Chapter 32 Show Me #3
“Because I had one as a kid. Orange cats are very special. Papa got him for me when I was a year old. His name was Buterbrod. He was very clingy, but that’s what I needed.
Mama was always busy, and Papa gone to work.
Maxim hadn’t been born yet, so it was Buterbrod and me.
We had all kinds of adventures together. ”
I let out a breathy ‘ha!’ ahead of my words. “We used to play ‘cops and robbers,’ and I would chase him with a squirt gun. Cats normally hate water, and Buterbrod wasn’t the biggest fan, but sometimes, instead of running, he’d try to bite the stream. We were best friends.”
He raised his head and rubbed his face, but didn’t look at me.
“Buterbrod liked to sit on the window, and sometimes when we opened the fortochka, a bird would get in, and he would always snatch it up. He was very fast, that’s why I think he knew we were playing. He never ran from me as swiftly as he could have.”
Silence.
“There is no moral to this story,” I said. “I’m not trying to give you some metaphor for… for anything. I just want you to know that there is an orange cat somewhere that I would really like you to meet. And I want us to name him after a stupid food.”
“How stupid?” he muttered hoarsely.
“Maybe after cheese,” I said. “But it has to be a very specific type of cheese. Something simple, because when you have an animal long enough, you need a one or two-syllable nickname you can easily shout.”
“I’ve never had a pet,” Vitali said, fingers tapping on his knee.
“Never ever?”
“Used to feed a stray cat that hung around the garages. He was missing an ear. Never came down from the roofs unless he saw me coming… but I used to tinker with things in a friend’s garage, and he would sit at the door and watch me. Sometimes he’d go to sleep…”
“That means they trust you.”
His mouth thinned. “I think the other boys threw rocks at him. I can’t stand people hurting animals. Got into a lot of fights over that.”
I saved the ugly thoughts of the irony for later, and slackened my hold on the blanket enough to loop my arm through his. He glanced at it, but that’s all.
“Did you name him?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Every day, I thought I would show up, and he’d be dead. I didn’t want to get attached.”
“You can name our cat, then. But it has to be a cheese.”
For the first time, he turned his head and looked at me, and I up at him. Hesitantly, he took my chin, tilting it up, and touched his lips against mine.
“You’re too good for this world, Katya. Too good for me,” he murmured.
I pressed myself closer, letting the blanket slip down, and then we were skin against skin. “You deserve someone to be good to you, Vitali. Let me be good to you.”
I heard the gulp, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him wipe his face with his free hand.
“I’m going to marry you,” he said. “Once I learn how to propose. And be a husband.”
I laughed because you weren’t supposed to voice that.
And because he didn’t ask, he told. And because it made me very seriously think that I’ll be someone’s wife, and it was a strange idea after spending my life as not-someone’s-wife.
And because I’d be his wife. And because I needed to learn how to be a wife, too.
And because the situation we were in shouldn’t have been romantic.
I sighed, then shifted and dropped the blanket, swinging my leg around to straddle him. A raw honesty reflected in the surprise of his expression.
I can’t say it was easy, because it wasn’t. Every bit of my body fought me, a prey-like instinct to dash knocked at the back of my mind. But neither won out over my heart.
His arms twitched, but he forced them to his sides. A mercy, because it took me another long minute to take his face in my hands and kiss him. At first, he did not kiss me back, but gradually warmed up to my movements.
My back arched, body remembering the eagerness to press my chest against his, to touch his skin—to touch him. When he wrapped his arms around me, the touch was light. Tender, patient. Whether it was with me, or himself, it didn’t matter. We both needed it at that time.
The kiss was slow and precious—a new memory of the evening being built second by second, and we were careful in its craft.
He stroked every muscle of my back, counted my ribs with the tips of his fingers, and felt down the line of my spine.
Warm hands pulled me closer in a way only passion born of pain ever could.
My hips ground into him, and his rose to meet me, until it wasn’t enough.
His touch slid to my thighs and pulled me down harder, manipulating my body against him.
It was obvious when Vitali did not know what to do.
He was a quick learner, but he had to learn.
Being gentle with me right then wasn’t something he knew.
