Exit Event #7
Aleksandr breathes, a hard exhale. Glancing down, he runs his thumb over one nipple, and then the other, holding the weight
of her breasts, before he leans forward, and kisses the spot between them, a thin place of bone and skin where he can probably
hear how hard her heart is thrumming.
Her hands tangle in his hair, grasping at his sweater. “Sasha—Sasha, take this off—”
He does as she asks, grabbing the collar of his sweater, pulling it off along with his shirt.
Before it’s fully off, Lili is kissing him again, straddling his lap—wanting his bare skin against hers, maybe too eager—but before the thought can spiral into too much, Aleksandr turns them, lifting her easily to fall against the bed.
The sheets are still disturbed from earlier, what she’d grasped when he’d hurt her, but now he’s touching her, and kissing
her, in the places she loves best. Her vision blurs with the lathe of his tongue at the hollow under her ear, that spot he
knows—he still knows—makes her lightheaded; thin skin, fast blood. They should talk further, she knows, questions hanging in the air, what does
this mean—
His hand slides down her stomach. She stiffens when his fingers brush her underwear.
Is this all you’re good for?
Aleksandr immediately stops, resting his hand against her stomach.
“We don’t have to—”
She shakes her head, tugging off her underwear.
Those aren’t the memories she wants of him in her body.
She grasps his hand, drawing it between her legs. The part of her skin, wet against his fingers. “You don’t have to be gentle,”
she whispers, “but just—please be kind, to me.”
Heartbreak rises in his eyes, again. But it’s followed—clear, fast—by determination and intent, rather than anger. Against
her, his fingers start to move. “You tell me when to stop,” he murmurs, kissing the corner of her mouth. “You tell me when
to stop, and I will—”
“Don’t,” she breathes. She grips his wrist tighter. “Don’t—don’t stop.”
Slowly, he touches her slowly, finding a rhythm that makes her feel feverish. It dissolves her earlier wince, making her toes
curl, and melts a growing release of warmth through her, dissolving her crippling fear that this is a last time, rather than
a first.
A finger—then two—slips inside of her.
Lili moans, hips stuttering against his hand. He exhales against her collarbone, warm.
“There?” he says, but his smile—faint, but felt—makes it clear he knows.
She nods, breathless. She knows how to breathe. It’s one of the earliest things a body learns how to do, but these last few
weeks, she’s had to tell herself constantly: Breathe, Lili. Breathe. With him now, braced over her, it’s both the easiest and the hardest thing, to keep breathing.
“God, look at this cunt,” he murmurs, as his fingers move. Looking down at her, he takes in the break of her gasps, pushing
her into a knee-shaking feeling, a glow across her skin.
He brushes against something sweeter, a sharp fracture of brightness. She inhales, surprised; Aleksandr catches it, a smile.
He leans down to kiss her skin, before he starts to move down her body.
Heated, his mouth lingers against her stomach before he moves lower. A sudden sob wrenches from her sore throat. It’s startling,
how her body opens for him, as his tongue moves against her—slow, deep motions, as his fingers keep pace, inside of her.
“Sasha—more, please—more—”
Aleksandr slings her legs over his shoulders, tugging her down closer to him. The bedsheets tangle under her, snag of her
hair caught under her back, but she doesn’t care about that fizzle of pain because he starts moving faster, a crook of his
fingers inside of her. Pleasure suffuses throughout her—both slow and sudden, like time is slipping past liquid, clear enough
to see each second, warm enough for it all to feel like one melting, indistinct glow—on this bed, in this home, with this
man—Aleksandr—chasing pleasure inside of her, carved out in places only he’s reached, really—only him. The combination of his fingers and
mouth exhausts her with heat, a seam of brightness coming apart. She feels Aleksandr’s groan against her as she comes, and
God, if that isn’t something sacred to her, something meaningful.
As the pleasure recedes—settling into the openness of her hips, a clearness in her chest—hitches of breath catch in the air.
Lili realizes that she’s crying, again.
“Sorry, sorry,” she gasps, swiping at her wet cheeks. “Sorry, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to—”
Leaning over her again, Aleksandr grasps her face. His fingers are gentle—wet with her—as his mouth finds hers. The smile
she sees, right before he kisses her, is both sad and fond.
“I’ve seen you cry before, sweetheart,” he murmurs.
She feels more tears still, as he kisses her face, but him, she wants him: simple and foundational—through each kiss, and
every breath, and into another day, after this, again, and again.
Lili reaches for his belt. “Can we—”
Before she can finish speaking, Aleksandr has shifted onto his knees, undoing his belt.
