Natalya #2
My brows draw together sharply, almost in pain, because the sensation of his heart behind me is suddenly overwhelming—too intimate and close to something fragile inside me.
“You feel that?” he murmurs.
His voice vibrates faintly through his chest and into my ear, syncing with the rhythm I’m listening to.
“That’s me,” he says. “That doesn’t happen in dreams.”
I nod, the movement small and shaky. My throat feels sealed shut, like words would splinter if I tried to force them out.
“And it’s all for you,” he adds, his voice dropping lower, rougher, barely holding its shape.
“It’s yours.”
The words echo.
They don’t land once—they split. One version of them comes from the man behind me now. The other arrives already worn and spoken in a younger voice that lives somewhere deep in my memory. Both versions ricochet inside my head, overlapping.
This is a memory. He’s told me this before.
I don’t remember deciding to move or thinking it through. But my body leans backward anyway, pressing into him, being pulled by gravity, summoned by him.
I want to hear it more. I want to feel it vibrate against me, steady and relentless and alive. I’m fucking desperate for it.
The second I lean into him, he softens behind me. I can feel it happen. His control loosens just enough as he exhales sharply, a broken sound that borders on a gasp, like my weight on him knocked the air straight out of his lungs.
That sound sends a shiver through me. I let my head fall back, until it finds his shoulder and everything aligns.
“Let me hold your hand,” he croaks. His voice is wrecked now, stripped bare, no polish left. Just need. “Please.”
I don’t hesitate. I reach behind me before he even finishes the word, my arm moving on instinct alone.
My fingers find his hand and it’s warm and rough.
The skin there isn’t smooth. There are calluses, ridges shaped by incessant use, damage and time.
It’s familiar, although it’s more than it used to be.
When our fingers slide together, the contact sends a quiet jolt through my body, like something clicking into place.
The touch itself tears a synced breath from both of us.
It shivers through our bodies as if the sound doesn’t even belong to either of us anymore.
Like it doesn’t care who made it. It just dissolves between us, drowned out by heartbeats that are now so close I can feel them slowly syncing and learning each other’s tempo.
For a second, I think of those two flames again. It feels like they finally woke up, after years of decaying in loneliness, flickering weakly in separate corners, unsure whether they were still fire at all.
I lift our interlaced fingers, guiding his hand forward. He follows without hesitation, already taking a fraction of control. I guide his palm to my stomach, right to the small strip of bare skin between the hem of my tank top and the waistband of my shorts.
That spot feels unbearably exposed and I need to feel him there, as much as I can.
The moment his hand touches my skin, everything inside me tightens. His fingers dig in slightly, not grabbing or claiming, but desperate and honest, like he’s anchoring himself there.
The pressure pulls me a little closer, just enough that my balance shifts and I have to take one step backward. That’s when our bodies press together completely and there’s no gap left.
My back fits against his chest like this is an old shape my body never forgot. I can feel the full line of him now. His heart is pounding harder than before, no longer pretending to be unaffected.
The butterflies in my belly are now right there under his hand. If he focuses, he’ll feel them flutter their wings frantically.
I inhale sharply. So does he.
His hand stays where I put it. He doesn’t move it and doesn’t take more.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs behind me. “Nat,” he barely whispers, as if he didn’t mean to say it at all.
The way my name sounds on his lips is reaching into those drawers I shut. I’m not ready to open them. I can’t let this dissolve and disappear, but my eyes burn anyway.
His palm rests on my lower stomach, big enough to cover nearly all of it, calloused and rough in the hottest way imaginable.
“You’re in control,” he chokes out, and it suddenly calms me down.
He’s right. This is mine.
“No one is ever going to hurt you again,” he mutters next to my ear. “I will never let it happen again—” His voice is breaking, the words are getting drowned in his throat as if it’s hurting him to force them out. “I won’t fail you this time.”
I want to believe him.
But that’s not how my world works anymore. Those words are no longer making sense to me. They blur, overlap, dissolve into noise as just another product of my imagination trying to comfort itself.
