by Megan Hart
“So . . . your neighbor,” Nikolai said. He carefully didn’t look toward the Guttridge house or raise his voice below a murmur, but his eyebrows went up. “She’s totally staring me down.”
“Wave at her.” Alicia demonstrated, teeth chattering in the chill. “Hey, Dina! Hi!”
Grinning, she looked back at him when Dina went back inside the house without returning the greeting. “I’m not afraid to name and shame her. She’s nosy as hell. Come in?”
They slogged through the snowfall and managed to get inside the front door, where they kicked off their shoes and watched the small piles of snow already beginning to melt. Nikolai bent to put his shoes and hers on the small mat next to the door, an action that warmed her for all kinds of nonlusty reasons. Because he knew it mattered to her that shoes came off inside the house, a habit left over from her childhood that had never been matched at the Sterns’. Because he made sure to respect the rules of her house without having to be told. Because standing there in her front entryway, Nikolai looked like he belonged there and always had.
“You know what would be really great right now?” he asked.
Alicia breathed in. “What?”
“You. Me. The couch. A couple glasses of wine. Something stupid on the television. Maybe one of those old creature features we used to like.” Nikolai tilted his head to study her. “Just hanging out, you and me, the way we used to.”
“I have a couple bottles in my kitchen. C’mon.” She paused to peek around him at the door’s sidelight, saying over her shoulder, “It’s snowing even harder now.”
Nikolai had already started toward the kitchen, finding glasses exactly where they’d been for so many years. She grabbed a bottle of Pinot Grigio from under the cabinet and a corkscrew, and handed them to him. She watched him open the bottle, admiring the shift and bulge of his muscles beneath the formfitting plaid shirt. He poured them each a glass.
They clinked them.
“Cheers,” Nikolai said.
She sipped hers, wanting to move into his arms so he could kiss her. She watched him take a drink. The slide of his tongue over his lower lip. When he smiled at her, it felt right.
“What is this, Nikolai?”
His smile faded. His gaze shuttered. He took another deliberate sip of wine before answering. “It is whatever it is. Whatever it’s going to be. Do we have to put a name on it?”
“A woman stopped me in the bathroom to ask me if you were single,” Alicia said wryly. “I think we need to at least talk about it. At least as long as you’re back home. I mean, obviously when you leave again, it won’t matter.”
Together they moved toward the den, where she turned on the television without bothering to set the channel. She took a seat on the couch, Nikolai beside her. It was chillier in this room, which had been built onto the back of the house, and she reached behind them to grab a crocheted blanket.
“Babulya made this,” Nikolai said. “I remember it.”
“She gave it to me when she went into the home. I’ve always loved it.” Alicia ran a hand over the blocks of orange, brown, and green.
He inched closer to get the blanket over his lap, lifting her legs so she could settle her feet on him. “I’m here with you. Now. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but if you want me to tell you that I won’t see anyone else while I’m living here, I can do that.”
“Hmmm.” Alicia wiggled her toes and sipped wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. “You sure?”
Nikolai laughed. “Umm, yes, Alicia. I’m sure. I’ve been home a month now. If I wanted to go out sowing my oats all over, don’t you think I might’ve done it sooner?”
“You came home to be with your grandmother. I’m not sure you’d have had time to go out and sow anything. But now . . .”
He shook his head with a grin. “Girl, you know I’m not going to do that.”
“I don’t know, actually, which is why I think we should talk about it,” Alicia said, hating to be that girl, the one who insisted on having “the talk.”
“Look, I don’t think it’s a great idea to just out ourselves, okay? That’s going to cause a lot of issues that neither you nor I want to deal with, especially you, since—”
“Since I’m the one who’ll stay behind and have to face everyone,” she said, finishing the sentence for him when he didn’t. The guilty look on Nikolai’s face told her she’d hammered that nail all the way home on the first try. Alicia sighed.
Nikolai leaned to kiss her. “We don’t know what might happen. That’s all I’m saying. Why should we rush into making some kind of announcement?”
If this wasn’t going to become something permanent, he meant. Something worth facing the surprise, the comments, the backhanded talk. Worth facing his brother over. She understood it, but it still didn’t settle that great inside her, not even when his kiss turned more fervent, and her body responded.
“I’m not seeing anyone but you, Alicia,” he said against her mouth. “Can that be enough for now?”
She withdrew just enough to catch her breath, aware that she’d almost spilled her wine. She sipped some and put it on the side table before leaning to take his glass from him to do the same. She kissed him again. “Yes, sure. Of course.”
Nikolai paused the kiss long enough to cup her face in his hands for a few seconds before letting go. “What about you?”
She laughed, hard and loud. “Me?”
“Yeah. Have you been seeing anyone?”
She pressed her lips together to hold back another round of chuckles. “God. No. I mean, I have gone on some dates and stuff, but not for a long time.”
“How come?”
He twined a long strand of her hair around a fingertip, a gesture that would’ve driven her out of her skull with annoyance had anyone else tried it. Much like the way he’d cupped her face moments before. At the gentle tug, she let her head tip toward him before he released her.
