Chapter 21
LEKS
We sleep in separate beds. We never talk about our feelings. We never take this to the next level. But every night I fall asleep — the best sleeping schedule I’ve ever kept — with the taste of Natalia on my tongue.
The second we’re alone in a room together she’s all I can think about. At first, I tried to be civilized about this. I would make dinner each night, ready for her when she got home.
Then I realized that as soon as Natalia walked in the room, all thoughts of cooking left my head. On the third casserole I burned into charcoal, I decided that cooking with Natalia present was a fire hazard.
Now we eat late at night, something quick and easy. Takeaways, toasties, salads. Something that won’t keep me from her.
The nights where I don’t taste her, when she’s visiting her family or out with Vera, my mood affects everyone around me.
Just like a junky.
Only there’s no support group to go to when your addiction is your wife. She’s a habit that I don’t want to stop.
The seconds of the day tick by slowly until I’m with her, then they go too fast.
The sweet taste of her.
The soft noises that I’m not sure she even knows she’s making. That only I bring out of her.
That delicious flush stains her chest, her neck, her cheeks.
Cream and rose. I lick her skin as if I could taste her arousal from it, tracing my tongue along the path of the flush as it spreads over her skin.
Natalia’s breasts arch against me as she responds to the glide of my tongue on her skin.
“Leks,” she gasps, already shaky from her release.
“Just one more, zolotse,” I murmur against her neck.
My cock throbs painfully as I trace my mouth down between her legs. She’s glistening with moisture, her flesh quivering with anticipation.
I kiss the smooth skin of her inner thigh, gradually dragging my lips towards her center. She makes a noise of frustration.
Her hands tangle in my hair as she tries to get what she wants from me.
“So needy. Not yet,” I growl, my cock growing steadily harder as I watch Natalia becoming desperate.
I hold back, nuzzling my face against her soft patch of hair between her legs and dropping my tongue further back, to a place where I know she’s never been touched.
Natalia gives a surprised gasp as my tongue lightly brushes her asshole.
One day, I think to myself. One day I’ll claim that too. She’s going to give me every single one of her firsts.
Then I bring my lips to her clit and give her exactly what she needs. It doesn’t take much, Natalia is so sensitive.
Her hips buck against my face as she comes apart. I spread her open and slide two fingers inside her as she comes, convulsing around my fingers. I hold her down on the couch until I’m done, until her moans turn husky and exhausted.
Her eyes flutter open and she looks up at me with that dazed expression on her face, like she doesn’t even know her own name. I’m the only one who gets to see her like this.
I may not have fucked her yet, but I’ve gotten closer than anyone else.
The jolt of pleasure at that thought, that whatever she may hold back from me, Natalia is more mine than anyone else’s, sends me over the edge.
I come all over Natalia’s breasts, rising and falling as she tries to collect herself.
She doesn’t say a word, just brings her fingers to her chest and scoops up my release, bringing it to her mouth and cleaning her fingers.
“So fucking filthy.” I lean over her to kiss her pink lips where she’s just licked my release away. She moans, the way she always does when she can taste herself on my tongue. “God we taste good together.”
Natalia blushes.
She probably thinks this is normal. That making her come repeatedly every night is just a normal amount of foreplay.
She doesn’t know that this is a compulsion for me. My behavior is out of control, even for me.
I want to consume her, and I want her to consume me as well.
It should be the ideal situation, really.
I just don’t think Natalia would be wrecked without this the way I would be.
I am dependent on the moments when I see her each day.
To Natalia, this is an added bonus of our marriage and nothing more. Another form of entertainment. Something to keep her occupied.
I should be able to accept that’s all it is. But I can’t.
When Natalia is wrapped in my arms, the taste of her all over me, her skin stained with the marks that my mouth leaves behind, I don’t want to let her go.
One night, with her wrapped in my arms on the couch, we fell asleep together. She slipped out of my arms without a word. I woke up to the cold feeling that she wasn’t there anymore. It’s a dangerous state of affairs, being so dependent on one woman who’s only here because she has to be.
She’s never used our safe word, no matter how much I try to wring every last drop of pleasure out of her.
Until I try to fuck her.
“Cherry blossom.” She flicks those green eyes to me. Her eyes still sparkle with pleasure, but she’s holding back from this. She always is.
“Why?”
She pulls her hand from my grasp and sits up to lean against the headboard.
“I don’t think that’s how this works. The safe word is not meant to start a discussion.”
Fucking Vera.
I’m glad that Natalia has someone to talk to. I just wish it was someone with a normal perspective on sex instead of someone who fucking wrote the book on BDSM.
“You don’t want to have sex with me?”
Natalia avoids my eyes whenever I try to talk about this. “I’m not ready.”
“You taste pretty fucking ready.”
“I never wanted to be married, Leks.”
“And that’s relevant because?”
She pouts. “Because if we consummate this, it’s real.”
I wipe a hand over my face.
“And you’re still trying to leave?”
I’m scared of the answer.
The sobbing phone calls to her family have stopped. Natalia still talks to them, of course. Just not in the same hysterical tone of voice as she used to.
The hits on me have stopped, too, making me wonder if she does have some influence on Maksim.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand what marriage is like for a woman in the Bratva.”
“You think you’d be giving something up.”
“Yes.” Natalia swallows, meeting my eyes for the first time. “I have a life that I want to live and it doesn’t involve being married to a Bratva Council member.”
“What if I promised you all of that? What if nothing had to change?”
Natalia stands up, pulling on a silk bathrobe.
“It still wouldn’t mean anything,” she snaps, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail. “Because you clearly don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
Natalia shakes her head, a blonde curl falling across her forehead. I watch her as she organizes her outfit for the day. The way her neck tenses when she’s irritated. The soft, methodical flick of her hands as she applies eyeliner at the dresser.
Whether or not I can have her, every detail of her is indelibly burned into my brain.
“Natalia, I’m serious. I trust you.”
“You made me a promise, Leks. You still haven’t told me what happened with my brothers.”
That.
My heart stills in my chest.
Just my luck that she wants the one thing I don’t want to give her. Literally, I would give her anything else. If she asked, I’d rip out my heart and serve it to her on a platter.
But she’s right. I promised. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal to tell her. I held out on her to use it as leverage, to make her trust me.
Now, when I think of the consequences of her not believing me… Telling her the truth about her brothers could ruin everything we have together.
“I will.”
When Natalia disappears into the kitchen I let out a shaky breath.
I know she deserves the truth.
I just wish the truth wasn’t a fucking explosive that’s going to turn her life into twisted shrapnel.