Chapter 17 I Missed You #2
“I’m fully aware of what I do, and don’t have to do,” he snapped, but not with anger. “I brought you some meat pastries; there weren’t a lot of choices at this hour. I want to see you eat one before I leave.”
He pushed the neat wax paper bundle toward me. It did smell nice, and my stomach growled, but I wasn’t sure if I could keep it down with the kitchen being so woozy.
Vitali pulled a pen and paper off a shelf and sat down beside me, scribbling. “Here is your new phone number. You don’t have to give me this one either.”
‘How long has Vitali known Katya?’ Sergei’s voice sounded through me like soured milk.
“Here is your new address. Cross streets. Here is the nearest pharmacy, market, and ice cream stand.”
I couldn’t resist a low chuckle, then leaned my head on an open palm, watching him write. Perfect script, of course. My own handwriting needed help. Sometimes the girls at work joked that my paperwork belonged on the walls of ancient pyramids.
“This is your mailbox number. Here’s the apartment. We’re on the seventh floor, but there’s an elevator. I’ll lay out all your keys—but you should know I have a full set of my own, and that’s not negotiable.”
It shouldn’t have been so comforting to hear… but at that moment, things felt so easy. For the first time in years, they were manageable. Uncomplicated.
“I missed you…” I said, because the words became too big to fit inside. His hand stopped moving, and he looked up, although I couldn’t quite read his expression.
“I missed you, too,” he said quietly after a moment, and his hand twitched so lightly I could almost imagine him dropping the pen to put it—
He did drop the pen, and caught his fingers in my hair—pulling me in. Our lips met. Softly, not like the first time. He didn’t crush me against him, and it wasn’t starved. Just tender. Drawn out. Our bodies, our mouths, and the soft caress of touch repeated the words.
I missed you.
I missed you. I missed you. I missed you.
It had been the worst day of my life, and then Vitali came—and he made it better. He made it all better.
My body sang, I missed you.
His breath tangled with mine. I missed you.
My hand rested on his chest, and his moved to cup my neck. I missed you.
His tongue melted into mine, and the heat on our lips sent shivers trailing every nerve ending I didn’t realize I had. When I felt his groan shudder through me, it wasn’t enough—it would never be enough. I missed you.
I leaned into it first, but he leaned harder. The chairs scraped and creaked as they toppled over, and I slammed into the wall with his weight against me. I missed you.
I wanted to drown in that kiss. I wanted to be the kiss, because no part of it felt like it gave me enough of him, and I needed more.
He threw my body upward, my feet leaving the ground, and my weight supported only by his hand and forearm under my butt.
We never broke what turned into an aching need to consume each other.
I wrapped an arm around his neck, the other sliding down the curve of his back.
He shifted to support my body and keep himself from crushing me against the wall.
Lips—tongues—we moved, we drank each other in as zealously as we could.
I missed you. I missed you. I missed you.
A jolt of pure electric thrill seized me as the hard length of him pressed against my inner thigh. I never thought I’d want a concussion from being thrust against the wall, but here we were, and the immediate need burned me alive from the inside.
“Kaaaaatyyyyyaaaa!” came from the other room.
The kiss broke, but we didn’t move, just breathed painfully against each other, too disoriented to know what to do.
“Vitaliiiiii!” the Devil’s voice tried again.
Without letting me down, he buried his face in the crook of my shoulder. His chest heaved harder than mine, and his intimate exhales against my skin held physical weight. We were both about to buckle.
I turned my head toward the hallway. “What!”
“I can’t get it to work!”
I felt Vitali let out a silent half laugh, and he carefully set me down.
We kept eye contact because breaking the connection felt like it would leave scars.
The way he looked at me only fueled the fire in my core—as if it took all the restraint on Earth not to take me right there on the kitchen floor.
“Kaaaatyaaaaa!”
I gulped, mesmerized by the swell of his lips.
“Viiiiiitaaaaalliii!”
“Blyad…” I whispered.
“Don’t swear,” he said, and rubbed the back of his head, turning this way and that to find the furniture that’d been so carelessly thrown about the kitchen. “What!”
