AISHE

The thing about trust is that it goes two ways. You give it. You receive it. You have it. You own it. If there’s no trust, the absence of it creates a void, and for me, just when I’d stopped thinking of it as an agent in my life, it came sifting back in on the breeze from stage left.

I didn’t have it when the video scandal forced me on tour with Clown Irruption. I’d forgiven Emil for what he did a long time ago, and there was no need for trust between him and me. But with Troy, things were different. If I forgave him, I’d have to trust him too.

Slowly, I became braver. See, trust walks hand in hand with love. I wanted to trust him, and I began working on it when my feelings became impossible to suppress.

For each day in Japan, we both became a little braver. Troy was fighting his own demons—guilt over how he had treated me, and horror over the person he’d become thanks to his actions. The only problem was that his pace didn’t keep up with mine.

Troy took longer than I wanted to make love to me. He didn’t trust me to wake up in the morning with the same sated smile I went to sleep with.

Then, there was the mirror sex. It had been our first twisted time together, and I hated that Emil had been present to tarnish it. It was a memory I couldn’t let stick, and I needed Troy to understand that. I wanted to suffocate it, throw dirt over it, bury it six feet under the love I saw in Troy’s eyes.

“You still don’t trust me,” I whisper to him, now, on a hotel balcony in Miami. It’s a week after Hailey’s hospitalization, and I’m holding his hand. He finds my eyes, squinting as he tries to guess my thoughts.

“Of course, I trust you. What’s not to trust about you?”

“On the night after the FNL disaster, you said you thought Hailey was me, that it was why you were going to sleep with her.”

“It was, but we never got that far.”

I nod. “You said you didn’t get inside of her.”

“Because it was true.” His gaze brightens the way it does when he’s worried. He already pictures it, the fight I’m instigating. Only I’m not.

“You were both naked,” I say, stringing out his concern.

“Yes, but I told you how it went down.”

“She was on top of you. I saw her. She was moving on you, and there was no way for me to tell if you were going along with it or trying to get her off.”

“Aishe, please. Why are you doing this? I thought you trusted me!”

“Exactly.” I breathe out, feeling the stillness of my belief in this man setting in. “I did, and I do. All I needed was your word for it.”

“Good, because it was obvious, wasn’t it? Why would I sleep with someone I detest, especially when I went there to find you?”

I feel a grimace running over my face. “Have you adored every groupie you’ve slept with, for instance?”

“Aishe.” He thumps back against the backrest of his chair. “Okay. So you’re right, but that was before you. I’d never do anything to jeopardize what we have. Ever. Where are you going with this?”

“I trusted you. Why don’t you do me the same honor?”

“I told you I do. What do you mean?”

“Make love to me in front of the mirror.”

He groans. Raises a hand and strokes it down his face.

“Trust, Troy. Trust me to not break down over it. Trust that it’s exactly what I need to vanquish Emil’s grin while he ‘was right.’”

Slowly, Troy’s hand reveals his face again. It lowers to his lap as his gaze stills, flashing defiance at me. “Except Emil was right.”

“How was he right, baby?” I’m not going to get upset and lose track of my goal.

“You were made for me, and I was made for you. He knew it.” Troy arches a brow, daring me to disagree.

I give him a hint of a smile. “He was. Emil just had a fucked-up way of getting his point across.”

Troy’s safari-greens shine as they fall to my lap. Restless, I fiddle with nothing there, a piece of thread, maybe. Goodness knows.

“So… you need the mirror, then, to separate him from us?”

The way he says it is brutal. It’s truer than anything I’ve allowed myself to think. “If you trust me.”

“I do.”

The way Troy trusts me is beautiful. Without words, he comes to me in the slow blue of the Miami afternoon, raises me in his arms, and carries me inside. On the bed, he lowers me like I am precious, like he’s known no one like me and needs to savor the meaning of us.

Slow and tender, his kisses explore, his tongue sucking in the flavor of my skin. I am exposed to him, unafraid and ready when he spreads my dress open and leaves it beneath me like a sheet.

