Chapter 10 - Janella
If he didn’t think I was weak before, he does now.
Why did I run? Why do I keep running?
Frustration crests like a wave in my chest. My breath leaves me in shallow pants. The door against my back is the only thing that holds me up. But it’s me barricading myself in. It’s me—being the scared, spineless girl Iosif accused me of reverting to. And I’m not one. I know I’m not.
I could have you on your knees, he’d said to me earlier. Moaning, pleading for me.
The dark undercurrent of those words had felt like a threat before. So quickly, they’ve turned into a prophecy. One that’s coming true. The fever has already spread—my body is alive, my skin abuzz.
I can’t run from this—We almost kissed tonight.
We were so close.
Until I fled, slamming a door shut between us.
I listened to him, even then. I counted each of his footsteps down the hallway. I heard his door shut. Now I have to shove myself away from my own.
I’m so aware of his coat, still cloaking me. When I shed it, it’s not because I want to. The luxurious wool can’t hold a candle to the way the cedar and citrus of his cologne warm my body. I drape it over the desk chair out of self-preservation.
I can’t keep still. I pace.
The plush carpet muffles my heels clicking back and forth until I kick them off altogether.
This is ridiculous, isn’t it? I’m being ridiculous!
We just got caught up in the moment. That’s all!
It happens! It was an emotional night for me.
Between meeting his family, spinning out about it being a foreign experience for me, and the unexpected heart-to-heart he’d treated me to with a side of ice cream?
That charm would have lured any girl. He can be so nice.
Kind. Demanding and crass—and wonderful.
And God, he’s sexy.
Effortlessly, dizzyingly sexy.
It happens to everyone, right? People get swept up in the moment. It doesn’t mean it means anything.
I can tell him that. A weak woman wouldn’t confront the person she just ran from. Clear the air, no problem. I’m not a na?ve little girl who can’t handle a little attraction between two adults. That’s all it was. Attraction.
It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
I’m hyped enough to throw open the door. I start walking before I can think too much about it.
A few steps, and my knuckles are raised to knock on his office door.
And then, a deep, toe-curling moan sounds from the door on the left. My hand jerks back, trembling against my chest. My heart thuds beneath it.
The door to his bedroom isn’t fully closed. It’s a sliver ajar, as if it just didn’t latch when he shut it.
I should knock, regardless.
Actually, I should go back to my room, take off this divine dress, and go to sleep. With my head sandwiched between two pillows. Pretend Iosif Yuri does not exist.
But I do neither of those things.
My fickle body gravitates toward the torrid, guttural sound that spills toward me. I lean in, helplessly peering in through the crack.
The ground beneath my feet tilts.
He’s sprawled out in his bed, all his propriety undone when his black shirt hangs open. City lights paint his chest in muted neons. The way his chest rises and falls is cinematic. It’s so like—yet entirely different from—the way I’d been panting behind my door minutes ago.
His impeccably tailored suits make no secret of his physique. Still, the sight of him leaves me winded.
That’s before my gaze drips down his magnificent body.
And I stop breathing at all.
The ripples of toned muscle no longer hold my attention. It’s been stolen by his hand.
His hand, that’s wrapped around his—
Oh, sweet Jesus.
I gasp for air that won’t come.
I know the size of those hands. I have felt them at the small of my back… the side of my hip. One does not cover the length of his erection.
His head tips back against his ivory pillows, giving me a view I will never get out of my head. His erection is swollen and dewy within his fist. His strokes are anything but gentle.
My thighs clench together involuntarily.
I should go. Oh my God. I need to go.
But then he groans again, and it sinks into me like a dagger buried in a target. I am transfixed, pinned in place. Watching him. Watching his pace quicken, his wrist twisting into every stroke.
I am sick. I am a perverse, sick woman. A shameless Peeping Tom.
And he is a work of art. The tendons in his hand flex. The veins in his forearm bulge. His every breath is heavy, turning ragged and raw.
“Fuck, Janella,” he breathes, every syllable shrouded in reverence.