“I can’t get it to work!”
Vitali went ahead of me, and we both stopped in the doorway of Maxim’s room, where a bunch of TV cables were already tangled with those of the Sega.
“Move this to the living room,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re not putting this in here; Mama will kill you.”
“Mama will kill you,” Vitali confirmed when Maxim glanced to him for support.
My brother’s face pinched up with regret for having called us.
That was somewhat comforting but nowhere near adequate, considering what he’d interrupted.
I was still hyper aware of Vitali’s body so close to mine.
Then his fingers grazed my lower back just above the beltline, and my vision blurred with colorful dots.
“Can you help me?” Maxim asked as he carried the electronic heap past us.
“Please,” I corrected him.
“I like it when you say that,” Vitali whispered in my ear as he followed Maxim to the living room.
I’d have to throw away the panties… maybe the pants, too. The scales kept tipping from horrendously hungover to excruciatingly aroused, but God is cruel, so I got to experience both at once.
The frustration only intensified as I watched him lie on the floor and scoot under the TV to connect the wires.
His already maddening body took my brain apart while he explained how it worked to my brother, showing him the coordinating colors and plugs.
He didn’t stop there and briefly gave everyone a lesson on electric circuits.
It made sense in theory, but his sleeves were rolled up tightly against his forearms, and I heard next to nothing about the importance of not overloading sockets.
I didn’t realize how late it had gotten until Vitali picked up his coat and laid out four keys on the kitchen table.
He patiently waited until I choked down the rest of the meat pastry, and then we silently stood in the hallway for a long minute, and for once, it wasn’t because I was the one lacking words.
“It will be a week or so until I can get Maxim into the school,” he said finally after staring at me for a good twenty seconds, which is a really long time when you’re alone in a hallway and know that no matter how much you want it, the clothes have to stay on.
“It was too late to call by the time we got here.”
Crap.
I looked away, interlocking my fingers. “He hasn’t been to school in a while…”
“How long?”
“A bit over a month…”
“Katya.”
My momentary irritation of him minding his business quickly became shame, and when I glanced up, his expression was as reproachful as I’d feared.
“He can’t miss school,” Vitali said. “It’s a privilege. I’ll have him registered tomorrow. Does he have uniforms?”
“I don’t know if they wear the same ones here. I’ll have to check.”
“Do you need a number for a tailor?”
I burst out laughing, and he looked genuinely insulted. A tailor for school uniforms—God forbid. Whatever world Vitali lived in, it did not have children, and it was a nice reminder that he wasn’t the authority on everything to ever exist.
“I’ll manage,” I said as the giggles wore down, leaving only a smile behind. “They’re sold in department stores.”
He nodded and fiddled with his gloves, the rare awkward gesture reminding me that he wasn’t much older than I was—and neither of us was prepared.
“You don’t have to go…” I said quietly, even if I already knew what he would say. It wasn’t about the implied question, but about letting him know I wanted him there. That I wanted him.
“I do,” he said. “I’ll call before I come over tomorrow. We can go see Mama. It’s a good hospital, and not too far.”
Another silence.
“Thank you, Vitali,” I said.
“Anything for you, Kotik.”
The name sent shivers down my spine. I would never hear it spoken in the way Vitali Konstantinov said it to me. Everything in me burned to make him feel the way it made me feel. The way he made me feel.
“One last thing,” he said, and pulled the beanie on. “You’re not going to drink anymore.”
I let out a sharp ‘ha!’ which awkwardly tapered into a laugh because his tone was serious, but he couldn’t be serious.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t care how bad your head hurts. There is aspirin and coffee in the kitchen. If I think you’re drinking, you’ll forfeit the privilege of going to the store, and I’ll figure out what other privileges you lose from there. Now tell me.”
“Aspirin and coffee,” I muttered, appalled that I was complying, “and if I do, I can’t go to the store.”
“Good Kotik.” He took my face between his hands and kissed me on the forehead.
Then, the door shut behind him.
I slid all the locks in place, went to my room, and never bought a bottle of vodka for myself again.