He whispers heat to me while he removes my bra, while he teases my nipples with expert lips. He whispers love to me as he runs his nose down my stomach and removes my panties for his hand to explore.

“I love you.” My words are a hiss, and though I shouldn’t block out the view of him, I can’t keep my eyes open. Heavy-lidded, they fall, my skin puckering with pleasure. Troy’s caresses are everywhere, making me arch against his hand, thighs spreading with a plea for more.

You’re my life. In silence, he presses his lips to my ear. It’s how I hear him. It’s why I bridge for him, moaning ecstasy when he unleashes my desire with one slow, slippery stroke inside of me.

“Never mind the mirror.” My breath is shallow with longing. “All I need is you.” I fold my legs around him, keeping him close as he moves with me.

Together we breathe. Together we rock. In sync, we find each other’s lips. Our rhythm is smooth limbs sliding, leaving no inch between us alone. Together we climb, our breaths growing ragged, and when he pulls out of me, it’s so unexpected, I gasp.

“This is for you, my moixcha.” Troy’s eyes shimmer as he leans down to take my hand. With trembling knees, I stand and let him lead me toward the desk. Cautious, he moves behind me, keeping my eyes with his own in the mirror.

“Do you see what I see?” His gaze rolls down the reflection of me, from the curve of my shoulder, to my quivering breasts, to my stomach. Starting beneath my chin, his hands find me as he presses himself against my back, the length of him velvety between my butt cheeks.

“I see us,” I whispers.

“Just us.”

A hiccough escapes me. A slight softening of his expression as he hugs me closer, eyes shutting with emotion before he opens them again. Troy gathers my boobs in his hands, lifting them upward, squeezing for the two of us to see. I sense his hunger. It shoots lust straight to my womb while I wait for his next move.

“Lean your elbows on the desk, baby mine.”

It’s easy to obey with his touch at the base of my spine, nudging me forward with the insistence of someone who loves.

“Look at us.”

I open my eyes and gaze at him, high cheekbones, a pink mouth and eyes arched with tenderness. His hands glide over my body until they lock around my boobs.

“There… we are.” I sound breathless. Green eyes darken with desire at the sound of my weakness.

“Look at yourself.” He spreads me open, and in one stab, he reaches the depths of me. I gasp, bowing my butt against him as he works me. His hand finds my pussy, caressing folds that are hyper-sensual, and I spread my legs, getting up on my toes for better access.

“God,” I sob. It is him—all of him, I see—the tick of his pecs, the play of a string of muscles at the edge of his shoulder.

I hike to my toes, arching my back with the need to have him as deep as possible. “More,” I whimper. “Please.”

I jolt as he catches my clit between two fingers and starts rolling it. He puffs heated kisses to my temple. “Are you ready to let go? Are you ready to explode?” He grows inside of me, becoming impossibly large.

“I’m so. Full,” I stutter.

“Come for me.” The fervor of his plea is all I need to fall apart in his hands. My knees buckling, he holds me up, lets me ride out my climax with toe-curling intensity.

But it’s not all I want.

With my heart thumping erratically, I force my eyes open and study the space around us. I find us in the mirror and run my stare over the empty office chair, over the lack of someone offering up a towel with a lazy grin on his face. My heart soars in the absence of you.

Troy’s eyes slide closed as he speeds up. I inhale the view of him, the only man I need and the only man with me here. This is how it should be, with love spearing aftershocks of pleasure into me with each hard shove against my body. It’s how the phantom of Emil is whispered off to the shadowlands and how I finally become free.

“Where were you just now?” Troy murmurs, kissing the top of my head. “You disappeared for a minute.”

The side of my lip curls with humor. “At the Delfina Hotel in Miami.”

“Ah.” There’s a sexy sort of amusement in that sound. “Good times.”

“I’d say.” I lean fully against him, nestled into the crook of his arm. After a year in this embrace, the quivering Drago Fuoc I had for him has grown into a full-on Sange Inima, an expression I’ve only ever used for my sister and her husband.

