Yuri

by Marian Tee

  It was another half hour before they left the shower, Yuri remembering belatedly to shampoo and condition her hair before helping her to dress. They ate a quick breakfast at the private kitchen in their floor and after, it was time for Kalli to attend her first day of college.

  It would have been a perfect day, Yuri thought grimly, if only Leon Arlotta hadn’t managed to get his damn foot in first.

  The two of them stared at each other at the doorway. Leon had offered to take Kalli to class, supposedly as part of his duty as her official guide. Kalli had accepted, and Yuri had to pretend he didn’t mind. He hadn’t been able to think of any way to let his fiancée know the Italian was a piece of shit without breaking her heart.

  Helios joined him as he watched Leon and Kalli walk away. The other man had his golf cart with him again, and he heard Kalli ask if she could drive it one day. His fists clenched at the thought that it would be another man teaching his woman to drive.

  “I’m surprised you’re letting her go,” Helios remarked.

  Only when Leon and Kalli had driven away did Yuri answer. “I can’t keep her caged forever.”

  “Fair enough.” As Yuri closed the front door, Helios continued, “But you’re forgetting something, I think.”

  “And what is that, ex-President?” he asked politely.

  “A cage’s not a cage when you have the key to it.”

  Yuri’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I wonder, though. Would having the key matter when one of them is claustrophobic? He might never leave the cage, might even throw away the key so neither of them would be able to leave.”

  Both of them knew that this time, Yuri wasn’t just talking about Kalli.

  Helios said slowly, “You could look at it differently. What happened before…maybe it only happened because you were caged with the wrong person.”

  The former president’s words remained with him even when lunch had come and gone and he was preparing a bento box for Kalli, thinking it would make a good surprise.

  “Oh my God, what are you doing?” Hallie hurried inside the kitchen, unable to believe that Aria had indeed been telling the truth. Yuri Athanas was in the kitchen and cooking!

  She reached his side, took one look at the table, and burst into laughter. It was a complete mess, with bento making tools scattered next to bowls of discarded food.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Yuri muttered gruffly when he saw her gaze at the mountains of bread and egg he had on plates, all of them imperfectly shaped. “I told Aria I’ll be fixing tonight’s meal, and no one’s going to dare not eat it when they find out I cooked it.”

  A good point, Hallie thought ruefully, although it was also openly ruthless, which was rare for her brother. Yuri had always liked to manipulate from behind the scenes.

  Taking a seat on one of the stools, she asked curiously, “What are you planning to do?”

  “Onigiri at the start,” he said, disgruntled, “but it proved too hard so now I think I’ll stick with a sandwich.”

  She peeked at his latest pièce de résistance and smiled at the design he had chosen. “How romantic,” she teased.

  “Shut up.”

  She pretended to be offended. “Is that how it is now? You snap everyone’s heads off except Kalli’s?”

  Yuri said with charming gentleness, “Shut up.” His sister burst into peals of laughter, and his hands temporarily stilled at the sound of it.

  That, he thought absently, was what he had promised to marry Kalli for. That was what he had pretended to love Kalli for, and knowing that she was now safe from harm made Yuri unable to regret his decision.

  He looked at her then. Pretty little Hallie, whose eyes were so like his. Her dazzling femininity hid a strong mind and an even stronger will to survive. She was dressed like a doll again, and he found himself thinking, not for the first time, if there was a more serious meaning behind it.

  Hallie noticed her brother staring at her, and she asked uneasily, “Is something wrong?”

  Yuri shook his head. “No. I was just thinking.” He started on the bento making again.

  Sensing that Yuri wasn’t completely telling her the truth, she asked, “Is it because of Dr. Korba? Is he bothering you again?”

  “That’s one.”

  She frowned. “You should just block his number. I mean, you can’t really believe what he’s saying about Kalli, can you?” She shook her head at the mere thought of it. “It’s like what you said. She’s different. Special. But she’s not crazy.”

  “I know.”

  She bit her lip, and suddenly it was clear to her. “Oh, Yuri.”

  When Hallie’s voice caught, Yuri glanced sharply at his sister, and that was when he realized he hadn’t fooled her at all. “Hallie—”

  She shook her head vehemently. “You must listen to me this time.” She bit her lip harder, using it to control her tears. “You were never to blame, and more than that, you managed to save me. Now, it’s time to let go.”

  Yuri didn’t answer, but he hadn’t stopped her from speaking either, and Hallie knew she should be thankful for that.

  Or not.

  Because behind the kitchen door was Lily, listening to every word that her vengeful, bitter heart knew could be used against Kalliope Antoniou in the future. She just had to find someone who could help her play her cards right.

  Chapter Fourteen

  While Kalli stared at the bento box Yuri held in his hands like it was a snake in the grass, other people in the hallway stared at them, their heads twisting in their direction as they walked past Yuri and Kalli.

  This, Yuri thought grimly, was getting damn awkward, but knowing Kalli, she wasn’t feeling a thing.

