8. Mikhail #3
Taylor goes completely still. So do I. The words hang between us. I wait for anger. For a sharp joke. For the pillow thrown at my head after all. Instead, her body tightens around my finger as I move inside her.
Oh.
Her breath catches, and I move again, slower this time. “You like to be called good, kotik?” I murmur against her temple.
Her eyes flutter open. “Did you call me kitten?”
“Yes.”
“That is patronizing.”
“Yes.”
Her body tightens around me again. Her breath stutters.
I change the rhythm of my hand, just slightly.
Her hips lift again. This time I let them.
The sound she makes is soft and shocked and so full of pleasure that my entire body tightens in answer.
I am hard enough to hurt. I don’t move against her.
I don’t take her hand and put it on me. I don’t make this about my hunger.
Taylor’s hand slides from the sheet to my wrist. For one terrible second, I think she means to stop me. Then her fingers press over mine, clumsy and urgent. “Like that,” she whispers.
The praise goes straight through me.
“Like this?” I say against her hair.
She nods quickly.
“Slovami.” Words.
“Yes. Yes, like that.”
I keep my hand exactly as she asks. Not more. Not less. She turns her face into my shoulder. Not hiding from me this time. Hiding in me.
She is quiet. Still trying to be careful, even now. Still trying to make her desire small enough to be acceptable. I will not allow that. “Let me hear you,” I say.
She shakes her head against my shoulder.
“Yes.”
“This house is huge,” she whispers. “It echoes.”
Despite myself, I smile against her hair. “No one is listening.”
“You are.”
“I am meant to.”
“Okay,” she whispers, her cheeks pink and her breathing shallow. I watch her face, the way her mouth falls open between her words, and I know that I’m doing it to her, can feel the slick heat between her legs reaching all the way down her thighs. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Something black and possessive opens in my chest. I lift my head and look down at her. “Never.”
She believes me. I see it happen, and it terrifies me.
I move my hand again. Her fingers curl into my shirt. She falls apart by degrees. First her breath. Then her pride. Then the careful little wall she has built between wanting and asking. She says my name once, then again, and the second time there is nothing careful in it.
I have heard my name spoken in fear, anger, respect. I have not heard it like prayer.
Her body tightens around my finger. I know she is close before she does. She panics then. Her eyes open wide, and she grips my wrist hard enough to hurt. “Mikhail.”
“I know.”
“I don’t—”
“I know.”
“It feels—”
“I know,” I say. She looks at me, lost and furious and trusting me with all of it. I kiss her forehead. “Let it happen. I have you.”
That’s all it takes. Her body bows against mine, and I cover her mouth with my shoulder when the sound breaks out of her.
Not to silence her. To give her somewhere to put it.
She clutches at me, trembling through it, my name caught in her throat like something she cannot decide whether to curse or keep.
I don’t stop until she comes down. Then I stop immediately. No more. Not one more touch than she can answer for tomorrow. My hand leaves her slowly. I pull the blanket back into place with more care than I have used for anything in years.
Taylor lies beside me, breathing hard, eyes closed, face flushed. She looks younger afterward. Softer. Not innocent. I know better now than to confuse those things. But unguarded.
Mine, some brutal part of me thinks. No. Not mine. Not like that. Not yet. Never, if I have any decency left.
Decency. What an ugly thing to ask of myself now.
Taylor’s eyes open. For a moment, she says nothing. Then, very quietly, “That was not nothing.”
My chest tightens. “No,” I say. “It was not.”
She looks embarrassed again. I catch her chin before she can look away. “Don’t ruin it by being ashamed.”
Her throat moves. “I’m not ashamed.”
“You are.”
“I’m not.”
I let my thumb move once along her jaw. “Then don’t start.”
Her eyes search mine. Something in her softens. “Okay,” she whispers.
I release her. She turns onto her side facing me, the blanket between us, her eyes already heavy. Pleasure and alcohol and the long, strange violence of the evening are pulling her under. Her eyes close. For a few minutes, I think she has fallen asleep.
Then she shifts closer. Not much. Enough that her forehead nearly touches my chest. I stay still. She moves again, the smallest stubborn movement, until her face rests against the front of my shirt.
I look down at her. Her breathing evens out. Sleep takes her without permission. It does what I have not been able to do. It takes the tension from her mouth, the fight from her brow, the careful vigilance from her hands.
I lie there in the dark, fully clothed, above the covers, with a twenty-year-old American girl asleep against me in my bed.
There are men who fear me. There are men who hate me. There are men who would pay fortunes to know where I sleep and how to reach me.
Tonight, none of them are the danger.