Chapter 35 Pyotr #2
She pulls back far enough to read my face. Whatever she finds there makes her obey without a word. She climbs off my lap, clears the med kit aside, and pushes herself onto the edge of the table in front of me. I’m still sitting in the chair, and now, she’s at eye level with her knees parted.
I scoot the chair forward and settle between her legs. My hands find her waistband, and I tug her leggings and underwear down her thighs in one pull. She lifts her hips to help, and I drag the fabric to her ankles and toss it on the floor.
“Tell me yes,” I prompt, because I will ask every time, no matter how desperate the moment gets.
“Yes.” Her voice cracks on the word. “Please, Pyotr.”
I press my mouth to the inside of her knee. She jolts at the contact, and I feel the tremor. I kiss my way up the inside of her thigh, tasting salt and skin and the faint copper tang of adrenaline. She braces her hands behind her on the table and leans back, giving me room.
When I reach the crease where her thigh meets her hip, I stop. She makes a sound low in her throat, half-protest, half-plea.
“Eyes on me, golubka.”
She drops her chin and meets my gaze. Her eyes are glassy with tears she still hasn’t shed, and underneath the tears is something fiercer that dares me to make her forget the past six hours.
I hold her stare and press my mouth against her center.
She cries out, and her hand flies to my hair.
I grab her thigh with my good hand and pull her closer to the edge of the table, spreading her wider.
She’s soaked, and the taste of her floods my tongue the same way it does every time, like something I’ll never get enough of, no matter how many times she lets me have her.
I work her with long, slow strokes at first, taking my time, and mapping every reaction. Her hips roll toward my face, chasing the pressure, and I let her. Tonight isn’t about making her wait; it’s about proving we’re both still here.
“Pyotr—” My name breaks apart in her mouth.
I circle her clit with the tip of my tongue and feel her thighs clamp against my ears.
She’s trembling everywhere. I slide two fingers inside her, and she’s so wet that they meet no resistance.
I curl them forward, searching for the spot I’ve memorized, and when I find it, she nearly comes off the table.
“Oh, God—”
“Stay with me.” I press my palm flat against her stomach to hold her down. “Right here.”
I seal my mouth over her clit and suck while my fingers drive into her in a steady rhythm.
Her back arches off the table, and the sounds pouring from her lips are broken and beautiful and nothing like the controlled woman I’ve come to know.
This is Daria with every wall down and pretense gone.
Just need and relief and the desperate proof that we survived.
Her inner walls clench around my fingers. I feel the moment she tips over.
“Look at me,” I order. “I want to see you.”
She forces her eyes open, and I hold her gaze while the orgasm tears through her.
She screams my name so loudly that Grisha probably hears it on the porch.
I work her through every wave, every aftershock, drawing it out until she’s gasping and boneless against the table with her fingers still tangled in my hair.
Then, I kiss the inside of her thigh, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and stand.
She’s sprawled across the kitchen table, her chest heaving, and her skin flushed from her throat to her navel. She looks wrecked. She looks perfect.
“Come here,” she whispers, and reaches for my belt.
Her hands are still shaking, but she gets the buckle open and drags my pants down. I kick them aside, and she wraps her legs around my hips and pulls me between her thighs. I brace my good arm on the table beside her head and line myself up.
“Still good?”
“Don’t you dare stop.”
I push inside her in one slow stroke, and we both groan. She’s so warm and tight and wet that my vision nearly whites out. I drop my forehead to her collarbone and force myself to breathe.
And then, I pull back and thrust into her again, and she wraps her arms around my neck and holds on.
We find a rhythm that’s nothing like the other times.
This is messy and desperate, two people fucking like they’re trying to crawl inside each other’s skin.
My left arm screams every time I shift my weight, and I don’t care.
She drags her nails down my back hard enough to leave marks, and I pin her hip to the table with my good hand and drive deeper.
“Harder,” she gasps against my neck.
I give her harder. The table groans under us, and I grip the edge with my wounded hand for leverage, ignoring the pain shooting from my wrist to my shoulder. She hooks her ankles behind my back and tilts her hips, and the new angle makes her cry out with every stroke.
I reach between us and find her clit with my thumb. She jerks against me, oversensitive from the first orgasm, but I don’t let up. I circle in time with my thrusts, and her breathing fractures into something unrecognizable.
“Let go,” I tell her. “I want to feel you come on my cock, golubka.”
She comes with her face buried in my neck and her nails dug into my shoulders, and the way she clenches around me drags me over the edge with her. I bury myself deep and groan her name as I finish, and for a long moment we just stay there, tangled together on the kitchen table, panting.
Her fingers find the edge of my bandage, where a thin line of blood seeped through the gauze. She traces it gently, and I feel her trembling ease.
“You’re still bleeding,” she whispers.
“I’ll live.”
“You better.”
I kiss her once more. Slow this time. Then I pull back, find my pants on the floor, and walk to the front door.
Grisha is on the porch, watching the tree line. He glances at my bare chest and bandaged arm but says nothing. Smart man.
I check the door lock. Move to the first window. Check the latch. Second window. Latch. Third. The bedroom window behind the bed, where Daria is watching me from under a wool blanket with something on her face that wasn’t there before tonight.
“What are you doing?” she asks, though I think she already knows.
“Bogdan is still out there.” I test the last window latch and walk back to the bed. “Until he’s not, I check.”
She reaches for my hand and pulls me beside her. I wrap my good arm around her waist and tuck her against my chest, and she fits there like the space was built for her.
I press my mouth against the top of her head. Bogdan is somewhere in those frozen woods, wounded and bleeding, leaving a trail in the snow that any half-decent tracker could follow blindfolded. Eduard is the best tracker Boris has trained. The snow will hold Bogdan’s prints for hours.
But until I hear the words “target down” through my earpiece, I won’t stop checking the windows, locks, and woman breathing softly against my chest.
Because that’s who I am. Bleeding, exhausted, and half-dressed in a hunting lodge two kilometers from a firefight. And still the man who checks.