  Another half-minute passed and they remained standing outside her baking class. Yuri had come to pick her up, no different he knew from a nervous parent anxious to see if his kid hadn’t been traumatized by his first day of school.

  In front of him, Kalli continued to stare at his bento in silence. She was perfectly beautiful and motionless, the complete opposite of a statue coming to life. Instead, she was like a girl turned immortal in marble, with her alabaster skin and exquisitely symmetrical features.

  “Are you going to take it or not?” he asked finally.

  Violet eyes met his. “But is it really for me?”

  He was exasperated. “I told you it is.”

  Silence again, and just when he had decided to simply retract his offer – even if it did dent his ego like hell – she said simply, “I find it hard to believe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one else has done it for me.”

  It was his turn to be skeptical. “Not even Mila Antoniou?”

  She nodded then held out her hands.

  Placing the bento box in her hands, he murmured, “I see.” But he didn’t. How could her grandmother not do something this simple for her? Surely she had known that food worked like some kind of value metric for her granddaughter?

  “Do you want to eat it now?” he heard himself ask. “I know a nice spot in the garden at the back of this building.”

  A slow nod, but her eyes were shining like he had told her he could give her the moons and the stars.

  Taking her hand, he led her into the heart of the university’s gardens, which boasted of award-winning landscaping. Once in a while, he would hear her sigh, like the beauty surrounding her took her breath away. Again, it highlighted how different she was from other heiresses, most of whom would have taken such loveliness for granted.

  Differences, Yuri thought, he now appreciated.

  “We’re here.” He brought her to a gazebo facing the garden’s manmade pond.

  Kalli looked around her and then told him gravely, “It’s perfect.”

  And private, Yuri thought. He had his guards circle the perimeter to prevent anyone from interrupting them.

  When they were seated across each other, Kalli finally opened her bento box, which contained two pieces of blackened panda-shaped t
oast as well as a heart-shaped sunny side up, also badly burnt.

  “Wow.” She stopped speaking as one of his guards approached them, handing Yuri and Kalli a cup of coffee each, which had been freshly brewed from a nearby specialty coffee shop. When the guard had walked away, Kalli told him baldly, “This is unbelievably bad.”

  He burst into laughter.

  “But,” his fiancée continued in a queenly voice, “I shall enjoy it because you did it for me.” As she ate, she started telling him about her first day in class, where no one had looked at her like she wasn’t normal and the teacher had not hated Kalli for being a natural genius in the kitchen. She said the words so matter-of-factly it had him laughing again, to which Kalli remarked, “I do not see the humor in it.”

  After the meal and the coffee, he patted his thigh and again, she didn’t hesitate, climbing into his lap in broad daylight like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  If all women were without a coy bone in their bodies like Kalli, Yuri thought, it would be so damn easy for men to fall in love.

  Time passed in peaceful silence. He thought she was sleeping when she stirred and suddenly said his name.

  “What is it?” He couldn’t resist nuzzling the top of her head as he spoke.

  She looked up at him. “What we did this morning…”

  He raised a brow.

  She asked thoughtfully, “I can eat you, too, can’t I?”

  Yuri choked.

  “Right?”

  He cleared his throat. “Err…yes.” And from feeling one with nature, he was now feeling desperate to be one with the girl on his lap. He watched her chew on her lip as she turned his question over her curious little mind. What he would do, Yuri thought hungrily, to chew on her pussy now.

  “I have decided,” Kalli suddenly said.

  His gaze narrowed, but his voice was deceptively polite as he said, “I have to warn you, sweetheart. If you’ve decided you do not want me again—”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” Kalli interrupted helpfully.

  He relaxed.

  “It’s the opposite.” Innocent, determined eyes sought his. “I’ve decided that I want you to teach me how to eat you.” He choked for the second time, and she pounded his back. “This is what Grandmother does,” Kalli told him, “when I choke on my food.” When he stopped choking, she peered at him, “Are you okay now?”

  “Yes.” His voice was strained. He was okay as a man at the end of his sexual tether could be.

  “Then I may eat you now?”

  God help him.

  Swallowing back a groan, he managed to say, “As soon as we get home, sweetheart.”

  She shook her head. “But I want you to teach me now.”

  Her mulish expression had him incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  “Please.” And it was almost like she was fluttering her lashes at him even though he knew she was probably only blinking. Either way, he was done for the moment he heard her say the P-word in that sweet, clear voice of hers.

  “You promise to do everything I say?” he heard himself ask even as a part of him questioned his sanity. Public sex had never been his thing, and yet here he was, his dick wanting to jump out of his pants and fuck the hell out of his fiancée.

  At Kalli’s nod, he said thickly, “Get down on your knees then.” He waited for her to ask why but she didn’t and instead slid to her knees gracefully.

  “Now…unzip my jeans.”

  A moment’s hesitation and then her fingers were fluttering over his zipper, wrestling with it at first before she got the hang of it and had his jeans completely unzipped.

  “Pull my dick out.”

  A deep breath before one of her hands slipped inside his jeans, and after it was his turn to inhale hard at the feel of her fingers gripping his dick. Another second and she had pulled his dick out.

