21
Oksana
The woman who came to tune the piano reminded me of the first teacher I’d had, an older woman who spent more time in front of the piano than anywhere else, including a mirror. Her frizzy hair, streaked with gray, was stacked on top of her head in a messy bun, and her clothes looked well worn.
Vasilije watched her every move, and I could tell it wasn’t with fascination. He was making sure she did nothing other than put the tuning hammer on the pins and go painstakingly key by key.
She was good. I’d watched my old teacher tune the piano at the opera house, and the woman today followed the same technique, working from the center keys outward. Although she was tuning quickly, it wasn’t fast enough for Vasilije. He glared at her and often glanced at his phone to check the time, sighing with impatience.
“How much longer?” he demanded.
The woman turned the lever a miniscule amount and hit the key again. “At least another hour.” She seemed just as put out by him as he was by her. “I’m sorry,” her tone was pointed, “when did you say this was last tuned?” Her passive-aggressive comment had thoughts of murder flashing in his eyes, and she wasn’t done. “Pianos are extremely sensitive to temperature changes. It shouldn’t be near these windows.”
“Great. Finish up and I’ll move it.”
“No!” the woman and I said at the same time.
The tuner answered before I could. “You move this, and I have to start all over.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath and his hard gaze traveled to mine. He could blame me all he wanted, but I needed this.
“It’ll be worth it,” I said as my throat tightened.
“It better be. It’s costing me a hundred and fifty dollars an hour.”
Whatever I composed, if he didn’t like it, I’d pay with my body, and I was all right with it. He wanted a song, and although he wasn’t compensating me in money, it didn’t make a huge difference. He’d keep me around until it was done.
It also meant he was the first person who’d ever commissioned a piece by me.
I’d spent the morning eager to get to work, but decided to refrain until the piano was ready to go. I already heard a few strains of a melody I wanted to try. It’d start out sickly sweet, take a dark turn in the middle, then rise into an anthem that sounded as powerful as it was terrifying.
He got on his phone at one point, telling someone he wasn’t going to be back for another hour, so I assumed it was the dealership. With his attention off me, I felt lighter, but I weirdly didn’t like the feeling.
My body was sore and bruised from last night. Red-purple hickeys dotted my chest, and I’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, stunned at how beautiful the color was. What would he think of them when he saw me tonight? Surely we were going to have sex again. We hadn’t after dinner last night. He’d gotten a call from his uncle, disappeared into his room, and never came out.
Vasilije pocketed his phone in the suit jacket and cast a dark look at the woman before his gaze finally drifted to me. He looked good in his black suit, gray checkered tie, and a sneer on his lips. I wondered how his employees liked working for him now that he’d taken his father’s place. He’d usurped Dimitrije. Did the people at the dealership hate taking orders from a twenty-four-year-old punk? Or was he charming as I’d heard he was, but never seen for myself?
“We’re going out tonight,” he said abruptly. “My cousin is coming over at five to help you. You’ll wear the dress I bought.”
He said it like it was no big deal, but my stomach lurched. He wanted me to wear the dress he’d described as what I’d wear when I’d meet his family. “Help me with what?”
“She’s a makeup artist,” he said.
“Oh.” It was all I could think to say. How was I supposed to take that? Did he think makeup was needed with me, or was he simply wanting me to look my best and make a good impression?
“We have reservations downtown at seven.” His gaze was piercing. “It’s an important dinner.”
He communicated everything he wasn’t saying out loud with a single look. Did my life hinge on the outcome of this dinner? If it was with Goran, it seemed likely. Vasilije had told me his uncle wanted me gone.
“I understand,” I said, although I really didn’t.
We never spoke the rest of the time the piano tuner worked. The only sound was her tuning forks and the repeated tapping of keys to compare frequencies. We watched her work, and I’d swear I could feel every turn of the hammer tightening inside my body. But I worried it was the same for Vasilije, and if she pulled him taut enough, he’d snap and lash out at her worse than a broken piano wire.
Thankfully, it didn’t happen.
She fixed the sticky key I pointed out, and as she packed up her kit, Vasilije looked beyond relieved the ordeal was over. He ushered her to the entryway and paid her in cash. She took it hesitantly, probably surprised, and scurried out the door a moment later. My guess was she was as happy to be gone as he was to be rid of her.
I sat at the piano, anxious to get started, but his heavy footfalls carried him toward me. “I have to get back to work.” He grabbed a fistful of hair at the base of my skull and jerked me back with a gasp. His expression was restrained, but his eyes were wild. “I wanted to fuck you when she was done, but that took too fucking long.”
