27. Let your husband take care of breakfast. （Aleksander）
LET YOUR HUSBAND TAKE CARE OF brEAKFAST. (ALEKSANDER)
For one disoriented second after I wake, I’m still inside last night. Tamara’s mouth under mine. Her hands on my skin. The way she said my name like she had not meant to give me anything and had given it anyway.
Sasha.
When my eyes open, the room is pale with winter morning, the city muted beyond the windows. I reach for her, my first instinct to pull her in and hear her say it again.
But my hand finds cold sheets. The covers are thrown back, the pillow still faintly marked where her head rested.
My muscles tense, threat assessments lining themselves up before reason catches.
She didn’t leave the apartment. Yuri would’ve called before the elevator reached the lobby. She is somewhere inside these walls, which makes the immediate, irrational irritation moving through me useless.
It doesn’t make it less real.
I sit up, jaw tight, and notice that the clothes we scattered across the floor last night have been folded neatly over the chair by the window.
After all that heat and need and skin, she managed to restore order before I opened my eyes.
I drag a hand over my face, then pull on jeans and a clean T-shirt.
She has likely gone to the study to work on the Healy project, because apparently my wife handles emotional upheaval by reorganizing floor plans and pretending last night did not rearrange anything.
But when I step into the hallway, a hint of butter hits me.
Warm. Rich.
Then something sharper beneath it. A thin, alarming scent of food almost burning.
I head toward the kitchen, shaking my head as a laugh threatens to escape.
David Kalinin taught his daughter to sit in a room full of dangerous men with a straight spine and a blank face.
He taught her how to negotiate, how to endure, how to hide the parts of herself he might use.
Apparently, he never taught her how to make breakfast without creating a credible threat to the property.
Halfway down the hall, I hear a woman’s calm, cheerful voice explaining batter consistency. Then Tamara, low and furious. “That is absolutely not what yours looked like.”
I stop at the kitchen entrance. My wife stands at the island wearing my dress shirt from last night, her hair loose and sleep-mussed around her shoulders, sleeves rolled badly to her elbows.
There is batter on one cheek, flour dusting her forearm, and a pale streak across the front of the shirt where she has apparently wiped her hand without looking.
The laptop is open on the counter beside her. Ina Garten is paused mid-demonstration over a bowl of perfect batter, looking calm and competent and offensively relaxed.
On the stove, one pan smokes faintly. A plate beside it holds three folded things that may or may not be crêpes. Tamara glares at the fourth attempt as if she can intimidate it into behaving.
I lean one shoulder against the doorway. “Should I call someone?”
She startles, whipping around with the spatula in one hand. “Jesus.”
“No. Just me.”
She takes me in, color rising along her cheekbones.
Good.
I’m apparently not the only one remembering.
“You were asleep,” she says.
“I was.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“That explains the silence. Not the fire.”
She looks back toward the pan. “There is no fire.”
“Yet.”
The corner of her mouth twitches before she suppresses it. She turns back to the stove with exaggerated dignity. “They’re crêpes. In case you’re wondering.”
I glance toward the plate, nodding. “I see.”
“Ina said this was simple.”
I move farther into the kitchen, close enough now to smell her beneath the butter and flour. Citrus, clean linen, warmth. Less defensive than it used to be. More skin than polish.
And my shirt from last night, hanging loose on her body, open at the throat, one shoulder slipping just enough to show skin I had my mouth on hours ago.
I stop beside her, close enough that my arm brushes hers when I reach past her to lower the flame. Tamara’s breath catches, and she tries to hide it by stirring harder.
“You were not next to me when I woke up.”
Her hand pauses around the spatula. Then she resumes with unnecessary focus. “I wanted to make breakfast.”
Ina remains frozen, smiling with the calm authority of a woman who has never had a recipe go sideways. I look from the ruined crêpes to the flour on Tamara’s forearm to the faint bite mark just below the collar of my shirt.
Mine.
No.
Not mine. Hers to give. Hers to take back. Hers to decide again in daylight.
The distinction is the only reason I don’t touch her immediately. Instead, I cover her hand lightly where it grips the spatula. Her fingers loosen after a moment, and I take the utensil from her and set it on the counter.
“Breakfast can wait,” I say, and turn her toward me slowly.
The second she faces me, the amusement fades. “I didn’t know what the morning was supposed to look like,” she says.
