10: In Which He Gets Advice from Half His Shoe Size [FILLER] (1/2)

10: In Which He Gets Advice from Half His Shoe Size [Nikolai’s POV]

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I squinted at the cloud, concentrating all my energy on considering what the hell it looked like. If I covered my right eye with a hand, it looked like a rabbit but with both bloodshot eyes open, it looked like a heart split down the fucking middle, tiny puffs of silver-grey blood spatters following in its wake.

Yeah, I’m not telling that to a six-year-old, I thought, now wishing I’d stayed away from my fourth glass of Hennessy that morning. If I had, maybe I would’ve made even the least bit of sense even in my own head.

“So what do you see?” Asya asked in perfect, impatient Ruslavian, shifting slightly in the grass on my left. She pointed at the cloud we were currently analysing. “That one, remember?”

I wiped at the moisture that was already accumulating on my brow. “Nothing. I see nothing.” I glared up at the sun hiding behind a cloud.

“You’re talking funny,” Asya giggled.

I gave the girl a sideways glance. “I’m talking funny? Your front teeth are out and I’m talking funny?” I slurred, sitting up.

Yeah. I was talking funny, all right.

Someone as intoxicated as me shouldn’t have been around a kid just then, but it was fucking impossible for me to chase her away from her space, a space that was specifically for the children of Kroya. I was the outsider, the strange man who got someone to drive him into the village so that he could stumble into a children’s park at eleven in the morning like a paedophile.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lev, my bodyguard and glorified babysitter, unobtrusively leaning against the limo parked at a distance outside the park’s gates. I couldn’t even get shitfaced like a normal person without someone watching my every move.

“Yes,” Asya replied, still laughing. She pushed herself up beside me. “Papa talks like that sometimes, but it’s only when he’s had his bitter drink. Have you had bitter drink today, Kolya?”

Let’s see. I was drunk by eight this morning. My sobriety has gone to shit. And why? Because of a female?

I wasn’t an alcoholic. I just liked drinking and didn’t particularly like how I got when I was drinking. This was partly the reason why I’d dropped out of college; why I couldn’t hold down a proper job. I could drink, but only socially, around people. When I was alone with a bottle, it was a toss-up on whether I’d stop at one – or finish the entire bar.

Think clean thoughts, Kolya.

“My mother would bring me here to play every weekend,” I murmured, resting my chin on my raised knees. “Back then, it was just a field of weeds but she had the best imagination. I forgot the bad things when she was around. This park was Eden and I was a six-year-old boy-king.”

“Mama says Aunt Sonya wanted to be an actress,” Asya spoke up, reaching out and curling her hand in mine. For someone so young, she was extremely intuitive. I squeezed her tiny hand in mine. “But she made dresses for princesses! She looked like a princess, too, didn’t she?” she wanted to know.

I reached out and ran my free hand through her thick, dark hair, staring back at green eyes that were exactly like my mother’s. “Yes,” I told her. “Yes, she did. And so do you.” She brightened at my answer.

Sometimes, when I looked at my little cousin, I swore I could see my mother staring back at me. Their eyes were the same, but Asya’s were almond-shaped and so expressive, they made Puss in Boots’ eyes look dull and lifeless. Even in a faded pink dress, Asya was beautiful. There were moments when I wanted to tell her mother – my aunt – to fuck her pride and accept my money, to accept the things I could and desperately wanted to offer her family.

But Aunt Sofia, my mother’s younger and only sibling, was stubborn. As was her carpenter husband, Josef. They were cutting off their noses to spite their faces and it was my cousin Asya who was suffering because of it. Pride was the reason they wouldn’t take money from the king’s bastard brother. Pride was the reason they felt slighted by my repeated offers and weren’t talking to me.

“Where’s your princess?” Asya questioned, finally opening the box of Romany Creams I’d brought her.

“I scared her off,” I replied, voicing the words aloud. “You know, when you grow up, little one, you'll be a heartbreaker. I pity the boys that will throw themselves at your feet and get breadcrumbs of a response.” I fixed my eyes on my cousin. “Promise me you won’t be too hard on them, Asya. They just want to understand you.”

She fixed me with a puzzled stare but I pressed on.

“And what do women want? A man to treat them like dirt, kick them around and swear that he’ll never do it again?” I rambled, accepting Asya’s offer of one chocolate-covered coconut cookie. I wolfed the thing down in two bites. “Don’t ever let a man do that to you, little one. A man should worship the ground his woman walks on. Promise me you'll come to me the minute a man so much as swats a fly in your face, angel.”

“Kolya,” Asya began uncertainly, “why did you scare her? I liked her. Sometimes the boys hide behind trees and jump out to scare us but it’s only a joke. I never get scared. Papa says I’m braver than all the boys.”

“I didn’t mean to scare her. I just wasn’t thinking straight,” I mumbled, rubbing at my temple with two fingers. If I rubbed hard enough, maybe the throbbing would ease. “I never think straight when it comes to her, Asya. I never think straight, period. Help me.”

She was licking cream of her tiny fingers, regarding me cautiously. “How?”

“Tell me how great I am.”

The little creature actually rolled her eyes at me. “I thought you would get a princess and have little princes and princesses for me to play with.” She shot me a glare. “Why did you have to jump out and scare her?”

Good question. Could’ve been worded differently but it was ultimately the same thing: Why did you have to come on too strong?

That was exactly like jumping out from behind a tree and yelling, “Surprise! I’m into you more than you're into me,” and expecting her to be completely fine with it. Women like Ophelia didn’t give up their lives, their dreams for a casual holiday fling. That was exactly what I amounted to – a few days of sexual tension building up to incredible, mind-blowing sex. Being inside Ophelia was like…was like being inside a fucking womb.