His mouth crushed against mine and his tongue shot past my lips. It was like he was fucking my mouth, and a whimper slipped from me. It shouldn’t have turned me on the way he manhandled me, but . . . it did. Oh God, it did. His unapologetic domination was insane. How the hell could I capture it in a song?
He ended the kiss as brutally as he’d started it, shoving me away from him, and my hands flew out, bracing myself against the keyboard in a sound of panicked discord.
“I’ll see you tonight. Be nice to Jennifer, or I won’t be nice to you later.”
Had he been nice to me before? I kept the comment to myself, because maybe I didn’t want a nice Vasilije. My new muse was complex enough. He didn’t say a real goodbye and left out the garage. The house felt cavernous when he was gone, but it made it easier to breathe.
I lost all track of time as I sat at the piano composing.
It was only when the sunlight faded enough that I realized how late it was. Was I supposed to be dressed when his cousin arrived? I dashed up the stairs, darting into the green-stripe wallpapered room, and dressed quickly in the black patterned dress. I’d just finished zipping it up when I heard movement downstairs.
“Hello?” a female voice called.
I went to the landing at the top of the stairs and looked down at the first floor. “Hello,” I said.
She was petite. Blonde like me, but hers was a golden honey. The woman was early thirties and dressed stylishly in boots, jeans, a slim-fitting sweater, and a colorful scarf looped around her neck. Her hair was done in perfect soft curls and her skin looked flawless. In a single look, I could tell appearance meant everything to her.
“I’m Jennifer,” she said, grabbing the handle of a large rolling tote and heading for the stairs.
“Nice to meet you.” I slapped on a pleasant smile. “I’m Oksana.”
Jennifer lugged her tote up the stairs and was disinterested in my greeting. When she reached me on the landing, she evaluated me critically and her tone was matter-of-fact. “He wasn’t wrong when he said you were beautiful.”
The offhanded comment nearly knocked me from my feet. Up until now, I’d only attracted unwanted attention from Ilia, so it was thrilling to have it reciprocated for once. Even if it was Vasilije Markovic.
“Thank you,” I said.
Jennifer stared plainly at me. “Which room is yours?”
While she got organized and set up in the bathroom, I brought in a desk chair from one of the other bedrooms at her request. I sat in the center of the bathroom, facing the mirror, and held still as she began to work.
It was surreal as she draped a towel over my shoulders to prevent any makeup from getting on my dress. She slathered on moisturizer, followed by primer, then foundation. I kept waiting for her to start a conversation, but it didn’t happen. I’d have to fire the first shot.
“You’re Vasilije’s cousin?” I asked lightly. I didn’t know everyone in the Markovic family tree, just the major players, and she wasn’t one of them.
“By marriage, yeah.” She swept powder over the bridge of my nose.
I thought I’d kicked the conversation off, but it died instantly, and I scrambled for something else. “How long have you been a makeup artist?”
It did the trick. Useless info poured from the woman, telling me about how she’d done a wedding last week where the bride had a bad reaction to a facial peel, but Jennifer had been able to work a miracle. She loosened up as she moved on to doing my eyes, chatting about celebrities and their Instagram accounts like I had a clue, but I nodded back enthusiastically. Could I get her relaxed enough to tell me something useful?
The answer was no.
I tried everything to steer the conversation toward the Markovics, but she shut me down every time. When I had exhausted all my options and she’d finished, she pulled out a mammoth bottle of hair spray and a tray full of bobby pins, sectioned by color. A large-barreled curling iron was plugged in and flicked on.
“You’re doing my hair, too?”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t gentle, either, but I stayed silent as she tugged my hair up into a ponytail and began curling and pinning. When she was done, my hair looked sophisticated, matching both the dress and the understated makeup.
If my half-sister Tatiana could see me now, her jaw would hit the floor and then she’d be pushing me out of the chair, demanding Jennifer do her next.
“Thank you,” I said genuinely. “You’re very good.” I didn’t have many emotions, but knowing I looked nice was an advantage.
She smiled warmly at my compliment. “Goran’s going to do a double-take when he sees you.”
I watched in the mirror as the smile froze on my face. That confirmed it; dinner was with Vasilije’s uncle tonight. If I was being sent to my doom, at least I’d leave this world with a pretty face. I pretended to be confused, disguising my dread. “Who?”
Jennifer sucked in a breath. Clearly it had been a slip. She wouldn’t look at me as she hurried to pack up her supplies. She put samples and a business card in a zip-top plastic bag and set it on the counter. “I can order more of whatever you like.”
