Natasha (Little Girl Book 1)

  What’s Inside

  Silas slid his hands down her back to her hips. "You're my beautiful dancing girl. Daddy's special girl."

  "Mmm." Natasha let out a slight moan. She turned her face up to Silas, already anticipating the kiss that he pressed to her mouth. Her breath caught when he hooked his hands beneath her thighs and lifted her effortlessly in his arms. She wrapped her legs around him and returned his kiss with everything in her. Her body felt like it was positively singing. Every part of her still coursed with adrenaline from dancing a favorite routine. Being able to channel her exhilaration and energy into Silas was nothing short of blissful, so she didn't stop him when he slipped the shoulder of her bodysuit to the side and nipped her shoulder lightly.

  "Is this okay, baby girl? Tell me no, and we'll stop."

  "If you stop, I'll never forgive you," she gasped, pushing her hips against Silas. She was desperate for contact, and suddenly, they were both wearing far too many layers of clothes. "Take off your clothes," she demanded, tugging at his shirt.

  Silas said nothing but kissed her again, harder this time, before he yanked his shirt off. Before Natasha knew what was happening, Silas had her bodysuit pushed down to her waist and was already unsnapping it from between her legs.

  "So beautiful," he murmured from his knees, kissing her stomach and pulling her tights down her legs. Natasha closed her eyes and ran her fingers through his hair with a tug. She loved how powerful his body was and how much he doted on her pleasure. There wasn't a selfish bone in the man's body, and she gasped when he hooked one of her legs over his shoulder and licked a red-hot path up her inner thigh. His breath ghosted along the sensitive flesh between her legs, and she bucked her hips, trying to get closer.

  "Please," she gasped, head thrown back wantonly. Silas' hands were steady at her waist while he held her up effortlessly, which was lucky as her legs were now shaking in anticipation of what was to come.

  "Well, when you ask so prettily I can't say no." His teeth grazed her skin before he turned his attention to that bundle of nerves screaming for attention. His tongue moved against her, finally licking her with delicious friction.

  Natasha gasped, her back arching while Silas began to move his tongue and lips over her with increasing pressure. She nearly cried when he caught her clit between his teeth and gave it a gentle tug. His tongue was there a moment later to soothe the ache while the hand firmly gripping the top of her thigh slung over his shoulder tightened on her. Natasha's heel dug into his back as she squirmed to get closer to his ministrations.

  Natasha

  Little Girl, Book One

  Rebel Carter

  Published by Blushing Books

  An Imprint of

  ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc.

  A Virginia Corporation

  977 Seminole Trail #233

  Charlottesville, VA 22901

  ©2019 by ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc. and author

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The trademark Blushing Books is pending in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  Rebel Carter

  Natasha

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-64563-002-9

  v1

  Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book contains fantasy themes appropriate for mature readers only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual sexual activity.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Rebel Carter

  EBook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  Blushing Books

  Prologue

  Natasha grimaced and squinted into the overly harsh light, her skin perspiring from the heat of the too bright lights overhead; it was nothing new. But that was life as a prima ballerina for one of New York's premier dance companies. The stage lights only seemed to increase in wattage with each performance, of which she was certain there would be many more before she hung up her pointe shoes.

  At twenty years old, Natasha was in the prime of her career. The product of a legacy built on grace and strength. Both her mother and grandmother had been celebrated ballerinas, which meant that anything less for Natasha was unthinkable. Further sealing her fate was the fact that she was named after her grandmother—Natasha Lleyna Ochenko, the light of the Soviet Union, or at least until she fled, during the Bolshoi Ballet's only performance stateside.

  It had caused quite a scandal.

  Even now, the memory of her grandmother regaling her with the tale of her midnight sprint to freedom through Grand Central Station set Natasha's blood singing. Or was the sensation merely the adrenaline rush from the prospect of taking the stage?

  Blowing out a calming breath, Natasha smoothed her hands over her costume, her sweaty fingers catching at the silk. She frowned, looking down at the twisted material. She needed to control her heart rate. There was no room for error, and a nervous heart made for nervous feet.

  "Be still," Natasha murmured to herself as the orchestra music swelled around her, announcing her entrance. She turned to her partner, Alexi, who was a few years older than she was, a proud Russian who still sneered at her when he thought she didn't notice. He knew all about her grandmother's flight to freedom; everyone did. Natasha relished that it bothered him. It had been a small victory for her when they had announced her as the company's female principal dancer.

  "Russians all around then, eh?" Alexi had said, regaining his composure after his handsome face had fallen at hearing her name announced.

  "No," Natasha had said with a tilt of her head and a smile that had barely pulled up at the corners of her lips. "I'm a New Yorker."

  Alexi had rolled his eyes at her and snorted, his attempt at camaraderie spent. "And I never forget it."

  Natasha had flashed a smile that far more resembled the baring of teeth than a friendly overture. "See that you don't."

