Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
VANYA
There was nothing better than a stomach full of warm comfort food and a lover stretched out beneath me, asshole wet and soft and pliant under my tongue as dessert. What made it even better was the noise Micah made as I licked him, making him restless in my hands.
He writhed, gasped, fingers clawing at the mattress, body shifting like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to move closer or get further away from me. Pulling my arm back, I smacked his ass—the fifth spank I’d given him since getting him naked and on the bed.
He groaned loudly, his back bowing as his head lifted off the mattress. It was a wonder how much he loved it—how much he craved that little bit of pain with his pleasure.
I understood it in a way that I didn’t with most lovers. I’d been asked to do this before. I’d been asked to do more—bonds and paddles and gags weren’t strange to me. But every lover before Micah seemed like they were putting on a performance.
Like because I was big and Russian and had a low voice and dark eyes, I wanted to hurt them. Like my rough hands couldn’t be tender, so they had to lean into who they thought I was.
With Micah, it was a need. It was a craving he had never been able to sate before. It was desperation for proof that he could take it—that I believed in him. That he was, above all, so fucking good and deserved to have everything he wanted.
“So perfect,” I murmured, admiring the way his skin lit up pink. It wouldn’t last. He was used to taking hits, and I would have to go a lot harder if he wanted bruises, but that wasn’t what this was about.
It was about the contrast.
About keeping him grounded.
About proving everyone in his past absolutely fucking wrong.
The connection between us was intense and powerful, and I knew that made a difference. I knew that was part of all of this. Without it—without the fact that he was in love with me, and I was in love with him—we wouldn’t have had any of this.
Being able to give Micah a little rough with his tender cravings didn’t mean he was fixed, because he wasn’t broken. In the times he couldn’t get hard or didn’t want sex because it was the last thing on his mind, it didn’t mean that things were suddenly wrong.
And I needed him to know I understood. I wanted him to be unafraid to be himself—without compromise and without apology.
He’d been fist-fighting himself this entire time he was with me—his fear of loving getting in his way of being able to actually fall. But my patience was being rewarded now.
“Vanya,” he gasped. I could see his hips humping into the mattress, and I grabbed him, yanking him up onto his knees.
“Not yet.”
“Please, fuck. I need to come. I’m going to fucking die.”
“No. You will not. Maybe have some blue balls—a little ache. Maybe get more desperate,” I rumbled against his ear as I slotted my hips behind his round ass. I fucked my dick forward, grazing his balls, and he dropped his head on a heavy moan. “But you are so good for me just like this.”
He shuddered hard, and his hips rocked backward against me. He was ready to be taken—ready for my cock. Reaching for the lube, I slicked up, then pressed the head against his waiting hole.
“Ask me,” I told him.
“Oh fuck. Vanya. Fuck me.”
“Nicer,” I said, giving him a hard nudge.
His elbows started to shake. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, pretty little goalie. Am serious. Ask me nice. I know you can.”
There was a long silence, and I could feel him fighting himself again. His ego. His pride. Then he swallowed heavily and whispered, “Please. Please, Vanya. I need you inside me. I need to feel you. I need you to fucking overwhelm me.”
“I love you,” I told him in Russian. He went boneless the moment I thrust forward, and he took me like he was made to do it.
“Vanya,” he gasped. And fuck, I love the way he said my name. I love the way it tumbled from his lips like a prayer.
His arms began to shake again as I shifted higher up onto my knees. I was hitting the perfect angle from the way he let out a shattered groan and his ass began to seek more friction.
Gripping him by the hips, I dug my fingers in and began to fuck him in earnest. The room was silent apart from broken moans, ragged breath, and skin slapping skin.
“Fuck, fuck,” Micah gasped. The back of his neck was bright red with a lust-filled flush. “Vanya, I think I’m…I might—oh god.”
It took me a moment for my brain to understand what he was trying to say, but then I realized it. He was going to come.
He was going to come untouched.
Gripping him harder, I fucked him faster, deeper, rolling my hips, hitting his prostate with every push and every pull until he was trembling and sobbing.
And then he let go.
It was between two breaths, and his elbows gave out on him, his face planting into the mattress while I held his ass in the air and railed into him with everything I had.
