Chapter 12 #3
The wooden boards creaked under our feet.
Maya's hair whipped around her face in dark tangles, and her cheeks had gone pink with cold.
She'd stolen my jacket from the car—just grabbed it without asking, like she had the right—and it swallowed her small frame.
The sleeves hung past her hands, and she had to keep pushing them up to maintain her grip on the shopping bags.
She looked fucking perfect.
"I used to come here as a kid," I heard myself say. The words came out without planning, pulled by something about the gray water and the familiar salt-rust smell of the boardwalk.
Maya glanced at me but didn't push, just kept walking beside me, matching my longer stride with two steps for every one of mine.
"Before my mother left," I continued, surprising myself with the need to tell her this.
"She'd bring us—Nikolai, Maks and me—on Sundays.
There was a stand that sold piroshki, the real kind, not the shit they serve to tourists now.
She'd buy us each one and we'd sit on the benches, getting grease on our faces, watching the seagulls fight over scraps. "
The memory was fragmentary, worn soft around the edges like sea glass.
I could remember the taste—cabbage and beef, the dough crispy and hot enough to burn your tongue if you weren't careful.
Could remember Nikolai, maybe eight years old, trying to eat his without dropping any filling because even then he needed everything to be perfect.
Could remember the weight of my mother's hand on my head, smoothing my hair back from my face.
Couldn't remember her face, though. That was gone.
Maya's hand slipped into mine, her fingers cold and small. I wrapped mine around them automatically, covering them completely, sharing what warmth I had.
"What happened to her?" she asked quietly. "Your mother?"
The wind tried to steal her words, but I caught them. Held them for a moment before answering.
"She left when I was five. Ran off with some fuck from a rival family—the Morozovs.
Ultimate betrayal in our world." I kept my eyes on the horizon where gray met gray.
"My father went half-insane after that. Paranoid, controlling.
Died of a heart attack when I was twenty-five, but I think he really died the day she left. "
We walked in silence for a moment. A jogger passed us going the other direction, took one look at me, and nearly tripped over his own feet trying to create distance.
"Do you remember her?" Maya asked.
"Pieces," I admitted. "Her hands—she had small hands, like yours.
The way she hummed when she cooked. Russian lullabies she'd sing when we were going to sleep.
" I paused, throat tight. "I don't remember her face anymore.
Just her voice, getting softer as she sang us to sleep.
Sometimes I think I made that up, too. That maybe she never sang at all. "
Maya squeezed my hand. Didn't offer empty comfort or bullshit about how my mother must have had her reasons. Just held my hand while we walked past closed snack bars and empty benches, the wind cutting through everything.
"My mother died when I was seven," she said after a while.
"Lung cancer. She was a researcher too, worked with chemicals back before proper safety protocols.
I remember her laugh more than anything.
How it would start as this tiny giggle and build until her whole body shook.
My father never laughed the same way after she died. "
The gray waves crashed against the beach below us, rhythmic and endless. Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying about nothing and everything. The bags in our hands rustled with each gust—all those normal things we'd bought, those small domestic promises.
"I've never done this," I said suddenly. The words escaped before I could lock them down, carried away by wind and her presence and the strange vulnerability of daylight.
"Walked on a beach?"
"Any of it." I stopped walking, turned to face her.
She had to tip her head back to meet my eyes, my jacket making her look even smaller.
"Dating. Being with someone. Actually being with them, not just—" I gestured vaguely, encompassing all the transactional encounters that had passed for intimacy in my life.
"I don't know how to do this. How to be what you need.
I don't know how to... care for someone. Not like this."
The wind whipped her hair across her face. She pushed it back with one hand, studying me with those hazel eyes that saw too much.
"You fed me when I forgot to eat," she said simply.
"You gave me rules when I was drowning in chaos.
You held me while I cried about a patient I couldn't save.
You took me to buy cat supplies because you wanted me to have something normal.
" She stepped closer, close enough that I could shelter her from the worst of the wind.
"You're already what I need, Kostya. All of it. "
The certainty in her voice undid something in my chest.
"I'll probably fuck up," I warned.
"Probably," she agreed. "I'll fuck up too.
I'll forget to eat, neglect sleep, get lost in my head when the anxiety spirals.
I'll need more structure than any sane person should want.
I'll wake up screaming sometimes." She reached up, touched the scar through my eyebrow with one cold finger.
"But we'll figure it out. That's what people do.
They try and fail and try again until something works. "
A wave crashed particularly hard, sending spray up onto the boardwalk. Neither of us moved. We stood there, her in my jacket, me holding shopping bags full of cat supplies, both of us pretending the salt spray was the only reason our eyes were burning.
"Come on," I said finally, voice rough. "It's fucking freezing. The cats are probably wondering where we are."
