by Megan Hart
“Touch me,” he muttered into her mouth, then against her cheek, her throat, as he slid his lips along her skin. He moved her hand slow, slow, curling her fingers over the bulge in the denim.
He groaned aloud when she yanked open the button and slid the zipper down, notch by notch. She freed him, pushing at the waistband of his jeans and briefs until she could hold his bare flesh in her palm. She stroked him as their mouths found each other’s again.
“I’ve been aching for you . . . couldn’t stop thinking about how you felt. How you sounded when you came . . .” Nikolai’s voice rasped, stuttering to silence when her grip circled the head of his cock.
He was so hard it was like gripping iron. The angle was wrong. The position, awkward. She wanted him in her mouth, but she couldn’t force herself to stop kissing him, not when the taste of Nikolai’s mouth was so tantalizing. Her tongue slid along his, mimicking the stroking rhythm of her hand. He pulsed in her grip.
It was her turn to slide her hand along the back of his neck. To grip him there, to hold him still while she nibbled at his lips and kept up the steady, demanding pace of her fingers gripping him. His fingers loosened on her wrist. His hips thrust forward, at least until she closed her fist tight around him, just below the head.
“No,” Alicia whispered into his ear, then took his lobe between her teeth. “Don’t move.”
She laughed breathlessly when he let out a muttered curse, but she didn’t relent. She pulled away enough to look at his face. He kept his eyes closed. His mouth, wet and open. His hands went flat against the filing cabinets, but he didn’t move. Not even when she slowed the stroking to what must have been an infuriatingly slow pace.
Nikolai’s brow furrowed. A soft noise slipped out of him. Then another when she gave in to the desire streaking through her and moved her hand faster. Faster. Until finally, he tensed. Warmth coated her hand, but she kept her gaze focused on his face. Waiting for his eyes to open, for him to look at her when his pleasure overtook him.
He did.
Alicia waited another half minute before she stepped away from him and grabbed a couple of paper towels from the shelf next to her desk. They busied themselves with cleaning up, neither of them speaking. She had her back to him, waiting for him to leave. Because of course he would, right? And he’d probably take the doughnuts with him, too.
Nikolai didn’t leave. He came up behind her and put his arms around her to draw her back against his chest. He nuzzled the back of her neck, and Alicia let herself melt into the embrace.
“Alicia . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Nikolai.”
“We have to talk about it.”
She turned to face him. “Why? Why do we have to talk about it? This thing has been going on between us for a long time, and I guess it’s just something that we have to deal with. But please . . . let’s not talk about it if all you’re going to keep saying is that you can’t and don’t want to.”
He let her step away from him. He’d buttoned his jeans, but the zipper was still down, and she took a certain satisfaction in that, and the way his hair was still rumpled. His mouth still plump and wet from her kisses.
“You’re going to leave again, anyway,” she continued. “Right? In what, a month? You’re going back all the way to the other side of the world.”
Something shifted in Nikolai’s gaze. After a second, he nodded. She shrugged.
“You have a life there, isn’t that what you said? Anything that will take you away from this place.” She gestured at the office, but they both knew she meant more than just where they stood. “You’ll go. I’ll stay. That’s how it works. And nobody has to know this ever happened.”
“We’ll know it.” He put his hands on his hips, brow furrowed. Frowning. He looked pissed.
She smiled, then. “Yes. We will.”
He returned her smile, and she wanted to curse herself for letting it warm her. Nikolai sighed. He tossed the paper towels in the trash and smoothed his shirt.
“It’s just a thing,” Alicia said, as though saying it aloud would make it feel true.
He nodded. “Yeah. Just a thing.”
“Nobody ever has to know about it,” she whispered as he moved closer.
He kissed her. “Nope.”
“Just until you leave again.”
“Sure,” he said. Then, after a second or so, he crushed her against him to bury his face against the side of her neck. He squeezed her.
The embrace felt a little desperate, but she understood that. Wasn’t that always how she felt about him? He released her abruptly, and they both stepped away from each other.
“Your zipper’s down,” Alicia told him.
With a rueful chuckle, Nikolai zipped himself and watched her as she went to the desk to pull out a couple of doughnuts from the bag. She handed him a powdered sugar and took an apple fritter for herself. Alicia settled into her desk chair and waved at him to take a seat across from her.
“How are the home repairs going?”
“The list keeps getting longer. She started this nightly dinner thing, too, where she cooks for us and wants to sit around and talk about our days.” Nikolai paused. “Maybe losing her mother has her contemplating the meaning of life or something? Or maybe she’s just being manipulative. With her, you can’t tell.”
Nikolai bit into the doughnut and looked around the office until he spotted the single-serve coffeemaker. Without asking, he got up to help himself, using the pitcher of water she kept there for that reason. “Want one?”
“Yeah, thanks.” She watched him for a second before continuing. “I didn’t think she’d really stay.”
“She shows no signs of leaving. She plans to live there for the rest of her life, I think.”
“With Ilya.”
Nikolai chuckled. “Yes.
“No wonder he’s been such a pain in the ass lately.”