Oh shit. Fuck. Did he see me? Has he—?
No. His eyes are half-lidded, rolled back.
I grip the doorframe as he does a fistful of his sheets. My legs threaten to give out. My insides have turned hot and tight and strange. I can’t. I can’t think.
His eyes find me.
Didn’t I know all along that they would?
The rainy-morning grey of his eyes is a midnight thunderstorm. Lightning strikes through my system. Every nerve ending finds itself fried.
“I’m—” I squeak out, frozen in place. “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t—”
His grin, lazy and satisfied, makes me dizzy. A smug flush has spread halfway down his chest. His voice is wrecked when he taunts me, “Are you going to run again, kukolka? Or will you stay and watch?”
My mouth is dry, and my tongue is reduced to sandpaper.
Yet I dare to ask, “What does that mean?”
His laugh unspools into a groan by his own hand. His strokes have slowed—and I know it’s for me.
“Little doll,” he answers, shameless.
His eyes, glazed with pleasure, never leave me. I push the door open the rest of the way and step inside.
I don’t step any further into the room. I can’t. But I stay, answering the challenge in his eyes.
“Good girl,” he croons to me, hoarse and wrecked and stunning.
He looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world.
Like I’m the only person. And he bares himself to me, letting me see him splayed out and ruined.
Unravelling. Tremulous and arching off the mattress with mindless, desperate breaths past parted lips.
His tongue darts out to wet them.
My breathing quickens to match this. His doorframe must be embedded in my palm by now. My nails scratch at the wood as I witness him find his release—and milk it to its end, one propulsive tip of his pelvis at a time. He spills over himself.
I have never wanted to touch someone so badly.
I want it so badly, the only choice I’ve got is to stumble away from him. The messy, marvelous evidence of him, his desire, his pleasure.
It doesn’t matter. It’s no good. I already know that getting him out of my sight won’t erase him from my mind. He’s etched there now, burned into place like a brand.
***
I sleep fitfully.
For a long time, I’ve had a strategy in place to deal with my circumstances. I just fake it till I make it. That may not be novel or unique, but it’s been mostly effective.
In the harsh light of day—and in the wake of a night of tossing and turning, sweating in my sheets with skinskinskin on my mind—it’s the only thing that can get me out of bed.
I can’t handle the thought of stern-browed and stiff-lipped Oksana reappearing at my door. So I peel myself out from under the covers and beneath the scalding shower, punishing myself.
Every time I close my eyes, Iosif is there. In all his glory.
When I open them, I am haunted by the ridges of his abs glistening with—
Stop it. Stop it right now. No!
But I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about him.
I go through the motions of putting myself together for the day. My hands dress me in thick, camel-colored slacks and a maroon turtleneck. Instinctively battling the perpetual flush that refuses to leave my skin now. My damp hair is cool against the overheated nape of my neck.
Making my way to the dining area, I decide to forgo the tea today.
When my gaze lands on Iosif, already at the dining table, I wish I’d forgone breakfast altogether.
I trip over my own feet.
He’s in a turtleneck of his own this morning. The charcoal wool makes his eyes look lighter than usual. His hair is damp, too.
It isn’t fair. He’s breathtaking.
“Good morning, wife,” he greets, casual and conversational.
“Hi,” I squeak out.
His brows raise as I stumble toward and drop into a seat.
I don’t think he misses that it’s the one farthest away from him.
He never looks away from me, staring through Oksana, who is setting my usual cup of tea in front of me without being asked.
When I mumble my thanks, it’s through a mouth full of cotton.
I just won’t look up, okay? I won’t look at him, and then he won’t see it on my face. He won’t see my sinful obsession mirrored in my eyes.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks politely.
Startled, I drop the fork, shoveling scrambled eggs. “Great, yes! You?” We both watch it clatter across the floor. I can’t breathe. My skin is on fire. My knees ache from the pressure of my thighs pressing together. My cunt is so tight and hot that it almost hurts. I feel exposed.
Iosif says nothing.