  Allowing herself one last shaky breath, she pressed her lips into a thin smile at Alexi, her spine rigid, and took his hand as the couple stepped out from behind the curtain. Once they were on stage, Natasha's expression immediately softened to something resembling a lover's beseeching gaze. Skimming her palm along Alexi's, Natasha sprang forward, her free hand fluttering at her side, feet moving so fast, so light, that she appeared to be floating to the audience. Natasha closed her eyes, letting the music reverberate through her, feeling the steps in her bones. She knew the routine so well, she could have performed it in her sleep, but for some reason, she wasn't able let go like she normally did during her performances.

  Something wasn't right tonight.

  She felt off; her heart moving too fast for her breath to keep time with. The effect had her gasping, and Natasha let out a little pant as she tried to take in enough air to stop the burning feeling spreading through her from her fingers to her lips. It was like liquid fire pulsing in her veins with each too quick beat of her heart.

  Alexi frowned at her when she was half a second too late for a lift, but they managed through it. Her sweaty fingers slipped down his arm and glanced off his wrist, which she scrambled to hold, trying to stay steady on her feet. It wasn't easy, but Natasha forced her legs to move, to hit the jumps that would look ever-so-elegant when they per
fectly matched Alexi's movements. Or rather, the movements should have been elegant if she had stayed in time with Alexi.

  Instead, Natasha landed with a hollow thud beside Alexi, who found his feet soundlessly. There was no grace, no finesse that spoke of her skill and strength. Tilting his head to the side, Alexi gave her a sidelong look that to the audience was imperceptible but to Natasha's trained eyes spoke a thousand words. He knew that she was off, and he was concerned, not for her but for his overall performance.

  "Everything okay?" Alexi asked her under his breath, and Natasha bit back her initial response of rolling her eyes.

  "Yes," she grumbled, turning her face into his shoulder in a pantomime of a lover's embrace. Exhaling deeply, she closed her eyes and took a moment to collect herself as Alexi moved them effortlessly across the floor, but even as she leaned into his strength more than usual, she felt her legs begin to tremble.

  With a frown, she shook her head and looked up at Alexi. "No, something's wrong."

  "Fuck," Alexi breathed, his eyes moving to stage left. She knew what he was trying to do—attempting to attract their director's attention without giving away too much to the audience. She was grateful for his discretion even if she knew it was only afforded to her out of Alexi's own self-preservation. Natasha turned with as much grace as she could muster, which amounted to her nearly pinwheeling into one of the prima ballerina hopefuls sweeping by her to take her place along the stage.

  "Goddammit," Natasha whispered. She forced her hands above her head, willed her fingers to do anything but splay formlessly in the air above her as she turned shakily through the flood of silk and feathers passing her by in a cloud of perfume and too much-pressed powder.

  She turned her face to the side, lips pressed into a thin line as she took in another labored breath. Why was she falling apart like this? In all her years performing, she had never experienced anything on this level of nervousness. Natasha excelled at keeping her heart still and her feet steady, a skill passed on by the women in her family; but tonight, it seemed that all of her careful practice, all of her discipline and self-control, had seemingly left her to fend for herself on the suddenly too large stage.

  Natasha, losing control of her grand jeté, stumbled toward the audience with a startled cry. Her feet felt like they had a mind of their own, like they were demon possessed and bent on destroying whatever sense of balance she had managed to salvage.

  "God." She knew the audience had seen her misstep, not to mention the director whom she could see furiously flapping on stage left. He was livid. She could tell by the distinct snap of his frock coat, which reminded her of birds in flight. Spinning again, this time with some semblance of the prima ballerina she was, Natasha glimpsed her understudy standing anxiously—no, excitedly—near the director. A frown pulled at the corners of Natasha's lips, but she was only able to stare in disgust at the other ballerina for a split second before her foot slipped out from under her.

  In a swirl of silk, the prima ballerina of New York's premier company slipped and tumbled to the floor in a whirlwind of hands, locked knees, and gasps. A pair of arms hooked under her arms and the bright lights of the stage dimmed as she was yanked off stage.

  She could hear the crowd moving, murmuring and rustling their programs to see if her fall was all part of the act, some sort of creative decision they had not been made aware of. Natasha swallowed hard, eyes sliding to the side, and watched the director usher out her replacement, the wide-eyed girl who had only just arrived from whatever cornfield from which cream-skinned naive girls popped out, fully grown and masters of dancing en pointe.

  Natasha moved to push herself up to her feet, but her hands slipped out from under her, and she fell back onto herself with a small whimper. A sympathetic sound from a backup dancer made Natasha duck her head, a blush coloring her fair skin. What had happened out there? How was this real life? Only a few minutes earlier, she had been the star of the show, but now she was on her hands and knees, forgotten like yesterday's garbage.

  "Here," the soft-eyed backup dancer whispered, giving Natasha a hand up.