“Yep.” Nikolai glanced at her over his shoulder as the machine hissed and spit a dark brew. “I heard them arguing. She threw out the fact it’s still her house again, so she has the right to stay in it as long as she wants to. Unless he wants to buy it from her, which you and I both know he probably can’t do.”
Alicia frowned, thinking of the business debt still hanging over their heads. Her parents had paid off their mortgage before retiring early. After her divorce, they’d given her a good deal on buying the house from them, something she’d always appreciated, especially considering the money they’d already given her.
“He was paying the mortgage on it and has been since she left. I mean, that was the huge thing. You left,” she paused, remembering how sudden and horrible it had been to find out that Nikolai had gone away without saying good-bye. Alicia cleared her throat, continuing, “The next thing we know, Galina’s off to South Carolina, leaving everything behind. If he hadn’t started making the payments, the bank would’ve taken it.”
“Yeah. Well. Apparently Galina’s name is still on the house, not his.” Nikolai brought two mugs of coffee to the desk and handed her one. His mouth twisted for a second. “Even if he was the one handling the payments, his name isn’t on the paperwork.”
She’d been stupid. Married to Ilya for ten or so years, and this was a surprise. They’d divorced as swiftly and amicably as they could, splitting their ownership of the business to the original percentages of when they’d bought it, and taking only the assets they’d each brought to the marriage. They’d never fought about anything material. Still, it seemed like something she ought to have known.
“The mortgage on that house was the one thing Ilya always made sure to take care of. I figured he’d bought it from her the way my parents had sold theirs to me. He never mentioned anything about her name still being on it. And, honestly, he hasn’t mentioned anything about her asking him for money or anything else for a long time. I thought she’d stopped.”
Nikolai blew on the coffee. “Maybe she’s changed.”
Alicia laughed. Hard and
loud. Nikolai joined her a second later, and the two of them filled her small office with the ringing sounds of their shared hilarity. It faded, leaving him smiling at her.
“I have something to tell you,” he began, but stopped himself at the warning look she shot him. “Hey . . . c’mon. I brought you doughnuts.”
Alicia very deliberately tucked the last piece of apple fritter into her mouth but spoke around it. “We’ve already talked about it. There’s nothing else to say.”
“I was going to say that I don’t want to keep sneaking around like this. Furtively doing things in your office, or whatever.” Nikolai met her gaze evenly. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Alicia sat back in her chair, uncertain about what kind of response he expected. “No. It doesn’t.”
“I think it’s clear this unfinished business is real. Something between us.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Her heart beat hard enough for her to feel the throb of it at the base of her throat. She closed her fists in her lap, keeping her hands from shaking.
“For a long time. Years.”
“Yes,” she said again.
Nikolai crossed the room to her in three long strides that startled her enough to push back in her chair. It hit the wall. He leaned across her desk and took her hands in his.
“I’ve spent too many years of my life trying as hard as I could to get away from Quarrytown, but no matter where I went in the world, no matter what I was doing, I always thought about you,” he said.
Alicia gently withdrew her hands from his loose grasp. “Nikolai . . .”
“Just listen, okay? I thought about what happened after Jenni.”
“We were kids,” Alicia said. “Dumb kids.”
Nikolai shook his head. “Was that all it was?”
“I don’t know,” Alicia admitted in a low voice, looking away from the intensity of his gaze. “It was a long time ago.”
“I thought about coming home from Israel to find out you and my brother had run off together,” Nikolai continued. “I was such an asshole about it . . .”
She looked at him, wishing she could tell him how devastated she’d been when he left. Wishing she could tell him that one of the reasons she’d turned to Ilya was that he was the only one there. “Were you wrong?”
“I was wrong to be such a prick. It was obvious you believed you were doing the right thing. You’d bought the quarry. You were both talking about making this happen.” He waved his hand around the office. “It was a great goal.”
“We didn’t need to get married to start the dive shop.” Alicia sighed. This time, she was the one who reached for his hands. She moved around her desk so she could stand in front of him. Close. Touching. Their fingers linked.
Nikolai turned his face toward hers. “But you did.”
“Yes. It happened. And you weren’t wrong to tell me it was a mistake, even though I didn’t want to hear it.” She let herself press against him. Her face tucked perfectly against his neck beneath his chin. She took a chance. “You weren’t here, Nikolai. You ran off, not a word, nothing . . .”
His arms went around her. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did,” Alicia said on a grating cough, words from a razor-shredded throat. “You left without saying good-bye, like I didn’t matter to you at all. You made me feel like I meant nothing.”
And there it was.
Alicia had been in her sister’s shadow her entire life, and Jennilynn’s death had not brought her into the sunshine. She’d never been able to capture her parents’ attention, or Ilya’s heart, and none of that had mattered much, really, but this did. Nikolai had gone away and left her as though he’d never even known her. He’d made her into nothing, and she’d never been able to convince herself she’d ever been more than that to him.
She wasn’t sure she could ever believe it now.
A hitching, throbbing rasp seared her throat and boiled out of her in scalding tears. She shook, fighting them for only a moment before it became too much to hold back. She sobbed.
