Chapter 20 - Marco
Alexei was… cleaning me up.
I was still bent over the table when I felt his hands again. He used a damp cloth he must have gotten from somewhere in the apartment, wiping away the mess between my cheeks and down my thighs. The whole thing felt incredibly weird, intimate.
I didn’t know what to say. I just stayed there, trembling slightly.
“Relax,” he said quietly.
That almost made me laugh, except nothing about this felt funny.
Relax?
My pulse was everywhere. My thoughts were worse.
“I’m relaxed,” I lied.
His hand paused for half a second. Then, in that same maddeningly calm voice, he said, “No, little star. You’re very much not relaxed.”
I shut my eyes.
He seemed to enjoy dragging every humiliating truth into the open and holding it there until I had no choice but to feel it fully.
I swallowed hard and tried not to move.
He finished in silence after that.
When he finally stepped back, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
“There,” he said.
I didn’t turn around immediately. My dignity felt like it was already hanging by threads, and facing him right then seemed impossible.
So I stared at the floor for a second and asked, very quietly, “Can I… take a shower?”
“Yes.”
I turned a little, finally forcing myself to look at him.
He was leaning back slightly. Then he nodded toward a door off to the side.
“Second door on the left,” he said. “Towels are inside.”
I hesitated. “Okay.”
He watched me for another second and then added, “Take your time.”
I made it to the bathroom on unsteady legs and shut the door behind me, bracing both hands on the sink and lowering my head.
My reflection in the mirror looked as wrecked as I felt.
Wet eyes. Flushed cheeks. Dark curls falling messily around my face.
I looked away.
The shower was quick, mostly because I didn’t trust myself to stay in there too long.
The hot water helped and didn’t help at all.
It washed away the physical evidence of too much, but it didn’t touch the confusion.
Or the horrible fluttering thing low in my stomach every time I remembered the way he looked at me.
By the time I stepped out, the mirror had fogged over.
I reached for a towel, dried off quickly, then froze.
I had no clothes.
A fresh wave of panic prickled up my spine. I looked around the bathroom like something helpful might magically appear out of nowhere. Nothing. Just folded towels, expensive soap, and me, stranded and stupid and very aware of the fact that I couldn’t walk back out there wrapped in nothing.
Then I noticed it.
A shirt.
Folded on the nearby bed just beyond the half-open bathroom door, like it had been left there deliberately.
I stepped out cautiously, water still dripping from the ends of my curls, and reached for it.
It was one of his. Black, soft, far too large. The fabric smelled like him.
My cheeks flared as soon as I pulled it on.
It swallowed me.
The hem brushed my knees. The sleeves covered half my hands until I pushed them back.
I stood there for a second just clutching at the front of it, then I looked around, but he wasn’t there.
My heart gave a strange little jump. I noticed the balcony door standing slightly open, sheer curtains stirring faintly in the night air.
I moved toward it slowly.
When I stepped out onto the balcony, I saw him immediately.
Alexei was leaning against the railing, one hand resting loosely on the dark metal, the other holding a cigarette between two fingers. Smoke curled up in thin pale ribbons around him, vanishing into the night. City lights flickered far below, painting the lines of his face in gold and shadow.
He turned at the sound of the door.
And then he just… looked at me. His gaze dropped from my wet curls to the oversized shirt draped around my body and stayed there long enough to make my throat go dry.
I tightened my grip on the shirt without meaning to.
Alexei took a slow drag from the cigarette, exhaled, and said, “Come here.”
And I obeyed.
My feet moved before my pride had time to object. I crossed the balcony slowly, stopping a couple of steps away from him.
His eyes flicked down once more to the shirt. “It suits you,” he said.
I looked down automatically, cheeks burning. “It’s huge.”
A faint curve touched his mouth. “You’re small.”
I stared somewhere around his collarbone and tried to think of something normal to say. My thoughts were no help at all.
In the end, the first thing that came out was the thing that had been quietly panicking in the back of my mind since I stepped out of the shower.
“Wh… where will I sleep?”
His eyes lifted fully back to mine. “On my bed.”
“Your bed?”
He took another drag of the cigarette, watching me over the dim orange ember. “Yes.”
I don’t know what expression crossed my face, but something about it made his gaze sharpen with amusement. “You look frightened,” he said.
“I’m not—” I stopped, because lying that badly in front of him felt pointless.
