Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal #1)(13)
And it’s this moment that he chooses to turn and assess his prospective partners.
He coughs on his drink. Literally choking for a second, his stunning gray eyes fix right on me. My stomach twists, and my face contorts in that pained scowl. Any suppressed nausea starts to build tenfold.
“Is something wrong?” Helen asks, glancing between me and Nikolai and back again.
I open my eyes bigger at him like please don’t say anything about last night.
But this only drops his concentrated gaze to my chest, staring like he can see through my black leotard, at the nipple he pinched between his fingers and stabbed.
I’m in trouble.
Last night, after he pierced me, he might as well have patted me on the shoulder and said hope you have a good life. There was no intention or expectation that he’d ever see me again. Ever. In my entire life. I wonder how many people traverse through his world. How many he eats up and discards like fodder for his performance.
He screws the cap on his Gatorade, collecting himself, but I can’t tell if he’s enraged by me or indifferent. I discount “happy” as a possibility. His stern, hard features are far, far away from any overjoyed sentiment.
“Nikolai?” Helen asks.
“It’s nothing,” he immediately says.
I inhale strongly, relief trying to surface. But for some reason, my muscles just constrict more. Nerves are trying to overtake me. With the brush of his hand, he wipes the sticky stream of Gatorade off his chest. And his eyes dance from Elena to Kaitlin and the other four girls, pretending like he wasn’t completely caught off guard.
Helen follows his act to ignore the slipup. “Meet Nikolai Kotova,” she says to us, rising from her seat. “He’s the male lead in Amour and the second half of the passionate pairing. This show won’t work if you don’t have chemistry with Nik. Partnerships take years to cultivate, and we’re asking you to grow comfortable within five months. It’s a lot, we realize, but this has to work. Aerial Ethereal has millions of dollars in this show.”
I mentally list off the perks. Land the job and I’ll be awarded a one-year contract for Amour, complimentary room and board within The Masquerade, and if the show does well, Amour could be renewed for a twelve-year run. It’s stability, something my parents want for me. Something I need.
But more than that, it’s a dream.
It’s a wonderful, faraway dream that I crave so desperately. I’m willing to work as hard as I can to live it.
Nikolai rotates abruptly, his back to us, and he starts speaking in hurried Russian to some of the art directors, choreographers, and whoever else is lined at the table. He grabs a few file folders and urgently flips through them. Only once does he glance over his muscular shoulder—and his eyes land on me again.
“Did you sleep with him?” Kaitlin asks me under her breath, anger wrinkling her forehead.
“What?” I frown deeply. “No. No.” This isn’t like that…but maybe it is. I don’t know. Is it that bad? Rare negative thoughts latch onto me. He’s going to throw me out. Tell me to pack my bags. My one shot is gone before it’s begun.
These jumbled fears jolt me to my feet, a string of excuses popping into my head. “I can explain,” I start. The room tenses, the silence deadened, my voice echoing in the cavernous gym. Everything is heavy and uncomfortable.
Nikolai says something rapidly in Russian to the directors, and then he sets the folder on the table.
I continue, “I didn’t know who—”
“Be quiet, Thora,” he says, spinning around and walking straight towards me with a lengthy stride. His eyes narrow like shut the fuck up.
That look has permanently ripped out my vocal cords.
He steps onto the blue mats, only a couple feet from me. And then his voice lowers. “You’re up first.”
“What?” I gape in confusion.
He puts his fingers underneath my chin, physically pushing my jaw closed. My plump bottom lip meets my top. “You’re up first in the audition.”
A short, round man with glasses and peppered hair lingers off to the side, arms crossed, and he interjects with a flurry of Russian words.
Nikolai replies back easily, still staring down at me. Then he breaks into English. “Do you want to audition, Thora?”
I nod.
“Then bark like a dog.”
What. The hell? I feel my eyes darken. “Is this a joke?” He’s planning to humiliate me, for payback or something?
He wears a new expression, one full of severity. No curved lips. No theatrics. His tough exterior intensifies by ten-thousand degrees.
I can’t shrivel. I’m solidified to stone by his change in demeanor.
“I take my job seriously,” he says with force behind each word. “You want to be a performer? Then bark like a dog.”
I hesitate, my gaze flickering to the table of directors. Some of them share furtive whispers, but for the most part, they watch us, poker-faced. They won’t intervene then. He’s taken over my audition and turned it into a crazy one.
I step forward once, closer to him, and say under my breath, “This isn’t a game to me.” This whole audition is so much more important than a bet.
His hand flies to my mouth, silencing me. His large palm practically fits across my entire face. “How badly do you want this?”