Emerging Markets #6
Aleksandr makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat, letting go of her.
She draws her arm into her chest, uncertain.
“The blond lawyer type with the AG who kept looking like he wanted to off himself. Works for the Southern District. So, no, I did not bring my own employee as my date, Jesus.”
“Isn’t that—isn’t that a conflict of interest, or something?”
“Not any more heinous than you fraternizing with class enemies.”
Lili’s frown deepens into a scowl. “No, you don’t get to push this back on me. I’ve never lied to you about Jamie, but you
still lied about when you were coming back!”
“Jesus Christ,” Aleksandr says. “I got back early to see you, you obtuse—”
Anger—too hot, stronger than before, obscuring reasons and root causes—crackles over her. “Don’t say shit like that!” she
yells. “You can’t—you can’t just say that—”
Aleksandr grabs her face, knocking the drink out of her hand and pulling her onto her toes, kissing her so hard his teeth
clash against hers. Around her, the world swerves as he pushes her against the door, slamming her into the wood. Lili gasps,
the breath knocked out of her, and his tongue is in her mouth, rough, angry, and she doesn’t want her skin to immediately
sing like this; she fights back, tangling her hands in his hair, pulling at his bottom lip with her teeth, wanting to make
him hurt.
“You can’t say things like that to me,” she repeats, desperately insistent, as he starts kissing her neck. “This isn’t—this
doesn’t mean anything—”
“Shut up, Lili,” he growls into her skin, a glance of teeth that makes her wince.
Her grip tightens in his hair. “Don’t tell me what to—oh—” In one fluid motion, his hand finds the slit in her dress, pushing her underwear aside fast. As his fingers start moving
over her—harder, faster, than he usually would be immediately, which is good, good, because she wants nothing else from him—Lili grasps his hair harder, enough to hurt. She pulls his mouth back towards her,
kissing him with teeth and spite.
It’s a vehement, angry heat in her hips, under the increasing pressure of his fingers.
The type of pleasure that makes rage rasp—frustration near to screaming, jealousy so potent it feels like nausea—emotions that eat each other.
She’ll tear this from him if she has to, one last time to let him know what he’s going to miss.
Her fury from the fight—from seeing him across the room, that bloom of something dangerously close to hope snapping to sudden pieces at the thought of him with someone else—roars into the simplicity of violent, demanding hunger.
Better to fuck away this feeling, this tightening in her chest—I got back early to see you—that she will only call hatred.
She starts scrambling for his belt buckle, pulling at the metal clasp. “Come on,” she hisses, tugging his shirt out of his
trousers. “Get to it—” She keeps interrupting her own words with how fervently she’s kissing him. “If that’s all this is to
you, then just fuck me—ah—”
He grabs her hair, tight in a fist. “That’s not all this is to me,” he grits out, pinning her against the door, so she has
to look at him as he tugs her underwear further aside, rough; the feeling of him, hard and thick, makes harsh relief scorch,
as he lines himself up against her. “You bloody beautiful idiot—”
She cries out as he slams into her. The doorframe rattles in its hinges.
Tears blister in her eyes. “There,” she gasps, scrambling to hold him closer, as he fucks her past the initial protest of
her body taken by surprise: a surge of brightness, scalding wash of pain, incomprehensible relief, anger chasing jealousy
chasing want; her desire spins out, vulnerability rising to the surface of her skin—that he’s here, with her, again, finally. Part of her is furious at him for meeting this want in her—would she have been better off if she’d never known it could
feel like this? Like parts of her were made for him, like parts of him were made for her? Every time he slams into her, he
presses against something dangerous and coiled, what feels consequential. “Right there—”
His arm slips under her knee, wrenching her further up the door. She eagerly lets him, and a moan gathers in her throat with
this new angle. “Fuck,” he groans, angry disbelief. “Fuck, how can you feel this good—this was all I fucking thought about—fucking missed you—”
Her heart lurches. She blinks away the frustrated sting of tears: meaning becoming coherent, wants becoming needs, things
she has to blind herself to, because she stupidly missed this, too. “Harder,” she pleads instead. “Come on, harder—please—”
Tilting his hips, Aleksandr pushes deeper, and Lili moans: that, there. An intense rush sears inside of her. Taking advantage of the release in her body, he hitches her hips higher, giving himself
more access; her stiletto slips off her foot, falling with a clatter, barely heard over the loud clamor of the door.