Please, let this be a beginning, she thinks, as he discards his trousers, as the warmth of his body comes back to her. The press of skin makes her already
wet eyes well again. She feels loose with pleasure and sadness—memories of her mistakes—under this smooth of hands, warm mouths,
running her palms across the shift of his shoulders—
“—a condom?”
“What?” Lili asks: a blur, confused, kissing his jaw.
“—do we—fuck—do we need to use a condom?”
“No, no—I didn’t . . . that time there was protection.”
“Yes, but I—” A sigh, heavy against her collarbone.
Lili stills, realizing. “Oh.” Heat stings at her eyes. “Oh, okay—right. You’ve—you haven’t—”
“No, I’ve been using protection—I usually always use protection; with you, I was just . . .”
Lili swallows, throat tight. “Whatever you want,” she whispers. “I understand if you don’t want to—”
He brushes her hair back from her face. “I’m asking what you’re comfortable with,” he says, quiet.
And she—she laughs, unexpected.
It’s a light sound, and it startles her: something like surprise, real humor, in the softness of this clear light, coming
through the window. The awkwardness of two bodies that want each other again.
Aleksandr tilts his head, confused but smiling. “We got this all backwards,” she breathes. “We’re always getting things backwards.
Now you ask me about my sexual health preferences, after how many months?”
“Hey, I asked about your birth control,” Aleksandr replies, raising an eyebrow.
Lili shakes her head, laughing again. His hand is warm and gentle against her cheek. “After we’d been sleeping together for
weeks,” she says. “For all you knew, I could have been pregnant already.”
“But you weren’t.”
“That’s your defense? People—countries—trust you with billions, and that’s your response?”
“Is it untrue?” he says, a smirk.
“Lucky for you,” she teases, letting her fingers brush over his beard. “You, who apparently hates children—”
“I could want children.”
Lili stills.
There isn’t a laugh, then.
“What?” she whispers.
“I just mean, if you wanted children,” Aleksandr says, and his smile—faint—has sadness, too. Like a thing almost lost, something
not yet fully within reach again. “I’d want them, too. With you. Eventually.”
She breathes, and does not respond.
He watches her, through the moments of her breath. Calm, but watchful. “Going to run away now?”
Lili pulls him down towards her, kissing him so fiercely their teeth clash. “I’d want your children,” she whispers, against
his mouth. “I’d want children with you—someday I would, I really would—I’d want to have a family with you—”
Suddenly, she’s no longer in charge of the kiss. Aleksandr pushes her against the sheets, kissing her perhaps harder than
he ever has. Lili moans into his mouth, as his hand slides between her legs, still wet from earlier. He grabs her knee, opening
her to him, and she feels him hard against her.
“Tell me—you have to tell me, if you want me to stop—”
She shakes her head, blind and impatient. “No, no—please, Sasha, come on—”
He grasps her face, swallowing her words with a long kiss, just as he—
Lili inhales, sharp between them, as Aleksandr pushes into her.
“Jesus, fuck.” The punch of his breath, and how his grip tightens in the sheets when he has to stop, when her body can’t take more. He
hitches her hips a little higher, and she almost winces—Wait—before he pushes into her deeper; a difficult fit, and her next gasp is close to a hiss.
Aleksandr notices, instantly. “Are you alright?” he murmurs, stilling over her.
“Yes,” she gasps. “Don’t stop, it just—I’m fine, it’ll just take a—ah—minute, don’t worry—”
Gently, he kisses her. He so rarely kissed her like this, like she’s breakable. Its warmth eases tension just as he starts to move again, with slow, growing intensity.
Her body burns, making room for him: a hot, wet slip. With such intentional slowness, he lets her adjust, the heat of her
accepting the hardness of him. It hurts, like a chill of newness, a fresh pleasure: the stretch of her body accommodating
his size; the way he works her open, moving with the give of her hips; finding the moments when she can take a bit more, pushing
deeper into them. Her grasp tightens in his hair; there’s something starved, in both their bodies—the fumble of wanting so
fiercely. This ache—a deep, bright shudder settled into her hips—splits with pressure, and when he moves inside of her next,
she gives a hard gasp.
“A bit more,” Aleksandr murmurs, “just a bit more, you’re almost there.”
“What—oh, fuck—”
The feeling of the last inches of him, thick and full, with the realization that he hadn’t gotten there yet. Reciprocal tension
snaps in his shoulders when she tightens in sharp surprise.
“Fuck, Lili,” he groans, “give me a chance at lasting here—”
“Give me—Jesus, give me a second—”
He laughs, breathless. He kisses the corner of her mouth.
“You tell me,” he murmurs. God, the sound of him breathless, in her.