We walked back toward the car, her hand still in mine, the wind at our backs pushing us forward. I thought about my mother, about the lullabies I might or might not remember.
Maybe memory didn't matter as much as what you built going forward.
Back in my room at the compound, we spread our bounty across the floor like kids dumping out Halloween candy. The kittens watched from their cardboard box fortress, Zmeya's green eyes tracking every movement while Malysh peered out from behind his sister like she was his personal bodyguard.
"Shark bed first," Maya declared, pulling it from its packaging with the reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts.
The thing was absolutely fucking ridiculous—bright blue fabric shaped like a cartoon shark, complete with white felt teeth around the opening and a dorsal fin on top.
It looked like something that belonged in a nursery, not in the bedroom of a man who'd killed seventeen people with his bare hands.
She set it down near the radiator where the kittens liked to sleep, then sat back on her heels, watching. Waiting.
Zmeya emerged first, of course. Stalked toward the bed like it had personally insulted her mother. Circled it twice, batted at the dorsal fin, then launched herself at it in a full-body attack that sent the bed skidding three feet across the floor.
"Told you," Maya said, grinning as Zmeya wrestled the shark into submission. "Warrior princess."
The kitten gripped the fin with her teeth, kicked at the body with her back legs, then suddenly went still. Sniffed. Considered. And crawled inside, turning around three times before settling with just her green eyes visible through the mouth opening, making it look like the shark had come alive.
"Now she's a shark," I said. "Great. I've created a monster."
"You already created a monster when you named her Snake," Maya countered, pulling out the gray cave bed. "This is just giving her appropriate housing."
She placed the softer bed a few feet away, closer to my dresser where it would be more sheltered. Malysh crept forward on his belly, every step cautious, like the bed might suddenly attack. He sniffed the entrance, touched it with one tiny paw, then dove inside so fast he nearly knocked it over.
For a moment, nothing. Then his little gray head poked out, eyes wide with what I could only describe as wonder.
"He's never had his own space," Maya said quietly. "Never had something that was just his, that he could hide in when the world got too big."
She wasn't talking about the kitten anymore. Not entirely.
I watched her watch them, saw the way her face softened as Malysh kneaded the fleece with his tiny paws, purring loud enough to hear from across the room. She looked younger like this. Unguarded. Like maybe she'd found her own cave to hide in when the world got too big.
"The toys next?" she asked, already reaching for the bags.
We set everything up together. The scratching post by the window where morning sun would hit it.
Food and water bowls in the bathroom where they couldn't be knocked over during kitten NASCAR at 3 AM.
The litter box in the corner, though both cats seemed to prefer the bathroom arrangement we already had.
Maya dangled the feather wand, and Zmeya emerged from her shark to hunt it with single-minded intensity. Malysh watched from his cave, just his eyes and nose visible, until his sister's enthusiasm became too much to resist. He crept out, pounced on the feathers, then immediately ran back to safety.
"He's learning to be brave," Maya said. "Look, he's coming out again."
She was right. Malysh was creeping back toward the feathers, drawn by play despite his fear. Maya moved the toy slowly, gently, letting him approach at his own pace. When he finally batted at it, she made this soft sound of encouragement that made my chest tight.
She was on her knees on my floor, still wearing my jacket over her clothes, playing with two rescue kittens like it was the most important thing in the world.
Her hair fell forward, hiding her face, but I could see her smile in the way her shoulders relaxed, the way her whole body leaned into the simple joy of the moment.
This was what I wanted.
Not just the protection, though that burned in my blood. Not just the dominance and submission we'd explored last night, though my body was already responding to memories of her saying "Daddy" in that breathy voice. This. These ordinary moments that weren't ordinary at all because she was in them.
I wanted to watch her play with our cats in the morning light. Wanted to see her smile at small victories like Malysh being brave enough to attack a feather. Wanted her clothes mixed with mine in the laundry, her coffee mug next to mine in the kitchen, her scent on my sheets.
"Stay tonight," I said. The words came out rougher than intended, more command than request.
Maya's hand stilled on the feather wand. She looked up at me, and something in her eyes told me she understood exactly what I was asking. Not just tonight. Not just sex. Everything.
"In my room," I clarified unnecessarily. "With me."
She set down the toy, rose to her feet with that grace she still carried despite everything. Crossed the space between us, stopped close enough that I could feel her body heat.
"Yes," she said simply. Then, softer, with that trust that destroyed me: "Yes, Daddy."
The title in her mouth sent heat straight to my cock.
Last night had been about discipline, about establishing the dynamic, about breaking down walls.
Tonight would be different. Tonight I'd show her exactly what it meant to be mine.
Would take her apart piece by piece and put her back together with my hands and mouth and cock.
Would make her understand that this wasn't just scene or play or temporary arrangement.
This was everything.