I almost laughed. She was trying to sell makeup to a girl who could be dead tomorrow.
She dragged her tote bag down the stairs and rolled it through the entryway, tossing a perfunctory goodbye over her shoulder as she left. I went upstairs, collected the black heels, and carried them back down to the piano, figuring I’d play until Vasilije arrived—
The garage door squealed and clanked as it rolled up.
I jammed my feet into the shoes and did the tiny buckle around the ankles, using the action to focus myself and tamp down my nerves. Vasilije didn’t want me dead. He’d paid thousands of dollars in clothes. He’d had the piano tuned. He’d commissioned a piece and said it was all right if it took me a while to write. Why do any of that if he was going to hand me over to his uncle or get rid of me himself?
“Jesus.”
Vasilije’s stunned voice drew my attention up from my shoes and I froze. “What’s wrong?”
His expression was shock and it turned my bones to ice. “Nothing,” he answered. He stared at me like he wasn’t sure I was real. “You look . . .”
I braced myself. He liked to fuck with me, so I expected almost anything to come out of his mouth.
“Acceptable,” he said finally. He pushed back the sides of his suitcoat and set his hands on his hips. “This thing tonight is important. I need you to be quiet and do exactly what I say.”
“You want me to be your obedient bitch?”
“That’d be perfect.” His eyes were intense, or perhaps it was the grip of his Glock peeking out of his suit. “My driver is here. Let’s go.”
When I reached for my coat in the closet beside the garage, Vasilije scowled. “No, you’ll look stupid. I’m sure the dress cost ten times what the coat did.”
“It’s freezing outside.”
“Good thing we’re not eating dinner outside, then.” He wrapped his hand around my wrist like a shackle, pulling me through the open door into the garage. His tone was mocking. “Besides, I can keep you warm.”
How? He was cold-blooded. It was twenty degrees colder in the garage and I pulled my arms tight against my body, as if it would do anything. The same man from my first night sat behind the wheel of the SUV. John, Vasilije had called him.
Vasilije yanked the backseat door open, I climbed in, and wasn’t surprised when he followed. At least the car interior was warm. I buckled my seatbelt and crossed my legs, as I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
He played on his phone while John opened the garage door, backed out, and set off. Vasilije must have told him where we were going already. I wanted to ask, but at the same time, a warning sounded in my mind. Maybe I was safer without his attention on me.
“Are you sore?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his phone, but loud enough I suspected so John would overhear. If it was an attempt to humiliate me, it was wasted. I was a bastard child in the outskirts of Kazan, where the community was tight-knit and religious. I’d lived my whole life with shame and rarely felt it anymore.
“Sore from when we fucked?” I said casually. “Not really.”
The phone was no longer the most interesting toy in the car for Vasilije, and his black eyes focused on me. “That’s surprising.” He threaded his tie through his fingers, smoothing it down. “Because it seemed like it hurt a lot.”
John’s gaze found mine in the rearview mirror, but I shrugged. “As I told you last night, I’m fine.”
“You feel different? Now that you’re not a virgin?”
The devil wanted to play, and I rose to meet him. “Not really, but I forgot to thank you.”
“For what? Making you a woman?”
I smiled widely. “For finishing so quickly.”
When the sound rang out of his seatbelt unbuckling, I readied for retaliation. Just like the last time we’d been in the back together, he flew across the seat and I wore his hands as a cold, unwanted collar. This time there wasn’t pressure, though. Only dominance.
“Was that you trying to hurt my feelings?” he snarled in my ear.
“No,” I said honestly. “You don’t have feelings.”
His smile was like mine, devoid of warmth or joy, and failed to reach his eyes. “You’re wrong, I can feel plenty of things.” He trapped my earlobe between his teeth and drew it away painfully until it snapped free of his hold. “Like what it feels like when your smart mouth is sliding up and down my cock.”
His hands were gone and he slid back into his seat, palming himself through his pants. My mouth went dry and my throat closed up in anticipation of his next move. He’d escalate the game as he tried to humiliate me.
His strong hand rubbing on his crotch was distracting, almost mesmerizing.
“You want me to go down on you?” I whispered. “Right now?” I flicked my gaze to the driver who was within arm’s reach.
Vasilije oozed confidence. “I told you tonight’s an important dinner. Your mouth can take the edge off for me.”
He was so smug about it, expecting me to balk, and I savored the moment. “All right,” I announced plainly. “Just be careful of my makeup.”