Nikolai stroked her hair, which at some point during their escapades had come out of the loose ponytail she wore for work and now lay tangled over her shoulders. He didn’t say anything. He offered the comfort of his embrace and his silence, which was what she needed. He fixed everything else, but he wasn’t trying to fix her, Alicia thought as she pressed her face to the soft flannel of Nikolai’s shirt and wept for the past, for the present—still a mess—and for the future she could not begin to even think about.
It was exactly what she needed, and in a minute or so the tears tapered off. He grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk and tipped her face up to dry her cheeks. She laughed at that and squirmed away from him when he jokingly tried to wipe her nose.
“I got this.” She took the tissue from him. After she’d gotten herself under control, she hugged him again. She did not point out that his brother never would have known how to handle her sudden burst of grief, not wanting to once again remind them both that she and Ilya had been married. But she noticed it. “Thanks.”
“Any time.”
Alicia cleared her throat. “So. What happens now?”
“What do you want to happen?”
“That’s a good question,” she answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“I meant what I said about these random ‘things.’ I don’t want that anymore. If we’re going to be together, even if we both agree it has to be a secret, I don’t want it to be like this.”
Alicia wasn’t sure she did agree it had to be a secret, even if she knew that made the best sense. “So what’s the solution?”
“I’ll think about that,” Nikolai said.
She chewed the inside of her cheek for a second. “Nobody will blink an eye if you and I hang out together.”
“They’ll do a lot more than blink if they know we’re a couple,” he said.
“Are we a couple? Or are we just screwing?” Alicia asked bluntly.
Nikolai didn’t smile. He did reach to twirl a strand of her hair around his fingers and tug it to get her to move closer. “I don’t know.”
Frustrated, she wasn’t going to push him for more. Besides, it wasn’t like she knew what the hell they were really doing, either, she told herself as she pushed up on her toes to press her mouth to his. The kiss deepened. His hands roamed across her back to settle on her ass, pulling her closer to him.
“You should go,” she said against his mouth. “I have work to do.”
“Right. Sure. Of course.” He looked at her, but if there was something else he meant to say, he was keeping it to himself. “I’ll . . . so, I’ll see you? Later?”
She sat in her chair to study him. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
He didn’t say anything after that. He gave her one of those slow, smoldering smiles tinged with just the right amount of smugness to make her want to pinch him someplace tender. Kiss him first, then pinch him, she thought as Nikolai gave her a little wave on the way out the door.
This was going to hurt like hell, she thought, but she was going to keep doing it anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Then
All Ilya wanted to do was see her, one last time.
He thought he’d have the chance. Everything he’d ever seen about funerals on TV or in the movies showed a satin-lined casket, the deceased with hands folded on the chest. Like they were sleeping. That was what he expected to see today, but they went and closed the lid on the coffin. They trapped her inside.
He was never going to see Jennilynn again.
From his place toward the back of the room, Ilya had a clear view of the black casket up at the front, but his vision was anything but clear. He’d been drinking vodka since nine in the morning. First from the bottle. Then from the water bottle he filled before they left the house. Niko had to help him with his tie.
Now the room threatened to spin, but screw that, he wasn’t going to let it. He was going to stand up.
He was going to walk up there. He was going to open up that lid. He was going to see her so he could say good-bye. So he could say he was sorry.
“Sorry.” The word muttered out of him aloud.
Too loud by the nasty look he got from one of the old ladies sitting near him. Slowly, deliberately, Ilya took another long pull from the bottle while making eye contact. She looked away first.
His mother sat closer to the front. Theresa beside her. Barry next to Theresa. Niko, however, was in the back with Ilya.
“I wanna tell her I’m sorry,” Ilya said.
Niko frowned. Good little brother. Always thinking of the right thing to do, right? Except he wasn’t so good; he was no better than Ilya. Niko had done his share of shit. He just never seemed to get caught.
“We should go outside. C’mon.” Niko grabbed Ilya by the sleeve of his dress shirt. “Be quiet.”
Outside the funeral home, Ilya paced. He drained the bottle and tossed it with a curse into the bushes. He bent, hands on his knees, waiting to puke, but even though he wanted to—he wanted to sick up everything inside him—nothing happened but a few heaves and a strand of thick drool.
“Get yourself together.” Niko pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tucked one between his lips. He lit it.
Ilya staggered upright. “Since when do you smoke?”
“Since the girl across the street was found dead.” Niko’s reply was flat, but broken after a second by the coughing and hacking he did when he took a drag on the smoke.
“Pussy.” Ilya’s grin peeled back from his teeth, making him a snarling dog.
Without thinking about it, he stepped forward. One, two. His first punch connected directly with his brother’s face—a lucky shot. The next missed as Niko shouted and turned, and Ilya staggered forward. Fell on his face.
He rolled onto his back. The sky was an ugly shade of gray. The first spatters of rain hit him in the eyes, and he wanted to close them, but he couldn’t seem to do anything but lie on the ground and let the clouds cry for him.