Chapter 8 Ruslan
Ruslan
Dangerous – Sleep Token
The villa sits far enough from the city that silence sounds real here.
Actual silence, the kind that doesn’t belong to hotel corridors, conference floors, or family compounds where every quiet moment is just another form of surveillance.
Out here, the world still makes noise, but none of it sounds like a threat.
Cicadas in the trees, the whisper of leaves, distant water, and old wooden beams settling in the heat. Nothing that means danger. Nothing that screams fathers.
I bought this place in Kolomna a year ago through three different names and a man in Naples who doesn’t ask questions because he prefers cash to curiosity.
It isn’t grand by any standards of our families, which is exactly why I like it. No ballroom, no staff quarters full of ears, no front drive long enough for a spectacle.
Just a low stone house built into the rise of the land; all pale walls, shuttered windows, and a kitchen too small to host anything but conversation.
The first time I brought Salvatore here, he stood in the doorway with his coat still on and looked around like he was waiting for the trap to show itself.
There isn’t one, which is why he starts to relax later on.
Not all at once, he’s still a Vieri. But I see it happen in pieces: the line of his shoulders eases within a few hours, his mouth starts losing that constant hard set that reminds me so much of Aldo.
He stops checking the windows every time he hears a car passing on the empty stretch of road below.
But the thing that tells me he’s finally started to relax is the way he starts falling asleep faster here.
As if the animal part of him knows this is the closest thing either of us has to neutral ground.
I shouldn’t let myself think that way. Neutral makes things sound safe, and safe makes men stupid.
And fuck, do we become stupid here.
The day after we arrive starts with sunlight through the linen curtains and Salvatore still asleep beside me—on his stomach, face half-turned into the pillow, dark hair a mess across the white linen.
I wake before him because years of training, habit, and general mistrust of the world make proper rest feel like a weakness I only indulge in with the help of a needle.
But here, with him in my bed and the villa keeping the outside world away, I lie still instead of immediately moving. That alone is fucking miraculous.
He sleeps more deeply here, too. Not soft, because even in sleep, Salvatore carries tension in the hidden part of himself that still believes love is an ambush.
But deeper, yes. He breathes slower, doesn’t wake at every floorboard sound, and doesn’t flinch toward wakefulness if I shift too quickly beneath the sheets.
I reach out and drag my knuckles lightly over his shoulder, down his spine, and his mouth tightens before his eyes open.
“You’re staring again,” he says, voice rough with sleep.
I hum. “Can you blame me? The man I love is sleeping next to me, how can I not stare?”
His lashes lift properly then, and there he is. Dark eyes, sharp mouth, that familiar look of irritation stretched over the fact that he’s already soft for me because I’m touching him.
“You sound disgustingly sweet this morning,” he grumbles.
I lean in and kiss the corner of his mouth. “You love knowing you’re the only one I’m sweet for.”
His hand comes up slowly, fingers sliding into the hair at the back of my neck, and he kisses me properly. No anger in it, no panic, no shadow of fathers or meetings or the things waiting outside of these walls.
Just morning heat and familiarity. The kind of kiss that belongs to people who wake up together because they’re allowed and not because they’ve stolen the hours and are already counting how many remain.
That’s the kind of stupidity this place invites.
We stay in bed longer than we should. Long enough that the sun climbs higher and the room warms around us. Long enough that he starts getting hard against me, flips me over, and shows me why we’re both dominant in this affair.
Afterward, he’s lying half on top of me, scowling because I’m smoking in bed, but drawing lazy patterns on my chest, anyway. I let the ash fall into an empty glass on the bedside table because there’s nobody here to complain about my manners.
“You’re impossible,” he says after a while.
“Hmm, still here, though.”
He snorts softly. “You say that as if persistence is a virtue.”
“It is when I get what I want.”
“And what exactly do you want, amore mio?”
Usually, I would answer with something filthy or deflect. A line designed to make him roll his eyes and kiss me anyway. But there’s too much daylight in this room and too much truth lying naked between us for that kind of bullshit to stick.
“You, Salvatore,” I say, looking him in those maddening dark eyes. “I only want you.”
He stills—not dramatically, but the line he’s drawing on my chest stops, and he stares at me with so much love and sadness in his eyes that my breath stutters.
