“No, no. Christ no.”
“So they were complex, then. They were strange and conflicted.”
“It’s not that they were complicated or fucked up or anything like what I feel for you. But don’t you get it? That’s the fucking problem. Where I’m at with you is a hundred times worse than where I was at with her. A thousand times worse. So what kind of fuck-up am I gonna make here, huh? How big is that mess going to be?”
“There won’t be a mess. We’ve just established that you didn’t do one single fucking thing wrong. You didn’t fool around on company time or take longer breaks than you were supposed to. You didn’t even really like her all that much, which proves that emotion did not get in the way. So what’s the problem here?”
“The problem is that I just don’t want to fucking have these feelings, all right? I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel—”
He almost stopped before the final letter, on the end of the word. The L was so silent it could have been absent altogether. He could have maybe turned it into something else…but she could see he didn’t want to. As soon as he’d said it, all the tension drained out of him. He let out a breath, so full of relief it was almost a laugh.
And then it was a laugh, all weary with rue and half-regretful.
“Huh. Guess you had the right of it about five minutes ago.”
“Yeah I think that might be kind of the case.”
“Did I just actually say that I don’t want to feel out loud?”
“Well, you sort of cut off the end of your sentence. So there’s a possibility you were going to say ‘I don’t want to feel an old man’s testicles’. But judging by the way the rest of this conversation has gone, I don’t think so.”
He shook his head in a way she absolutely adored. It was one part serious, two parts shoot, I fucked it up. There was some squinting, and a bit of finger snapping.
“Damn. Was sorta hoping for that testicle thing.”
“You can still say it if you want to. And I can pretend that’s what you really meant too, if you’d like me to. In fact, we could just erase this conversation entirely, pretend none of this ever happened. Rewind back to before we touched each other, before you kissed my cunt, before you said the things you did to me last night in bed. I’d be willing to do that, if it made you happy.”
She would have, she would. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but because of his eyes when she offered it. They were so warm with gratitude suddenly, so full of hope and longing. She’d opened the door for him to leave, if he wanted to.
But knowing that the option was there was enough to make him stay.
“Do you honestly think it would?”
“Maybe. Maybe it wouldn’t be so much happy as…some kind of status quo,” she said, and this time his laugh was big. It was big and it was startling. It came with a thigh slap, though after he’d spoken she understood why.
“How do you do this? How do you break me down like this?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never broken anyone down before.”
“You do know. Come on. How do you get me so well?”
She considered for a second. A second was all she needed. She could see the answer already, right in front of her…as though he were a mirror, instead of a man.
“I guess…I guess I just understand where you’re coming from. It’s hard to let your feelings out to roam around all wild and free. You don’t know what they might do, or how they might hurt you. Most of the time it’s easier to keep them small and sheltered—that way, if something bad happens it won’t matter. They’ll still be safe inside you, instead of carved up on some unexpected butcher’s block. Maybe he won’t return my feelings, maybe he will and things will go bad…and of course worst of all…maybe I’ll love him, and he’ll leave me.”
“I’d never leave you. God I’d never leave you.”
The sentiment was so unexpected that she couldn’t quite say what she wanted to next—maybe you won’t have a choice. It just didn’t fit with the atmosphere. It didn’t fit with the sudden spark behind her eyes and the warmth spreading through her chest, or the way he seemed to reach for her. His hand faltered before he made it, but the gesture was there between them nonetheless.
And so she said the only thing that mattered, instead.
“I’d never leave you, either. You know that, right? You know that I’d never hurt you. Just in case that’s what you’re really worried about. And if you wanted to stop, at any point…if you want to—”
“I don’t want to stop. I want to grab you.”
“You want to what?”
She had to check. Maybe she’d hallucinated.
“I want to grab you. I want to grab you now, really bad. Is that okay?”
“Oh my God that is really, really okay,” she said, but only because she didn’t really understand what he was saying. He used the word grab and her mind filled with images of him rushing around to sweep her into his arms, or something similarly romantic. Instead, he reached across the table with his two massive hands and actually got her under the armpits.
And then while she was busy gasping, he lifted her up. He lifted her up off the ground and into the air, as though she weighed about as much as a bag of rice. In fact, she was sure most people would have had trouble with such a small item—but not Sergei. He didn’t even have any trouble hauling a human being over a table. She felt her sneakers knock against the wood and heard the clatter of the salt and pepper shakers as he did this crazy thing.
She didn’t get much chance to worry about them, however. The second he had her in the circle of one enormous arm—pinned to his chest like a bug beneath a microscope—he swept everything else away along with them. Plates smashed and cutlery clattered. They were definitely going to have to buy a new gravy boat.
She was probably going to have to buy a new mind to go with it. Her old one was all in pieces, and the bits that weren’t were struggling to catch up. Had he honestly just heaved her across the table? And then followed this with sweeping everything onto the floor? The first was stunning but the second was unbelievable.