His forehead sinks into my hair now, exhausted. The way his chest moves against my spine suddenly makes me… uneasy. The rhythm is too fast.
I turn around in his hold and open my eyes.
He’s still there. Nothing but him.
Everything around us suddenly feels too abstract to acknowledge. His head is bowed toward mine, forehead resting against my hair like he doesn’t have the strength to hold it up anymore.
Our gaze collides and I let myself get lost in the hazelnut color.
The world is chocolate brown for a moment. It’s just the warmth of his puppy stare, surrounded by thick black lashes.
“What—” he breathes, barely audible, stopping himself with a swallow. “Are you thinking—” His attention drops to my lips, lingers, then drags itself back to my eyes. “Right now?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, the words slipping out of me in a shaky rush.
His forehead stays pressed to mine, but his eyes betray him. They flicker down to my lips, remaining there a fraction longer than they should before snapping back up.
He’s nervous. Genuinely. Right here, right in front of me.
Then I feel his fingers weave back into mine, our hands interlacing and falling loosely between our bodies.
He lifts them gently and guides my palms up to his neck. The gesture isn’t demanding, it’s almost shy. Like he wants me to feel him and to confirm that he’s solid, that he exists.
He leaves my hands there to wander as they please, and the moment I accept the contact, his eyelids fall shut like the sensation is too much for him to process.
My fingers wrap around his neck, feeling the smooth skin, interrupted only by the silver necklace. He breathes so abruptly, it seems like he’s fighting himself not to make a sound or holding something back with sheer willpower alone.
There is something deeply soothing about a man twice my size melting under my touch.
He feels so safe.
I let my fingers slide down from his neck, while grazing the moving part of his throat as he swallows nervously.
My fingertips glide down his shoulders, the loose fabric of his T-shirt wrinkling under them, then the fabric ends and all that’s under my touch is the inked skin.
I graze his arms all the way down so I can take his wrists and lead them to circle them around my waist.
“You can touch me,” I tell him.
The relief that leaves him is immediate and visceral. He exhales sharply, like the permission just saved him from drowning.
I expect him to grab me, to pull me in hard, to slide his hands under my clothes, to map every inch of me with urgency and hunger. But he doesn’t.
Instead, his palms appear on my cheeks, framing my face, almost reaching to my nape and holding me with tender possession. He keeps his eyes closed but nudges closer, uncontrolled, his nose bumping into mine, as if he’s desperately trying to not kiss me.
“You worked on your car,” I whisper, the observation slipping out before I can think about it.
He freezes for a heartbeat, startled or genuinely surprised.
“I can smell the car oil on your hands,” I add.
His mouth curves into a real smile then, as if the fact that I noticed just made his day.
“Yeah, I did,” he confirms through a smile.
Our smiles fade naturally, as the weight of the moment settles back in. The air feels thin now, as though it’s holding its breath, waiting to see which one of us will break first.
“Close your eyes one more time,” he demands, still holding my face just inches from his.
I take one last look at him before I obey. I need to be sure, desperately, that he’s still this version of him.
The one I’m falling for all over again.
I imprint the image into myself like a failsafe before I let my vision collapse into darkness.
He leans in.
His lips faintly brush against mine, barely there, like a question. His thumb grazes my chin, anchoring me, tilting my face just enough. That alone makes my lips part.
And finally he’s there.
His breath becomes mine. His mouth finds me fully this time, claiming and colliding without force, desperately and unmistakably hungry. My body recognizes it instantly, far ahead of my mind.
I soften into it instantly, melt in a way that feels like I might lose all structural integrity if I don’t brace myself.
He feels it, the way my weight surrenders, and reacts immediately. One of his hands shoots down to the small of my back, holding me there, lifting me just enough so my legs don’t need to exist anymore, not picking me up, just removing gravity.
The kiss is slow.
His mouth moves against mine with aching patience, like he’s memorizing me instead of taking me, like he’s afraid this might be the last time he’s allowed to know the shape of me.
Then the intensity spikes.