Breathe Me Read online

  “Sasha?”

  “Yes?”

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  He looked stunned and a little bit more awake from his previously glazed-over look. This made me feel a wee bit sorry for him, but it served him right. Wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve can be a violent, rough ride.

  “I−I….”

  “You said you’re sorry. Okay. Fine. I can respect that. Once we get off this ride, we go on with our lives, and your torment ends. I’m so happy for you.”

  Sasha blinked back at me. Confusion swam across his handsome face. His hair was a bit messy from sweating in the heat all day, and my fingers itched to run through his locks. If only he hadn’t screwed it all up, where would we have been?

  The summers in Las Vegas were nothing to joke about. The dusk was a welcome relief from the endless broiler of the sun’s heat. It made some of his spiky blonde hair lay flat in spots, in disarray. Somehow it made him look almost harmless, like a wet dog in need of shelter or a swift hosing off.

  I shook off the caretaker in me. Why did I always do this to myself? Every time someone looked helpless or in need, I was there, picking up the pieces, making it all right. No, not this time. Hell no!

  With a swift movement, his hand was on my wrist, gripping it firmly but not hard. His eyes looked focused, sobered up from whatever fantasy he’d been living in his mind. I was now feeling more aware of his seriousness, like life or death depended on what he was going to say next.

  “Piper, I want another chance. I’ll make it right, I swear. You’ll never be sorry if you give me another chance to love you the way you deserve. I won’t be the fool this time. I’ll be there, no matter what the cost. I swear it.”

  I stopped tugging my arm back, his words shocking me like an ice bath. “What?”

  The sounds of people laughing and the clinks of rings against glass bottles hammered in my head. A headache was growing, and I desperately wanted to hop off this hunk of metal junk ride. In fact, my chest felt like a fire was consuming every bit of oxygen surrounding me. There was no air, and I was afraid I was going to suffocate.

  “Hey.”

  Glancing up, I felt his fingers encase my hand softly and begin stroking my skin. It sent tiny little prickles of pleasure up my arm, melting into my chest as I slowly inhaled. The Ferris wheel jerked again, finally bringing us to the platform. The operator yanked up the metal bar, the steel creaking from a lack of lubricant. Sasha jumped out, turned back and offered his hand to help me out. I took it, not because I couldn’t get out by myself, but because I was still processing every single word he’d spoken. My mind was a jumbled mess, and I needed to think.

  Sasha Koval had bested me once more, and he didn’t even know it.

  Chapter Two

  Piper

  Back Then

  ONCE UPON A time, I’d fallen in love with the wrong person. He had caught my eye in French class, of all places, during my freshman year of college. I’d already taken four years of French in high school, but figured it’d be an easy A, so I might as well kick back and enjoy myself. Still, I didn’t want to fail my first semester, so this was an obvious choice to cover my international culture requirement.

  Sasha Koval had slipped quietly into the empty chair next to me as I shuffled my binder and pens around. The room was filled with long, white laminate tables, separated into two distinct sections with a worn, carpeted path down the middle to the front board. I remember glancing at him in my peripheral vision, observing how light his blonde hair was, almost as if it had been bleached either by chemicals or by a long, hot summer under the blazing sun. Not a trace of sunburn could be found across his smooth skin, but he wasn’t as pale as some of the guys in the room. Most never saw daylight, having spent the summer before the start of the semester avoiding responsibility and holed up in their rooms or apartments, playing video games and eating munchies.

  Not Sasha, though. He’d spend summers at some beach, any would do. His twinkling, indigo eyes studied every crevice in the room and hovered over every face. I was pretty sure he’d memorized everyone’s features in mere seconds, including mine, when I realized he was staring right back at me.

  I flicked my eyes away from his handsome face as fast as I could and bore them into the whiteboard at the front just as the teacher, Ms. Andrews, made her way to the podium. Heat rose, rushing across my face and making the sweat seep from my body. Still feeling the weight of his eyes on me, I shuffled my folders and pens, hoping to look much too busy to be affected by the most perfect specimen of a man I’d ever seen.