But he was trying, and this time, the enormity of him and the strength of his grip were my protection against the emptiness of the world.
We didn’t tear away from each other when I lifted myself and tugged at his pants. He pushed them clumsily over his thighs without letting go of my lower back.
“All the way off,” I whispered. “I’m not going to be the only one naked.”
His cock pressed against my stomach, the hot flesh so close to the wet heat between my legs that it made it hard to breathe. I rolled my hips just to feel it press against my sex, and he groaned.
“I need to hear you say you want this,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t count if you don’t say it.”
“I want this.”
His hands slid under, lifting me up as he spread me.
“Put your arms around my neck,” Vitali whispered against my skin. “Brace your body.”
My core tightened, and I gasped before he was inside; the head pressing against me was the edge of a cliff, and once I fell, I’d keep falling. But he didn’t let me come down hard, instead holding me gently against his chest. Gradually stilling my fears.
I had never been aware like this; my entire being honed in on the head of his cock, slowly pushing in and out. Excruciating moments passed, and I wanted to preserve them, but my body begged to feel more of him inside.
I flexed, encouraging him, but his movements were careful, and he would only go a little deeper each time. The dull, intimidating pain mixed with a warm, back-arching shiver, but it did not make it easier to take his size. I quickly realized the delusion of going harder.
“Never, ever stop making that sound for me,” he said heavily against the hollow of my throat. It was only then that I realized I’d been letting out shallow moans.
He kissed my neck, my collarbones, my breasts.
I leaned my head against his, willing my body to relax, and let him slide me up and down his shaft, slickened by each other’s want.
Sweat beaded on his brow, and his thighs trembled beneath me as his muscles fell further into rock-hard tension with every thrust.
He shifted again—a partial retreat followed by a much deeper, unmindful re-entry.
A sharp pain shot through me, and I bit down the scream, knees shaking. He took the reaction for something else and pressed his lips hard against my neck, pulling my hair lightly to expose it further.
“I want you to cum,” I gasped, teeth grinding, “please, Vitali, this is too much.”
“Katya…”
“Please?”
His forehead pressed hard into my shoulder, breath hot and ragged against my skin. He shuddered with a series of deep tremors, and an uncontrolled, broken groan rose up in his chest as he let go, flooding my insides with sudden heat.
I moaned, my thighs trembling around him, because the intimacy of the moment tightened my throat.
I never imagined Vitali underneath me in such a vulnerable way.
Only I would ever look down and see the tight meeting of two bodies thrumming, and know it was with him, because this was mine.
To keep. He belonged to me, and I reveled in that thought as I panted, mindful not to go too fast as the pain pulsed through me. I moved to get off.
He grunted, sucking in a deep breath. “Slow, Kotik.”
I should have listened, because the sudden emptiness quickly turned to a weakening ache, and my knees buckled, but he had me.
It was laughable, standing there like that.
Whoever made the music videos with lace veils and a red backdrop clearly never had sex on a cold bathroom floor with cracking tiles.
His cum dripped down my slickened thighs, and I braced myself against the sink, grabbing for toilet paper to clean up.
“Shit…” Vitali knelt beside me and took it from my hands, carefully wiping off… blood.
“Oh…”
I had heard of spotting after your first time, but this was more than I expected. It flowed. It wasn’t supposed to flow.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No… I think this might be natural.” I didn’t want to make him feel worse after being so cautious. The only thing I could presume to have done this was his size.
A chill crept up my spine at the image of his empty eyes above me.
Beg me to fuck you, or I’ll do it anyway.
That Vitali wouldn’t have been as gentle, and I had to remember that. I had to check if there were stains on the bedsheets…
“Wash up,” he told me, tossing the bloody paper in the trash. “I’ll see if I’ve got a hot water bottle somewhere; if not, I’ll warm up a bag of rice.”
I didn’t want to think of why he knew to get that.
“Vitali,” I called as he balled up the blanket we left on the floor and headed out of the bathroom. “You’ll sleep here, with me, right?”
“For the rest of our lives, Kotik.”
* * *
About Russia,
Buterbrod - sandwich, sometimes open-faced (also butter bread)
fortochka - a little ventilation window at the top of a regular window