“You already have me,” he whispers.
No, I think. Not really; not in the way the world would recognize because men are not supposed to want other men. I don’t have you in any way that can survive daylight, our fathers, and the rotten architecture of our names.
But for one beautiful, stupid hour in this bed, I let myself pretend he means it in the simple way.
I stub the cigarette out and throw the covers back. “Come on.”
He blinks at the sudden movement. “What? Where?”
“Kitchen.”
He watches me get out of bed, and I can feel his gaze drag over my back, my hips, and the bruises he keeps leaving. “That isn’t an answer, Ruslan.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” I say, picking up my briefs and sliding them on. “Get your ass up.”
He scowls, and I have no idea how he makes it look elegant as fuck. “Bossy prick.”
“You like that, too.”
He mutters something in Italian that I only catch half of and choose to take it as affection anyway.
The kitchen is sunlit, plain, and perfect in a way none of the grander rooms in either of our worlds is.
Old terracotta tiles, a carved wooden table scarred by use, and copper pots hanging above the stove. The windows are open because we never bothered to close them last night. It lets in the smell of earth and herbs from the garden.
I start the coffee and turn when I hear him shuffling into the room. He’s wearing nothing but his silk boxers and one of my shirts, unbuttoned and showing off his chest and the marks I left.
The sight of him barefoot in my kitchen, wearing my clothes, hits me harder than it should. I am so stupidly in love with this man.
He notices and tries not to smirk. “What?”
I shake my head once. “Nothing.”
“That face says otherwise.”
“It says I’m considering whether I should keep you here forever.”
His mouth twitches despite himself. “You’d get tired of me in three days.”
“Wrong, it’s nearly been three.”
“In five, then.”
“Also wrong.”
I set the moka pot on the stove and turn to face him fully. “In two months you’d still be bitching at me about how I cut bread, and I’d still want to bend you over this table.”
That earns me the look I’m after—offended, amused, and a little flustered.
He leans against the counter and folds his arms. “Your domestic fantasies are vile.”
“My domestic fantasies are honest.”
The word domestic hangs there for a beat too long. That’s the danger of this place—it lets words stretch into shapes they have no right to hold between men like us.
Domestic. Morning. Kitchen. Us.
Small, stupid things that feel harmless until you realize they’re the foundation of every life we’re not supposed to have.
Salvatore glances away first, toward the open window, the herbs outside, the sun striking the edge of the sink. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a kitchen with someone like this.”
I tilt my head. “Like what?”
“Like this,” he says again, and gestures vaguely between us, the room, and maybe the whole impossible idea of it.
I walk slowly toward him. “That’s because your family treats kitchens like they’re built for servants and poison.”
He scoffs. “They’re not wrong.”
I stop in front of him and hook a finger under his chin, my gaze sliding down the length of him and my shirt on his body. “And mine treats them like another place to conduct business.”
“Yes, well. We come from charming stock.”
I kiss him before he can retreat into the irony, and feel the smile he tries to hide break against my mouth.
Coffee brews, bread gets sliced, and eggs go into a pan. Salvatore acts insulted when I slap his wrist away from the tomatoes I’m cutting, but steals one anyway, glaring at me while biting into it as if he’s making a point.
It feels so dangerously normal that I start hating it even while I sink into it.
He sits opposite me as we eat, and every so often, he refills my cup even before I can, without comment. As if he’s been doing it all his life.
It’s such a small thing; that’s what gets to me. Not sex or the violence we know how to turn into devotion. Small things—refilling coffee, handing me salt without looking because he already knows when I’ll want it. Leaning over to steal a bite off my plate, even while he still has plenty on his.
Maybe this is what ruins people more effectively than lust. Not the fire, but the possibility of routine.
After breakfast, we take the coffee out to the back terrace. There’s nothing but a stretch of green in front of us; the cicadas are louder now, and the birdsong is low.
Salvatore stretches his legs out in the chair next to me and closes his eyes, face turned into the sunlight. Gods, he looks younger here—less heir, more human.
“You could stay here all the time, you know,” I say.
His eyes open slowly, and a ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Could I?”
I know what he means. Could and allowed are entirely different species in our lives.
“For today, lyubimiy.”
“For today,” he repeats.