Chapter 32 Show Me #2
“So it must be this.” His fingers hooked into my panties, dragging them down with laze.
The lace snagged on my knees, and he shifted, bending them for me to slide the fabric free.
“You’re doing so good, following the rules.
Now, Kotik, that wasn’t permission. Don’t struggle.
What was it Dostoyevsky said about interpreting freedom as the rapid satisfaction of desires? ”
He read it… I never thought classic literature could make me so hot.
“He also wrote ‘I will not take a hen-house for a mansion,’” I breathed, choking as he slipped a finger inside.
“Let’s put you in that mansion, then. Open your legs.” His tone was unexpected. Vitali didn’t ask—he told—but this wasn’t either.
I tensed and did not react in time because his knee already pried my thighs apart, and he delivered a light slap across one of the healing bruises. I bit down on a cry, but only out of surprise.
Nothing he could do will hurt me, I thought.
“Wider,” he said sharply, and I didn’t have to learn my lesson twice.
The vulnerability that came with being naked was one thing, but being naked with your legs sprawled out while the only other person in the room is mostly clothed, that’s another.
I’d have to sit up to undress him fully, if he even let me, and he hadn’t permitted me to move.
A part of me ached to test my luck, but something about his tone made me hesitate.
An instinct I would learn to appreciate.
He set his thumb against my sensitive clit, and I squirmed at the light pressure growing into something wilder.
“Whose are you?” he asked, voice low and ready for my disobedience.
“Yours…” I mumbled, but he rolled my clit between his fingers, and that shot through me like a lightning bolt, but it wasn’t pleasant. It hurt. “Yours!”
“That’s right, Kotik,” he said, letting off.
He braced himself over me, and I didn’t have time to react as his hand gripped my jaw, thumb set over my lower lip where the remnants of the night’s lipstick still stained the swell.
He swiped it roughly, and his breathing became visibly restrained.
“Every little bit of you. Now beg me to fuck you.”
His finger hooked my mouth, forcing it open, and when I tried to speak, I couldn’t.
On instinct, I glanced around for help I didn’t want.
The wrong thing to do, as it turned out, because he dropped his hand against my chest—hard—and this time the sharp slap landed on the cheek opposite the cut.
I cried out, but it didn’t make any difference in his expression.
He fumbled for his belt, then zipper, before I could process what was going on. His pants weren’t even off, and that didn’t feel right either.
“Beg me to fuck you, Katya,” he repeated, voice low and words unhurried, “or I’ll do it anyway.”
“What—”
He came down, snatching my wrists up and pinning them painfully above my head.
His face was close enough for me to smell the faint aftershave and see the fully dilated pupils consuming his eyes.
They weren’t even. The left was smaller than the right, all too visible against the bright green of his irises.
Absent, I thought. And that’s when I fully understood how wrong this was.
He pushed down the briefs enough to free his cock. It slapped heavily against my thigh. I’d never been more aware of our size difference, and he was nearly twice as large.
“No…” I gasped, frantically shaking my head. Not like this.
I jerked hard, and he didn’t like that, because he gripped my hip with white-knuckled strength, and I screamed, tears lashing out as he pressed a finger into a bruise. He didn’t like that either, because the next moment, that hand was on my throat. It wasn’t kind.
I twisted, trying to kick, to get him off, but his fingers steadily grew tighter, cutting air off as my ears filled with my pulse. I pummeled on his chest, over and over. My back bowed, but he already had a leg pressing down on my battered thigh. Complete control.
“Stop,” I wheezed, the word breaking into a sputtering cough, fingers desperately digging into his bicep. Whoever was there with me did not hear it. “Vitali—please God stop!”
The tension in his shoulders played across the muscle in the dim light, growing tighter. Like his breathing. Dark dots appeared on the outskirts of my vision. He shifted, and there was nothing seductive about the movement, only precision because—
No.
No—no–no!
His cock throbbed against me as he took hold of it with the hand that wasn’t on my throat. I hit, I kicked, and I could do nothing. Pre-cum dripped onto my thigh as skin met skin. I was breathing in blood, and only blood.
The face above me, a stranger’s face, swam out of focus and the early morning shadows came creeping in.
* * *
There was a pause, and it lasted a lifetime. A lifetime spent naked underneath the man I loved, scared for my life, and begging—begging him to stop as I gasped for precious air.
