Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alexei
NyQuil
You’re saying bay leaves are a scam?
NoBo
Yep. Cooked up by Big Bay Leaf to make us buy five tiny leaves in a jar that cost eight bucks and have no fucking impact on a meal.
Jacob “Dingaling” Bell
Sounds like you’re buying inferior bay leaves. They actually make a difference.
NoBo
Oh yeah? Answer me this. Why do you have to take them out before you eat? Because they are a total grift.
NyQuil
I just use the baby leaves off my Ficus plant. Tastes as good.
NoBo
See? Proves my point exactly.
NyQuil
I jest. Do not pull leaves off random trees and plants to add to your soups and stews.
I was debating whether to introduce my thoughts on truffle oil and how none of it came from an actual truffle, when the doorbell chimed. I checked the intercom and got a very pleasant surprise.
“Open up, Nazarov!”
I thought about donning a shirt and decided against. I would need all my weapons. My breath hitched with the excitement. She was mad but she was here.
She rolled her eyes when I opened the door. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?”
“You think this shirtless shit is going to win you any favors?”
Yet she was unable to stop staring. “I see a touch of drool—”
“Can it, Nazarov. I am furious with you.” She halted. “Wait, is your dad here?”
“His nurse took him to the park.” I stood by to let her in, and she flew right by me on a mission upstairs. Was she checking to see if I was lying about us being alone?
I followed as she charged into my bedroom, but soon she was out again.
With a sweater.
Not even a nice sweater. This was an ugly Christmas one, given to me a couple of years ago by an old girlfriend.
She shoved it into my torso. “Wear this.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“To hell if you don’t cover up those pecs.”
“Lauren—”
“Wear it!”
I did as I was told, glad that the air-conditioning was on quite high.
She regarded me with disdain. “Now I need you to answer some questions, Nazarov. And none of your BS.”
“Okay.”
She paced for a few moments, hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you tell me you came to see my games?”
Isner and his big mouth. “It was just a few. When I was in town.”
“Oh, travel to Chicago often to take in a women’s pro hockey game?”
“I like to keep up with my favorite player.”
She pointed. “Don’t get cute. Tell me why you did that but didn’t tell me.”
“Lauren, we have not talked in a long time. You have not wanted that and I understood why. I hurt you greatly. I tried to reach out after I returned from playing in Russia, but you blocked me, so I figured you weren’t ready to forgive.
But still …” I paused, seeking the words.
“I needed to see you doing what you do best. My silver-eyed skater.”
She seemed to be searching for a response. “But … why?”
“Because it helped me feel closer to you.”
Myriad emotions chased each other over her face: sadness, disbelief, awareness, anger, before settling on something more carnal.
She reached for me—or rather the Rudolph nose on my sweater—and pulled me close. I went easy. I always would for this woman.
Our mouths crashed into each other, and my one, singular thought was: my wife is kissing me.
Wife. It was just a four-letter word, yet it was infused with the weight of want over the years. We were connected by a ceremony, a certificate, a drunken night. None of those things should mean anything, yet it had brought me back into her orbit. It had given me a second chance.
I wouldn’t waste it.
I pulled back. “We should talk.”
She shook her head, her eyes smoky with lust. “That’s the last thing we should do. Because if I talk to you, you’ll say something that will make me second-guess what’s happening here. Do you want me to think too hard about this, Alexei?”
She had a point. Sex first, talking later.
The sweater was the first to go. Ladies’ choice, and I was glad of it because it allowed me a chance to move more easily as I contemplated what to do.
This might be my best chance to woo her.
It might be my only chance.
I had to make it good.
I moved in to kiss her again, this time more slowly. Deeply. Thoroughly. I had missed this, though our time together in the past had been brief. I remembered every kiss, every touch, every thrust.
Cupping her jaw, I held her in place, angling for the best approach, then moved my lips to her jaw, her ear, her neck.
She sighed, a sound of immense satisfaction, as if the kissing was the goal here.
And in a way, that made sense. We needed to relearn each other.
What we liked, how we liked it, a full-scale exploration of our chemistry.
This hunger for her would never abate, but today I planned to get as much of my fill as possible.
The kissing continued. The intensity of it surprised me, but then that was Lauren in a nutshell. Fire and fury, my silver-eyed girl, and this moment could have lasted forever. In another life, I might have been satisfied with it, but no longer. I needed to own every inch of her.
I drew back. Her eyes were aflame, her chest rising as she panted.
I unzipped her hoodie, slipped it off, then did the same with her T-shirt.
She wore a simple sports bra, not particularly sexy, but on her it was perfect.
She was strong, vibrant, everything I wanted in this moment. In all the moments.
I ran my knuckles over the exposed skin above her breasts. So soft. So sensitive, as she shivered under my touch. Then she peeled off the bra. It left thin red lines over her collarbones, ones that would probably fade by the time I was inside her.
I kissed her shoulder, ran my tongue over those marks, tracing a trail to her heart. There was something about them that really turned me on. Or maybe that was just everything Lauren.
My lips coasted up her throat before I took her earlobe in my mouth and nipped.
Her shiver of pleasure fueled me, so I did it again, then suckled.
Which reminded me I could be suckling other parts of her.
Her lips, her breasts, her pussy. In the back of my mind was my father, how he would be back soon, how my time these days was crunched into slots of responsibility, and this one, perfect moment was what I needed to focus on.
She was here. Lauren, my forever love.
I moved down, down, to her perfectly shaped tits and wrapped my lips around a pebbled nipple. She moaned, pressed my head to keep me latched, while I feasted on this gorgeous meal, only interrupted by a frenzy of clothes removal and angling my body between her thighs.
Home, at last.
“Condom,” she gasped.
I had never forgotten before, not even the first time with her. But this woman would make the Pope forget his vows.
I reached over to the nightstand drawer and pulled out a square of plastic. My hands were shaking. Giving it to her, I barked a gruff command. “Put it on.”
She wrapped her hand around my cock and stroked, not that I needed preparation. Another loving stroke, and I was on the brink of losing my mind.
“Lauren. Chyort. Fuck.” I plunged searching fingers between her thighs, anything to distract my brain from the swelling of my balls. Her pussy was soaked and all I could think was how welcoming it would be for my cock.
If she would only put on the condom … hurry … please … finally she rolled it on, and I couldn’t wait a moment longer. I buried my body inside her.
I groaned as her slick heat wrapped me tight, pulling me so deep I could stay here forever. With each thrust, I tried my best to imprint on her the depth of my feelings, the words I couldn’t say all those years ago. The words I still couldn’t say aloud.
This is us, Lauren.
How it was meant to be.
How it will always be.
I grasped her hand, interlocked my fingers with hers, and held tight.
With my free hand I pushed her thigh up.
She moaned her pleasure, deep, resonant.
I had never forgotten how noisy she was.
Lusty and uninhibited. I loved that this one thing about her was the same when everything else was so different.
Our bodies had aged but the desire was as potent as ever.
I had more stamina than my twenty-one-year-old self, that was for sure.
But not much. I was close to exploding, leaving everything on the table. Not just the physical but every part of me that officially belonged to her. I had held on to pieces of me for so long, an effort to shore up my defenses, but it was all on display.
It was hers to own.
“Lauren,” I moaned, just as I thrust hard and hit the spot that lit her up. Her scream when she came reverberated through every cell, triggering my own release.
And you bet I stayed there as long as I could. Because I had no doubt she’d be kicking me out of her body as soon as she came to her senses.