Page 9 of The Breath Before Forever

He might have ripped the thin netting of her white stockings when she rocked harder onto him, but she didn’t appear to mind.

“Hurry up—put those fingers of yours to use,” he told her. “You better come before someone knocks while you’re fucking squealing.”

Her fingernails dug into his left thigh where she had previously found stability. Sharp and pinching, it only earned her a chuckle. “I do not squeal.”

At that, he outright laughed.

“You just had to go and turn it into a challenge, kisska, yeah? You still have to tell them all goodbye. Should have thought of that.”

3.

“How is your honeymoon so far?” Claire asked, the very first question she had after greeting Vera when she picked up her mother’s call.

Claire couldn’t see the way Vera’s face flushed with heat, and she was grateful for that. There was only one way to describe the past few days as a newly married woman to a very particular husband: insatiable.

“Well?” Claire pressed at Vera’s silence.

“Where’s Papa?” Vera returned, cheeky on purpose.

Claire laughed. “Never mind, then. That tells me more than enough. Someone’s keeping you busy.”

What else needed said?

“Yep,” Vera replied, happily.

“As Vaslav should,” she thought her mother said back.

Vera couldn’t be sure of Claire’s final words for their conversation because the crackle of static over the speaker as it was passed over to someone new cut out the last bit of the reply.

Her father spoke next.

“I wasn’t quite far enough away not to hear that, anyway,” he mumbled as Vera cackled.

“I thought you were sleeping—really,” Claire insisted in the background.

“Trying to,” Demyan grumbled. “Someone loves to make phone calls first thing in the morning. In bed with her husband, too.”

As Claire had been the one to call her, Vera didn’t pay much attention to the early morning hour until her father mentioned it. As a child, she could remember his motto about not rolling his ass out of bed before nine, if he could help it.

Life, kids, and duty often got in the way.

Then, she had another thought.

“Shouldn’t you be up already?” she asked her father. “Don’t you have lunch in the city this afternoon?”

Silence answered her question about a lunch he might not have known she had any clue about. A lunch she only had the details for because Vaslav had also intended on attending until the low-grade migraine he’d been suffering on and off with for a couple of days finally came to it’s unbearable peak. Not even the medication meant to sedate him had helped the night before.

He wasn’t in any state to go anywhere. Even if the worst of it had finally waned, leaving the two of them soaking in the jacuzzi tub in the very wee hours of the morning where he explained about the lunch he was supposed to attend the next day.

Igor would also be in attendance. No other women were to join the men, however. A purposeful move on his and Igor’s part as the restaurant they’d be dining in was owned by a man with significant ranking in the organization. Demyan would be seen with the current boss, and Igor, before any official announcement or event could happen. The reason for all of these careful plans and public meetings?

Vaslav’s retirement.

She didn’t have the first clue why all the pomp and circumstance was needed, but those were the kinds of details Vaslav hadn’t seemed interested in discussing.

Nonetheless, he wouldn’t be attending the meeting when he was barely able to lift his head from a pillow at the moment. She made the call to Igor whom she assumed would pass the news and change of plans onto Demyan.

According to Vaslav, it didn’t matter.