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I was scared of rejection, before. But I’m not blind. I’m not even naïve, not anymore, not completely. And if Aleks rejects me, what happens? What do I lose?
When I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around me, I still feel calm. Measured. It’s only when I open the door that my heart begins to beat hard. Fast. A surge of panic courses through me, and if he weren’t right there, right in front of me, right this second, I know I would lose my nerve and rush back into myroom. Slam the door behind me, get into bed, and try to figure out what the hell was going through my mind. And I’d wake up tomorrow, hungover and ashamed and losing myself in him, and his loss, all over again.
But I don’t flee. I don’t run. In fact, I don’t move a muscle. Because he’s right there. Inches away. He’s moved a dining chair into the hall, so he can sleep or guard outside my bedroom door all night. He didn’t tell me he was going to, or ask. He just did it. And he’s just here, sitting in the chair, his strong arms rested against his knees, and his hand holding his phone idly. But his eyes are raised to mine. Cool as ever. Inscrutable.
No—not inscrutable. There are things in his face, in his eyes and the set of his mouth, that I think I can read and couldn’t before. His gaze seems to be more focused on me, not on my body, but on me. The real me, that I haven’t had many chances to show him. It brings a heat to my cheeks. Is it him, has he changed? Lowered his guard a little? Or is it me, have I learned to read him like I couldn’t when I was younger, when I was more naïve? Does it matter?
No.What matters is this: in his eyes, in his deep, blistering eyes, there is a cool pool of desire, and it is plain to me. Plain, because he’s showing it. Not attempting, even, to hide it. He wants me to see, just like I want him to see. We’re both adults; this situation is clear, and anything but safe. We’re both adults, who can make educated decisions. As stupid as they may be.
And here I am in my towel, dripping on the floor of the hallway. There he is, looking up at me, with that want so clear in his eyes that it stuns me into my statuesque state.
“You should go to bed, Kat,” he says, measured. His face has a look of boredom in it, but it’s clear to me that boredom is constructed. A façade, slapped on the clearer want. He looks away from me, back to his phone where I can tell he wants to disappear from me. “It’s late, and you’ve been drinking.”
We’ve both been drinking, I want to correct him. Rain taps against the windows with a dull patter, pleading for the time to speed up and move the moment along. I study him, debating. Do I make the first move? If I wait for him to do it, it will never happen.Will it? Could it? Could I make it?
“Kat,” he repeats, his voice harder, his eyes flicking up from his phone again to touch mine coldly. “Go to bed.”
“Come to bed.”
He stares at me. Now his expression truly is inscrutable. A faint flick of his lashes is the only indication he gives that I’ve moved him at all. I wait as I gaze down at him, unsure of what exactly he’s able to read in my expression. My heartbeat feels like thunder pounding against my eardrums and rattling my ribs. My blood is burning through my veins.Touch me, I think to him, with an almost bare desperation.Take me. Make me feel like I did that night. Make me forget everything else but you again. Please.
Slowly, as though bidden by the dark whispers in my mind—Aleks stands from his seat, the wood of the dining room chair creaking, as he closes the small distance between us, reaching for me.
The contact turns me straight to stone, like a Greek myth, right there in my own hallway. I watch his eyes travel across my body as he slides his hand gently over my clavicle, his palm blazing hot as it makes its way, slowly, so slowly, up to my throat. I tremble, though I try in vain not to, and push out a shaky, quiet breath. Suddenly, it feels as though I can’t bear to look at his face for a moment longer. I stare at his chest, watching the subtle, steady movement of it as it rises and falls, as he breathes.How is he so calm? How can he just stand there like that, touching me like this, and be so completely, and utterly unphased?
He leans in close to speak once more, close enough that I can feel the heat of his skin radiating against me, feel the soft fan of his breath against my cheekbone. “Go to bed, Kat. It is very late.”
But his hand remains on my neck, burning into my skin. Possessive. Dominant. Can he feel the drum of my pulse, how wild it is, how hard he’s making my blood pump? I force myself slowly to raise my eyes—bad idea. The minute they meet his, I feel all will, all control, leave my body. I’m warm from the liquor that we shared. I’m scared of the world beyond these windows and walls that I’ve made a home. I can hear the storm building outside, rearing up, rapping hard at my front door.