Yeah, I’m not telling that to a six-year-old, I thought for the second time, amazed that I was still in charge of what came out of my mouth. My thoughts, on the other hand, were warped.

Before I could change the subject, Asya’s favourite song in the world, Ylvis’ The Fox, blared from the back pocket of my Levi’s. I scrabbled to get my phone out, answering it without even glancing at the screen.

“You put your number in my phone,” a husky voice said in my ear.

She sounded strange, her voice thicker, lower. But I still knew who she was.

“Ophelia,” I said. “What a pleasant surprise. You sound –”

“Drunk? Sloshed? Wasted?” she cut in, giggling. “I had a couple shots of Jose Cuervo. I think therefore I am pretty fan-fucking-tastic! God, what a trip.”

I instantly sobered up. “Where are you?” I strained my ear to hear and was rewarded by the faint thump of music in the background.

“Highway,” she replied. “It’s the only club in the Bay. Pretty sad, if you ask me.”

A sharp arrow of jealousy pierced my chest. Clubs meant dancing and if she was drunk, men would take advantage. Hell, I would take advantage of someone as incredible as her.

“You’re back home? With Devin and your mother?”

“My mother is in hospital because she tried to OD. The stupid bitch can’t even kill herself right,” she snarled, rolling her Rs. “My mom is Rory and Rory is great. Rory is perfect and Rory thinks I’m perfect. But I’m not, Nikolai. I’m not perfect.”

I pushed myself up to my feet, stumbling away from my cousin and finding the nearest park bench. “You’re perfect,” I told her. “You’re perfect to me.”

“I wish you’d stop saying things like that. I wish I’d stop thinking about you,” she complained loudly. “It’s been three damn days and all I hear is your stupid, stupid sexy accent. I can’t even look at cats anymore. You made me hate cats!”

“Kitten,” I began, “do you have someone to get you home?”

“No, I came here alone.”

God, that was much, much worse than if she went out with a handful of girlfriends. I pushed down yet another flash of protectiveness.

“Can you call Devin to pick you up?”

She laughed in my ear, the throaty sound churning my insides and heating my skin. “You must be crazy. I’ll call a cab. I’m not totally out of it.”

“When you end this call, phone a cab and then phone me back while you’re waiting, OK?”

“You’re so bossy, Prince Nikolai. I miss you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “You have no idea how much I miss you.”

“I lied. I lied because I was scared, because you make me feel things that I shouldn’t feel so soon,” she said in one breath. “You're intense and sweet and the only guy to ever make me come. I was scared.”

My eyes flew open. “The only guy to what?”

Laughter filled my ear once again. “Is that the only thing you heard? And here I thought you were a sweet guy but you're only after one thing.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone, kitten,” I growled, aware that I was fast on my way to becoming aroused in a park that was filled with swings and sandpits and merry-go-rounds.

“Then come to me, Nikolai,” she said softly. “I need you. I need you because…because I really, really… like you. I do want you. I want you very, very much. I want you and it scares me because I’ve never needed anyone this much.” She inhaled deeply. “God, I really am drunk, aren’t I? I should never have –”

“I’ll be there,” I interjected, eyes on Asya as she hopped onto a swing. “And pussycat?”

“Yes?” she breathed.

“By the time I get there, you’ll have sobered up,” I told her, “which is why I recorded this conversation. You won’t be able to back out once I see you again.”

“I won’t want to,” she said softly. “As long as you hurry.”

I didn’t bargain for Ophelia’s stepmother to open the door. I’d spent the eleven-hour plane ride battling a ridiculous hangover with ibuprofen and Angry Birds on my iPad, all the while trying to push away the fact that travelling on the whim of a woman who wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure of her feelings made me slightly foolish.

No, not slightly. Completely and totally un-fucking-believably foolish.

Now I was standing on the doorstep of Ophelia’s childhood home, staring back at her stepmother, who kept sliding a curious glance at an admittedly intimidating Lev leaning against the rental Benz.

“Well, whoever you are, it’s too early in the morning for you to look that unhealthy,” Rory observed, giving me the once-over.

I glanced down at myself. Yeah, I looked like shit in a cup. My hair was dishevelled and I had a couple of days’ worth of stubble on my jaw, not to mention the fact that I was sure the remnants of my alcohol binge were in my bleary eyes. My T-shirt was rumpled and my jeans still had grass stains on the back.

Fucking hell.

“Mrs. Shaw, I’m, uh, a friend of Ophelia’s.”

Her brown-eyes, which ridiculously reminded me of Ophelia’s, danced. Dressed in a checked flannel shirt and jeans with her raven-black hair pinned up, she looked way younger than Devin, although the sparse wisps of silver in her hair and faint laugh lines on her face told a different story.

“A friend, hmm? Well, I think you’d better come in then, Prince Nikolai,” she said brightly, stepping aside to let me in.

“How did you –”

“Just hearing that voice,” she said, laughing at my incredulous expression. “It’s not every day Anton Yelchin in Star Trek says my name. Is your equally giant friend coming in?”

Glancing back at Lev, I replied, “Uh, no. Anton Yelchin?” I allowed her to lead me through the passageway and into the inviting, brightly-lit living area.

“Yeah. He’s younger than you, obviously, but Russian. Sometimes. Think the Fright Night remake.” Rory motioned for me to sit but I found that I couldn’t. “Though I suppose princes don’t go for that sort of thing? Movies. You’re probably always busy with important things. Ruling principalities and whatnot.”