“Can you still get there on your own?” he breathes against her lips. He’s fucking her harder than he should, but Lili would break her own bones to keep having this type of sex—to keep having it with him. “You had to think about me, didn’t you? While I was gone?”
She moans again, response crossed between fight and agreement. The pressure and pace, the force and friction and near-blinding
heat of blood pumping rough into her heart—it’s too much, and her head falls against his shoulder. She feels full, like a
redefinition that’ll leave her terrifyingly empty afterwards. Her hands fist in his suit, holding onto him—stay, she thinks, nearly fucked senseless, don’t leave again.
As he takes over entirely—setting the pace, holding her in place—she should be angry. It’s just—she feels near to something
like potential between his hands, against his body. Like he can push her to these places inside of her, outside of her mind,
that she can barely taste in daily life. Moments of peace, silence—moments of astounding, absurd release—something she can
just start to reach now, through the brutal force of him, near sadistic.
“Oh, my God—Christ, yes—yes, that’s—Sasha—”
He grabs her hair suddenly, pulling her head back. His eyes are fervent, almost angry.
“What did you say?” he hisses.
“Sasha?” she whispers, a sudden rush of embarrassment; it’s intimate, Russian diminutives. “I thought . . . I was reading—should
I not—”
Aleksandr kisses her so hard he swallows her breath.
The surprise of it makes her tense up, some ridiculous sound near a whimper, like what she’s faked during sex with other people,
mimicking porn, but it’s unbidden now, a sound that he inhales. The kiss is hot and hungry, her body overwhelmed, panicking—scrambling
with the sudden build in pressure, weight, sensation, the fast-approaching sense of a breaking point—her dress rucked up around
her waist, her underwear just pulled aside, his clothes still on, as he’s reaching sensitivity inside of her that makes Lili
feel dark depth in her throat. Her thighs—tight around his waist, bare skin against his black suit—start to shake, her frame
shuddering each time he thrusts into her, wracking the door with the movement of their bodies.
“I’m going to fucking ruin you,” he groans.
His breath is warm on her neck, grip so tight in her hair.
Little sounds of pain hitch on her moans.
He’s not stopping, not slowing, and she’s not asking him to, she’s encouraging him: please and there, right there and like that, yes, please, just like that, I need—
“Tell me what you need,” he says. It’s an order, but it’s as close to a plea as she’s ever heard from him.
“Nothing—nothing, please, I’m almost—oh—just don’t stop, right—fuck, there, just—”
His hand abandons her hair, sliding along the outside of her thigh, slung around his waist. He forces her leg up higher, and
she’s about to be angry—she told him not to change what he was doing, that she was so close—except he’s somehow found more
in her. The pleasure warping her body shimmers, excruciating, like an oil slick of color.
Blurry white spots falter over her vision. She can’t fully moan, only whimper, these unintelligible noises mingling with the
sound of him inside of her, a difficult fit no matter how aroused she is, and that pain brings the chill of quiet, freezing
her thoughts.
But no—she doesn’t want to lose her mind this time.
Lili buries her face in the crook of his neck, the fabric of his shirt. She pushes aside the craving for something almost
like violence at his hands, wants to instead be aware when he comes inside of her.
The pressure folds, warps, caves. Even as it collapses through her, becoming full-throated pleasure, a complicated blur that
feels too great for her body, Lili’s determined to stay aware, to stay here, to feel him.
Her voice breaks in her throat. He keeps moving, fucking her through it, and a few moments later, he groans against her neck,
flooding her, heavy and warm, and she feels needed, and she feels claimed, and she feels necessary, and she feels owned, and
she lets her eyes close; now that he’s back here, inside her, with her; now that she’s in his arms, again.
Moments, restoring their breath. Chests panting, she can hear the muffled sounds of the party press back in, distant cars
and pedestrians floating up from the street. Ragged remains of her climax run through her.
“How—how was your trip?” Lili gasps out. Laying her hands on his chest, she steadies herself, feeling his hard heartbeat under
her palms.
Aleksandr laughs, lifting his head from her neck. He rests his forehead against hers.
“Good,” he says. “Productive. How did your thesis meeting go?”
“Good,” Lili breathes. “Great, actually.”
He grins. “Let’s celebrate, then,” he says. “Come on, we’re going to dinner. I’m starving.”
Her body is buzzing, warm: released and humming, ecstatic with potential.
It’s just dinner, she thinks.
Lili nods, smiling up at him.
Aleksandr’s grin widens, and he kisses her again.