Chapter 13 - Darya #2
“Hate sex,” she posits. “Also, okay, you freak—who needs more than forty-five minutes to get off?”
I huff, cheeks puffing out with air. “We are not discussing this.”
She summons a bottle of water out of thin air, like magic, and slides it over to me. “Drink up, kitty cat. Gotta hydrate before you die-drate! Then, let’s discuss this. C’mon, if you don’t tell me, who’re you gonna tell?”
“No one?” I suggest.
Nadya’s mouth puckers into a ridiculous pout. “That sounds lonely, D. Hate that for you.”
Well, that’s terribly lonely, isn’t it? I’d said to Anton not too long ago.
I’d wondered, after, if those words had hit home enough for him to trust Viktor with the news of the mole. If I’d been the one to push him to brave it. Right now, I can relate.
Maybe that’s why I sigh and admit, “It is. I think our mother fucked me up.” Nadya gestures at me to continue.
I suck in a sharp breath. I take the time to unscrew the cap and sip at the water I’ve been assigned to drink.
It buys me some time to think. None of the words feel right leaving my mouth, regardless.
“I’ve spent some time with my mother-in-law, Galina.
And it’s really gotten me thinking about what makes for a fruitful life as a woman.
Is it—is it power? Independence? Is it a place, a person, you can call home?
Can you make a life with someone, or even yourself, and be this whole, healthy person, when there’s this chunk of your heart missing? ”
“She’s not missing. She’s in Moscow, living her best life,” Nadya points out dispassionately.
I feel myself deflating. “The idea of her, I mean.”
“You’re giving her too much power.”
“What, you’re telling me you don’t think about it? That the closest thing we’ve ever had to a parent is Trifon, or our nannies?” I demand, features pinching into a frown.
Nadya fixes me with a look so pitying, it’s frankly insulting.
“I don’t spend that much time thinking,” she says.
“I don’t spend my time tying myself up in knots about who I would’ve, could’ve, should’ve been.
That’s not me. That isn’t what fulfills me.
I’d rather be living my life, trusting my gut, doing the things that make me feel good and right, than sitting around thinking about it.
Honestly, I think you and Senor Sourpuss are both miserable because of it a lot of the time. ”
“I am not—” I kick away from my stool and stand up, furious. So angry, I trip over my words. It may not be unrelated to the three cocktails.
Nadya raises her hands in defense, eyes full of apology that really isn’t doing much for me right now. She can be so mean to me sometimes.
“I don’t mean miserable, dude,” she says. “I just don’t know a better word for it.”
“Esoteric,” I suggest.
“I don’t know what the fuck that means, D.”
I shoot her an ironic smile. “Look it up. You’ll see that that was extremely funny of me,” I say with a vindicated sniff.
“I will. Later,” she agrees. “I’m sorry, though.
I didn’t mean to be a cunt. I was actually trying to say that I’m having trouble understanding why you’re spending your time thinking about a woman who doesn’t think about us when you have plenty of people in your life, like Senor Sourpuss, and me, and all of us, who think you’re the fucking bees-knees.
Smart as all fuck. Hot as balls. Et cetera.
Fuck our mother. You’re not just whole without her; you’re honestly kinda too much. ”
I narrow my eyes at her, blinking against the tears that threaten. “That was a compliment, right?”
“You’re the funniest drunk. I love being a bad influence.
” I missed the sound of her laughter, bubbly as champagne.
“Which is why I think we should discuss if Senor Sourpuss’ dick is bigger than Viktor’s or the other way around?
We should make a bet and hustle them. If we don’t find a way to benefit from being married to brothers—”
“Half-brothers,” I add.
“—then it’s just fucking creepy.”
“You have an extremely disturbing mind.”
“I also have a tape measure.”
***
I throw open the door to the guest bedroom with gravitas. At least a sheet and a half to the wind, I still manage not to topple over in my spiky heels. It’s impressive. I pause in the doorway, throwing my arms out, waiting for applause.
What I get instead is the man in bed, blinking at me owlishly.