Her hair is loose around her face, one sleeve sliding down her arm, batter still drying on her cheek.
She looks nothing like the woman who walked down the aisle in white lace and fury.
She looks like a woman who woke up in my bed and tried to build something normal before fear could talk her out of it.
“You were asleep beside me, and it felt…” She stops, exhales. “It felt very normal.”
I wait.
Tamara looks down at my chest instead of my face. “That scared me more than the rest of it.”
There are many things I could say. That she is allowed to be scared. That last night changes nothing she does not want changed. That I won’t ask her for a label before she has found her own.
Instead, I reach up and brush the batter from her cheek. Her eyes close for half a second when my thumb passes over her skin.
That small surrender nearly finishes me.
“You left me in the bed.” My words are threadbare.
Something flickers in her face. Heat. Surprise. A dangerous little spark of satisfaction. “You sound irritated.”
“I am.” I brace one hand on the counter beside her hip. Not trapping her. Giving myself somewhere to put the force of wanting her. “I woke up wanting my wife and found cold sheets instead.”
Tamara’s hand rises to my chest, flour dusting the black cotton of my T-shirt. Her fingers curl there, not pushing me away. Pulling me closer. Her gaze drops to my mouth, then lifts again.
“You can kiss me, Aleksander.”
Permission. Clear. Soft. Devastating.
I close the distance and take her mouth.
The kiss is hard, deep, morning-hot and edged with all the irritation of waking alone when I had fallen asleep with her in my arms.
Tamara makes a small sound against my mouth and opens for me. My control goes thin.
Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair, and the spatula clatters somewhere behind her. I don’t care. The stove is still on. I don’t care about that either for three dangerous seconds.
She tastes like coffee and sugar and sleep.
Like my bed.
Like this morning should have started with her under my hands instead of crêpe batter on my shirt.
I catch her waist and pull her against me. She comes willingly, immediately, rising onto her toes, her body fitting to mine with soft, reckless trust.
That is the thing that nearly ruins me. Her choosing to lean into me in daylight.
I back her carefully against the counter, and she laughs against my mouth when something metallic hits the floor.
“Was that important?” she whispers.
“No.”
“You don’t know what it was.”
“I know it wasn’t you.”
Her laugh breaks again, breathless this time, and I kiss the sound out of her. Her fingers find the hem of my T-shirt. She hesitates there, barely, and I go still despite the blood pounding hard enough to make reason difficult.
“Tell me,” I say against her mouth. “What do you want?”
Her eyes open. Dark gray now. Unsteady.
“I want to touch you.”
The words are quiet. They still move through me like a match struck in dry tinder. I step back just enough to pull the shirt over my head and toss it aside.
She doesn’t ask again. Her hands are on me. Fingertips tracing my ribs, my chest, the hard line of my stomach. When she reaches my forearm, her touch slows over the old faded marks there, and my muscles coil.
“I’m not pitying you,” she says, caressing the scars, then looking up at me. Gentle, but not fragile. “I’m touching you.”
The distinction lands so cleanly that I have no defense against it.
“Tamara.” My voice is warning and request and surrender all at once.
Her answer is to press her mouth to the scarred skin. A kiss. One small, deliberate kiss over a place most people pretend not to see.
I catch her face in both hands and kiss her again. This time, it’s slower. Worse for that. More intimate. Her body softens against mine, and I feel the exact moment she stops bracing for the morning to become something she has to survive.
I lift her onto the counter.
Her legs wrap around me automatically, and the contact nearly knocks the breath out of my lungs.
The pan smokes behind her. Something sizzles angrily.
Tamara pulls back, eyes dazed. “The crêpes.”
“They were already in trouble.”
“The apartment may be next.”
That, unfortunately, is harder to argue. I reach around her and turn off the burner. The pan gives a final resentful hiss. Tamara looks at it, then at me, then at the laptop where Ina Garten remains paused.
“Ina can judge me later,” she says, smiling now, warm and wicked and still a little unsure. She flips the laptop closed and turns back to me. “Bedroom?”
I know I’m not going to make it that far without at least a taste. I slide my hands under her thighs and pull her to the edge of the counter. Her hands tighten on the counter when I tug her panties down her legs and let them fall on the floor.
“This doesn’t seem—”
“Shush,” I say before lowering myself between her spread thighs and stroking the tip of my tongue through her slit. “Let your husband take care of breakfast.”