Elena
It’s been a week since the masquerade, though it feels like much longer.
The days have a strange rhythm now, mornings that start with Artem’s quiet voice and the scent of coffee, nights that end with his hands tracing slow patterns against my skin like he’s still trying to convince himself I’m real. We’re real.
The city outside the windows is different from the one I used to know. It hums and pulses, but up here, everything is still. The world hasn’t stopped turning, yet I can’t shake the sense that ours has shifted onto a new axis.
When the delivery arrives, I almost don’t open the door. The courier leaves a long wooden case in the hallway with my name scrawled in ink I recognise immediately as my father’s assistant’s hand.
The cello.
For a moment I just stand there, staring at it. My breath feels shallow. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was, the varnish catching the light like honey, the faint dents along its side that only I could see. I press my hand to the case, half-expecting it to burn.
Artem appears from the kitchen, shirt sleeves rolled, a faint line of concentration between his brows. He stops when he sees me. “What is it?”
I swallow. “It’s mine.”
He studies me for a moment, then crosses the room, eyes flicking over the case. “The cello.”
I nod. “My father must have sent it. Or maybe he wanted it gone.”
There’s something in his expression I can’t read, pride, maybe, or understanding. “Will you play it?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
He steps closer, his voice low and steady. “Then don’t play Adagio. Play something else. Something that’s ours.”
The word ours catches between my ribs. “Like what?”
He thinks for a second. “Something that doesn’t sound like mourning.”
I nod slowly and unlatch the case. The smell of resin and old wood rises up, warm and familiar. I lift the cello out and let my fingers find the weight again, the curve of the neck fitting perfectly into my palm. My bow feels strange in my hand, heavier than I remember.
“What should I play?” I ask quietly.
“Anything,” Artem says. “Surprise me.”
I think for a moment, then set the cello between my knees. The bow touches the strings, and instinct takes over. The first sharp, bright chords of Palladio fill the room, rhythmic, alive, the sound of something building rather than breaking.
Artem stills. His hands slide into his pockets as he watches me play, and the faintest smile touches his mouth. He knows the piece, why I chose it. The music climbs, each note a defiance, a heartbeat. My fingers remember what my grief made me forget.
When the last chord fades, the silence that follows feels holy.
I lower the bow, my pulse racing. “Not perfect,” I murmur.
“It doesn’t need to be,” he says, stepping close enough that I can feel the heat of him. “It’s the first thing that’s sounded alive in this place for a long time.” Then he adds, “Not counting when you’re screaming my name, of course.”
I roll my eyes but I’m grinning at his comment.
He reaches out, his fingers brushing the back of my hand where it still rests on the cello. “Keep playing, Elena. Fill the room. Fill me.”
Something inside me loosens. For the first time since losing Lev, I don’t feel haunted when I play. I feel heard.
I keep playing, letting the music stretch and change beneath my fingers. Palladio fades into something slower, softer. Something I don’t remember deciding to play. My hands move on instinct, shaping an old melody that used to drift through my childhood room late at night.
A lullaby.
The notes fall like gentle footsteps across the air, wrapping the apartment in a hush that feels sacred. Artem leans against the window, watching me, his expression unreadable. The city burns behind him in gold and silver, but all I can hear is the sound of my bow, the sound of something beginning.
I don’t know when the thought hits me. Maybe in the quiet between notes, or in the way my pulse stumbles, but suddenly I realise how long it’s been. Since the masquerade. Since the world cracked open and we fell through it together.
My breath catches.
I play through it, pretending nothing’s changed, but the awareness blooms low in my belly. I’ve been late before, stress, exhaustion, but never like this. There’s a steadiness to it, a quiet certainty that sinks into my bones as the lullaby winds through the air.
When I finish, the last note trembles and fades. Artem doesn’t move for a long time. Then he steps forward, slow, deliberate, until he’s standing beside me.
“I know that song,” he says softly.
I look up at him. “You do?”
He nods, a faint smile ghosting across his mouth. “My mother used to sing it when Lev and I were small. Said it kept bad dreams away.” He reaches out, brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I hope we sing it to our children too.”
The bow slips slightly in my hand. My throat tightens.
“Artem,” I whisper, heart hammering. “That… might be happening sooner than you think.”
For a moment, he just looks at me, the words sinking in. His eyes search mine, and then something shifts in his face, shock, awe, something dangerously close to joy.
He crouches in front of me, one hand finding its way to my stomach, tentative and reverent. “You’re sure?”
“Not yet,” I breathe. “But I think so.”
He exhales, a sound half prayer, half disbelief. “You’ve just given me the one thing I thought I’d never have.”
I laugh softly, tears catching at the edge of my voice. “You say that like it’s certain.”
“It is,” he says, his voice low and steady. “It’s you. It was always going to be you.”
He takes the cello and places it with reverence in it’s stand. Then pulls me gently up to standing only so he can pull down my leggings and panties in one soft tug, before sitting me back in the chair.
“Spread those knees, solnyshko, let me worship you the way you deserve.”
I do as I’m told, because honestly, this is my favourite thing in the whole world. The way he looks at me the way he devours me, the way he makes me come apart so I can rebuild stronger.
He eats me slowly at first, teasing and tickling me with his lips and tongue until I’m sweating with the need for release.
He works me to the edge, filling the air with dirty talk while the orgasm recedes and I beg.
I grind against his face trying to find the friction I need to take me over the edge, and when it finally happens, I fly over it sobbing his name.
I’m still coming down when I hear him undo his belt and his trousers hit the floor. His thighs are flexed and wide, the muscles making lines I want to sink my teeth into. He fists his thick, heavy cock.
I stand from my chair on still wobbly legs and push him back to the sofa, straddling him and taking him into my wet heat slowly.
He groans when I reach the root of him and I pull my top over my head quickly, lifting myself up so he can bury his face inbetween my breasts.
He bites at my nipples through the lace of my bra and moan when I sink back down his length.
He undoes my bra, stroking his hands over my back before sliding it from my shoulders and down my arms.
“Fuck, solnyshko, you look like a queen.” He cups both of my breasts, measuring the weight of them. “These are going to become divine. They already drive me insane,” the last worlds come out strangled, as though he is barely holding on to restraint.
I begin to slide back and forth over his cock while he plays with my tits. Never taking his eyes from them.
“Full and stretched and leaking,” he mutters. His cock twitches violently inside me and I know he is getting close. One hand drops to my hip in a bid to slow me down, but I can’t, I’m chasing my own release now.
“Solnyshko,” he says, using the pet name he has given me. “Slow down,” he growls, eyes still on my tits. But I’m watching him closely, waiting for the moment he blows his load because I know that’s what will tip me over the edge.
“Who owns my dripping pussy?” I ask, turning the tables on his dirty talk. “Tell me who I belong to.”
“Me,” he manages, sweat beading on his forehead. “Your mine!” I know when his control finally snaps.
On the word mine, his jaw clenches and his eyes glaze.
Then he drops his face onto my breasts and holds onto both of my hips, pushing deeply into me with each surge of his cum.
I follow him. The feeling of his throbbing cock, his cum slickening my movements, the grind of my clit against him as I rock, and the sound he makes as he falls over the edge is all to much.
My head falls back and I ride the waves out as he sucks my nipple into his mouth and pinches the other between his thumb and index finger.