Such luck. Such incredible joy. What did I do to deserve him in my life? This man is my everything. He’s my obsession. My love. My fire. It is how I love him, and it’s good, because, without blinking, it’s how he loves me right back.

Languid and relaxed after our morning love in the cabin, I shift against his chest so we can both look out the train window at the Siberian tundra.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” I murmur, feeling a smile grow again. He does this to me.

“It is. This was a killer idea,” Troy says. “The Trans-Siberian Railway, huh? Who’d have known? If it weren’t for my moixcha, I’d never have seen this.”

I sigh happily. Nuzzle his neck and pull in a quick waft of warm amber and spices. “There’s a lot you wouldn’t have experienced if it weren’t for me.”

“All of my favorite highs and my worst, darkest low.”

“We’re not thinking of lows anymore,” I say, a reminder he doesn’t always heed. Today he does heed it. Today, when yellow and brown moss fight for a grip around rugged rocks outside our window, when white mountaintops glitter out their wild beauty in the distance. “This might be the last place on Earth where you can just be you vacationing with your girlfriend.”

“Not exactly.” He kisses the top of my head. “I’ve heard of some islands in the Maldives.”

“Oh right, the ones with no people on them?”

He snickers and shrugs noncommittally.

It’s been a hectic year since everything blew up in New York. We’ve had two world tours almost back to back due to a second album being released in the wake of “Deep in You.”

Emil was right about one thing: “The Mask” has become Clown Irruption’s biggest hit thanks to Bo’s lyrics and Troy’s groundbreaking percussion. The song is about me, Troy claims. I have no idea what he’s talking about, and neither does Bo. All I know is it’s made my man even more recognizable by the masses than he used to be.

When Troll broke his arm, I became his de facto assistant. His arm was fine a few months later, but in the meantime, I’d made myself pretty indispensable, so here I am, still on Clown Irruption’s payroll—with a pay raise! Troll calls me his PA. It makes Troy grumble, but it doesn’t matter to me; if this is the salary PAs get, I’m good.

The shock factor of the “Deep in You” video has faded, and the likelihood of finding its uncut footage online has dramatically dropped. Fans might still refer to it in roundabout ways, but even so the impact of the video has lost steam for me.

No one feels good about me manning the Clown Irruption merch table anymore, and that actually works for me. I enjoy the physical freedom of running errands for the band. And when Troll becomes too grumpy, all I have to do is complain to my boyfriend.

“Where’s your little sister and that husband of hers?” Troy side-eyes me playfully.

This trip is as much for them as for us. There was no one we’d rather celebrate our own discovery of Sange Inima with than the two who first showed it to me in the flesh. “So lazy, right? They’re missing out on everything.”

“All the moss and rocks and mountains,” he specifies, brow waggling.

“You’re dissing it now? I thought you loved the view.” I bite my lip to keep my smirk under control. My baby’s gaze falls to my mouth.

“Just sayin’ I get him; hours in bed with you are worth days in front of any window.”

“With a view like this?”

“With a view like you.”

“Stop.” I giggle like we just started dating, like I’m fifteen and he’s my first crush. This he does to me often, something he says, something he does. I’ve thought about it, and it’s new for me. My circumstances were never such that I’d enjoy a bliss that bubbled weightless in my chest over a man.

“Anyway, if my sister’s asleep instead of letting her husband ‘enjoy the view,’ I’m happy for them. That little boy she’s nurturing is making her tired. And I have a feeling he might up the stakes on that once he’s born.” Ten years and counting with her moixcho, it’s about time they welcome their own itty bitty love-fire child.

Out of habit, a worry stirs in my stomach at the thought of a new little human being brought into a family full of love that burns too hot. On instinct, I think, Will he get afflicted? Or is it like Troy says: is the Drago Fuoc just a tragic legend, while in reality we all feel love and heartbreak in different ways depending on who we are no matter the culture?