  You can imagine how little I heard that first day. It was sheer torture sitting through the endless drone of the teacher’s monotonous voice as she went through the syllabus and spoke French as much as possible, forcing the room to repeat the rolling r’s and use our tongues in ways the English language had no use for. Maybe that was why I loved French so much. It was romantic and sensual in the way it made you use your lips, sway your tongue and made one want to flit the hands into the air.

  It was a fine distraction from Sasha, whose name I’d finally gotten to know when Ms. Andrews forced each one of us to introduce ourselves and stand up to the absolute attention of the crowded room, like we were still in middle school or something. Apparently she was the only French teacher at this college, so her classes were jam-packed. The more the merrier. It just meant there were probably twice as many eyes studying the sweat stains on my back than there’d been in my high school classes.

  Never had I ever been so relieved to watch the clock tick to the eleven o’clock hour. Class was only an hour long, but it had felt like an eternity to me. Rushing toward the door only found me caught up in the clog of students trying to escape just as fast as I’d wanted to. The funnel kept me in the room longer, long enough to feel a sharp tap on my shoulder.

  I’d spun around to come face to face with mister dream guy. His eyes looked mischievous while his smile made me wish I had put on more makeup and spent more time in front of the mirror, curling my hair. It was arresting, like time had frozen, as I was slowly pushed along with the crowd toward the hall. His body hovered way too close. In fact, the warmth seeped through my clothes as he bumped into me, pressing his rock-hard body to mine. The people behind him weren’t that patient either and continued to push at us as we inched along. I could’ve died. His breath was caressing along my neck, sending sweet little slivers of pleasure down my spine.

  “You dropped this.”

  I managed to turn and lowered my eyes to his hand. He had held out a pink ribbon pen, one I’d bought that morning from a neighbor’s daughter who’d been selling them for breast cancer research. Who can turn down a charity, right? Not me. Especially not since she’d been a Girl Scout, with her gleaming white teeth smiling and wearing her Scouting best threads. I was a sucker for their cookies, too, so that wasn’t any help.

  “Thank you.” I slipped my fingers over the end of the pen, softly grazing his hand as I plucked it away from his grasp. His eyes took me in, like they knew me, like I’d stared into those same eyes a thousand times before. This uneasiness made me shiver again, and I had to avert my eyes to even attempt to catch my breath. His closeness was making the air dangerously thin, and my anxiety slowly slipped from control.

  “You’re most welcome. You’re Piper, right?” A faded foreign accent framed his words as he spoke, perking up my interest in this guy. Couldn’t hurt to engage in a bit of small talk, right? He was definitely the kind of guy I’d want to know more about. But guys like him were never interested in me. So what would make this any different?

  “Yes. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name….” My brain decided to freeze in its synapses.

  “Sasha. Sasha Koval.”

  I nodded, relaxing as I let my smile take over. He was dreamy, in every sense of the word. He had a slender build with a touch of huskiness which made me want to run my fingers down his chest, across what probably was a six pack stomach under that cream-colored
thermal shirt. It hugged his build quite nicely, and I gulped as I tried to pay attention to walking straight. Faded jeans hung snug at his hips but were the loose, relaxed fit. He made it look good, that was a definite. Gulping, I ripped my gaze away from his body, hoping he hadn’t caught me studying him too long. I could feel my long brown hair clinging to my neck, and I wished with every fiber of my being that I had pulled it back into a pony tail. It was darn right unbearably hot with him so close.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too. Hey, I’m pretty new in town, I was wondering if….”