And then nothing.
People always think you can pass out and it’s a half hour, or hours, and then you just wake up with a gasp and go on with your day.
In reality, it’s under a minute, or you need serious medical attention.
I was out for seconds, maybe five, maybe thirty, but when I came to, Vitali was above me, still as if he were drawn onto the ceiling.
You also don’t come back all there. The brain lags, but you don’t know it because everything is alright while it tries to figure out if you’re dying. Not everything makes sense, and some things come up funny in very unfunny situations.
He was seeing me. Truly seeing me, because raw panic flooded his expression. He ripped himself away, stumbling back so fast he had to catch the doorframe.
I sat up, ruined mascara filling my vision and spilling down my face with new, violent bids for air and hiccuping sobs.
A tremor started deep in Vitali’s shoulders, working its way down his arms until his hands shook. He dug his fingers into his hair.
“Fuck—fuck—fuck—” he mumbled quickly, backing up into the bathroom where he sank onto the floor against the edge of the tub. “Fuck—fuck…”
I grabbed for the blanket and covered myself, wrapping it tightly around my shoulders. My breath came in rapid gasps.
I didn’t need anyone to explain what happened, and right then, I just needed to calm down. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think about the pain dissipating through my body where I was either hit or…
Just needed to calm down.
Wind slammed against the window again, rattling the pane, and the sound fought the buzzing in my head.
“I… didn’t mean… Katya.” The words scraped out of his throat. He lowered his head, pressing down on his neck with both hands as hard as he could. “Fuck. FUCK.”
I swallowed and lightly touched my throat, where his phantom grip still choked my words.
“Fuck—God—FUCK—”
My cheek ached, and now the other one stung. My thighs throbbed.
“Don’t leave…” It was so quiet. If his voice weren’t so deep, I never would have heard. “Please, don’t leave.” He didn’t look up, just pulled his knees up to his chest. Like a child.
I slid off the bed, tugging the large blanket behind me as pillows rolled off onto the floor, but did not move toward him. I wanted to, but my legs refused. Light shivers played between my ribs. I tried to swallow. Couldn’t. Too many pennies in my mouth.
Slowly, I shuffled to the foot of the bed and away from the bathroom. My dress lay discarded on the floor beyond the iron bedframe. One of its straps ripped off. The nylons hanging off the post were shredded.
The sight of him above me, panting like an animal as my breath ran out, seared into my mind with a white-hot flash.
I blinked away the film of makeup on my eyes and tried to sort my prattling thoughts as I listened to his heavy breathing. He timed it.
Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four.
Hold. One. Two. Three. Four.
Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four.
I counted with him, and my lungs gradually fell into the same pattern.
Vitali didn’t move when I made my way (slowly) back to the doorway and leaned against the frame. We stayed like that for a few long minutes, in that tiny bathroom with chipping bath tiles and exposed pipes. In that tiny bathroom belonging to a man with a $30,000 watch.
“I’m not leaving,” I said finally, cleared my throat, and tried again—this time more convincingly, “I’m not leaving.”
His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was rapidly mouthing something to himself.
How many times had he lost control like this? How many times could he have lost control and didn’t?
“Never her,” he breathed out, and I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear it. “Never, ever her…”
I gave it a few more minutes because my body shook, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t overcome the thought to run. So, before my legs could carry me off, I sank down beside him, setting the blanket like a buffer between us.
A cruel place, this world.
He protected me for so long. Over and over, he told me ‘no.’ Even when I got upset. Even when I pushed it, thinking myself sly. Thinking I understood.
His hands trembled, so unlike the ones digging into my bruises. I didn’t want to hold them, but I didn’t want to let them tremble like that either.
I couldn’t be angry.
It wasn’t just him dealing with this now; it was him and me. And right then, Katya had her wits about her (I hoped)—and Vitali didn’t, so I had to stay. I had to decide to stay, because anything else would make what I was about to do dishonest. And it wouldn’t count.
I leaned my head on his shoulder sticky with cold sweat. He hadn’t anticipated the movement and flinched, then grew stone-stiff.
The silence groaned with water pipes as someone on the upper floor flushed their toilet.
“Do you know,” I said, “why I want an orange cat?”
Nothing.