“Are you scared?”
“Your watching me long ago is the least of our problems at this time.” I pulled off my pants and panties. “But we’ll get back to it.”
“I’m sure we will.”
I undid my bra. “Don’t watch me anymore unless I give you permission.”
A fierce honesty thickened his voice. “I’ll do as you ask.”
The cello’s melody soared over the tension rising in the room.
How long did he watch me? Where were the cameras in the condo? Did he have them in my bedroom? In my bathroom?
I shoved those thoughts out of my head. Like I told him, this rising battle with the Turgenev family gave me anxiety. I had no time to be outraged about Misha monitoring me when our lives were in danger.
It took me less than five minutes to dress. When I finished, I spoke, “Okay.”
He faced me and drank in my new attire. I no longer wore my pants, shirt, panties, and bra. I’d shed it all and then put on a simple leotard and pointes. The frown had disappeared. Excitement glittered in his eyes as a wide smile covered his face.
I walked over to the bar, held on to it, and started stretching. “What happened today, Misha?”
“I had information that Leonid Turgenev would be at Club Pleasure.”
Starting in first position, I placed my left hand on the barre, kept my back straight, and both legs turned out. “Was Leonid there?”
“No, but his brother was.”
I lifted my right leg high and then rested my ankle on the barre. “Did you talk to his brother?”
“Not for too long.”
Pointing my foot, I looked over my shoulder at Misha. “And?”
“That’s the short of it.”
“Then, tell me the long of it.”
“There are bad parts.”
“Tell me.”
He glared.
“How did the conversation go with his brother?”
“I killed him and sent his head to Leonid.”
My stomach twisted. I lowered my leg and stared at myself in the mirror. No disgust lay on my face, although it bounced within me. Even though Misha didn’t describe the gruesome details, the image of Misha cutting off a man’s head played in my mind. I blinked, trying to get that horror film out of my brain forever.
You asked for it. Now you know.
Bile rose in my throat. I cleared it away. My fingers shook against the barre. “What happens now?”
“We’ll see.”
I looked at him through the mirror. “You’re too smart to wait for his next move. You have a plan in your mind.”
I doubt he knew I was watching him.
His gaze traveled from the point of my toes to the curve of my thighs. “Perhaps I do, Ava.”
“Tell me the plan.”
He snapped his gaze to my face as I watched him in the mirror. “By leaving out some details, I’m doing you a favor.”
“How is that?”
“I’m helping you maintain mental stability.”
“And you think I’ll go crazy knowing too much?”
“It could happen. . .or other things.”
“What other things?”
“You may be so turned off that you want to walk away.” His gaze shifted to intense. “And unfortunately you’ll find that I won’t let you walk away.”
Silence filled the room. Not sure of what to say, I focused on my stretching. I closed my eyes, put my right hand to high fifth position, leaned forward onto my right leg, and held that stretch.
“. . .I won’t let you walk away.”
A shiver ran through me. Deep down I knew this would be the case. When Misha made love, he did so with intensity, possessing every inch of my flesh and dominating me to the core. That wasn’t a lover who would step aside if I wanted to leave. Even when I had asked for space, he gave me some time, and then later returned to addicting me some more.
There would be no space with him or a chance to walk away.
A new song played. It was a cello solo. I recognized this one immediately. O and I enjoyed practicing to The Dying Swan on Sunday mornings.
Sometimes I performed the short ballet myself. It lasted four minutes and followed the last moments in the life of a swan. O’s great-great-grandmother Anna Pavlova had performed the piece 4,000 times. She’d been inspired by swans that she saw in public parks and by Lord Tennyson's poem The Dying Swan. Everything was historic after that. Combining technique with expressiveness, her dance became the symbol of Russian ballet.
I rose from the stretch and opened my eyes.
Misha stood right behind me. There must’ve only been an inch of space between us. Heat spread across my skin. My body didn’t tense. It yearned for him. The more layers of Misha that I pulled back, the more it revealed terrifying power.
The most shocking part was that none of it scared me.
I took my leg off the barre and did the same stretch for the other one. I thought he would press his cock against my ass or slip his hands along my frame. Instead, he whispered, “I love when you dance to this song.”