“Quarrytown,” she told him, as though that were enough of an answer.
Nikolai laughed. “The pool’s very shallow, huh?”
“If you’re not related to someone, you went to school with them,” she pointed out, and scooted closer so he could put an arm around her. “Or you’ve known them since you were, like, three.”
“Gross,” he said with a laugh, since of course they’d known each other that long. He squeezed her closer.
She propped her feet up next to his on the coffee table, and they sat that way for a few minutes. She tapped his foot with hers. He returned the motion. She snuggled closer, at last paying attention to what was on the television but not willing to give up this closeness to grab the remote.
“This is nice,” Alicia said.
Nikolai made a murmured, sleepy reply. She twisted to peek at him and saw his eyes were closed. A faint smile played on his mouth. She didn’t want to wake him. She wanted to watch him, just this way.
Time had brought him back to her in a way that she guessed neither of them could’ve imagined. Whatever that meant, she thought, as she traced the curves and lines of his face with her gaze. Fate? Destiny?
A shared desire for eventual and mutual self-destruction?
Leaving him to sleep on the couch, she took their wineglasses to the kitchen, where she flipped on the outside light to look at the falling snow. It was still coming thick and fast. Heavy curtains of white that blocked out the sight of anything else. At least half a foot had layered on top of the picnic table in the backyard. She clicked off the light and turned, letting out a soft yelp as she connected with a solid male body.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
She let herself be enfolded. Her cheek pressed the softness of his flannel shirt. In the dark of her kitchen, they moved slowly. Not quite dancing, but definitely not standing still.
“Are you tired?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Are you going to go home?”
“No,” Nikolai said.
&
nbsp; She smiled against him. “Good.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nikolai woke with the taste of her still on his lips. They’d made love slowly, leisurely, taking their time, and it seemed impossible now, after sleeping, that it wasn’t yet morning. Not even the hint of light peeked through Alicia’s soft curtains, so he contented himself with curling up against her back. Naked. Warm. He pushed aside the fall of her hair so he could press his mouth to the back of her neck. His hand curved over her hip.
She didn’t say anything, but she wiggled against him in a way that was definitely going to cause a reaction. He waited to see if she’d speak, or move again, but with a sigh, it seemed Alicia had fallen back into dreams. Nikolai closed his own eyes, no longer tired. He’d grown used to sleeping comfortably in any kind of bed, any kind of situation, but it seemed as he got older, he needed to sleep less, and without the clock to tell him it was nowhere near time to wake up, his body was considering starting the day.
He relaxed into the warm cave of the blankets and Alicia’s skin, instead. If he couldn’t sleep, at least he could enjoy this moment. He wanted there to be a lot more times like this.
It wasn’t going to end well.
How could it? Even if he could put aside the rise of jealousy that clenched his fists every time he thought about Ilya doing even one of the multitude of things Nikolai and Alicia had done, even if he could get past the incestuous tumult of being with his brother’s wife, there was no getting beyond the simple truth that he and Alicia had always been more like oil and water than air and fire.
No woman had ever made him so angry or pushed him so far beyond the limits of his temper. None had ever made him laugh so hard or feel so protective. He kissed her bare shoulder, tasting her. Breathing her in. It seemed that Nikolai could remember easily dozens of times when he’d been convinced he hated Alicia, but there was no time when he could not remember loving her.
“Are you awake?” he whispered into the darkness, half hoping she wouldn’t answer.
She wriggled against him. “Mmffff.”
It was enough of a response for him. He slipped his hand lower, over the softness of her belly. Lower still to the heat between her legs. A small, inquiring stroke of his fingers against her had Alicia arching with a sigh.
“Again?” Her voice, husky and low, sent a tendril of desire curling through him.
He dipped low to find sleek wetness, then drew it up and over her sensitive flesh. “Sure. Let’s give it a try.”
He loved the way her throaty chuckle turned into a rasping sigh when he circled his fingers against her. Loved the tense and release of her muscles as his touch aroused her. He could lose himself in the sound of her voice muttering his name and in the smell of her hair as he buried his face in it.
He loved her.
She’d been getting close—he knew it by the way her body had smoothed and formed itself to him—but at the stutter of his caress, Alicia tensed in a different way. She shuddered but did not go over. She twisted in his embrace to face him. Her heart pounded hard enough for him to feel it between them. When she spoke, her voice was ragged.
“Nikolai? What’s wrong?”
He kissed her so he didn’t have to speak. There weren’t words for what he wanted to tell her. Or rather, there were plenty of words, but none that he could make himself say. He wanted to fit himself inside her and move, to let their bodies have the conversation instead of their words. It was too soon for him, though. He couldn’t quite manage.
“Shhh, stop,” she said with her hand at the small of his back to hold him close but stop him from trying to make it happen.
“I want to, for you,” he said. Stubborn. Proud.
Alicia kissed his mouth. “Shhh.”
Minutes ticked past as she kissed him. After a few, she eased her mouth from his. She kept her hands on him, though.
“Are you worried about this?” she asked. “Because it’s not—”
“No.” He took her hand, fingers curled around him, and stroked to show her the way his body could respond.
