So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(27)

“Bonjour, kotyonok. You are still asleep?”

“Vadim,” she replied in that French purr he had adored for a week while Marceline was in Quebec for business late last year. “It’s 6 a.m. in Paris. Of course I’m still asleep.”

He heard her fumble and then the telltale click and expelling of smoke. She had hid her habit in Quebec, but there had always been that faint trace in her hair, on her clothes. Not like Isobel, who smelled like flowers.

He shook his head, conscious of his mission.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time.” He didn’t really care, but that was her cue for her to remove herself to privacy if she had someone in her bed.

“It is never a bad time for you, Vadim. I have a flight to London in four hours, which should give us plenty of time to—”

“Not today, kotyonok,” he said with a grimace. “I am calling to ask you something. It is . . . delicate.”

“Mon Dieu, you have some disease!”

“No, not at all.” He always used condoms. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps a woman—Isobel—did not get the full impact because he was encased in rubber. Or perhaps he was grasping at straws.

There was nothing for it but to spit it out.

“When we were together, did you come?”

A slight hesitancy. “Did I—what?”

“Orgasm, Marceline. I believed you did, but I wanted to be sure.”

Silence.

“Marceline?”

“Oui, Vadim, I am still here.” Her voice was now tinged with Continental amusement. “I am trying to understand. Are you writing a memoir?”

He sighed. This was the reaction of the two women he had already called tonight. Everyone wanted to understand his rationale. Was it not a perfectly valid query?

“No. I am just doing some research . . . on behalf of a friend.”

“Hmm.”

He hurried on. “I have my own techniques and I wondered if there was something you liked that I could tell him.” Nothing had ever sounded more stupid exiting his mouth.

He heard her sharp intake of breath as she dragged on the cigarette. “Vadim, our time together was wonderful. But sometimes a woman is too tired and it makes things easier, non?”

“Makes what easier?”

“The male hurt feelings. Their egos, so fragile.”

She talked about men as if he wasn’t a member of this sensitive species who needed to be shielded from realities. He could interpret this as an insult or as a sneaky French way of giving him the information he wanted. Knowing Marceline, it was both.

“And when a woman is tired?” he prompted.

“Or not in the mood or feeling pressured to perform for any number of reasons, she must decide if her lover’s sulking is something she wants to endure.”

Vadim’s head pounded. He wished he hadn’t called. He wished he hadn’t heard a word about that conversation from Shay. He wished he’d never slept with Iso—no, he didn’t wish that. Of all the things he wished for, that was not one of them.

“So you would fake an orgasm to avoid a man’s pouting.”

She laughed, low and cruel.

“I have, but not with you, Vadim. We had a wonderful time together in Quebec, n’est-ce pas? I will be in Chicago for business soon. Perhaps we can get together?”

“Sure.” His mind was trying to wrap itself around what she had just said. Why tell him the secret thoughts of women and orgasms if this didn’t apply to him? Was she speaking in hypotheticals or trying to hint that his sexual skills were subpar? Yet she wanted to see him again—and he knew she wouldn’t be visiting so he could act as tour guide around the Windy City.

On balance, he had to conclude that he’d delivered the orgasms she was looking for. Vadim Petrov didn’t have a problem. Other men had problems—and some women, too, if Marceline’s catalog of excuses on behalf of the sisterhood was to be believed.

“I should let you get ready for your flight, Marceline. Au revoir, kotyonok, and merci.”

He ended the call, assured that he had absolutely nothing to worry about.





EIGHT




Isobel couldn’t take her eyes off the perfect breasts being shoved in her face. Similarly, the body attached to those breasts was a work of art. Gilded skin, curves in all the right places, a hint of glitter over the décolletage.

“You havin’ fun, hun?” the perfect specimen asked, and there it was—that revealing bobble of an Adam’s apple.

Isobel nodded dumbly, placed a dollar bill in the performer’s G-string, and watched the hip swivel that took her away to a table of rowdy bachelorettes.

She turned to Harper, who was eyeing the proceedings at the Kit Kat Lounge and Supper Club, Chicago’s premier drag bar, over her martini glass. “I’m not sure if I should be jealous of that body or think seriously about my sexual orientation.”

“No reason why you can’t be both,” her older sister mused. “She’s hot.”

Violet popped a truffle fry into her mouth and groaned. “Too. Good. But y’know, if you’re leaning that way it might make things easier—or explain a lot.”

Lesbianism would really be the simplest solution. Women were a lot less needy.

Harper asked, “So how’s Gerry?”