening. Her understanding is about to be stretched and widened.

  She’s going to take it. Lying down, standing up, on all fours, and any damned way I please. I’m about to break her in two.

  She’s shown me the roll of her ripe and gorgeous hips and the quiver of her luscious, creamy flesh. I can only watch so much without taking what I need. She is going to feel the fire of a real man’s raging need. In her sassy little mouth, her pouting, insolent lips, her swollen, wet pussy. She’s going to feel it everywhere.

  Her big, wet eyes don’t fool me for a moment. All of her ‘oh-so-innocent’ little wriggles and shimmies, her ‘I didn’t mean it,’ shakes of those fabulous tits, I know that she knows exactly what she’s doing.

  She knows what she needs, just as much as I do.

  Play your games, little lady, but you’re playing with fire, and you’re about to get burned.

  I’ve got a long, hard poker, and it’s red-hot for a reason.

  Now. Get ready to open up.

  Chapter One

  Her

  “HERE’S TROUBLE. SEE THAT scowl?” Claire stands next to me at the servers’ station. She nudges me and points her eyebrows in the direction of the man. I know which man she means.

  In the far corner booth, through the low blue and orange glimmer and deep in the shadows of Deke’s Downlow Cocktail Lounge, he leans back. Spreads his arms wide, stretching along the back of the booth. Opposite him, the long, lean blonde just arrived, a few minutes after him. Her loose, gray-green wrap-over is deep in the neck. Split high on the thigh. Falls off the knee. Her wide silver necklace moves like liquid on her collarbone.

  Claire doesn’t need to say it. We both hate her.

  They stand out from the usual well-dressed low life that hangs around in Deke’s basement bar on a weekday afternoon. For one thing, they don’t look like they are skulking in shadows to hide away from a life they tried to leave outside. Darkness is more like their natural habitat.

  He arrived first. Fast. Impatient.

  My back was to the door. Claire was taking an order at the next table. I was serving a group of ‘businessmen.’ When people tell you, ‘I’m a businessman,’ all it means is, they’re not going to tell you what they do. There might be a lot of reasons for them not wanting to say exactly what it is they do. Usually, it’s because they know you’d have dozed off before they got to the end of telling you.

  Just occasionally, it’s because you really don’t want to know.

  I had on my professional smile for the table of gentlemen I was serving. The tip-collector smile. These suits were more like the second kind. Whatever they do, you don’t want to find out anything about it. From the corner of my eye, I saw Claire look up at the door. Made a mental note. Tell her not to do that.

  Keep your attention on the customers all the time you’re with them. I’ll clue her in. It’s not only for the tips. You need to keep an eye on them. Most of the time they’re fine. They’ll behave like perfect gentlemen. Well, nearly perfect. But if you’re not looking, that’s when you can get into a situation.

  But the look in her eye almost made me look around. As the sound of traffic was shushed off by the closing door behind me, an impatient thump of hefty boots stamped from the door, across the floor, to the back of the room. Assertive masculine energy shook the floor with each step.

  After I took the orders from the ‘businessmen’ to Seb at the bar, that’s when I allowed myself to look around. Yes. I saw why Claire’s eyes flashed.

  Back at the server’s station a minute or two later, Claire nudged me when the woman’s Manolo Blahniks clicked onto the floor. Immediately, I watched her swing the Birkin bag, too. If I had that kind of money, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be slinging it around over my shoulder.

  “If I was coming to meet that kind of a man,” Claire breathed, “I would use every trick I could lay my hands on. And then some.”

  She already had. She went to the table to get his order about eight seconds after he sat down. Carried the silver tray with the two cocktail glasses about a foot higher than usual. Put some prowl into her walk. Claire can look stunning when she puts her mind to it. All of her charm was wasted on this guy, though.

  “Him?” I was half pretending. I can see it. Long, loose dark curls hung over his heavy brow. A big, aristocratic nose and the curling lips of a classical statue. His Adam’s apple cocked like a weapon. Watery blue eyes lit up and flashed, flicking around the room. Always gleaming. Never quite still. Each time their beams lit on me, electric tingles vibrated inside me in unexpected places.

  “Man can fill a shirt, though.” Claire’s eyes were wet and wide. “Look at that.” Her tongue moistened her lips.

  He had that perfectly unruly, just-fell-out-of-bed look. A man who never shaves, but somehow his stubble is always perfect. Every part of him seemed big. Every part that I can see. I won’t deny, it made me wonder about the parts I couldn’t see. Too old for me. And way too arrogant. With a look like the gods of Olympus made this world for his pleasure, and now he’d taken a stroll down to se
e if it meets his standards.

  The droop of his heavy lids and the slow sweep of his ridiculously long eyelashes was weary. Scornful.

  “He and that woman he’s with,” I’m polishing a table by the servers’ station. “They both look like they stumbled into in the wrong bar.”

  “They’re pretty up-town for the usual clientele down here.”

  “She looks like she’s something in fashion, right?”

  “Or maybe an actress?” Claire says, cocking an eyebrow. In sisterly loyalty, server-sisterly, at least, I can see that Claire doesn’t like the woman. So I won’t either.

  “Could be.” I say, “Or maybe a salon. Something like that.”

  “Her clothes are too loud for business dress, right?”

  “That dress?” I narrow my eyes. “Kind of eccentric. Fashionable, though.”

  She could be a model if her look wasn’t so stern and severe. Now the man is making a noise.

  He sputters as he holds his cocktail glass up high. He snarls. “What the fuck is this fucking filth?”

  That voice, though. My knees are ready to sag. A tremble worries the inside of my thighs. His rich, dark accent makes him sound even sexier. He sounds like he comes from somewhere exotic. Somewhere dangerous. I could dream of being licked all over by a voice like that.