It was faster this time than it had been earlier in the night. Harder. Fiercer. He’d tried to focus on her, to finish what he’d started, but he couldn’t manage to do that and finish himself. When the pleasure filled him, he bit back her name.
After, she pushed herself up on her elbow to trace circles on his chest with her fingertips. Over his heart. Across his ribs and up again, not tickling, though he did eventually put his hand over hers to keep from continuing.
At some point, the sun had started to come up. Pale, fresh light filtered through the curtains and lit the lines of her face. She wasn’t smiling.
“Nikolai. I want you to know how glad I am that you came home. How happy I am that you and I . . . that we’re here. Together, like this.” She paused. He stayed quiet. “I think you’re amazing and wonderful and all of this is great. I want you to know that.”
He wanted to tell her that he felt the same way. He wanted to tell her more than that. But when he tried to form the words, nothing would come.
“And I want you to know,” she added carefully, “that it’s all right if you have to leave. I would never expect you to stay where you didn’t want to be.”
When you loved someone, Nikolai thought, you gave them the power to hurt you. Worse than that, you made it possible to hurt them. To disappoint them. The last thing in the world Nikolai wanted to do was hurt or disappoint Alicia, at least not more than he already had in this lifetime.
So he didn’t say anything. Not with words. He kissed her and hoped she would be able to understand what he meant to say, even if he couldn’t manage to say it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Snow. So much snow. Easily four feet of it, piled high in all directions. At least the power hadn’t gone out, and she’d gone to the grocery store a couple of days ago, so they weren’t going to run out of food.
“And the pipes won’t freeze,” Alicia said, tongue in cheek, as she pointed with her spatula at the still-dripping faucet. She was making French toast with apple chicken sausage.
Nikolai was in charge of the coffee, and he looked to where she was pointing. “I can fix that for you, you know. I should’ve done it already.”
She thought of how Ilya had promised the same thing, time after time. Nikolai, she reminded herself, was not Ilya. “I bet you could. You could fix it so hard.”
“So hard,” he agreed as he set out mugs, cream, sugar. He gave her a grin that lit her up inside. “I’d fix it for you so hard you’d forget it ever leaked.”
Flipping the toast in the skillet, Alicia guffawed. “Perv.”
“That smells good.” He came up behind her to nuzzle at her shoulder, bared by the edges of her robe. “I like that you cook.”
“Trust me, it’s no big thing,” she scoffed, but his praise warmed her. “It’s just eggs, milk, bread, sugar.”
“I like that you’re cooking for me—how’s that?”
She slid the slices onto the platter she’d already filled and turned off the burner. “I’ll cook for you. You fix the faucet. It’ll be a love straight out of 1952.”
Love. The word had slipped out of her before she could stop it, but there was no calling it back. She didn’t want to think about this morning, how she’d spilled her emotional guts all over him and had received only silence in reply. She focused on the French toast instead.
At the table, she sat across from him and watched as he loaded his plate with food. He’d already poured her coffee, though he hadn’t added anything to it. She did: sugar and cream enough to turn the liquid to a light-caramel color. They ate in companionable silence. She could look over his shoulder to the window behind him. Snow still falling.
“This is nice,” Alicia said. Trying again. Stupid, she thought. Don’t be stupid, Alicia.
Nikolai looked up, his cheeks bulging with food he chewed carefully before swallowing. He washed it down with a long swig of coffee. “What, the coffee?”
> “Us. Here.” She’d forked a bite of food but set it back on the plate. “Together.”
“Yeah,” he answered after a few seconds’ hesitation and a quick glance at the windows. “Snowbound.”
“It would be great to do it even without the snow,” she said, and when he didn’t answer, she sighed. She shook her head. “You can’t even say that it would be great?”
“Alicia . . .”
“What?” she challenged, and got up to take her plate to the counter. She’d hardly touched a bite of her food and set about packaging it up to put away in the fridge. She wouldn’t look at him.
“I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
She turned at that. “About what?”
“Us.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” she said finally, her voice steady. “But what are we doing, if you can’t even tell me that you want to be with me?”
“You should know that I want to. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Nikolai frowned and pushed his plate away.
“So why can’t you just say so?” She leaned against the counter and pulled her robe closer around her. She was naked beneath it, and felt it.
“What do you want me to say?”
She sighed. “Anything. Something. Never mind.”
His phone buzzed from where he’d left it plugged in on the counter, and Nikolai got up to answer it. “Yes. No, it’s fine. I haven’t . . . I’d have to check. Well, I’m not there right now. I’m across the street.”
She straightened, looking at him. He looked back. She waited.
“I came to check on her, yes. She’s fine. I will. Where are you?” He paused, looking away from her. “Okay. You know it could be a while before the plows come back here. I think everything’s going to be shut down for a while. Yeah, I will. Okay. Sure. Yes . . . yes, Mom. You, too.”
He disconnected with a sigh and put the phone back on the counter. Alicia turned away to busy herself with putting away the extra food she’d made. She’d lost her appetite. When he came up behind her to put his hands on her hips, she didn’t push him away, but she didn’t lean back into him, either.