The weight of his attention is anything but light.
All it does is remind me of how he looked at me hours ago. Like I was the center of the universe.
I can’t stop imagining it. My wretched mind distorts reality, twisting and turning, remodeling memory until it is my hand instead of his. My touch causes the muscles in his stomach to tighten, then flutter. His erratic breath—those maddening, hungry moans—warming my cheeks while I give to him.
In my head, I give and give and give.
“Janella.”
Automatically, my head snaps up.
I don’t understand the look on his face. I’ve never seen it before, but I could swear it looks like guilt.
“That was fucked up,” he says with a grimace. “Last night.”
He can see everything on my face. Of course he can.
Oh God. I want to burst into flames.
Hastily, I blurt out, “We don’t have to talk about this!”
His expression hardens.
“Yes, we do,” he insists. “I’m sorry. I had no right to put you in that position. I made you uncomfortable. I never want to make you feel like you owe me anything. You don’t.”
“I don’t think that! It’s—”
“It’s not fine.” His tone lashes like a whip. “It was fucked up. I’m sorry.”
Nothing about his words brooks any argument.
With a sinking heart, I shrug. “Okay.”
He’s still looking at me. I can’t look back at him. I can’t believe he’s apologized to me. Like I’m not the snooping deviant who broke into his room and invaded his privacy. There’s only one person at this table who needs to apologize, and it isn’t him.
Before I can figure out how to apologize to him, he cuts through the tension smoothly.
“I have a surprise for you,” he announces. “Will you come with me?”
I’d love to, my conscience suggests.
Like the little doll he’d deemed me last night—a puppet, suspended from his strings, dancing for him—I nod eagerly.
***
Twenty minutes later, we are pulling up in front of a red brick building.
My head spins.
No. No, it can’t be.
“Iosif?” The words come out strangled.
The building has deteriorated to its bones. Construction workers and their paraphernalia are everywhere. But past the scaffolding and lumber and the men in their bright yellow hard hats, I know this place. I would know this place anywhere.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, sounding far away to my ears.
He just gets out of the car, rounds it, and opens my door. “Come see,” he invites. My brain feels scrambled as I take his proffered hand. I can’t spiral over him, keeping it in his grasp, guiding me.
The crowd of workers parts for him just like the people in the Pit had that night.
Inside, the space is gutted. Memory is vivid, though. There is a hole in the ceiling, and I still see the exposed beams Mom hung thrift-shop fairy lights from. The windows are dirty, paint-splattered. I’ve been dreaming about the park view from there for years.
Iosif lets my hand go. I turn in a circle, waiting for the punchline.
Is this a cruel joke?
“I don’t understand,” I breathe.
Iosif reaches out and grips my shoulder.
“The idiot Cillian sold this place and ran it into the ground, given how competitive this area has gotten. He was more than happy to give it away. It’s been sitting empty and deteriorating for a while.
It was a good investment. It’s shitty. And I thought, after a little renovation, you could make it enchanting. ”
My vision blurs, tears stinging my eyes. “You just bought back my mom’s café? Why would you do that?”
His features soften, his eyes falling shut. Much to my surprise, he lets loose a warm, rumbling laugh.
“To prove that perspective can change.”
I can’t speak. I’ve cried a lot in my life. I’ve cried a lot the past few days. I have never wept from an abundance of joy.
“My mom’s café?”
I can’t believe it.
“A café,” he corrects. “You’re going to have to learn the business and build it as you see fit. I don’t have the time for that. So, it’s on you. The aesthetic, the menu, any staffing, and financial decisions. The whole thing. You can handle that, can’t you?”
It isn’t really a question.
Iosif’s callused thumb catches my tears.
“You aren’t weak, Janella. When I see you, all I see is potential. That’s why I saved you.”
I’m crying too hard to speak now. Those cried are muffled against his chest, my arms wrapping around him. Iosif catches all of me, his hand cradling my head.
“Thank you,” is muffled by charcoal wool.
Yet he hears me. He heard me.