Supply and Demand #4
Resistance seizes back into her struggling breath. Lili lets out a sob of frustration.
Aleksandr feels it.
“Let go, Lili,” he orders. He squeezes her throat until her vision falters; and there, in her periphery, a choking sense of
incoherence and intensity.
She’s allowed to feel this sometimes, she thinks.
She’s allowed to feel something like freedom.
There’s an ache inside her that he hits again and again. It unfurls emotion, tangled skeins, heavy waters. Dark things too
deep to dredge, but she wants them exorcised; she needs them gone, their weight—invisible, monumental, pressing down on her, so fiercely ignored—torn away. She wants them strangled, her own
breath taken, pushed to the edge where everything leaves her, falls away, just leaves her alone—
The chill of silence. Little air left in her lungs, and her vision goes black.
A resounding nothingness envelops her. As she disappears, she’s distantly aware of the shift of her body with movement, force,
impact, the rush of liquid heat in her belly, that he’s still fucking her, that this perhaps brushes up against too far, but
the blessed silence grows, and she lets her eyes close.
“You have a few gray hairs, you know,” she says.
Aleksandr hums something noncommittal. He continues reading the newspaper, his hand still stroking a pattern on her hip through
the sheets. The scent of coffee mingles with newsprint.
Stay, he’d murmured afterwards, as if she was capable of moving.
The sound of her own breath, coming back.
Her hands in tight fists, twisted in ruined sheets.
Trying to settle back into a sense of herself, reluctantly.
The clink of a cup—waft of coffee—on the nightstand as he’d settled back beside her.
Lili reaches up now, brushing her fingers over the strands at his temple. “Right here,” she says, determined to prove her
point.
He sighs, setting down the newspaper. He looks at her, her head resting on his thigh. “I work in finance. It’s a stressful
job.”
He’s irritated. She can see him trying to hide it, and she tries not to smile.
Lili continues to brush her fingers over his temples. She feels sore and well used, but also easy and open. Like the hardness
she keeps up in her daily life can melt away for a bit. Outside the loft, real life will rush back into place; she wants to
linger in this ease a little longer.
“I like it.”
He snaps his newspaper back up. “I’ll deal with it later,” he mutters.
She sits up fast, grinning. “Do you dye your hair?”
“I’m not partaking in this conversation,” he says, getting out of bed. Determined, Lili wraps the sheet around herself, following
him into the bathroom.
“I can help!”
“Absolutely not.”
“I used to dye my hair with pink streaks, you know—wasn’t great, since my hair is black—”
“Of course, you did.”
She hears the shower turn on. As she hobbles into the bathroom, Aleksandr catches her wince in the mirror. The grin he gives
her is rude.
“Come on,” he says, undoing the drawstring of his pants. Kicking them off, he steps into the shower. After a moment’s hesitation,
Lili drops the sheet and follows him in, letting the glass door fall shut behind her.
It’s incredible, the hot water: hard pressure, steam. Standing under one of the waterfall showerheads, Aleksandr scrubs his
hands over his face, running through his hair before looking at her.
“Come here,” he says. Lili does as he says, expecting—something, but not how he angles her into the water, letting it soak
her hair.
“Your hair’s a mess,” Aleksandr explains.
Uncertain, Lili watches him, as he starts washing her hair. He runs his fingers through the thick fall of it, lathering shampoo into her scalp; telling her when to close her eyes, tilting her head back. She feels like a child being taken care of. She’s not sure what to do with that.
Once her hair’s clean, his hands continue roaming.
She keeps watching him, fragile vulnerability slipping under her skin as he washes the rest of her. Their playful, lighthearted
mood steadily drains away. His gaze shifts to something intent, serious. Slipping over her wet body, his palms mold against
the slope of her waist, the gentle run of his fingers over her ribs.
Some blood on her thighs mingles with his spend. His hand moves between her legs, carefully.
Her breath catches. Need flickers again, like a flame she thought was gutted.
She leans into his hand on her. “Please,” Lili whispers, voice almost lost in the rush of water.
A frown mars the focus of his possessive gaze. “Sweetheart, I don’t think you can—”
Lili grasps his wrist. “Please, I—”
His fingers move over her, and it hurts, it really does. Stinging pain makes her bite back a hiss, but it doesn’t come anywhere
close to dampening the neediness brewing inside of her.
Aleksandr’s fingers still. He looks down at her, expression inscrutable, and Lili freezes.
This was it—she was too much. She is too much. Hot embarrassment floods her, and she braces for it: the rejection, the shameful sear of insufficiency.