And yet…the heat that is throbbing through me keeps me standing up on my own two feet. History is beating between us like a shared heart, and he’s touching me, and I wonder if I’m going crazy. Maybe I’ve been imagining this entire evening, the way he looked at me before, the way we shared whiskey from the same glass and grazed our fingers against one another and gazed into each other’s eyes. It’s just me. It’s just wishful thinking, or plain lust that has slithered its way into my mind. I’m crazy, I know I am, I’m—
I watch as his eyes slip to my mouth, and back to my eyes just as quick, a flash of something like anger crossing through his eyes.He didn’t mean to do that, I realize, in the exact same instant. I feel a heated sensation begin to pool between my legs, in my core.
It is all the confirmation in the world that I could need from him.
I decide to gracefully slide my hand up to my neck, over his fingers that are still applying pressure to my pulse. I stand up on my toes, watching the surprise brighten in his eyes, and then the want catches like fire immediately after.
And then I press my mouth to his, pushing my lips against his, savoring the memory that has come back to life. His hand around my neck tightens, as I move my hands to his chest, which I find to be harder, more solid than expected. I feel my heart flutter, along with the space between my legs.Kat, I expect him to say, hushed, his lips against mine.What are you doing? What are you thinking? What is this?
But he says nothing. Only stands there, his body rigid and stiff as a statue, his hand still resting around my throat. He could keep me at bay if he wanted to.
But he doesn’t want to—does he?
I don’t need to wait long at all for him to respond to my advance. A split second later, something inside of Aleksander Lukin gives, cracking down the middle like a dam. All hell has been let loose, and his body responds accordingly.
His grip on my neck tightens and he steps forward suddenly, pressing all of his body against all of mine. I gasp softly, but his mouth, rough against mine, seems to make the sound vanish. My back hits the wall, hard, from what I hear, but I’m too overwhelmed to recognize any pain. He pins me there, his hips pressed with urgency against mine, both of his hands rising to cup my face to hold me still in the kiss.
I gasp again. This time, in the single moment my lips are parted, his tongue dominates and pushes between them—and I moan. Thank God for the liquor, or else I’d be running away from this like a maniac.Or would I?I feel like a locked door, and Aleks is the key, jarring me loose, knocking the dust that has collected through the years off my bones. He is setting me free in this moment. Fuck the liquor, I didn’t need it in the first place. I have enough guts in me, I realize. I made this move.
Now I’m going to fucking enjoy it.
His mouth opens, his tongue plunging back past my lips, wrestling for power. I rush my hands up over his chest, his face,into his silky, soft curls that I realize I’ve been wanting to touch since I recognized him on the side of the road the night he found me. His hands shift to my waist, and he lifts me up, pinning me against the wall with his strength as I lock my thighs around his torso. His mouth moves to my neck and I’m shocked when he bites me—not a nip but a true bite, hard enough to make me cry out—a soft sound of pain mingling with the pleasure and surprise. Then, he drags his tongue over the same stinging place, the sweet after the sour. It sends a shiver down my spine and causes me to squeeze my thighs around his middle intuitively.
I feel his chest heave under my hands and without a word he turns into the bedroom, crossing over the threshold of the door, his hands locked on the backs of my thighs to keep me in his arms, my limbs wrapping around him like a vine on a tree. We’re kissing again, more wildly now, more loosely, our tongues slipping, the scalding skin of our lips crashing together, and his breath is hitching. He groans softly in a way that turns my navel straight to water. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt like this, and it makes my skin prickle with delight. To know that I can create that kind of reaction in him.
He throws me down on the bed, and the damp towel that’s wrapped around my body falls open. I don’t even have it in me to be ashamed—my main focus isn’t on my body, which isn’t quite as young or taut as it used to be, or of the little pounds that have gathered around my middle, or of the angry triad of lines that welcomed my son into the world with the tip of a scalpel. Instead, I’m relishing in this small moment that I get to have where I feel so entirely carefree.
But I don’t think it would matter anyway, because the way he looks at me now is with such lust, such naked want and desire that I feel my face flush with color—not with shame, but with pleasure. I feel wetness already between my legs, and I begin tosquirm, the heat in my core flooding as he looks at me with that gaze, wild, as his lips part, his expression dark with hunger. For me. He drinks me in, laying there before him, like I’m somehow both a feast for a starving man, succulent and sprawling and calling him in to dine, and also some ethereal painting in a museum, done in the hand of a master long gone.
