Chapter Thirty Two – London
Aleksandr Volkov – Thursday Morning
It was bliss, but it couldn’t last forever.
At the very least, Elena needed fresh groceries and I needed clean clothes.
We were showering together, getting distracted from the act of washing by each other’s nakedness.
I was kissing her neck, a finger teasing her most sensitive of places when her phone rang.
“Ignore it,” I said, my voice drowned out by the shower pounding against the tiles. Elena’s breath was rough against my shoulder.
“I intend to.”
I inched my finger inside her and pressed her against the cool tiles. She gasped and her head bumped back against the wall.
“I love your face when you come. You’re so sexy.”
She grinned, caught between pleasure and amusement.
Her phone had gone quiet, but just as I was bringing her to her peak, it rang again. She groaned in frustration and gently pushed me away.
“It might be important. No one ever rings me repeatedly like this.” She grabbed a towel and hurriedly wrapped it around her, shimmying out of the bathroom and leaving me alone under the steady stream of water.
I rinsed my finger, turned off the shower, and followed her, patting myself dry to avoid dripping too badly on her carpets.
“—No, I get that, but you gave me the week off,” she was saying when I entered the bedroom. Her back was to me, and her head was dipped forward. She turned slowly to face me, her expression concerned. “What do you mean ‘no one can find Volkov’?” Her eyes went wide and she fought a laugh.
I shook my head, sending little droplets of water over my shoulders. My phone battery had died the previous night and even though I could have used her charger, I didn’t. I had fifty missed calls, even more messages. I couldn’t face it all yet.
“Well, maybe he’s holed up somewhere private hiding from us pesky journalists?
I’m sure he’s fine.” She was trying not to grin and waving her hand at me to stop me from making her laugh, even though I wasn’t doing anything deliberately.
I was just naked, wet, and faintly amused at the idea that her editor was concerned about my whereabouts.
Sex seemed the tidiest way out of this, so I dropped the towel, edged around the bed and tugged her towel loose. To her credit, she let me. She didn’t put up any resistance when I started kissing her neck.
“Hmm, yes, I appreciate the urgency.” Her voice was strained with the effort of continuing the conversation, even when my lips made contact with the silky skin of her breast. I tugged her nipple between my teeth and she gasped. “Well no, I don’t want you to give my story to someone else.”
Still she didn’t stop me as I dropped into a crouch in front of her and eased my fingers between her thighs.
“Oh, no, I’m very grateful, Graham.” Her voice was breaking now, the struggle to stay focused on her conversation becoming too much as I eased two fingers inside her, my warm breath on her belly.
“No, I don’t have any way to find him for a quote.” Her hand went to the top of my head, her fingers threading through my hair.
I looked up at her, her eyes were glazed. Smiling, I guided her backwards until the backs of her knees bumped into the bed. Still with my fingers inside, I eased her down onto her butt and spread her thighs, kneeling between them.
“Oh God,” she moaned. Immediately followed by “Give me a break, Graham! I will call you back when I have a quote! Goodbye.” She hung up the phone, tossed it aside and let out a guttural cry as my tongue danced over her clit.
She flopped onto her back and writhed under my touch.
I moved my fingers back and forth over her g-spot, pressing firmly, while my tongue spelled out the alphabet.
“Fuck!” she cried out, her hips bucking.
I grinned as I pushed her ever closer to her breaking point, a point I’d thoroughly enjoyed exploring over this blissful time together. I knew she was close. Close to exploding. So I pushed on, thrusting my fingers, circling her clit with my tongue.
When Elena tried to pull away from me, I held her firmly and pulled my head back. It was time. I replaced my tongue with my thumb and began rubbing hard and fast over that hard nub of flesh.
Her cries drove me wild with need. My cock was so hard it was aching, but she wasn’t quite there yet. She thrashed wildly on the bed, like I was exorcising a demon from her body.
When her hips yanked so hard away from me that she pulled herself out of my grasp, I grinned, yes, it was time.
“Fuck me, Aleks! I need you inside me right now!”
I grabbed her legs and flipped her onto her front.
She let out a startled cry but quickly scooted up onto all fours.
I crawled onto the bed behind her and slid my cock into her, grabbing her hips firmly and setting about wrecking her completely.
My hips pounded hard. My balls slapped against her with each thrust and the noises she made—oh sweet God—they were incredible.
She dropped her chin to the bed, her arse still up high, and the duvet swallowed the rest of her orgasm. I pressed a hand against the small of her back and dropped my head back as if to stare up into the face of God, who must be watching this divine act unfold. This was truly heaven.