He cried out loudly into the sheets as I chased my own climax, letting it overwhelm me as I filled his hole. My own knees were shaking, and my heart was hammering in my chest as I slipped out and gathered him into my arms.
He clung to me like if he didn’t, he would fly away, and I rolled us onto our sides, cradling him in the arc of my body.
“Micah, Micah,” I murmured.
His lips searched, finding mine, kissing me sloppy and messy and so fucking perfect.
“You were so good. So good for me,” I whispered.
His hand crept up, fingers grazing my temple, then pushing into my sweat-soaked hair. “Tell me what you said before in Russian. Please.”
The words crept up my throat and froze. Would it ruin everything if he knew? Would it destroy this fragile thing we’d built?
But I couldn’t deny him anything. It was against my nature. Pulling back just slightly, I cupped his cheek, brushing my thumb over his dry lower lip. He chased the touch with his tongue, though I didn’t let him catch me.
“I told you I love you. It mean…the words I say…” I was struggling with language, my head a fuzzy mess. “In love. That I am in love.”
I waited on a knife’s edge, waiting for my heart to be sliced in half, leaving me to bleed out. For him to break me by telling me that it was too much.
Or not enough.
His hand crept up between us and pressed gently against my beating heart. I could almost feel my pulse between my teeth as his fingers gently scraped over my skin.
He licked his lips, took a breath, and I nearly died waiting for him to speak.
“I’ve never been in love before. I was always afraid I couldn’t fall in love.
Or that I wouldn’t know it until it was over.
For a while, I convinced myself I didn’t want it.
That it would be too complicated. And I’m still afraid that the moment you experience me on a bad day—or a bad month—or a long streak where I don’t want to be touched like this… ”
“Micah—”
“No, please,” he begged. “Let me finish. I need to say this before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I leaned forward and pushed my nose against his temple. “I’m listening.”
He relaxed a fraction. “I don’t know if it’s just the feeling of…
being with you, or the newness of it. I don’t know if one day, my desire for sex is going to dry up into nothing, and it’ll be years before I want it again.
I don’t have any real experience. I barely know myself, and I went through something really bad when I was younger that left me afraid.
You make me feel safe, but sometimes it won’t matter how good you are to me.
Sometimes the past will catch up with me, and it’ll fuck me up all over again. ”
I waited as he went silent. I could tell he wasn’t finished.
“And I don’t want to let you in only to be thrown away when you realize it won’t always be like this.”
I took a moment to think about his words. To process them. To make sure I understood everything he was telling me, because while I understood English better than I spoke it, he had a lot to say.
And those words were very important.
But it didn’t take an expert to understand what he was afraid of. Micah had been living behind so many masks for so long, it only made sense that letting one drop would terrify him. All I could do was take the time—the years, if I had to—to show him that nothing about him scared me.
That I didn’t need what we’d just done.
That while I loved it—while I fucking adored watching him fall apart beneath me—there was so much more to him than this. I had fallen for him long before I ever got to put my hands on him. Months before I had him in Alexio’s car, gasping and writhing at my touch.
I wanted all of him.
“Forgive me if I don’t say all my words as nice as you,” I told him. “Is so hard in English.”
He laughed softly. “I wish I spoke more than a few words in Russian.”
“Maybe you learn. Maybe we learn a language together, yes?”
He grinned and pressed his smile against my chest. “Okay.”
“For now,” I murmured, “I don’t think I can say any words to convince you not to be afraid. Fear has been best friend for so long.”
He sighed. “I…yeah. Fuck, that’s hard to admit, but yes.”
“So is okay for me to share space for a little while. As long as you let me try.” I eased him back and cupped his chin in my hand.
I loved looking at his face. At the cut edge of his jaw, and the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, his wild hair and long eyelashes, and the way he’d wrinkle his nose when he was deep in thought.
“If you try and be patient, I will prove.”
He swallowed heavily. “I can do that.”
“And as long as you need to take, I can wait for your I love you.”
He shook his head. “No—I…that’s…” He let out a puff of air. “That’s not what I mean. I’m saying all this because I do love you, and it scares the shit out of me.”
I’d said those words already. I’d come to terms with them. I’d told him how I felt. But I hadn’t realized how profoundly it would affect me to hear them coming from his lips.
“Micah,” I whispered.