Iosif
She's still in my lap.
Her eyes are on me, but hooded. She is so relaxed and glowing and beautiful. I can’t take my eyes off her, and the tingling in the base of my spine tells me I'm not done. Not even close.
I should be thinking about what just happened.
The implications of it. The fact that I told my family I wouldn't do this, told myself I wouldn't do this, and then she sat in my chair and told me to stop deciding for her, and every reason I’d come up with in the last twenty-four hours to support that evaporated like morning mist in the sunshine.
Now I can’t stop thinking about the sound she made when she came.
The way her head dropped back and her mouth opened, and her whole body pulled tight like a bowstring.
I'm thinking about the fact that she'd never done this before.
That she chose me. Not because I was convenient or because crisis made her careless, but because she looked at me and decided, with that same clear-eyed pragmatism that has been quietly taking me apart since yesterday, that she wanted this.
Wanted me.
Her breathing slows. She lifts her head. Her eyes are bright. Dazed. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are swollen. Her hair is a disaster, and she is the most disarming thing I have ever seen.
"Hi," she says. Quiet. Almost shy, which is absurd given what she just did to me in my own chair.
"Hi."
She smiles. Then she shifts in my lap, and we both feel it. Me still inside her, both of us oversensitive. She makes a sound, a sharp little inhale, and I watch her eyes darken.
I watch her want more.
Something in me goes very still. The same stillness I recognize from operations. The moment before a decision. The moment when every variable has been assessed, and the only thing left is the action.
I put my hands on her waist and lift her off me. She gasps at the separation. I stand with her in my arms. She's light. I knew she'd be light, but the reality of it is different. The reality is her legs wrapping around me, her hands gripping my shoulders and her eyes wide, startled, trusting.
The oak reading table is against the far wall. Piled with books I've been meaning to sort for weeks.
I walk her to it and sweep the books off with one arm.
They scatter to the floor in a mess of fluttering pages that I will deal with later.
Right now I don't care about the books. Right now I care about the woman in my arms who just gave me something no one else has had, and who deserves more than what I just gave her.
She deserves to understand what this is.
I set her down on the edge then step back.
She looks up at me. Bare. Flushed. Sitting on the edge of my reading table in lamplight with her hair falling across one shoulder and her lips parted, and I need a moment with that.
I need a moment to look at her and let the image settle into a part of my memory that I know I'll return to on lonely nights.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"Looking at you."
A flush climbs her throat. She starts to cross her arms over her chest but I catch them gently. Hold them at her sides.
"Don't hide," I say.
She swallows. Nods.
“Part your legs for me, Printsessa.”
She slowly does as I ask. I take my time looking at her.
The lamplight traces the contour of her collarbone, the soft curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist. She's slight.
Delicate in a way that makes me conscious of my own hands, how large they are against her skin.
But she isn't fragile. Nothing about the woman who told me stop deciding for me is fragile.
I lower myself to my knees.
Her eyes go wide. "Iosif—"
"Shhh."
She goes quiet.
I put my hands on her knees and press them further apart.
She tenses, then makes herself relax, and I track the effort of it.
I track everything. The way her breathing changes.
The way her fingers curl against the edge of the table.
The way she bites her lip when my hands slide up the inside of her thighs.
I think about this morning. About Yury saying the answer is right in front of you. I think about how right he was and how wrong I was to fight it, and I press my mouth to the inside of her knee.
She whimpers.
I work upward. My lips on the soft skin of her inner thigh, then the other, alternating, taking my time. She's trembling. Her breath is coming fast and uneven and her hand comes to the back of my head, fingers sliding into my hair, holding on.
I've spent all day thinking about her mind. The speed of it. The courage. The way she processes things and moves forward instead of breaking down. I've spent all day admiring her from a distance I imposed because I thought that was the decent thing to do.
This is not decent.
This is me on my knees in front of a woman I've known for one day, pressing my mouth to the swollen heat of her, and I don't care about decent anymore.
I care about the sound she makes when my tongue finds her.
The sharp, strangled gasp, the way her thighs tense around my head, the way her hand tightens in my hair.
That. That sound. I want to hear it again.
I use my tongue. Flat and slow and deliberate, the way I do everything, and she shudders.
Her hips shift toward me, an instinct she can't control, and I hold her steady with one hand on her hip while the other slides up her stomach to rest between her breasts.
I can feel her heartbeat under my palm. Hammering.
"Oh god." Her voice is thin. Wrecked. "Iosif, that's—"
I don't stop. I adjust. Find the spot that makes her legs shake and stay there. She told me to stop deciding for her. Fine. But this is something else. This is me deciding for her in a way I think she'll forgive.
I think about how she looked this morning, across the counter, shadows under her eyes, offering herself up like a transaction. Would you consider a relationship with me? Like a contract. Like a deal.
She has no idea.
I press harder with my tongue. She cries out. Her back arches off the table and says my name like it's the only word she knows. I feel it everywhere. Not just physically. Somewhere deeper. Somewhere that has been shut down for a very long time.
I change the pace. Faster. Tighter circles.
I can feel her climbing. The tension building in her thighs, the way her stomach muscles contract under my hand, the desperate, rhythmic motion of her hips.
She's close. I know she's close because her breathing has gone ragged, her fingers are gripping my hair hard enough to sting, and she's stopped trying to control the sounds she's making.
Good. I don't want her controlled. I've spent enough time around control. I am made of control. What I want from her, right now in this room, is the opposite.
My cock weeps for attention as a fresh burst of her taste mixed with mine coats my tongue.
Then I feel it happen.
The exact moment her whole body draws tight, her trembling thighs clamping against my head, her back lifting clean off the table. She says my name once, broken in the middle, and then she's coming with my mouth on her, my hand steady on her belly, anchoring her while the rest of her flies apart.
It lasts a long time. Longer than the first. I feel every wave of it under my hands and against my mouth, and I stay with her until the aftershocks taper to small tremors and her grip in my hair loosens and she goes limp against the table.
I press one last kiss to the inside of her thigh before I stand.
She's lying on the table. Eyes closed. Chest heaving. The lamplight paints her in gold and shadow. There are books scattered across the floor around us. Her clothes a scattered trail with mine around the chair.
She opens her eyes. They're bright and alert.
"You're very good at that," she says. Her voice is hoarse.
"I'm good at most things."
She laughs. It's loose and raw and real and it fills the room, and I lean over her and brace my hands on the table on either side of her head. I look down at her and think: I was right. Earlier. When it hit me. The thought I tried to dismiss.
I am going to fall in love with this woman.
Not going to. Already started.
She reaches up and touches my face. Traces the line of my jaw. Her fingers are gentle and certain.
"Stay with me tonight," she says.
It's not a question. It's not a demand. It's somewhere between the two, in that space she occupies so naturally, the space where vulnerability and directness coexist.
I pick her up from the table. She wraps around me easily, her head dropping to my shoulder, and I carry her out of the library and up the stairs to my room.
The house is dark and quiet around us. Her breathing slows against my neck. Her fingers trace absent patterns on my shoulder.
I think about the mandate. About the deadline. About Yury and Zakhar and my cousins.
And I think about the woman in my arms, who killed a man in self-defense and walked through a city alone and sat in my chair reading Edith Wharton with her feet tucked under her like she belonged there.
Because she does belong there.
With me.