23. Cali
CALI
I make it through the rest of the night on autopilot.
But the whole time, two things are chewing at me. The first is what the woman in gray said. You're the operator. Look after yourself.
The second is Vera's thumb on Ronan's jaw and that stupid little laugh.
I wish I could say that the second one isn't bothering me more than the first, but that would be a lie.
What does that say about me, that a threat to my life feels less important than Does Ronan truly love me?
We say our goodbyes. It seems like we've done what he needed to do this evening, because he's getting plenty of respectful nods and firm handshakes from the men.
Then we're outside in the August heat. Paolo is off tonight, so it's just us in the Rolls Royce as Ronan pulls out into the dark streets of Brighton Beach.
"What's on your mind?" he asks.
"Nothing. Just tired."
"I think you're forgetting how bad of a liar you are, Cali."
I don't answer.
"Calista."
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that. I believe you less and less every time."
I turn from the window. "I don't care, okay? About Vera. If that's what you're fishing for. I don't care."
He's quiet for a second, eyes on the road. "I wasn't fishing for anything."
"Well, good, you don't have to. I don't care. I hope that's clear. I. Don't. Care."
"Okay."
"I mean it. It's ancient history. It's nothing. It doesn't bother me at all."
"Okay," he says again.
"Stop doing that," I snap before I can stop myself. I do a mean little impression of his voice. "Okay. Okay. Stop it. It's maddening."
He glances at me. "You want me to disagree with you?"
"I want you to fight with me. I want you to be a normal person for once and just—fight."
"About what?"
"About Vera!" I throw my hands up. "Some gorgeous woman came sashaying over in her silk and her pearls and put her hand on your face and reminded you and me and the whole room that she used to have you in her bed, and you barely did anything about it, and now, you're being all okay, okay about it, and I want to scream. "
He drives another block in silence. "So you do care."
"No."
"You just said—"
"I said I want you to fight with me. That's different."
"It's really not."
"It is completely different, and the fact that you don't see that is exactly the problem."
He signals and changes lanes. "Fine," he says. "You want a fight. Here's one. You want to talk about tonight? Let's talk about it."
"Great. Let's."
"I spent the entire night watching men look at you."
That stops me. "What?"
"Every man in that room gawked at you. Not because you're the pakhan's wife.
Because of who you are. You walked in wearing that dress and you handled Marisha and you handled Vera and you looked like you belonged there more than any of them.
They all noticed, and I watched them fall in love with you.
I wanted to break each of their fingers one at a time. "
I stare at him. "You did not."
He turns onto a wider road, and the streetlights slide across his face.
"You want to talk about Vera and her hand on my face?
I don't remember it at all. I barely remember Vera being there.
I spent the whole night staring daggers at every man who looked at you a half second too long, so you'll forgive me if I didn't have any attention left over for an old flame from twelve years ago that I felt nothing about even at the time. "
The car goes quiet except for the engine.
"So you were jealous," I say.
"Disgustingly," he spits. "The entire time. It was one of the worst nights of my life."
"That's not—" I start, and then I can't finish it, because I don't know what I was going to say. My skin feels too tight to contain all the things inside me. "That's not the same thing. Nobody was actually flirting with me."
"They were all taking you to bed in their heads. I could see it."
"Now, you're just being ridiculous."
"Maybe. But you asked for a fight, and this is the one I've got.
" He glances at me again. His eyes are dark, and there's a heat coming off him now that has nothing to do with the summer temperature.
"I was jealous, Calista. All night. So don't sit there and tell me you don't care about Vera when we both know that's a lie, because I know exactly what you're feeling.
I've been feeling the uglier version of it for four hours straight. "
That's the thing that takes it over the top. Both of us. Him admitting it, out loud, plainly, without dressing it up as anything reasonable, and me feeling it slam into me that I've been jealous, too, and so has he, and we've both been dwelling on it all night like two idiots.
"Pull over," I say.
He looks at me.
"Pull over. Right now."
He doesn't ask why. He hits the signal and swings the car onto the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under the tires. We're somewhere along a dark stretch with the water on one side and nothing on the other, no houses, no people, simply the two of us and the pitter-patter of my aching heart.
He puts it in park. "Cali—"
I'm already climbing over the console.
I get a knee up onto his seat and my hands in his collar and I kiss him, hard, before he can say one more reasonable word, before either of us can talk ourselves out of it.
He's surprised for maybe half a second, and then his hands come up to my hips and haul me the rest of the way over into his lap, my dress bunching up my thighs, my knees on either side of him against the leather.
"You want to be jealous?" I breathe against his mouth. "Fine. Be jealous. But you don't get to be jealous about a room full of men who never touched me when you're the only one who does."
"Say that again," he growls.
"You're the only one." I kiss him again, deeper this time, and his hand slides up my back and grips the base of my skull, tangling in my hair. "You're the only one who touches me. Nobody else. Just you."
He kisses me like he's trying to leave a mark on the inside of me. One hand fists in my hair to tip my head back, and his mouth goes to my throat, to the soft place under my jaw. He drags his teeth over it just hard enough that I gasp and grind down into him without meaning to.
