19. Vitaly
19
VITALY
I ’m lying down on the carpet, my fingers laced behind my head as I stare up at the ceiling, when someone knocks on my bedroom door. My head turns, but I don’t get up right away. I let another set of thuds sound before I lift the blanket from my waist and stand.
A third round of knocks never comes while I take my time making the bed, zero desire to explain to anyone why I sleep on the floor.
When I flip on the light and open the door, one foot shifted back like I’m braced for anything, I find Mila in the hall peering at me with wide, serious eyes that steal my breath.
My eyes dart down the hall in search of the source of that seriousness, but my attention abruptly shifts back to her as she rises onto her toes and takes my face in her hands, crashing her lips to mine.
My arms tense as I stumble backward with Mila’s lips clung to mine, but when I have a second to register what's happening, a sigh unwinds my chest. My hands lower to her hips, and I match her intensity before kicking the door shut.
Her face turns, breaking the kiss. When she whips back to me with parted, swollen lips, she looks as ferocious as a tigress.
“Why can’t you chase me for a change?” she asks, her voice a low purr.
I smile, shifting my body closer until her silk top caresses the bottom of my favorite tattoo. My fingertips glide over her shoulder before pushing her hair back to reveal the warm glow of her flesh.
“I came all the way from Russia for you,” I whisper, playing with the strap of her silk cami. My eyes lower to the hem of her shorts then rise to the buds poking through her top. The air in the room feels thin, but my mind is heavy, and I sway ever so slightly as the scent of her perfume warms itself inside my nostrils. “The least you could do is walk upstairs.”
Her hand is firm when she cups the back of my neck and jerks me to her, catching me in another brutal kiss. My eyes close, and I relax into it, but she’s finished just as abruptly as she started, jerking me back by my hair. It’s rough. Rough enough that my first instinct is to retaliate with greater force. It lights a fire inside of me that travels the length of my body. When I open my eyes, I wonder if they’re blazing. And then I wonder if it’s what she wants, and the whole thing excites me.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to come here?” she asks like it makes any difference. She’s here. This is happening.
“Obviously not hard enough.”
“You want me to go?” She looks me up and down, as if challenging me. I think she likes to challenge me. I think I like it too.
I lean in close, putting my mouth to her ear while running one hand lightly up her back until my palm is resting on thick, dark locks. “Pull my hair again.”
Immediately, her eager fingers thread through my hair, but before she can pull, I yank her head back, hard , possibly too hard and watch her lips closely as she gasps. When her eyes reopen, I bring her to me with a kiss just as bruising as she gave me and lift her by her lower thighs.
Her hands caress my face as I carry her to the bed we’ve both called our own at one time or another and lay her down before climbing on top of her.
I could kiss her like this all night, even with my cock hard and throbbing in my shorts. But when Mila’s hands move from my face to my back, smoothing over a field of scars, it gives me pause. I don’t stop. Neither does she. But it brings me back to reality, to a world where I am the man I am and not nearly good enough for her.
I tear away from her, making her hands still and her eyes penetrate mine.
“Grab my cock,” I whisper, kissing along her jaw before making my lips and tongue at home on her neck. Relief pushes my eyes shut as her hands slide from my back to my hips before she slips one beneath my waistband.
Her grip on my cock feels so good that I thrust without giving my hips the command and groan against her neck as she squeezes.
“How long has it been?” she asks, her voice a husky whisper.
My chest rumbles as I laugh against her neck. “Too long.”
“ How long?”
My smile falls, and I consider blowing off the question. I’m not embarrassed, certainly not ashamed. But I don’t know where she’s going with this, and I don’t know if I’d like her to take me there. Sex is … not something I’ve thought about in a very long time. You’d think those urges would never go away, that a man or even woman would starve without it for so long, that they’d feel deprived in some way.
But I once watched a man be raped with a potato that another starving man later ate. The sounds of newcomers—young, just like I was but not as brutal—being taken by savages kept me awake at night for years before I learned to sleep through the noise.
I don’t know at what point I stopped craving sex, but even after I was released, I didn’t seek it out. It isn’t something I’ve felt desperate for, until now. Now if Mila chooses to walk out of this room, I might explode.