Sergei did not sweep things. He placed them. He placed them practically and with great deliberation, after he’d devised a plan and analyzed every potential pitfall. She knew he did, because she’d seen him laying the goddamn thing he’d just destroyed. She’d watched him measure the space between each knife and fucking fork, and now it was all over the floor.
The constant conversations have addled his mind, she thought, but she couldn’t deny the other idea that followed hot on its heels. This idea was vicious and heated and full of a weird kind of triumph, and it came the second he pinned her to the table. His hand went to her hip and his other one to the waistband of her sweatpants, and then it just burst out, glorious and unbidden.
Good.
Oh yes good yes he was just going to go for it. He was just going to rip her pants down and spread her legs—though it was still a glorious shock when he really did it. He was still staid and stoic Sergei in her head, so every inch of this change was a new kind of bliss. Her body jolted when he tugged them down and buzzed with pleasure once she was all bare for him—just like it had in the gym.
Only this was so much more intense. He didn’t hesitate here, conflicted. There was no tense look of doubt all over his face. And he didn’t stop with one outrageous thing, once he’d started down that path. The table wasn’t enough, and the plates all over the floor, and the bareness of her body below the waist.
He had to go one step further, this time. Twelve steps further, in fact. Once the sweatpants were off he went for her t-shirt, shoving it up with both hands in so rough a way her bra went with it. Suddenly she was completely naked, half-tangled in clothes that he’d almost torn off—though both problems presented their own rewards.
They meant that he could stroke her from the jut of her collarbone to the crook of her knees, palming her sensitive breasts on the way down—and he did. Oh he did. He touched her as if he
’d never touched a woman before, pausing only to explore more deeply and fondle more intently. His thumb found the hollow of her navel and the tight little tips of her tits, caressing both before restlessly moving on. He caressed the curve of her hip, pressing just long enough for her to feel grabbed or grasped or something similarly delicious.
But more importantly, he did all this while she was trapped. While her arms were caught in the clothes he’d shoved up, and her hands were tangled in her bra. For a few endless, torturous minutes she was actually bound—she was actually held captive. She couldn’t move or do anything and oh God that was much nicer than it had any right to be. A burst of arousal went through her the second the idea occurred, so fierce she came close to biting her own tongue.
And it got better too. It got so much better once she’d fought the clothes up a little farther, because they just kind of…covered her face a little bit. They blindfolded her, briefly, and apparently being blindfolded while some big, big guy hovered over your naked body…well…that was kind of electric.
She couldn’t see him. She didn’t know what he was doing. She could only hear his heavy, lust-choked breathing, like some insane engine heaving on and on. It seemed to get louder and louder the longer this went on for, and it was the same for the feel of his hands on her body. The less she could see, the more intense his every touch got.
He brushed the edge of her right knee with the back of his hand—those were his thick, rough knuckles, she could tell oh she could tell—and her whole body jumped. The skin there seemed to tighten; her every nerve came alive.
God only knew what would happen when he went back to her breasts. Likely as not she’d shoot right off the table, or maybe swoon into a coma. She was close to the latter anyway, and he’d barely done a thing so far. He’d just sort of stripped her, and maybe muttered a few things that made her hair stand on end—fuck you’re so sweet, she thought—and then stroked her body a bit.
He hadn’t done anything major.
She barely knew what major was. She held her breath, waiting for his hand on her chest, or maybe the inside of her thigh, sure and certain that those were the most intense things he could possibly do.
Then he just went ahead and cupped her cunt with one big hand. He got a hold of her there, as if he wanted to test the softness or the wetness or some other measure of her arousal that she didn’t really want to think about too hard. If she thought too hard about it, the top of her head was liable to come off.
He was squeezing her between her legs. And he was saying things. Things she wasn’t used to Sergei saying. That sweet comment had been bad enough—so bad she was sure she imagined it—but oh fuck his next words were so much more exciting. Baby, he said, baby, just like men did in sexy movies, and then he followed it with three words she could hardly wrap her mind around.
“You’re so wet,” he said.
But it wasn’t just the words themselves. It was the way he spoke them, all hoarse with desire and half-confused. There was even a shudder in there somewhere, so low and deep it shook through her bones. She squirmed to hear it and gasped when he said it again—how come you’re so wet?
But she also saw it more clearly, once he had.
He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand why all this turned her on so much. He probably thought he was crushing her with his giant man hands again, even though he was being almost as gentle as he was before. He had a firm grip on her sex, true. But the fingers he eased into her were slow and soft and almost tentative.
He just wanted to see, she thought. He just wanted to know how wet she was exactly. No pushing, no fucking, no forcing. Only this long, slippery slide into her body as he told her more things that simultaneously drove her wild and made her furious. I can’t believe you get like this, he said.
And suddenly the urge to set him straight was not an urge anymore.
“I get like this because you do it to me. You did this to me. Oh God you have no idea what you do to me,” she said, with at least thirty percent less coherence than she’d intended. It kind of came out in a great babble, if she was really being honest about it.
