Chapter 13 - Iosif
Blood.
There’s—
My confusion paralyzes me. Stunned, I blurt, “Shit, Nell. Did I hurt you?”
I search Janella’s face. Take in the cherry red blush across her skin and the tears in her eyes. And then, again, the blood. Her blood.
Virgin. She’s a virgin. She’s probably never had a man go down on her. That’s why she went stiff before. That’s why she was startled that night. She’s never…
The realization fucking levels me.
After everything she’s survived—all the degradation her bastard father has put her through—this is one thing she’s managed to keep. The one thing Driscoll hasn’t taken from her. Something he sold easily.
And she’s giving it to me.
“Don’t stop,” Janella insists stubbornly. Her legs wrap around me, dragging me back inside of her, deeper. My breath hitches painfully. Fuck. This soaked heat is the closest to heaven I’ll ever get. “Don’t stop.”
She’s whining, begging. I’d told her she would, weeks ago—but what did I know then? Shit, what the fuck do I know now?
Only how good she feels.
And what it means, that she’s giving me this.
“I won’t,” I find myself promising, leaning down. My arms bear the brunt of my weight, my lips meeting hers more gently than they ever have—as if I can retroactively remedy giving the woman barely any foreplay before her first time.
Jesus fucking Christ.
She makes a tiny, wounded sound in the back of her throat. A whine I lick right out of her gasping mouth.
“Fucking Christ. You’re so fucking tight, doll,” I groan, forcing my body to slow down, to make this good for her.
I’ve fucked so many women—nameless, faceless, interchangeable to me now.
All those bodies that have been under my hands, only to mean nothing to me come morning.
I know how to fuck. It’s always been a quid pro quo deal, an itch to scratch, a great fucking way to burn off some adrenaline after a job.
But this—she—isn’t that.
This is Janella, looking up at me with tears shining in her big, golden eyes, and trust I haven’t earned. She’s giving me a piece of herself. She’s taking one from me, too.
I want to give it to her.
I crave this. I crave turning her delicate whimpers to choked screams. Want to feel her shake around and against me. Want to ruin her. Want too much, want everything she has to give, and I want it right fucking now. I’m a bastard that way. And what’s worse is that I almost don’t care.
Sheer willpower reminds me that I can’t have it that way.
I won’t let myself take it.
The slower I go, the more time she’ll have to adjust, and the less likely I am to bust a nut in the next three minutes.
My eyes roll somewhere very close to the back of my head.
I can’t get over the intensity, or everything else about this woman—sensational and provocative, fragile and maddening.
She’s going to fucking kill me, and I can’t bring myself to mind.
Not if I get to go out like this, buried balls-deep inside of her and drowning in the gorgeous fucking sounds my movements elicit from her pretty mouth.
I cradle her cheek, thumb smoothing her tears away. I’ve done that many times by now, and never like this. I kiss her forehead. She’s doing so well. “Good girl,” I praise, amazed by her.
A second set of fingers trails down her body to her clit, rubbing small, tantalizing circles. I pull back nearly all the way out of her and press back an inch at a time. Giving her a little at a time. Never letting up on the swollen nub, where every flick of my thumb has her keening anew.
“Oh, God,” Janella cries, bucking up. “I can take it. Please.”
I lap at the sheen of sweat that’s begun to gloss her skin.
My smirk holds past her lips against mine, and through my teeth, when I taunt, “Can you?” like I’m not hissing it through ground teeth.
She grips my arms like they’re her last tether.
She hasn’t figured out yet that none exists.
Meanwhile, her nails break skin when I give her that first, real thrust. I fill her again, and again, each stroke meant to stoke a fire.
I want her to know this—to understand it. What a pleasure it can be to burn.
Her legs fall apart even wider, giving herself to me.
I grip her at the waist and start pounding into her in earnest. The table shrieks in protest. Her tits bounce in a way that could make the Devil weep. Every slap of our bodies meeting is loud, obscene. Fucking perfect.
Her body is already shaking, her cries getting louder and louder. Maybe I should help her muffle them. We’re in her fucking café. But I don’t. I want to hear these sounds. They’re fucking mine.
Arousal pools between my hips, building behind my navel with every squeeze of her dripping cunt. Her eyes glaze over, and she begins to writhe beneath me, like she can’t handle everything she is feeling.
“Is this what you wanted?” I breathe, my thrusts building in momentum. I lift her pelvis off the edge, just to get deeper—if that’s even fucking possible—until my mouth falls open.
Her mouth is already open, but no intelligible sound comes out.
This is what she looks like, lost to pleasure.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Forget sexy, and forget fucking hot; she’s beautiful. This is the moment I discover that when Janella comes, she makes no sound. Where there was sound, now there’s only erratic breaths that leave her in gasp after gasp after gasp.
Her entire body shudders with the force of an orgasm that pulls her under, pulsing hard around my cock, until she’s dragging me off the edge right behind her.
I pull out of her just in time to lose all control. Pulsing bliss peaks and wracks through my entire quivering body over and over. I splatter over her belly, hot and thick, painting her with my pleasure.
We work through it, every last spasm and every last drop.
I brush her hair back from her sweaty forehead, and the tenderness of my own gesture catches me off guard.
I’ve killed men with these hands. I’ve broken bones and cut through flesh with them.
But they touch her the way she should be—like something precious.
It feels more dangerous than snuffing out a life.
Neither of us can breathe long enough for a kiss to last, but I try. When our lips part, I remember to ask, “Was that okay?”
In return, Janella erupts in ludicrous, impossibly cute giggles.
No woman should be able to look adorable after getting railed on a giant steel table where her employees assemble food. And yet.
Here she is.
