47. Grisha
GRISHA
The house was dark by the time we made it back inside, every window along the east wing gone black except for the porch lamp Dmitri left burning out of habit more than need, and I locked the side door behind us the way I locked it every night of my life, out of a reflex twenty years deep that not even tonight could talk out of me.
Tasha's hand stayed in mine the whole walk up the stairs, her thumb moving once over my knuckles the same absent way I'd been doing to hers for an hour straight, both of us apparently unwilling to let go of the other for even the length of a staircase.
The stairs creaked in the same three places they always creaked, familiar under my feet in a way that made the climb feel less like walking and more like finally arriving somewhere I'd been circling for years without letting myself land.
Tasha didn't say much on the way up. She just held on, her eyes finding mine every few steps like she wanted to keep confirming I was actually still there, and not some version of tonight she'd wake up from before morning proved it real.
"You're doing the thing," she said quietly, on the second landing.
"What thing?"
"Checking the windows with your eyes without actually turning your head. I can feel you doing it."
"Old habit." I didn't deny it, because there was no version of tonight where lying to her again would have made any sense at all. "I'll stop eventually."
"Take your time. I've decided I find it a little bit endearing, against my better judgment." She squeezed my hand once we reached my door, and something in her voice went softer, less teasing. "Is this strange? Coming back here instead of the cottage?"
"Everything about tonight is strange, in the best possible way I've ever used that word.
" I opened the door and let her go in ahead of me, and stood a moment on the threshold just watching her cross into a room she had been in exactly twice before, both times briefly, both times with other things on our minds. Tonight there was nothing else on mine.
I'd lit the candles before we left for the garden, an hour of preparation I hadn't told her about because some things I still preferred to let speak for themselves.
Four of them, unscented, set along the dresser and the windowsill and the small table by the chair nobody ever sat in, and I crossed the room now and touched a match to the last one I'd left unlit, watching the flame catch and steady.
"No lamp tonight," she said, turning slowly in the middle of the room, taking in the light the way she took in everything, cataloguing it without meaning to.
"I've had enough of that particular light for one lifetime. Interrogation rooms and security offices and hospital corridors. Tonight I wanted something that didn't feel like either of those."
"You planned this." She said it like an accusation and a compliment at once, both hands coming up to hold her own elbows, the ring catching the candlelight every time she moved, throwing a small warm flash across the wall behind her. "The candles. Not just the garden."
"I planned the garden for weeks. I planned this for exactly the last hour, standing in a hedge with my heart trying to climb out of my chest, thinking about nothing except getting you back to a room where I could finally stop sharing you with the whole rest of the world for one night.
" I crossed to her, slow, unhurried, the way I did most things that actually mattered.
"Is that too much honesty for one evening? "
"I don't think you're capable of overdoing that with me, not anymore.
We used up our quota of the other kind months ago.
" She tipped her face up when I reached her, and I framed her jaw with both hands, feeling the small tremor still living in her from the garden, or maybe a new one entirely, one I recognized because it lived in me too.
"Say it again," I said, low. "The word. I want to hear you say it in this room, with no radio and no gate and nobody left to interrupt us."
"Yes." She said it steady this time, no rush behind it, just the plain fact of it laid down flat between us. "Yes, Grisha. I'll say it as many times tonight as you need."
I kissed her then, easy at first, the kind of kiss that asks a question it already knows the answer to, and felt her hands come up to fist in the front of my shirt, pulling me closer instead of just holding on.
The candlelight moved warm across both of us, and somewhere under the quiet of the house I heard nothing at all, no footsteps, no radio static, no reason in the whole world to hurry.
"I've been thinking about this exact room for a long time," I told her, working the buttons of her cardigan loose one at a time, unhurried, watching her face for every small change it made. "Longer than I ever let myself admit, even to myself."
"How long?" Her voice had gone breathless already, though I'd barely touched her yet.
"Since the garden. The first one. I stood there watching Fedya's radio ruin the best almost-kiss of my life and thought, somewhere under the frustration, that I would spend whatever it took to eventually get you alone in a room with no interruptions left standing between us.
" I slid the cardigan off her shoulders and let it fall, and pressed my mouth to the curve of her throat instead, feeling her pulse jump under my lips.
"It took longer than I wanted. I intend to make up for every single day of it tonight. "
She laughed, low and a little unsteady, and it turned into something else entirely when I found the spot just under her ear that never failed to undo her.
Her hands moved to my shirt, working it open with fingers that weren't quite steady, and I let her, standing still and patient under her hands the way I rarely let myself be patient about anything, because some things deserved to be unhurried on purpose.
We made it to the bed slower than either of us probably meant to, trading pieces of clothing for kisses that kept interrupting the whole process.
I reached behind her and found the clasp of her bra with the same careful attention I used on anything that mattered, and felt her breath catch when I finally eased the straps down her shoulders and let it fall, her skin bare and warm under my palms for the first time all night.
She pulled at my belt in answer, her fingers clumsy with wanting instead of skill, and I helped her the rest of the way, shrugging out of my shirt and stepping out of what was left until there was nothing between us but candlelight and the particular quiet of a house that finally felt finished instead of merely guarded.
I laid her back against the sheets and looked at her a long moment, just looked, memorizing the picture of her there with her hair spread dark against the pillow and her hand resting near her own collarbone, the ring catching light with every small breath she took.
"You're staring," she said, echoing an old line from a different morning altogether.
"I'm allowed. It's the best view this room has ever had." I settled over her, braced on my forearms, and felt her legs come up to bracket my hips like she'd been waiting the whole walk up the stairs to do exactly that. "I want to take my time with you tonight. I want you to let me."
"I'm not stopping you." Her hands slid down my back, and her hips lifted once against mine, testing, patient and impatient at the same time. "I've wanted your undivided attention since approximately the moment you caught me in that storage room and marched me back to my own door like a criminal."
"That was professional concern."
"That was the least professional look I have ever seen on a man's face." She arched up to kiss me again before I could argue the point, and I let the argument go, because she wasn't wrong and there was no version of tonight where I wanted to spend it defending old lies.
I made her wait for it anyway, tracing a lingering path down her throat to the curve of her collarbone, learning the places that made her breath catch before I ever touched them a second time.
I found the spot low on her ribs that made her whole body flinch toward me instead of away, and the one just inside her hip that turned her helpless little sound into something closer to a plea.
By the time I reached the soft skin of her stomach she had both hands fisted in my hair, not pulling me away, just holding on, like she needed somewhere solid to put everything I was taking apart in her one inch at a time.
I let my hand follow where my mouth had already been, tracing lower over her stomach and finally between her thighs, and found her slick and swollen and shockingly ready for me already.
She gasped at the first slow drag of my fingers through her, her hips canting up to chase the pressure, and I took my time there too, learning the exact place and rhythm that made her breath stutter hardest before I let myself move on to anything else.
"Grisha." She said it on an exhale, half warning and half invitation, her hips already lifting to chase whatever my mouth was about to do next.
"Let me." I settled lower, between her thighs, and looked up at her once before I did anything else, wanting the picture of her like that, candlelight across her stomach and her chest rising fast, committed to memory before I let myself have the rest of her.
"I've thought about this more than I probably should admit out loud. "
"You can admit anything to me. That's supposed to be the whole point of tonight." Her voice had gone thin, stretched over something needy she wasn't bothering to hide anymore, and the sound of it undid whatever restraint I'd been holding onto out of habit.