He's huge and hard beneath me. I can feel him through the tuxedo trousers, right where I'm pressing, so I roll my hips against him.
"You spent the whole night," he says against my throat, "in that dress, and every man in that room wanted you.
But you belong to me." His hand slides from my hair down my back, down to the hem of my dress where it's rucked up around my thighs, and his fingers find the bare skin there and drag up. "Mine."
"Yours." I don't fight it, don't even feel the old instinct to make myself small, to fold up, to say the safe thing. "Say it again."
"Mine." He tugs the strap of my dress off my shoulder and puts his mouth to the top of my breast. I arch into him. "Every part of you. Mine."
His hand slides up under the dress, between us.
I lift up onto my knees to give him room.
His fingers find my pussy over the thin lace and press.
He drags the fabric aside with two fingers and touches me bare.
Slow. Exactly the way he knows I like. I'm already so wet that his fingers slide easy, and my whole body jolts.
"You're soaked," he says against my ear, wonder and want tangled together. "You were dripping all night, weren't you? Sitting next to me, being jealous, being furious, being mine."
"Yes." I can barely get it out. "Yes. God." I'm rocking against his hand now, shameless, both of my hands fisted in his lapels. "Ronan. Ronan, please—"
"Please what, kotyonok?"
"I don't want your fingers. I want your cock. Now. Right now."
I feel him swallow. Then his hands are at his belt. I lift up on my knees, my forehead pressed to his, both of us breathing hard. I hear the buckle and the zipper, and then he's freeing himself. His cock is hot and hard against my palm when I reach down. I stroke him once and he shudders.
"Nothing between us," I say. It's not a question. We haven't used any protection since the lake. I don't want anything now. I want all of him.
"I'd rather fucking die," he agrees. He grips my hip with one hand and lines his cock up with the other. I sink down onto him slow, slow, letting him fill my pussy inch by inch. The stretch of it, the fullness, punches the air right out of my lungs.
"Oh."
"That's it." His hand spreads across my lower back, holding me steady. "Take all of my cock. Just like that. You were built for it."
I take all of him, until I'm sitting flush against him, his cock buried deep, his hands on my hips and my hands framing his face.
For a second, I just stay there. I feel every part of him inside me.
I feel the way he's looking at me in the dark, the streetlight through the window catching the half-gray, half-blue of his eyes.
"Look at me," he says, though I already am. "Keep looking at me. I want to watch you the whole time."
I brace my hands on his shoulders and ride his cock in the front seat of his car on the side of a dark road.
He lets me set the pace. I take exactly what I want, his hands on my hips guiding but not forcing, his mouth on my throat and my collarbone and the top of my breast. The windows fog up around us.
The leather creaks. Every time I sink down onto him, he pushes up to meet me, and his cock hits somewhere so deep I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out into the quiet.
"That's my girl," he breathes. "That's my queen. Take what's yours."
"Mine," I echo, and I mean it, I mean all of it. I roll my hips and grind down as the tension coils tighter and tighter in my belly.
"You're mine and I'm yours," he says. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, tipping my face so I have to keep looking at him. "That's the deal. That's the only deal that matters. Not the paper. Not the marriage. This."
He slides a hand between us and finds my clit where his cock is splitting me open. He presses his thumb there and circles. I break apart faster than I can brace for it. I clench around his cock and shake, and he holds me through all of it, whispering, "You're so fucking beautiful" again and again.
I'm still coming down when he grips my hips and takes over.
He's fucking up into me hard and fast now, his control finally cracking, that iron barrier in him splintering the way it only does with me.
His forehead drops to my shoulder and he says my name, my real name, Calista, Calista, and then something in Russian.
He goes rigid beneath me and spills into my pussy with a groan I feel more than hear.
We stay like that for a long time, his cock still buried in me.
His arms are wrapped all the way around me, my face tucked into his neck, both of us breathing hard in the fogged-up dark.
His heart is slamming against my chest. I can feel it slow, degree by degree.
I put my hand flat over it and let it slow under my palm.
"You're a bad man."
"I've told you that from the start," he rasps. Then he raises his eyes up. "But I'm trying to be good for you."
I lift my head and look at him. His hair's a mess. There's lipstick on his collar, mine this time, and I feel a fierce, dumb pride about that. Twelve years ago, some woman in blue silk used to kick him out of her apartment.
But where is she to be found? Not here.
Tonight, he's in the front seat of his car on the side of a road with me, his cock still inside me, looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world worth any scrap of his attention.
"We should get home," I whisper. "The sitter probably wants to go home. And also, I want round two."
He grins. "One of those things is more motivating to me than the other."
I laugh and squirm in his lap until he groans. "I mean it," I insist. "Plus the windows are all fogged up. Anybody drives by, they'll know exactly what we did."
"Let them." He kisses me and slides his tongue into my mouth. "Let all of them know."
I stay in his lap another minute, maybe two, his cock softening inside me. I refuse to be the one to move first. I feel more like myself than I have in longer than I can remember.
Not small. Not folded up. Not waiting for it to be taken away.
But whole, full, and complete.
And his.