Chapter 16
Sixteen
The Present
Sitting between his legs on the lounger, Aleksander’s chest is warm against my back as the sun disappears behind the horizon.
I’m so grateful for every sunrise and sunset I get to see because I know if things didn’t happen the way they did, if Alana and Cillian hadn’t saved me from the fire, I wouldn’t be here… and neither would my children.
Nibbling on a thin slice of pickle, I look up from the journal propped against my knees in my lap, so many different thoughts running through my head.
I didn’t know that Tristan and Hendrix went to see him after our elevator encounter.
I also didn’t know he’d been stalking me.
Aleksander had been right there, so close, yet my alarm bells weren’t triggered like they usually were whenever I felt eyes on me.
“That night at the Bierkeller was quite serendipitous if you think about it.”
Tipping back his beer, Aleksander peers down at me over the lip of his bottle. “There is nothing serendipitous about being shot.”
“It was just a graze,” I refute. “And I wholeheartedly disagree because you, Tristan, Hendrix, and Constantine showing up at the same time on the same night I was working is the definition of serendipity.”
“I’ll concede that point,” he murmurs against my ear, and a flurry of goose bumps erupts down my arms.
“How many times did you sneak into my classes?”
“A lot.”
I twist around so I can see him better. “How much is a lot?”
Dimples pop on his cheeks when he grins. “More than once.”
My eyes cartwheel at his clever evasiveness. “More than once is not a quantifiable number. Do you still do it?”
He mashes his lips together, and my expression widens with disbelief when his silence tells me everything.
“How in the hell do I not know you’re there?”
His gray eyes light with amusement. “That’s the whole point, love.”
Pulling off a piece of brownie, I pop it into his mouth, then take my time licking the chocolate off his lips. “I like it when you stalk me.”
“Syn.”
My core clenches at his deep rumble of my name. “Yes?” I reply innocently, darting my tongue out for one last taste.
The plate, along with the rest of my food and the journal, slide off my lap and fall to the ground when Aleksander takes my throat in one hand and cups my pussy with the other.
We existed in a limbo of slow burn for years as we circled one another and our feelings for each other.
The build-up to the inevitable was excruciating, but once those walls tumbled between us, the sex has been pure fire.
“Good girl” may be my kink, but Aleksander has one as well. He likes to watch. And he remembers.
Applying gentle pressure around my neck, my moan erupts from deep within when he pinches my clit through the thin fabric of my yoga leggings. Pain is my pleasure. I’m addicted to it, and Aleksander knows exactly how to play my body to make me soar.
I arch back into him, not being subtle about what I want him to do. Aleksander could never deny me anything.
My abdominal muscles tremble when his clever fingers sneak underneath my waistband and stroke through the soft hairs of my pubis as they travel a sybaritic path down between my legs. Desire cascades over me like falling stars when he dips his middle finger inside my heat.
“You feel so fucking good. Your pussy is my paradise,” he says, sucking my essence off his finger before kissing me deeply, fucking my mouth with sensuous swipes of his tongue.
The taste of him, of me—of us—is intoxicating, and I get drunk off his kiss.
I go up in flames when he pushes my leggings down, the tight Lycra banding my knees together like satin restraints. Goose flesh pops, one by one, as the tepid evening air rushes over my skin.
“I want to hear my songbird sing,” he says, his possession of me all-consuming when he fucks me three fingers deep.
The agony of being stretched so completely is almost too much to bear, especially with my clothes pinning my legs together.
My moans grow louder when Aleksander attacks my clit with his thumb like it’s his mission in life to make me come all over his hand. But just when he’s about to hurl me over that cliff into sweet bliss, he stops.
“Do you remember the first time you came to see me?” he asks as my pussy pulses around his fingers like a heartbeat.
“Yes,” I gasp when his middle finger presses my G-spot, and I whole-body shudder at the beautiful torture. “I also remember the last thing you said to me when I left.”
“What was that?” he asks, but I know he remembers. Aleksander doesn’t forget anything.
“Run. And I did,” I tell him. “Back to you.”
I let out a gasp when he wrenches my head back and scrapes his teeth up my neck. “Even devils get miracles,” he says, controlling my pleasure, despite my efforts to come.
One roughened hand slinks under my shirt, the calloused pads of his fingers lighting a trail of tingles from my navel to my breasts. Desire sizzles up my body when he tweaks the peaked bud of my nipple.
“Your skin feels like satin,” he murmurs in my ear, his cock hardening against my backside and bulging his jeans. There is nothing more wonderful to a woman than knowing her man derives pleasure just from touching her.
Sliding my hand between my legs, my middle finger joins his, and we slowly finger-fuck my pussy together.
“Dirty girl,” he says with a chuckle and slumps down in the lounger.
I’m suddenly flipped over and lifted in a bench press above him, and—
“Oh, fuck yes!” I chant, gripping the back of the lounger.
The first swipe of his tongue against my clit has me spiraling into bliss, but it’s the wicked things he does to me with his mouth that has me sobbing his name. I’m hurtled over the edge of no return, flying higher and higher as my orgasm coils tauter and tauter.
And then I detonate, coming apart in the most glorious of ways. Aleksander wrenches every last shudder from me until I collapse onto his chest. Blissfully spent, a little dazed, and a lot happy.
Getting the energy to prop my chin on his chest, a goofy grin spreads across my face. “Your mouth should be designated one of the wonders of the world.”
One sexy eyebrow arches behind his reading glasses. “Just my mouth?”
Reaching up, I slip the frames off and use his shirt to clean the smears from the lenses.
“Every part of you,” I amend, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
With some effort, he’s able to wiggle my leggings back up. I don’t make it easy for him.
Climbing into his lap, I splay my hands over his wide, muscular shoulders and take in every gorgeous inch of his handsome face. Every time I look at him, I’m still amazed that he’s mine. That we’re us.
“That’s it?” I pout with disappointment.
“You want something, pevchaya ptitsa?”
“Your dick.”
He laughs. “After you eat.”
“I can do that,” I reply, going for his zipper.
“Food, woman.”
I glance down at the remainder of my half-eaten sandwich on the ground. “I’m not eating that.”
“Eat mine.”
“That’s what I was trying to do.” I go for his zipper again and dissolve into giggles when he tickles me.
“You are so beautiful.”
His fingers tease over the curve of my hip, then lightly skim along the outside of my clothes over the area where the burns cover my side from thigh to shoulder.
His gaze follows the path his fingers take, the tenderness of his touch making me ache for him.
Sucking the tip of his thumb into his mouth, he brushes it over my nipple and watches as it puckers underneath my T-shirt as the warm evening air quickly wicks the wetness from the cotton.
“So are you,” I reply.
Bracing my back with his palm, he sits up and nuzzles my neck with silken brushstrokes of his nose, then jolts me into euphoria when he tugs down my collar and lightly bites the upper swell of my breast, marking my flesh in the way I crave.
I wear their marks like they wear their tattoos, except mine fade with time and are replaced with new ones.
My body is an evolving canvas, a visible story written by our passion where each new chapter is even better than the one before it.