A low groan rumbled out from my chest. My balls tightened. My eyes rolled back in my head and I came with a primal moan. My hips jerked as I pumped her full of my release.
Her cries became whimpers and I slowed, bringing us both down from such incredible highs.
Her strength gave out first and she slithered off my cock, collapsing on the bed. I laid down beside her and rested a hand on her back, caressing gently up and down her spine.
“That was so good,” she moaned, her voice muffled by the duvet. “I bet you’ve had a lot of practice.”
I smiled. “Not really. It’s instinct.”
She rolled onto her side and looked at me with shining eyes. A tear rolled down her temple.
“Are you all right?” I asked, frowning.
She nodded and smiled. “Overwhelmed with oxytocin, but yeah, I’m fine.”
I pulled her against my body and tucked her head under my chin. I wanted to stay like this forever. But it was time to face the music.
“I should go,” I said at last. “It’s time.”
“Life is calling,” she said, her voice soft, reluctant.
“It is.” I held her even more tightly. “If I don’t see you before Bahrain, I’ll be missing you.”
“Me too.” She pulled back just enough to look into my face. “How about a quote? To keep my editor happy?”
“No comment.” I grinned. “I won’t let you use your sexual power over me for a story. What do you think I am?”
“Media-savvy,” she said with a scowl that I know she didn’t mean.
“But that’s so unfair, Champion. You used your sexual power over me just now, while I was on the phone!
That was a business call. With my boss. And you got all frisky and interrupted.
The least you can do is give me a stock line that your PR handler would approve of. ”
I heaved a dramatic sigh and stroked her hair.
“That’s a fair assessment. Okay. You can have this, on the record: ‘I am deeply concerned about the allegations. I know nothing about any misconduct and am working with my team to clear up any confusion’.”
“No,” she shook her head and pulled out of my embrace completely, sitting up on the bed and looking down at me, her expression serious. “Don’t say that. I won’t use it.”
“Why?” I asked, sitting up.
“It makes you sound complicit.”
“It does?” I frowned.
“It sounds like you’re dismissing my case. Like it’s all a misunderstanding. That makes you sound guilty. A single soundbite won’t help. Give me a full interview. Go on the record, for real, share your side. It’s the only way.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Not before I talk to a lawyer, and my team.”
“Oh,” her face fell.
“Hey,” I shuffled closer, suddenly aware of our nakedness in all this madness.
I cupped her face in my hand and met her watery gaze.
“You did what you had to do and it was the right thing to do. There is zero bad will here. I wouldn’t have spent the last two nights with you, having sex with you over and over, if there was a problem between us over the article.
But like I said to you back in Seoul, this is my career.
I have to go and do some damage control. Can you understand that?”
She nodded but didn’t speak. Her lip gave a small tremble. I leaned in and kissed her swift and chaste.
“I needed this time with you. More than you can possibly understand. And I hope you needed it too. It’s been heaven, Elena. Thank you for letting me stay. But it’s time for me to go.”
She nodded again and watched me as I moved off the bed.
“I did need it. I need you, Aleks. This isn’t the end of us, is it?”
I stopped, looked at her and shook my head. “Not a chance. I’ll call you as soon as my phone is charged. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a weak smile.
She sat there watching as I dressed in the same clothes I’d arrived in on Tuesday night.
I scooped up my dead phone, my wallet and keys and turned to face her again.
She sat in the middle of the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them.
I had never wanted anything more than to scoop her up and whisk her away to a private island where we could just keep on fucking and talking and hiding together. But it couldn’t be. Not now.
“Elena,” I said, my voice soft, steady. She looked up at me. “A quote for you, for real… ‘This has been a huge shock and it’s going to take some time to set things right. I’m grateful to my fans, my friends, and especially my girlfriend, who has been a rock these last few days.’”
“Girlfriend?” Her eyes were wide, her lips puffy and her cheeks flushed. Exquisite and mine.
“Girlfriend. Officially. And you get to break that to the whole world. Maybe don’t admit that it’s you though. Not in the same article.” A small smile skimmed my lips and she returned it with a bright beam of her own.
“Got it. That’s probably smart.”
“I’ll call you later today, I promise.”
She nodded and finally peeled herself from the bed. She scooped up her discarded bath towel and wrapped it around her body. I stepped towards her, wrapped an arm around her and kissed her, deeply, with heat and promise.
When I left her flat, it was with a heavy weight pressing on my shoulders. Now came the hard part. But I had faith I could get through it, because Elena had my back.