Chapter 20
Ksenia
My heart pounded in my chest.
“You think you’re ready for that? You’ve barely mastered furniture,” I said.
Daniil glanced down at the chair he’d drawn. One leg was still making a bid for independence.
“I’m ready for a more interesting subject.”
“A table, maybe? Build on what you know.”
He put down the pencil and looked at me.
“You heard me, Little One. Clothes . . . off.”
Oh.
We had been married for months. I knew that look. It still made me lose the next clever thing I’d been about to say.
I slid off his lap, leaving the blanket behind, and picked up the sketchbook.
“Bring the pencils.”
His chair scraped back before I reached the kitchen door.
I smiled all the way up the stairs.
In the studio, I switched on the lamp and drew the curtains against the February night. Daniil came in carrying the canvas roll and my blanket. He draped the blanket over the back of the green chair, then checked the radiator.
“You’ve brought provisions.”
“Your studio is freezing.”
“I was about to make a very impressive entrance.”
“You can still impress me in a warm room.”
He turned up the radiator. I angled the lamp toward the chair. He moved the chair six inches to the left.
I moved it back.
He looked at me.
“The light,” I explained.
“I can move the lamp.”
“Or you could stop touching the chair.”
“Is this what your contractors put up with?”
“My contractors adore me.”
“Do they know that?”
I pointed at the stool beside the drafting table. He sat, with the faint smile of a man who had every intention of being difficult again.
I set the sketchbook in front of him. He untied the green ribbon and spread out the pencils.
Seeing them there gave me a small, ridiculous rush of happiness.
I’d stood in the art shop that afternoon worrying about paper weight.
Now he was testing a pencil on the corner of a page, and there was nowhere else he wanted to be.
“All right,” I said.
He looked up.
I unbuttoned my cat-print pajama top. His gaze followed my fingers, and by the third button he had stopped testing the pencil.
That helped with my nerves.
I knew he wanted me. He was generous about making that clear. But standing here, deliberately offering myself to be looked at, felt different from undressing for bed. There would be time to notice things. Time for me to wonder what he noticed.
I took off the top and folded it on the corner of the table. The bottoms followed.
“You can breathe,” I told him.
“Yes. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
“You don’t appear to be doing it.”
He let out a breath. I laughed, and the last of my hesitation went with it.
I sat in the chair, tucked one foot beneath me and rested my hand on my knee.
“Like this?”
He nodded.
“Use your words, Daniil.”
“I’m revising my assessment of the assignment.”
“Too difficult?”
“Extremely.”
But he opened the sketchbook to a clean page.
I watched him look from me to the paper. His hand hovered. He made a mark, considered it, then rubbed it out.
“You don’t have to show me,” I said.
His eyes lifted.
“When it’s finished. If you don’t want to.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. I knew a little of what his father had said about drawing. Enough to understand why he might need to hear that he could try something without having to defend the result.
“I want to,” he said.
“Good. Because I was going to be unbearably curious.”
He smiled and bent over the page.
The radiator ticked behind me. I settled into the chair while my husband drew his first uncertain line, and I found that I liked this part already. Being here while he learned. Having something to give him that he couldn’t arrange for himself with a phone call.
“Comfortable?” he asked without looking up.
“Very.”
His pencil moved again.
After five minutes, he frowned.
After ten, I intervened.
“Not going so well?”
He looked up sharply. “What?”
“You look like you’re being forced to admit Arkady is right about something.”
He glanced at the page, then back at me. A laugh escaped him. He put the pencil down and rubbed a hand over his face.
“I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”
He picked up the pencil again.
I had expected to enjoy being the center of his attention.
I hadn’t expected how much I would enjoy watching him.
The tiny crease between his brows. The way he leaned back to judge a line, then forward to change it.
Once, he glanced at my hand and shifted his own on the table, testing the angle of his fingers.
Watching him, watching me. It was electric.
I knew those hands. I knew how gentle they could be. Watching him struggle to persuade one pencil to do what he wanted made me want to get up and kiss him.
I stayed where I was.
“Turn toward the lamp a little.”
I turned my head.
“There.”
He studied my face. I felt myself smiling.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s rarely true.”
“I like you.”
The pencil stopped.
“Well, well, well. What an unexpected development. He likes his wife.”
“I know. I was very resistant.”
“You hid it badly.”
He looked at me for another moment before returning to the page. The corner of his mouth stayed lifted.