Instead, he kisses her.
Much softer than before: that first night, this morning. His fingers curl into the hair behind her ear, holding her face.
Lips soft against hers, his tongue presses into her, opening her mouth, gentle.
Something stutters in Lili. Breaks a little, cracks open.
But then he’s grasping her hips. He lifts her up against the wall, the chill of wet marble against her back. “Take a breath,”
he says, and she nods.
He was right. It is too much, too soon, as he slides back inside of her, thick and hard. But Lili makes herself take it, enduring the swell of pain, the protest of her body. She wants to drive away the softness fermenting under her skin.
But instead of pushing her, forcing her: There’s the slip of his skin against hers, her gasps rising higher each time he thrusts
into her—the slide of her wet skin against the cold wall, the fall of his breath against her neck—the stroke of his thumb
along the line of her jaw, the way his mouth moves against her throat. These lingering kisses, heat and steam, a severe gentleness.
Her chest tightens. Not physical, no, it’s in her chest but deeper: the way he touches her, the glance of his gaze, that possessiveness
and softness inexplicably mingling—
No. It’s something instead of nothing, and she doesn’t want it. She wants suffering, but of his making, not her own.
If she touches that—pain, but a lucid, fathomless pain, not the pain at his hands, but the pain inside of her—she’ll never
get out. She’ll fall into the cracks of herself.
She tightens her arms around him. “Don’t be gentle,” she whispers. “Please—I can take more.”
“Lili, we just—”
“Don’t be gentle with me,” she pleads, frustrated.
Anger flashes in his eyes.
Good, she thinks. Good.
“Lili,” he repeats, hard teeth. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
Finally, the threat of roughness. Make me struggle, she wants to beg. Fuck away this pain. Make her feel the hurt in her body, not the hurt in her head.
But instead of tightening his grip on her, thrusting into her harder—fucking her—Aleksandr keeps moving slowly, maddeningly. This visceral, terrifying gentleness, a fullness that hurts in a different
way than before. The presence of him with her, looking at her, now.
It terrifies her; she wants to cauterize herself, not reveal herself. She wants him to be brutal, to take without consideration
for her; to make her feel insignificant, worthless, that freedom in nothing, please, nothing—
His hand finds her neck, fingers still tangled in her hair. Not choking her, but holding her, gently.
When Aleksandr kisses her again, Lili starts to cry. Her head hurts, and her body aches. She needs to make this stop; needs
to find something familiar, the flare of superficial pleasure to end this. Desperate, she reaches between them to try and
touch herself.
But he grasps her wrist, and presses it back against the wet marble, tangling their hands together.
“Don’t,” he murmurs against her ear. His breath makes her wet skin rush. “Don’t, I’ll take care of you.”
A sob breaks in her chest. The agony, felt—it bursts with ruthlessness inside of her. As she starts to come—gasps hitching
on her tears—he kisses her again, guiding her through it, and she holds onto him so tightly she can’t tell if she’s struggling
for more or begging for it to end.
When she comes, she’s barely in her body to feel it.
A sharp intake of breath against her lips, followed by a harder thrust against her hips. Then, the feeling of him finishing
inside of her as she’s drifting back.
Aleksandr looks at her, then. A few breaths linger between them, him still inside her, still holding her. Tears track down
her wet cheeks, shower running. The sobs shaking her slowly settle, receding back inside.
He looks at her and it’s not expectant, but patient.
She doesn’t want to know what he’s waiting for.
Afterwards, wearing a clean white shirt of his and drinking warm coffee, Lili roams around the apartment as Aleksandr checks
emails on his phone in the kitchen, absently running a towel through his hair.
The loft is softly flooded with morning. It’s a steady, peaceful light. A fragile calm has settled in her lungs. Her phone
lies somewhere, abandoned with her clothes from last night. Her hair drips onto the floor, wet and freshly combed, as she
wanders into one of the other rooms near his bedroom.
It’s his study, or office. Bookshelves line the walls, tall windows looking out at sun breaking into the narrow Tribeca streets.
Restored wooden desk, papers, fountain pens, a pair of glasses resting on a slim gray laptop.
There’s an Eames chair in the corner, a stack of books on the coffee table, a worn leather couch.
A few canvases lean against the wall, tucked out of sight.
It looks lived-in, like he spends time here.
Lili takes a sip of her coffee and tilts her head, reading the titles on his bookshelves.
Judt, Thucydides, Pamuk, Rilke.
She frowns: Calvino, Gramsci, Baldwin, Foucault—
“Judging my taste in books?”