  The spill of the crowd let out into the wide hallway, and I hurried out the door while half listening to him. I stopped in my tracks as his voice momentarily faded. I turned to find that he had stopped to let some students pass before jogging up to me. I had a full view of him now, and I felt a tickling warmth tumble in my belly as I watched him move. He prowled like a predator, very sleek, very dangerous.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out some time. You probably know this town better than I do.” He flashed his disarming smile again, making me want to actually groan out loud from the radiance of it. Instead, I swallowed back the dry desert in my mouth and smiled like a fool right back. Had he just asked me out? Nah. Well, maybe….

  “Been here my entire life.” I straightened, wanting to slap myself for sounding so incredibly plain and starstruck. “I mean, yeah, I guess we could hang out sometime.”

  If it was possible for a smile to light up more than his did, I’ve never seen it. “Great! What’s your number, Piper? I could call you. Or email you? I could text you, if you prefer.” Was he nervous, too?

  I tried to answer, but no words came out. I was literally speechless and staring at him like a drooling dog.

  Whoa, nelly, find your words, girl, find ‘em.

  “Uh, yeah. Um. You can call me. You got a pen?” I shifted on my feet, feeling a sudden urge to run and never look back. He motioned toward my hand, still holding the pink pen he’d just given back to me not a moment before. “Right. I mean, got something to write on?” I was such a retard.

  Maybe I should’ve known better, but at the time, I didn’t have a clue what I was jumping into. If someone had told me it was a vat of boiling oil, I would’ve willingly walked into it. I’d have laughed and told them how absolutely full of crap they were. Sasha was as hot as they got, but he was harmless, right?

  He produced a small notepad and eagerly placed it in my small hand as he patiently waited. He didn’t look nervous. In fact, he didn’t seem at all inexperienced at asking out women, which should’ve sent a huge, blaring alarm ringing through my head. But I was oblivious, and this oblivion made me ignore the signs as I scribbled my number on his notepad.

  Just like that, I’d handed him my heart, and he’d taken it, slipped it into the back pocket of his snug jeans—which showed off his rear end in a most indulging way—without a second’s thought. Waving goodbye, he’d headed off toward his next class, leaving me to enjoy the view for just a bit longer.

  I didn’t know it then, nor could I have predicted it, but I was in so much trouble, just like that. Well, I suppose a part of me did know it, but another part of me told the other part to go screw itself and enjoy the view.

  Chapter Three

  Sasha

  In the Past…

  MEMORIES SCENTED WITH beer and pizza smells wafting around the fraternity house like they’d embedded themselves into the walls and furniture, filling my head with so many past parties and times gone by. I held a plastic cup of alcohol, but it remained, for the most part, untouched. The music made the walls vibrate and the picture frames moved with the beat. Nothing could have put me in a festive mood that day, not even having Piper in the same room, because what I had to do was like asking me to hack off an arm.

  She was chatting it up with a group of girls. I didn’t know any of them, but were groupies of some of the guys in the house. Some of them were already blasted while others were off in dark corners with some of the guys, lost in deep, passionate embraces as they nearly consumed each other. All I could think about was Piper, the way she laughed, the way her dark brown hair fell into her face and how she was constantly but uselessly shoving it behind her ears. No one here was like her. No one had my heart but this one woman. And I was about to break hers into a thousand tiny little shards.

  My visa had expired, and as soon as I graduated, I’d have to leave the US and try to return one way or another. They’d refused to grant me another since I still hadn’t gotten a job. I needed a job to stay, but it was madness how they ran things at the Immigration department. They’d been less than helpful. Once I left, I wasn’t sure how long it’d be before they’d let me return.

  Eyeing her pink lips as they moved to whatever she was adding to the conversation, I wanted to rush across the room, sweep her up and make love to her one more time before smashing her heart to bits. It’d be better this way, at least that’s what I’d told myself. If I told her the truth about leaving, she’d want to go with me and not finish her college degree. I couldn’t let that happen, she had so much going for her. I couldn’t be the one to hold her back like that, even if I was madly in love with her.