“You’re not possibly shy about sleeping in my bed,” he continued, “after I finger-fucked you. Are you?” he pressed, taking a step closer.
I took a step back. My shoulder hit the cold stone of the balustrade, and I realized I had nowhere left to go.
“I’m not shy,” I forced the question out in a rush. “Will it only be sleeping?”
He tilted his head slightly, considering me. “Hm.” That single sound made my pulse spike. “This time, yes.”
This time.
My mouth went dry.
I repeated it before I could stop myself. “This time?”
“Why? Are you hoping for something more?”
“No!” The denial came out too quickly, too high-pitched. “I just—I wanted to know what to expect. I’ve never…I don’t usually—”
“You never shared a bed with someone who made you come so hard you cried?”
I made a sound that was half-gasp, half-whimper. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say things like that. It’s—” I pressed my hands to my burning cheeks. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s the truth.”
“That doesn’t make it less embarrassing.”
I tried to change the subject because if I didn’t, I was going to melt straight through the balcony floor.
My face was still burning from what he said. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I looked away.
Up.
The night stretched above us, scattered with stars that looked clearer from his balcony than they ever did from my bedroom window. Maybe it was the height. Maybe it was the open air. Maybe rich people even owned better pieces of sky. That thought was so stupid it almost made me laugh.
My eyes dropped from the stars to him before I could stop them. Bathed in silver, he looked less like a man and more like something the moon had dreamed into existence. Too beautiful to belong to this world, too cruel to belong to heaven.
My gaze moved lower. There was a small moon tattoo crawling up the side of his neck.
I hadn’t noticed it properly before. Or maybe I had and my brain had been too busy screaming to keep track. It curved near the darker ink on his throat, delicate compared to the rest of the tattoos disappearing under his skin.
It looked strangely gentle there.
That made no sense.
Nothing about Alexei Morozov was gentle.
My fingers tightened in the hem of his shirt where it hung almost to my knees.
“Do you…” My voice came out small, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Do you like stars that much?”
He leaned back a little against the railing and turned his face up toward the sky. “Hm,” he said. “I do.”
The answer surprised me. Not because liking stars was strange. A lot of people liked stars. They were beautiful.
But Alexei liking them felt… odd.
Like finding out a wolf collected flowers.
I shifted awkwardly on my bare feet. “Is that why you’re studying astronomy?”
He nodded and I tilted my head. It really didn’t fit him. “Your major seems… unexpected.”
“Why?”
“Because you are…” I searched for a word that wouldn’t get me killed. “You.”
His cigarette paused halfway to his mouth. “And what am I?”
A trap.
The question was a trap. I knew it. Every instinct in my body knew it.
Still, my mouth, traitorous and exhausted, answered before my survival instincts could stop it. “Scary.”
Alexei looked at me.
No anger moved across his face. No amusement either, at least not the kind I recognized. He just watched me.
I swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean—”
He turned his gaze back to the stars. “You’re not wrong. But I like stars enough to study them,” he said.
“What is so great about them?”
Alexei’s head turned. He looked at me in a way I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the usual look. He seemed…offended?
No.
Not offended.
Sulky?
The thought was so bizarre that my brain latched onto it helplessly. Alexei Morozov, sulking? No. Impossible.
And yet there was something in the faint tightening of his mouth, the slight stillness around his eyes, like I had insulted something personal without meaning to.
I blinked at him. “Did I… say something wrong?”
“No. You simply asked the wrong question.”
“…There’s a right one?”
Alexei looked back toward the sky. “The better question is why I think they are great.”
I hugged the oversized shirt tighter around myself.
“…Okay. Why do you?”
The cigarette burned lower between his fingers before he finally spoke.
“…I met someone. He told me a little about the stars back then. I guess I caught an interest from that.”
My chest tightened. It was such a small admission, but from Alexei, it felt like a massive, jagged boulder dropped into still water. “You met someone?” I asked. “Is he… your friend?”
Alexei shook his head, a wry, almost bitter slant touching his mouth. “No. We’re not friends.”
He didn’t elaborate, but there was an undeniable undertone in the way he spoke about this person, a rare resonance that sounded close to fondness.
A sudden ache bloomed right in the center of my chest. It actually hurt. My heart squeezed painfully, a hollow sensation spreading through my ribs.
Am I… jealous?