“The day before I met you,” I say at last, running my hand over her stomach, so smooth, impossibly unmarred for a woman who’s lived her life.
She coaxes my cock with an experienced hand that brings a tiny smile to my lips thinking about the irony of this. She was supposed to be a virgin, and I the experienced one. What a different life we would’ve lived.
“Get off.” She nudges my shoulder to help guide me off of her until I roll onto my back in the empty spot beside her. When she stands on the mattress, she stares down at me with that same, feisty look she gave me earlier, one I could get used to looking at.
I fold my arms behind my neck and watch as she slowly lifts her top over her head, revealing perky, full breasts with rosy-pink nipples that jut from her areolas. She goes to her shorts next, crooking her thumbs in the waistband before leisurely shifting her hips and letting the silk kiss her skin on the way down.
Her eyes never leave me throughout her display, and when her panties are off—revealing her shaved pussy she lets me peek at through slightly parted thighs—she drops to her knees and crawls to me.
Her shoulders seductively sashaying, she climbs on top of me until our lips are an inch apart, but when I go to kiss her, she jerks back. We do this dance twice more before I relent and let her come the full way to me, my eyes closing when she rewards my patience with a light brush of her lips.
“How do you want me?”
I open my eyes as my palms find her ass, tight from years spent in a gym. “In every way possible.”
With a tantalizing smile, she works her way to my waist, tucking her deft hands inside my waistband before slowly pulling the material from my legs. When my shorts are on the floor, she positions herself between my legs and pumps my cock that jumps at her touch.
I sit up, eyeing those plump lips of hers, but when she lowers her mouth, I cup her chin to stop her. She looks at me as I guide her up my body until she’s straddling me.
“Not that,” I say with a slight shake of my head. “You were meant to be a queen. You’re never doing that again.”
Her head tilts as her lips part. “Okay… I know that’s what your father wanted, but that isn’t?—”
“I’m not talking about my father.” I run my thumb over her jaw, shifting my gaze between her lips and her eyes. “I’m talking about you . Everything I said about you before was wrong… You were born for great things, Mila Alekseev. It’s a shame a man is required for you to achieve them.”
Her hands sink into my shoulders as she stiffens and her eyes gleam. She blinks the moisture away, saying nothing. She stares at me for what feels like a long time, seemingly thinking of how to respond. She settles on closing her eyes and leaning in close.
Her kiss is soft, relaxed. Unhurried. It holds a passionate intensity but doesn’t say what she came here to. This is something different, a sign of another shift in this ever-changing world we’re creating together.
I run my hand up her back and pull her close as I work my tongue past her lips, arching my spine when she meets me with equal intensity. Without breaking our kiss, she positions my cock at her entrance and lowers herself, sinking me into a warm embrace that steals my breath and halts my movements.
Her hips roll, propelling friction across my length that fires up every pleasure center in my brain, many I’d forgotten were there, many I’d never known existed. Endorphins pour into my veins as a shiver crawls across my neck.
Mila’s tongue still works inside my mouth, though I’ve stopped kissing, too captivated by the sensations thrumming inside of me. A satisfied grunt bursts from me when her nails slice across my chest as she increases her pace.
When her mouth breaks away from mine, she lets her head fall back, her eyelids creasing as she rides waves of pleasure she creates with every grind of her hips. She doesn’t stop or slow down, even as minutes pass. Her pace only increases, as does her rapid breathing, until she finds a rhythm that rises to a crescendo and has her pussy squeezing my cock in a tight embrace. My grip on her waist tightens, and a groan crawls up my throat, hitting the back of my teeth.
A hand slaps over Mila’s mouth as she moans into it, her chest pressed out, her cheeks flushed. I meant it when I said she was born to be a queen, but from this angle, she looks more like a goddess.
She pauses only long enough to collect herself before her hips start back up again, sweat sticking stray strands of hair to her forehead. I bring her mouth to mine and kiss while flipping us over, cool air fanning the sweat on my back. Mila’s legs stick up as I move inside of her, first slow and unhurried, then like I truly have been starved.
