Chapter 15 #2
When he took me in his mouth I arched off the bed and grabbed the sheets and made a sound that was not dignified and did not care.
Mik's mouth was careful and deliberate and devastating, and I could feel him learning in real time, adjusting to what made me louder and what made me grip the sheets harder, applying his analytical brain to the project of dismantling me.
"God, Mik, your mouth." I was babbling. I was aware of this. "You're so good at this, how are you so good at this."
He pulled off long enough to say, "I am a fast learner," and the dry delivery in that context sent me into a laugh that turned into a groan when he went back down.
He brought me to the edge and then stopped, which was either strategic genius or psychological warfare, and crawled back up my body and kissed me deep and I could taste myself on his tongue and the intimacy of it made my head spin.
"I want you inside me," he said. Quiet. Direct. Mik.
The words hit me like a physical blow. This was new. Last time, he'd been underneath me and vulnerable and it had been about trust. This time, he was asking for it. Choosing it. That was different. That was a man who had figured out what he wanted and was no longer afraid to say it.
I reached for the nightstand. Got what we needed.
He was on his back and I prepped him carefully, slowly, watching his face the entire time.
His expression when I pushed a finger inside him was something I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
Not pain. Not discomfort. A kind of surrender.
A relaxing of every muscle he'd spent his life keeping tense.
"More," he said.
I gave him more. Two fingers, working him open, and when I found the spot that made his hips lift off the bed he said something in Russian that sounded urgent and beautiful and completely untranslatable.
"Ready?"
He reached for me and guided me into position himself, impatient now, and when I pushed inside him we both groaned and held still. The feel of him around me was tight and hot and overwhelming and I pressed my forehead to his and breathed.
He moved first. His hips rocking up against me, finding the rhythm, and I matched it and we were moving together the way we did everything, instinctive and synchronized, two people who had learned each other's frequencies so thoroughly that even this felt like something we'd always known how to do.
It was at this point, while buried inside the man I loved and approximately thirty seconds from an orgasm that was going to rearrange my internal organs, that I attempted to tell him something romantic in Russian.
I had been practicing on a language app for two weeks. The phrase was supposed to be "you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen."
Mik stopped moving. His eyes went wide. His mouth opened. And then he started laughing so hard that I had to pull out because the convulsions of his body were making it physically impossible to remain where I was.
"What?" I said. "What did I say?"
He was gone. Full-body, tears-streaming, gasping-for-air laughter.
He rolled onto his side and curled up and the sounds coming out of him were sounds I had never heard from Mikhail Volkov.
Uncontrolled. Unguarded. The laughter of a man who had not laughed like this in so long that his body had forgotten the mechanics.
"WHAT DID I SAY?"
"You called me," he wheezed, "a beautiful refrigerator."
"What?"
"Kholodilnik. Refrigerator. The word you wanted is muzhchina. Man."
"Those sound nothing alike."
"No. They do not. Which makes this worse."
I stared at him, naked, on his side, shaking with laughter, and I thought: I will spend the rest of my life learning bad Russian if it makes him sound like this.
He finally stopped laughing. Wiped his eyes. Looked at me with an expression that was flushed and wrecked and so full of unfiltered happiness that it hurt to look at.
"Come back," he said. "We were not finished."
"Are you sure? Because if I try any more Russian, I might accidentally propose to a kitchen appliance."
"Come. Back."
I came back. He pulled me on top of him and guided me back inside and the laughter was still there, underneath everything, a current of joy running through the sex that made it better than anything I'd ever experienced.
We moved together and it was messy and imperfect and real and when he came, with my hand wrapped around him and my body deep inside his, his face did the thing that I lived for.
The complete openness. Every wall down. Every defense abandoned. Just Mik.
I followed immediately after, with my face in his neck and his name on my lips and the echo of his laughter still vibrating through both of us.
He held me afterward. His fingers in my hair. His heartbeat under my ear.
"For the record," he said, pressing his mouth to my temple, "I am flattered to be compared to a large kitchen appliance."
"You're never going to let me live this down."
"Correct. This is permanent. When we are old, I will remind you of the time you called me a refrigerator."
He was thinking about a future. Our future. A long one. One that stretched past this room and this season and this version of us into something bigger and further than I had dared to imagine.
I didn't say anything. Some things are too fragile to acknowledge directly. You just let them exist and hope they take root.
We lay in bed for another hour. Talking, not talking. His hand on my chest. My hand in his hair. The morning light moved across the room the way mornings do, slow and indifferent and perfect.
"Cole."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for waiting."
"You were worth it."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I know."
I grinned. "Did you just Han Solo me?"
"I don't know what that means."
"We are watching Star Wars tonight. This is non-negotiable."
"Is there hockey in Star Wars?"
"There's a Wookiee. Close enough."
He did that thing with his eyebrow. The one that meant he was judging me but also fond of me, which were apparently compatible emotions in the Russian operating system.
We watched Star Wars that night. Mik had questions. Many questions. Most of them about the structural integrity of the Death Star, which he considered poorly designed from an engineering standpoint. I had never loved anyone more.