  “Hey, you.” Piper slipped her arms around my waist. I had been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t realized she had made her way across the room toward me. “You’re looking mighty glum for being at a party.” Her lips found their way across my neck, and I felt the edges of her teeth nip my earlobe. It sent an electrifying jolt through me, and I had to hold up my hands and step back slightly. The hurt in her eyes killed me.

  “Piper, I….”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I gulped. I had to do it. I had to.

  “I don’t want to stay together anymore.”

  She stared at me, stunned and unable to even form words. I felt like was going to hell for doing this. It was so wrong, so wrong.

  “What are you doing?” She managed to choke out after a moment.

  “I want to see other people.”

  A lie.

  “What? How can you say that?”

  “I… I’m not feeling this anymore.”

  Lies, lies.

  “Excuse me?” Her face was flushing scarlet, but the pain shot from her eyes like daggers. “Are you fucking with me?” I flinched at her words, knowing full well she really wanted to not believe me.

  “No, Piper. I’m not.”

  “Are you… seeing someone else already?” Her voice cracked, and the knot in my throat grew.

  “Yes.”

  Lies, lies, lies!

  She said nothing further, but her face changed to a deadly serious mask. “Who?”

  “What?” I was confused.

  “Prove it. Who is she? Go get her and kiss her. Kiss her like you kiss me. Prove to me you don’t love me.” Her challenge turned her features icy cold, and I began sweating under the heat of all the bodies gyrating around us.

  “Piper, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  Lies, lies, lies, lies!

  She closed the gap between us, her lips hovering a mere centimeter from my own. It made me hold my breath. To breathe her scent in was to admit I was a liar.

  “Kiss me, then.” She leaned forward, closing the gap between us. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show her I still cared. I stepped back.

  “Piper.”

  Her rage returned and tears spilled from her shiny eyes. “Fuck you, Sasha! You want to throw it all away, just like that? At least show me it was worth it. Kiss her.”

  I was disgusted by her challenge, but I knew full well she was right. If I didn’t prove it to her, she’d know I was lying and interrogate me until I broke and fessed up. I couldn’t let that happen, it’d ruin my plan.

  “Fine, but don’t come crying to me when it’s all said and done.” My face turned still as stone as I tried to tuck away every little fee
ling I had for her and walked away. Who could I kiss to convince her that our love was over with?

  Caroline’s laugh echoed across the hall toward me, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. She was nuts about me, and she’d definitely let me kiss her. I’d seen the way her desire burned in her eyes every time I’d pass her in the halls. She’d be an easy hit, soft like putty to meld. I was sure that if I asked her out, she’d jump at the chance without hesitation.

  I made my way toward her long, dirty-blonde locks as she flicked her mane back. Her overly loud laugh let me know she’d already had a few drinks and would be as loose as an oiled gear in my hands. My stomach clenched as I reached her, slid my hands around her skinny waist, pulled her hair to the side and kissed her soft neck. She stiffened but turned, and a high-voltage smile formed on her lips. She was ecstatic, and I leaned forward, finding her pretty mouth and devouring it like there was no tomorrow. Closing my eyes, it was easy to pretend she was Piper, even with a completely different perfume. She matched my rhythm and threw her arms around my neck, grinding her body against mine.

  As I slowly turned my head, she continued lavishing kisses on my neck and earlobe. Her hands made their way down my chest and over my rear, slipping her fingers into my pockets. I found Piper across the room, tears running down her cheeks. Her chest heaved as she tried to wrangle in her breathing, and I was pretty sure an anxiety attack would overtake her soon.

  It was the worst thing I’d ever had to do, and my eyes never left her, even as she shoved her way through the crowd, all oblivious to her turmoil, and flew out the front door. I wanted to run after her, tell her I was so sorry and that she was right. I was an ass, a stupid, lying fool.

  But I didn’t, and I let Caroline drown me in her overpowering scent. I still had my beer in my hand, and I brought it to my lips, downing it with but a couple gulps. I was going to need way more than just one cup of beer to get through the night, not to mention the rest of the week.