Chapter 20 #2
“Would you like something to drink?” he asks, pulling me away from my thoughts as he gently helps me slip my coat off. I hold in my breath when his knuckles brush the nape of my neck, coaxing goosebumps to flutter across my skin.
“That all depends,” I quip coldly, just to keep him in the dark of the current turmoil I’m under. “What do you have? And don’t be a cliché and say vodka.”
“Very well, I won’t say vodka.” He chuckles while hanging my coat on the rack. “Sit. Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”
He leaves me standing in the living room as he walks over to the kitchen and prepares something for me to drink. I’m still standing in the middle of the room when he returns with two steaming cups of something that smells incredible.
“Here. Drink this. It’ll warm you up.”
“What is it?”
“Glintvein.”
“In English, please.”
“Mulled wine.” He chuckles. “It’s basically just red wine heated with cinnamon, cloves, a little honey, and orange peel. Russians drink it in winter, so we don’t freeze to death.”
I take a sip, letting the hot liquid warm me from the inside out. But when Kirill settles onto the sofa, arms draped over the backrest and eyes locked on me with that heavy, consuming gaze, it’s not the drink that makes me flush. It’s him.
I set my mug on a coaster and cross my arms, staring him down.
“Why am I here, Kirill?”
“Because you want to be.”
My lips curl in irritation. “And what gave you that idea?”
“We both know that if you didn’t want to be here with me, you’d have found a way not to.”
“Maybe I was curious.”
“Or maybe you just missed me,” he counters, coaxing my nails to dig into my palms.
“I have never met a more conceited man,” I snap back. “You really are full of yourself.”
“That all might be good and true, but I don’t hear you deny it.” His voice lowers. “You did miss me. You’re just too stubborn to say it.”
“And you’re not?” I scoff, crossing my arms tighter over my chest.
Kirill leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, fingers laced together, as his dark gaze pins me in place.
“I missed you, dusha moya. Every day since you left me, I have missed you.”
I swallow hard, his words wrecking every defense I’ve tried to rebuild.
“That is my truth,” he says softly. “Are you brave enough to be as truthful with me? With yourself even?”
When I don’t respond, he eases back against the couch, something sad flickering in his eyes.
“Come, milaya. Come sit with me so we can talk.”
“Just talk?”
“Would you prefer we danced first?” He arches an eyebrow, the suggestion clear as day.
No.
No dancing.
Not if I’m to keep my wits about me.
I slowly walk toward him and am just about to sit beside him when he grabs my waist and pulls me down onto his lap.
I slap his chest as one of his hands slides to the nape of my neck, his fingers threading into my hair. “Let me go.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I snap, hitting him again.
“Calm the fuck down.”
“Fuck you!”
“Stella.”
“Let me go!”
But that’s all the time I get before his mouth crashes onto mine, stealing every protest from my lips. My traitorous body melts into him, and before I can even think, my lips are kissing him right back, my fingers now entangled in his hair.
“Why do you always fight me?” he murmurs between kisses. “Why do you insist on fighting us?”
Because I have to.
Because all of this is far too terrifying not to want to run away from.
But I don’t say that. I just kiss him harder, until we’re all teeth and tongues and desperation.
“Fuck, I need you so bad,” he growls, his hard cock already poking at my ass.
“Russian. Talk to me in Russian,” I order breathlessly as I rip through every button of his shirt, and pull my sweater off me, just so I can feel his skin against mine. I sigh in contentment when Kirill begins to sing sonnets to me in his native tongue, while his mouth overpowers mine.
In my head he’s saying all the words I yearn to hear but shouldn’t.
He tells me that I’m beautiful. That I’m the only woman for him. He tells me that he yearns and hungers for me like I crave him. He tells me that one minute apart from me is pure torture and that these last couple of months were as maddening for him as they were for me.
He says everything I feel but will never be able to reciprocate back.
In Russian, I can pretend that he doesn’t say any of those words, that it’s all in my imagination.
In Russian, I can pretend that my heart is still safe and not in danger of falling in love with him.
In Russian, I can still lie to myself that none of this is real.
In English, I can not.
“Kill,” I moan out when his mouth finds the hollow of my neck, licking its way up to my mouth, nibbling on my bottom lip, before sliding his tongue to be reunited with mine.
“Tell me what you need,” he growls with a devastating look in his jet-black eyes. “Say it, Stella. I need to hear it.”
I know what he wants to hear. That all I need is him. But I coward out and say, “Fuck me,” instead.