  Claire’s new to the bar. The tiny, clinging uniform is pretty hot on her athletic figure, and a red flag to the noisy, troublesome, and downright difficult customers, but I don’t want to see her dropped in the deep end. I raise a hand to stall her as I take a silver tray over.

  His eyebrows lift. But his hooded lids still droop. And the gravel at the bottom of his voice deepens as his angry accusations rise.

  In the steady glare of his eyes, the short, trimmed gray waitress tunic and gunmetal tights make me feel more exposed than ever before. This is not the most progressive establishment, but then I don’t work here for the political consciousness-raising debate.

  I’m here for the tips. All the time I’ve worked here, male eyeballs have lingered over the way that I bulge out of the top of my too-tight tunic. They’ve peered into my cleavage, they’ve sneaked looks up my thighs. All the time, I’m thinking about tips. Tips mean tuition fees and rent. Books and food. Education, independence and, ultimately, my route out of the underground bar. At least as a server.

  My smile is almost perfectly in place when I get to the raised booth at the back. I’m eyeball-to-eyeball with him. His face is twisted in a snarl of rage.

  “Oh, what’s this?” His thousand-watt glower blasts me full in the face. “Does this cheap dive bar send its most beautiful waitress to tell me why I’ve been served the dish-washing swill instead of a martini?” As he speaks, his expression is changing. Like a sea that turns from a dark green swell and soothes to a deep blue calm.

  I look at his drink as he’s waving it around. His accent unsettles me.

  I wait a moment. Leave a beat of calm before I ask him, “Did you ask for them dirty?”

  “I told the girl to bring me the two best martinis your mixologist can make.” He’s arrogant, and powerful. I think he’s a Russian.

  “The dirty martini is our signature drink.”

  “Well, you need a better signature. The idea of a cocktail bar is for the customers to get drunk. Not the barkeep.”

  I could just have Solomon throw the guy out. Still, his beautiful shirt and the woman’s extravagant dress and Birkin, there should be at least one decent tip in there somewhere.

  “Let me take your glasses. Allow me to make you a martini. If you don’t love them, you won’t pay at all. How’s that?”

  “Not as good as, ‘There will be no charge either way.’ That would seem ideal.”

  “Spoken like a real rich boy. Like we only exist to please you. Everybody’s privilege is to try and make you happy and we should all thank you for the chance.”

  “Chippy and pretty pushy for a cocktail waitress, I’d say. I’m not sure I like your attitude.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not selling it. I’m sure you’d like to confirm some more of my prejudices, but let me get your drinks first.”

  “They don’t treat the customers like this in the Carlisle Rooms, you know.”

  “No. If they act like you do, they discreetly escort them out with an invitation to never return. I can arrange that for you here, if you prefer, but customer relations would be a shade more frank. More hands on, you might say.”

  I take the glasses, then look at his companion. “Would you like another martini, Ma’am, or are you happy with the one you have?”

  Her voice is weary. “Nothing about this place is making me happy.”

  “I wonder what drew you here.” I maybe shouldn’t have said that part out loud.

  Her eyes cut to the man. I jolt inside. He’s still looking at me. Like he’s looking at a juicy steak.

  So, I suppose maybe a tip’s not out of the question.

  I take the two glasses back to the bar. Seb is ready with a cloth in his hands, a shaker and a pair of clean glasses. He’s wearing his bartender’s professional ‘I wasn’t watching’ face but I know he doesn’t expect me to believe that.

  Claire is biting the inside of her bottom lip.

  “I’ll mix them,” I tell Seb. He looks surprised. I move past him behind the bar and take the vodka from the freezer. That’s usually kept only for very special orders., Seb doesn’t argue, though. While I fill the cold shaker with ice, Seb asks quietly, “Do you want me to call Solomon? Have him stand by?”

  I shrug. “It’s dumb luck that if I say ‘no,’ then something will kick off or blow up. But I think it’s going to be okay.” Then, “Give Sol a heads up, but don’t ask him to come down.”

  Seb nods and makes the call to Solomon by the door upstairs. While he calls, he watches me. Discreetly, but I know he’s impressed. Seb is a terrific guy. Great looking, smart, charming. I wish I had feelings for him. But there it is. My first night here he somehow friend-zoned himself, and now I can’t see him any other way. There were times I even wanted to. But it is what it is.

  I know what I’m doing, fixing martinis. I’m quick. Brisk. Frosted cold glasses and a thin twist of lemon make the presentation perfect. I take the shaker on the tray with the two cocktails.

  I brought the shaker so that, after they tasted the martinis and said how wonderful they were, as I was sure they would, then I would pour what was left in a flourish. I’d never have the performance style of a cocktail barman like Seb, but I know a thing or two.

  How to mix a martini is one of the things.

  In the back of the room the atmosphere across the table in the corner booth is thick enough to cut with a fruit-knife. The woman glares in hot silence at the man. He man says nothing as I set up the drinks for them.

  I don’t want to talk so I just say, “I hope these are more to your taste.”

  He gives me a small, dark smile.

  She speaks across him, “These will be perfect.”

  She picks up a glass and hurls the drink into the man’s face. Then she grabs the other glass and splashes that on him, too. She stands. Her lips purse as she stares at me.

  Chapter Two

  Him

  “NIKITA,” SHE SNARLS MY name on her way to the door. Jesska Sackfil-Gest lobs a glance over her shoulder at me, “Your fifteen minutes of fame have been canceled. You won’t show in Sackfil, or in any other major gallery. Not now, not ever. Never.”

  I shrug. She’s an idiot. I’m more impressed by how cool the waitress is, just watching her go. Margot, it says on her badge. I noticed it before. She is beautiful. Young, probably only just old enough to be in a bar, but gorgeously woman-shaped. Ripe and full of life.