She bites her arm to muffle her moans, her eyes clenched shut in ecstasy. Though the reminder that we could be caught should sober me, seeing Mila like this only fuels my thrusts until I’m rutting into her with a desperate force, chasing relief that feels so close yet impossibly far away. Like I won’t be able to reach it in time. Like any moment, a knock will sound on that door and take away the only thing that currently matters in this world to me.
I don’t care about death.
I don’t care about Nikita.
All I care about right now is Mila’s pussy.
“Vitaly,” Mila whines, letting go of her arm for a moment of reprieve. Teeth marks have dug into her flesh, and when she goes to bite her arm again, I slam it to the mattress and cover her mouth with my lips instead.
I’m so close.
So close .
My heart pumps furiously as my breathing hitches, my lips hardly moving against Mila’s as I fuck her with everything I have in me until my mind feels like it’s coming apart. Pressure squeezes my balls, stilling me as I come inside Mila, my mouth breaking from hers as I expel the last of the air from my lungs.
Sweat dampens my skin as I hover over her, letting her pussy ripple around me as she comes down from her own orgasm. Her head rests heavily on the bed as her hand drapes on the pillow next to her, heavy breaths shifting her chest.
It’s a solid minute before I work up the motivation to roll off her onto my back, staring up at the same ceiling I was staring up at when she knocked on my door. It looks different now.
Mila nestles herself on my chest while we lay breathing heavily for a long time, not saying anything. It reminds me of the lake, and I wonder if she’ll avoid me again. If this will scare her away even more effectively.
I close my eyes at the thought. I was disappointed by her avoidance before, but I understood. I could take it then.
Now…
“It’s not up to you, you know,” Mila says, drawing my eyes to her. She stares out my window instead of facing me, her head rising and falling with each of my breaths.
“What isn’t up to me?”
She shrugs. “Anything, really. But certainly anything having to do with me… I don’t belong to you, Vitaly.”
I frown when I realize what she’s talking about. I told her she would never blow another man again. She thinks I’m wrong.
“You don’t belong to anyone.”
She huffs, but it isn’t irritated. It’s sad. “Why? Because you say so?”
I watch her, looking more hopeless than I’ve ever seen her.
I see her point.
Who am I ? A soldier? I have no power. No say in her future. I don’t even have a say in my own future.
Right now, I am nothing. All I’m doing is existing here. I’ll never be able to help Mila like this.
I suppress a growl and look up at the ceiling again, thinking about all the nights I spent in this room. All the nights I dreamt of being Pakhan, ignoring the fact that my father would have to be dead before it could happen.
All I wanted was that authority. I collected every drop of it my father spilled from his cup. I used my name in every situation I could to prove I was a man worthy of respect, which was ironic because any man who does such a thing disqualifies himself.
I wasn’t worthy then. Not of respect, certainly not of authority.
But now?
No. Instantly, my mind registers the answer. I’m just not sure that it matters.
“What do you want more than anything in the world?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the ceiling.
Mila is quiet for several moments, but I don’t think she’s considering the question, only her answer. I think she’s known what she’s wanted for a very long time.
“Power.”
Power .
My lips tilt slightly on one side while I move my hand to lightly caress her back. I’m not surprised by the answer. I figured it out the night at the lake.
Mila was born to be a queen. Plain and simple. Hell, maybe she was born to be a king. She is worthy. She is fit to lead.
If she was by my side… Maybe one day, I could be worthy too. Maybe my father knew that.
“I have to be Pakhan in order to give you that, don’t I?”
Mila stiffens. She sits up, peering at me with wide eyes. She says nothing. Her eyes say it all.
“I didn’t come here for that. I promise, I told you the truth. And in the spirit of honesty… Being Pakhan isn’t something I’ve wanted for a very long time. But for you, I will do it. If you ask.”
She stares at me for long moments, saying nothing. Her expression isn’t one of gratitude, excitement, or hope. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but it isn’t what I expected.
When she climbs off the bed and starts dressing, I sit up. “Mila.”
No response. I think about asking her to stop, to talk to me, but I’m too caught up in confusion to say anything. Instead, I watch her walk to the door and leave without another word.