  "Thank you." Natasha allowed herself to be pulled to her feet before she shakily made her way away from the stage. She turned when she heard the familiar flapping of a frock coat and managed to deliver as scathing a glare as she could summon while wrapping her arms around her shaking frame.

  "What happened to you?" the director demanded, his eyes—small beady things that Natasha had never liked to feel—on her. They were like cold fingers, Natasha had decided one day during practice, knowing the small man had been staring at her with a focus beyond that of artistic direction.

  "As if you care," Natasha hissed, taking a shaky step back from him. He crowded her against the wall and she wanted to be anywhere but here, sandwiched between him and the cold cinder block at her back.

  "You're the star. Of course, I care," the director insisted, but already, Natasha saw that he glanced at her understudy with an appraising and pleased look. She had to get away from him, and now. She felt sick at seeing how quickly she had been replaced.

  "No. I'm not," Natasha whispered. She turned and slipped away down the hall toward the dressing rooms.

  "Natasha!" The director was behind her now. His frock coat flapped as he stormed after her. "Get back here!"

  "No," Natasha rasped, her legs carrying her straight past her dressing room. She didn't care about what was inside. A beaten duffel bag, a pair of sweats, the lunch she hadn't eaten. None of it mattered. Her grandmother had never trusted banks and had insisted that she carry forty dollars on her at all times, even when she danced. She would hail a taxi, and thanks to her grandmother's addition of a money pocket to her costume, there would be plenty of cab fare to get her home to Brooklyn.

  "Natasha! Don't you walk out that door!" the director yelled at her. She ignored the screaming man and burst out of the backstage of the theater, stumbling into the alleyway. She could hear him still screaming, even when the door banged shut behind her.

  "Get back here! Natasha!"

  Lurching forward, Natasha waved a hand over her head once her slippered feet hit the sidewalk. A taxi appeared almost immediately, and she was grateful that her costume was at least more than useful when it came to attracting attention in New York. Slipping into the backseat of the taxi, she barely had a second to collect herself before the director's fist hit the back of the cab.

  "Natasha!"

  "Brooklyn. Yesterday!" she cried, her fingers digging into the leather of the seat. "Please," she added as an afterthought. Perhaps it was her manners, but the driver didn't comment on her attire or the man screaming her name on the sidewalk. Instead, he drove, and while he drove, Natasha thought.

  "What am I doing?" she whispered to herself, her forehead against the glass, but no answer came. She had no idea what she was doing. She'd cracked, finally, after all those years of careful planning and discipline.

  Natasha squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself not to cry. She would not cry, not after losing her nerve. Though, after only a few minutes, her efforts to stem the tears pricking her eyelids proved fruitless. She sobbed into her hands, which only added to her shame of running like a coward. Natasha had been many things, but until today, weak hadn't been one of them.

  Chapter 1

  It came as no surprise to Natasha that she didn't much like being a coward. The feeling of it hung heavily over her like thick smog on a hot summer morning in the city. For once, she was grateful for her family's no-nonsense approach to life. The older Ochenko women had put her to work immediately as a teacher in the family's small dance school. It was helpful to have a task, no matter how small, to stop her from dwelling too much on her run from the spotlight. Like Natasha's grandmother, her mother, Olya, was a beautiful dancer. Olya had only ever danced in small companies throughout the city, but what she lacked in prestige, she more than made up for with a personality big enough to fill any stage.

  "What I was not given by God, I wil
l make by my own hand," her mother had often sighed to her after another day of teaching at the dance school. Natasha had wordlessly nodded at her mother and continued with her own stretches, but more often than not, Olya had come to stand beside her daughter to inspect her form.

  "Back straight, always," she would say, one hand lightly touching Natasha between her shoulder blades. "Heart steady."

  Olya Ochenko possessed the passionate and all too focused demeanor of the obsessive ballerinas who pushed themselves to the brink of exhaustion. Natasha had always felt sorry for them for wanting to be more celebrated than their abilities allowed, though for all her talent, her own dance career had ended very nearly in the same manner as the women she had once pitied.

  "Heart steady," she scoffed at herself with a slight shake of her head. A lot of good the mantra had done her when it was all on the line in what had been the most significant role of her career. Now, here she was, teaching children to walk en pointe with a fake smile plastered on her face while barely holding the memories of that fateful night at bay.

  Stifling a groan, Natasha turned to face the classroom rapidly filling with an assortment of pre-teens. How had she gone from dazzling audiences of thousands in avant-garde costumes and makeup with her very own orchestra to wiping noses and sweeping the hardwood floors after her last student bounced out of her sight? Remembering was a dangerous game to play, even in the relative safety of her class. Life sprang into sharp focus on the rare occasions Natasha allowed herself to remember the feel of terror and anxiety that had crashed so hard and fast on her that she'd had no choice but to shatter. It wasn't safe to revisit memories of that night, or even her dance career, and safe was the name of the game for Natasha.