“Husband,” I command, snapping my fingers.
Anton does not move from his spot on the bed.
He’s wearing those ridiculous reading glasses again.
And by ridiculous, I mean they make my ovaries whimper.
It’s like he can read my thoughts. No sooner have I thought the words than he is taking them off, canting that insane jaw to level me with an appraising look.
I rip off the claw-clip holding hair curls secured, and whip my head until they’ve tumbled around my shoulders.
Still, Anton just sits there, staring at me. I have to spell this out for him? Fine. “Take off your pants. I’ve been sent by my sister to calculate something.”
“My pants?”
“Your cock,” I correct. “Its size. Typically, I could eyeball it; I have a good eye for spatial awareness. I rarely miscalculate. But you were hitting it from behind last time, so.”
I’ll admit, it’s highly satisfying watching a man of this stature choke on nothing but air. “I beg your pardon?” Anton wheezes.
“So, beg.” I nod and work my way through the buttons of my blazer until I can shuck it from my shoulders. Left in nothing but a lacy, cherry red bra, I summon him with a crook of my finger and the universal gesture for come hither.
“Darya.” His face is turning red. So is his chest. I know, because his button-down from earlier today is hanging open in invitation. “You’re drunk.”
“Thank you, Senor Sourpuss. Tequila also makes me horny. So, are you going to do something about it—” My hands reach behind myself, popping open the clasp to my bra in a single, fluid movement. “—or are you going to watch me touch myself?”
His face looks genuinely torn. Tormented, even—the way a child is in a candy store, told to choose one option. I grin at his distress. It’s endearing enough that I find my mouth assuring, “It isn’t a trick.”
“Did you just call me Senor... Sourpuss?” he intones, clearly damned with the wrong priorities.
I’m done waiting. I get on the bed myself, ripping the hard-backed book in his hands and flinging it to the side. It lands somewhere with a thunk. Somehow, I don’t think Anton minds. The way his hands grip my thighs is anything but admonishing.
Good, I think. His touch is as desperate as I feel, the cool air raking at my bared, sensitive flesh. My body is alight with awareness. Every inch is coated in gooseflesh, as if the bumps rise to elicit his attention.
It works. His lips brush my clavicle, then drag all the way down to the crook of my elbow. My breast knocks against his warm cheek. The teasing, grazing contact makes my nipples tighten.
These trousers are too snug to straddle his lap.
His thighs are massive. But one of them will do, my body decides.
One of them is all I need, a saddle for me to slot myself onto and ride.
I’m so wet. God. I know I am; I can feel how damp my panties are.
What will he say if I leave a damp spot on his thigh, through two layers?
“Tell me the things you’re thinking,” I whine.
His sigh fans over my chest, and I all but drag his mouth to the hard bud at my breast with a fistful of his curls. His groan vibrates around it, seeping into my skin. He floods my system with his own desire—as if my body has any room to spare.
“I’m thinking,” he laps words against my skin, “that you’re so fucking beautiful, it hurts to look at you sometimes.”
The words are said so mindlessly; they’re somehow all the more raw for it.
I think Nadya was wrong. There is a piece of me missing, and it’s made me a sink with an open drain.
Anton gifts me a little droplet of praise, and nothing less than a deluge will do for me.
“More,” I insist, tugging at golden strands. “Up.”
In two words, he manages to understand me. His face presses against my sternum, mouthing at the valley between my breasts, like he can’t get enough either, as he resituates us to the writing desk in the corner of the room. It’s on top of it that he deposits me.
I blink up at him, palming his stiff cock through his trousers. “Do you have some kind of a furniture kink I should know about?” I ask, curious. I could make it work, probably.
“I’m getting some water in you,” he says. His voice is colored by humor, however wry the brand. That’s when I notice his hands aren’t on me anymore. I’m so feverish, I didn’t realize his hands were behind me, doing something.
I hear a slosh of water and smack his chest. My palm hits the muscled pec with a tantalizing smack of flesh against flesh. It makes my mouth water.