A few minutes later, I stretched my ankle.
“Do you need a break?” he asked immediately.
“No. I need you to stop gripping the pencil like it owes you money.”
He looked at his hand and loosened it.
“Better,” I said.
“Keep that expression.”
“Which expression?”
“The one you have when you’re about to tell me why I’m wrong.”
“That’s most of my expressions.”
“Yes. But there are micro-differences, depending on the flavor of chastisement.”
I laughed.
“Ksenia. Stay still.”
“Then stop making me laugh.”
He waited for me to settle, his eyes on my mouth. Something in his face changed, and I became very aware that I was naked.
I had almost forgotten. We’d been talking, and the room had warmed, and I’d grown comfortable in the light. Now his gaze moved over me and my breath caught.
The pencil remained still.
My eyes dropped to his lap. His trousers were tight across his groin. He was hard, and the knowledge sent a quick, answering heat between my thighs.
“Is the drawing going well?” I asked.
“Parts of it.”
His voice had changed.
I pressed my thighs together. He saw the movement; of course he did. His eyes returned to mine, and for a few seconds all our teasing deserted us.
I wanted his hands on me. I wanted to watch that careful concentration come apart.
But I wanted him to finish, too.
“Take your time,” I said.
His gaze stayed on me. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
He went back to the drawing. I sat in the lamplight, wet and increasingly impatient, and watched him make the last few marks.
Two minutes later, he set the pencil down.
“Come and see.”
Istood too quickly and had to wait for my tucked-up foot to remember its purpose.
Daniil held out a hand.
“Very dignified,” I said, taking it.
He drew me beside him, his hand settling at my waist, and I looked down at the page.
Oh.
The shoulder was too steep. One hand was too large, and he’d changed his mind about my jaw often enough to leave a faint gray blur. I could see every place he had struggled.
I could also see myself.
The way I sat with one foot tucked beneath me. The lift of my chin. My mouth caught just before a smile, as though he had said something I intended to challenge and we both knew I was enjoying it.
He had watched me closely enough to know that face.
“Well?” he asked.
I touched the clean margin.
“You’ve made me look very pleased with myself.”
“Art imitates life, I guess.”
I laughed, and his hand eased against my waist. Only then did I realize he had been waiting for my verdict with his whole body.
I bent and kissed his temple.
“I love it.”
“The hand is wrong.”
“A little.”
“And the shoulder.”
“You’re allowed to be a beginner.”
He looked up at me. I brushed a strand of hair away from his forehead.
“I mean it, Daniil. You don’t have to be good at everything by bedtime.”
His mouth softened. “That seems generous.”
“Tuesday, then. I expect greatness by Tuesday.”
He laughed and pulled me closer. I kissed him properly this time, and his hand tightened on my waist as his mouth opened beneath mine.
The kiss lasted long enough for me to forget what I’d intended to say next.
“The drawing,” he murmured when I leaned against the table.
I looked behind me. My elbow was an inch from the page.
“Already choosing your art over your wife.”
He moved the sketchbook out of reach.
“Problem solved.”
I kissed him again. My hand slipped down to his trousers, finding the hard length of him through the fabric. He drew in a breath, and the sound made me press closer.
“Come to bed,” I whispered.
“Gladly.”
He stood, keeping me against him. I could feel how much he wanted me. There was nothing distant or composed about the way he held me now, and I loved knowing I could do this to him.
“There’s something I want tonight.”
He drew back enough to see my face.
We had talked about it before. I could still feel heat rising in my cheeks. That made me smile at myself: naked in his arms, my hand on him, and somehow the words were the part that took courage.
“I want you to take my ass.”
His breath left him roughly. His hand moved to the small of my back, drawing me close again.
“Yes,” he said. Then, more quietly, “If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
He kissed me, and I felt the effort it took him to stop.
“Slowly,” he said against my mouth. “And you tell me if you want anything different.”
“I will.”
I trusted that he would listen. I trusted myself to speak. That was part of why I could stand here wanting him this much, with no need to disguise it.
He closed the sketchbook and put the pencil beside it. I gathered my pajamas while he switched off the lamp, leaving the studio lit by the open doorway.
Then he took my hand.
We made it as far as the hall before I pulled him back for another kiss.
“The bedroom,” he reminded me.
“I know where it is.”
“You’re making very little progress toward it.”
“You could be helping.”
He laughed against my mouth, and we went together.