But it had the right effect.
It had an amazing effect.
One moment he was hesitantly touching her pussy with one careful hand. The next he was smothering her body with his, with all of him, with every bit from his thighs between hers to his chest against her chest to…oh…oh…
Was that his mouth touching hers? Was he kissing her? It was kind of hard to tell with her t-shirt still in the way, but so unexpected and new that even the smallest sense of it appeared enormous. They’d never done that before. It seemed impossible, but they hadn’t. He’d kissed her cunt and she’d touched her cheek to his and they’d come close, on a number of occasions.
But they’d never gone all the way.
And now he was trying to go all the way with what felt like ten tons of material between them. The t-shirt had made a brilliant blindfold, but it was an awful thing to kiss through. Frustration swamped her the moment she tried to press back at him, as did the urge to just tear the fucking thing away. She saw herself cutting holes in the material with her fingernails and clawing it off with various kitchen implements.
Though in the end she was glad she waited. Her patience was rewarded a thousand times over when he finally reached up and pulled the cotton barrier away—mainly because he didn’t pull it away at all. He lifted it just enough to bare her mouth and nothing more, then kissed her so softly through that sensory darkness.
She could have wept. She probably did weep. At the very least her face felt damp beneath the shifting cotton—and she couldn’t fault herself for it. Had she ever been kissed like this before? With such tenderness and attention? Somehow she’d always suspected that her date was busy looking over her shoulder at someone else when he ended the evening on a dry peck.
But she couldn’t make the same assumption with Sergei. His focus was all on her, all on kissing her, all on holding her in his arms until she melted into a mess that had once been Margot. His mouth almost sort of rubbed against hers, never lifting to take a breath or turn a different way or just maybe take a break. Always going deeper, pressing more firmly, everything so sinuous and slow she could hardly stand it.
She wanted to speed things up.
But at the same time, oh at the same time, could he maybe take even longer? Forever would be fine, she suspected. Forever was needed, if she was actually going to get around to touching him back. So far she’d let him do everything, though naturally she knew why. She’d experienced the same thing a dozen times before, and it was no different here.
What if he didn’t like it?
What if he didn’t want it?
There was always a chance, even if that chance seemed sort of slim and insane right now. Of course he wanted her to touch him. Of course he did. He was probably just waiting for it, mentally pondering why he did most of the work while she did fuck all.
Yet even that thought couldn’t quite get her into the right place.
Her hands still shook as she lifted them toward his body. In fact, they shook so much she had to wonder if gravity was somehow acting against them. It felt as if she had weights attached to her wrists, and now they were wobbling under the pressure.
And when she finally managed to put her hands on him, she did it in the weirdest possible way. She just kind of clamped to him, as though his ribs were made of metal and her palms were filled with magnets. He almost oofed, she was sure he did, but thankfully he didn’t stop the kiss. He didn’t break off and ask her what the fuck she was doing, so maybe it was okay.
It had to be okay, because her hands didn’t really want to stop there. They wanted to explore more of his great, broad back—the one she’d found herself fantasizing about on many occasions. And it didn’t disappoint, either. His skin felt as smooth as it always looked, and beneath that silky exterior she could feel every shift of those slab-like muscles. He leaned closer to her and something flexed, the
n tightened, and oh the steep arch of his spine…
She reveled in it. She had no idea why she reveled in it, but the feeling was there all the same. Maybe it had something to do with the image of him, crouched over her body like some hungry animal—shoulders up, the rest of him as close to her as he could get…
She didn’t know. She didn’t care.
She just wanted to stroke and squeeze and touch him all over, from the relative innocence of his back all the way down, down to something else. Would he mind if she touched something else? Those company-issue sweatpants always appeared so tempting on him, so ready to fall right off his hips, and they felt just as precarious as they looked. The waistband seemed flimsy beneath her fingertips, the effort to push them down minimal.
She could probably help things along with her feet, if need be. Or maybe her teeth, if he was amenable to it. All she had to do was just…
“Are you trying to shove my pants down with your toes?”
It was possible that she was attempting exactly that. The whole thing had sounded much more reasonable a moment ago, when she’d hatched the plan. But now that he was describing it in his eminently practical voice, the whole thing seemed a little foolish. She was pretty sure she’d put her foot in one of his pockets.
And to top it off, the pants weren’t going anywhere. No matter how much she squirmed and shoved and tried to ignore his incredulous comment, they just weren’t budging. They were still firmly in place when he made another, even more embarrassing follow-up comment.
“Is this how you usually try to remove clothes?”
“I’m blindfolded and pinned beneath you. I can’t move enough to—”
“Oh so this is really you trying to make me naked?”
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
“I’m not being a jerk. I’m really asking.”
She fell silent then, just so she could flick back over his comments. Suddenly, they seemed a little less sarcastic and a lot more uncertain—as though it was really possible that she might not be doing such a thing. As if it were crazy to think she would want to strip him out of his clothes.
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