Meanwhile, I can’t feel my face.
I’m fucking ruined for anyone else. Ruined. It doesn’t matter that I’ve had hundreds of women. This is innately otherworldly. Every thrust carves out space in my chest for something I’ve got no name for.
It doesn’t fucking matter if I have no right to take this. That she should give her first time to someone better, someone gentler, someone who’s always bought into the sentimental bullshit instead of treating it like the punchline it’s been to me.
I’m too much of a selfish motherfucker to give this up.
To give her up.
“Best lunch break I’ve ever had,” I tell her stupidly.
She beams up at me. But slowly, that smile dies.
“Oh my God,” she squeals and sits upright. Her arms wrap around her chest. Insatiable fuck that I am, I appreciate how hard she fails at putting that rack away.
I recoil just in time to keep from cracking her skull with mine.
“No!” she says and smacks my shoulder. “I’m the boss. I can’t have sex in my place of work! It wasn’t in any of the books, but come on, this is so unprofessional of me!”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. There’s no stopping it. It froths up inside me and spills out of my fucking nose. “So, fire them and hire new ones.”
The suggestion is mostly to fuck with her. Of course it works.
She smacks me again.
This time, I grab her wrist and drag her hand down the mess I’ve left on her. I guide those fingers into her swollen mouth. She blushes furiously but sucks her fingers clean.
“Oh my God,” she says again, this time in an embarrassed whisper.
I want her. I want her still, and I want her again, and I don’t know what the fuck to do with any of it. Really, I should’ve known impulsively marrying a woman would be the first domino to fall in a series of firsts.
Since then, I’ve gone a record five months without sex. I’ve deflowered a woman. And now, what, I want to sleep with the same woman again? When the fuck have I done that before?
I make myself back away from her and hand her a towel.
Maybe it’ll help to have her dressed again. To no longer have those freckles on display, and my tongue begging to chart every one of them.
I manage to confirm it doesn’t.
Even when we’re both dressed again—and she begs me to go open the door to let the baristas back in and explain why the café randomly got closed in the middle of the day—I can’t stop thinking about my wife.
Specifically, my wife beneath me. And potentially on top of me.
All around me.
God, I’m so fucked.
***
I tell myself the space is best for both of us. This way, she gets to live her life, and I get to focus on mine. I have to focus. Neither of us needs to be losing our heads.
It’s for the best, right?
After what happened at the coffee shop. After I devoured her on top of a table like a fucking beast. Just because she’s never had someone treat her half-decently doesn’t mean it’s what she should settle for. I didn’t rescue her to damn her to that fate.
So, I stay away. Mostly.
“She’s doing great,” Nadya tells me over the phone the week after. “She and Gela are working on a website or something. They’re both nerding out over it. It’s fucking cute.”
A part of me is disappointed that she isn’t curled up in bed, moping about my avoidance. But I ignore that part.
At least Nadya’s nicer about being my source than the rest of my siblings, who mostly just mock me and ask questions I don’t have answers for.
Exhibit A:
“Earth to Iosif.”
I realize I’m still sitting at my brother’s table, my half-finished steak in front of me. He’s staring at me, looking deeply amused.
Well, that teaches me to come check on my convalescing brother.
“Sorry,” I sigh and cut into the meat.
Leonid nods and pours more wine into my glass. His other hand tosses cut-up pieces of his steak, one each, to his Dobermanns. “Sure,” he allows. “But if you were going to ignore me, couldn’t we have done this at yours?”
He knows exactly why we couldn’t have done this at mine. But I’m not going to humor him with that conversation tonight.
I narrow my eyes at him. “We could. But Oksana hates that you bring the dog smell into my apartment, remember?”
It’s a running joke at this point.
“Oksana can fuck off,” Leo snorts without malice. “Besides, I know Janella wouldn’t let her be mean to me.”
There it is.
He says her name with too much relish. And I know exactly why he does. He found a button to press when I told him to check on her for me the other night. When she made him fucking dinner.
I know what he’s doing. It makes it twice as annoying when it works.
“Not falling for it.”
“For what?” Leonid blinks, feigning innocence. “I’m just pointing out that Janella is a friendly woman. Warm. Pretty fucking easy on the eyes…”
I stare at my brother and twirl my steak knife pointedly between my fingers.
But I take it, because it’s an alternative to him asking me again why I’m avoiding her. Telling him why, if I can even fucking articulate it, would make it real. I’m not ready for it to be real. It’s haunting me enough, as it is.
“You’re an idiot.”
Leonid grins at me, having a fucking ball.
But I’m not. I don’t even recognize my life anymore. This one, where I spend all my time mooning over my wife, who I’ll never be right for. Who any member of my family, in an absurdly short amount of time, manages to adore.
What the fuck is it about her?
It doesn’t matter how much I stay away. She’s still in my head. She’s still under my fucking skin.
And I know why.
When I’m with her, there’s no fluctuation in my interest. I push her, and she pushes me back, unlike anyone else. Somehow, she spools out some goddamn version of me that remembers what it felt like to be a kid, before hard lessons about weakness and strength.
Whether I like it or not, she makes me want to build shit instead of just blowing it up. Nothing loosens her hold on me, not even the lurking fact that anything that stands can be knocked down.
I’ve never believed in anything that doesn’t come with a body count.
This shouldn’t be a big deal. All my life, I’ve been reckless. There’s a reason I’m known for it. I’m the one who leaps off the bridge. I take the risks no one else will, and most of the time they pay off. Most of the time, it’s fucking fun.
I can make it work.
Why is this time different? Why is she?
Why can’t I run away from how it bites so much harder when it isn’t just my life on the line, but hers?