There’s a sad glint in his eyes, but he isn’t able to deny me either. Not when he wants this just as badly as I do.
Kirill grips my waist, lifts me with effortless strength, and lays me down on the plush cream carpet in front of the fireplace. The glow of the embers catches his eyes, turning them molten, and the sight is enough to make my heart ache.
No man should be this beautiful.
Especially not when he’s looking at me like I’m something precious. Like I’m his whole world.
Unable to withstand that look in his eyes for another second, I shove him off me so that he’s the one lying on his back.
I unzip his pants and chuck them off him, followed quickly by my own.
The head of his cock glistens above the waistband of his briefs, and I carefully strip them away, followed by my own panties and bra.
Now fully naked, I take him in. And that’s when I see it—bitemarks tattooed to his skin on his left shoulder.
“You got a new tattoo?” I ask breathlessly.
“I did.”
“When? Back in Russia?”
“I got it on the day you left me.”
“Why?” I swallow dryly, all my previous bravado now out the window.
“Because I didn’t like the feeling of seeing the mark you made on me starting to fade away.”
I watch helpless as his throat works, all the words he wants to say lodged there, suffocating him.
“I want you,” I hear myself say, finally giving him an honest answer. “Just you, Kill. You.”
“And you have me. You fucking have me,” he growls, before his hand shoots up to grab the nape of my neck, pulling me to him so he can kiss me.
As my heart swells with his words, Kirill flips me on my back yet again, his hand caressing my cheek as he puts everything to this one kiss. My body feels like a live wire, needing only a little more to catch fire completely.
Tonight, there will be no foreplay. No sweet kisses and lingering looks. No hands traveling up and down our bodies to inspect every little change that we missed during our time apart.
Tonight, only raw need prevails.
The need to become one before both of us lose all sense of sanity.
My head tips back, mouth agape as a loud sob escapes my throat when Kirill finally takes pity on both of us and thrusts deep inside me.
Angry that he can’t see my face while he’s fucking me, he pulls me up so I’m sitting on his lap yet again.
My forehead falls to his shoulder, my teeth finding their tattooed brethren, sinking in deep into his skin while Kirill fucks me like time is his enemy.
“Look at me,” he rasps, brushing my hair away from my face so he can look deep into my eyes.
I wrap my arms around his neck and just stare into that black abyss and make a home there.
He curses in both Russian and English, pounding into my pussy like he wants to ruin it. Ruin it until nothing or no one could ever make it feel this good besides him.
We’re panting, our bodies slick with sweat, but our eyes never leave each other.
I’m so close, so goddamn close, but Kirill looks like he just got his second wind, drilling into me with even more fervor than before. My arms pull away from his neck, so that one hand can latch on to his throat, while the other grips his jaw, forcing him to open his mouth for me.
I spit into it, then lean in and lick his sweat off his chin before tasting myself on his tongue.
“Fuck!” he shouts, snaking his hand in between us to pinch my sensitive clit.
And just like that, I cry out in ecstasy, my eyelids falling on their own accord as I ride it out. Kirill comes right after, his cock swelling inside me, his cum dripping down my thighs.
My body is still trembling after the earth-shattering orgasm he just gave me, every bone in me deliciously heavy and spent. I rest my head in the crook of his neck, my palm splayed over his chest, his heartbeat thumping just as wildly as mine must be.
“Tell me you missed me, dusha moya. Give me that at least,” he says, voice low and aching.
I tilt my head back to look at him. His dark eyes are so soft right now. So pleading. Like one wrong word from me could shatter him entirely.
“I missed you, Kill. Every day, I missed you.”
He lets out a deep exhale. Almost like my admission breathed life back into him, completely ignoring how dangerous it is.
I shouldn’t have missed him the way I did.
He should mean nothing to me.
I want to tell him that this is just sex. That that’s all this is. But I’d be lying.
To him and to myself.
This… whatever it is… isn’t just about giving in to desire. It’s more. He feels it, and so do I.
The problem is that he refuses to acknowledge that whatever this pull is, whatever this feeling that keeps dragging us back to each other, has a shelf life.
I wasn’t born to belong to a man.
I’m my own person. I want to live my own life.
And I know that if I give in fully to this… to him… I’ll end up losing myself.
I’ll lose me. I will lose all that I’ve been working so hard to obtain.
I’ll lose myself in him and the worst part, I’ll probably do it with a smile.