  It looked almost furiously big, and her fingers reflexively tightened when his dick pulsed at her touch. After, she raised her eyes to his, whispering in awed disbelief, “It looks like it has a life of its own.”

  Despite his arousal doing its best to get his head unscrewed, Yuri managed a grin. “It kinda does.” When her gaze returned to his cock, he asked, “Are you certain you still want to do this?”

  “More than ever,” Kalli answered him without taking her gaze off his furiously pulsing dick between her fingers.

  Sucking his breath at her answer, he said hoarsely, “Then tighten your grip. Tighter. As hard…there.” Yuri felt beads of sweat forming at the side of his head as he fought to control his lust. “Now, start moving your hand up and down. Don’t loosen your grip…just keep moving…yes.”

  The word had come out in a hiss, and Kalli’s fingers stilled as she looked up sharply at him. “Did I do something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “You’re doing everything right,” he rasped out, “and that’s what…” She didn’t let him finish, her hand moving up and down again, and he closed his eyes at the sheer pleasure of it.

  God.

  She was such a damn natural with this.

  “Faster.”

  Kalli obeyed his command without question.

  “Are you ready to eat me?”

  His fiancée answered simply, “Yes.”

  “Then do it,” he said harshly. His eyes opened. “Lower your head and slowly take my dick into your mouth.” He groaned as the first inch of his dick slipped into the moist, snug warmth. “Open your lips wider, sweetheart.” Another inch slipped in as her mouth opened wider, and he groaned again.

  “Relax your throat,” he told her roughly, “or you won’t be able to eat all of me.”

  He could feel her struggle to heed his warning. Gag reflex kicked in once or twice, but then suddenly his dick was sliding all the way in. In the next second, his entire length had disappeared into her mouth, and Yuri groaned.

  His fingers sinking into her hair, he told her, “Eat me. Move your head up and down. Release my cock then get it back…oh God, yes, like that, exactly, sweetheart, God…” And this time, she did something of her own accord.

  She started sucking without being commanded.

  He threw his head back with a guttural sound.

  She sucked him hard and deep, her mouth moving tirelessly up and down and his dick, and the moments trickled too slow and too fast at the same time. Pleasure so intense began to build inside him it had Yuri gasping and stiffening under her ministrations.

  “I’m about to come,” he gritted out. “If you don’t want to try tasting me, now’s the time to stop eating me.”

  Her eyes wide at his words, Kalli slowly shook her head, her mouth still stuffed with his dick.

  The sight of it proved too much and, holding her head tightly, he began thrusting his dick deeper into her. Kalli’s throat was completely relaxed, allowing him to sink fully into her mouth. When she didn’t panic at his touch, he slowly increased his pace, and the pleasure inside him sharpened.

  And then there was no way to think.

  Pleasure took hold of him, Yuri coming with a growl and his movements becoming wild. He fucked her mouth as he came, stuffing her mouth with his dick again and again.

  And she took all of it, to the very last drop.

  Later, with Kalli snuggled in his arms as he carried her on their way back to Afxisi’s headquarters, he heard her say drowsily, “Yuri.”

  “Mm?” He kissed her head. He couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t know what’s changed,” she confessed, “but I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting you now.”

  He didn’t answer even though just listening to her suddenly made the truth so blindingly clear

  Things had changed when he had changed.

  Her body had become his the moment Yuri had accepted that his heart was hers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Day 14.

  It had been two weeks since Kalliope Antoniou had come to live with him, and Yuri had recently found himself starting each day with a mental diary. Fr
om day one, however, the main entry had been the same.

  Still torture.

  It was the simplest way to describe the agony of lying beside Kalli, who at first tormented him with her indifference. Fast forward a week, and she still tormented him, this time with the knowledge that his fiancée was his for the taking.

  But for some reason, he just couldn’t make himself touch her. Even knowing that she now wanted him as much as he wanted her, he couldn’t make himself cross that line.

  If he took her virginity, that was it. There would be no turning back, whether or not she deserved someone like him.

  As if sensing she was in his thoughts, Kalli suddenly snuggled close, her breasts brushing against his arm. Her nipples puckered, and his dick twitched.

  Yup, Yuri thought resignedly. Still torture.

  Beside him, Kalli asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  He allowed himself to smile in the darkness. “You.”

  She giggled.

  He loved that sound. Her laughter, her giggles, and her gasps – he loved every sound of pleasure she made, and it was terrifying how much that sound had become important to Yuri in such a short time.

  Turning on his side so he could move back and place a bit more distance between him and the temptation of her breasts, he asked, “And you?” His voice was gently teasing. “Are you thinking about me?”

  “All the time,” she said simply.

  Ah, Kalli. He wanted to tell her not to say such words so easily, but he didn’t. To do so would ask her to stop being different – to start lying and be as normal and deceitful as the rest of them – and that, he realized, he didn’t want her to do.

  The longer he knew her, the more he thought that the world needed more people like Kalli and less of people like him.

  “Yuri?” Kalli inched closer towards him, closer and closer until he had no choice but to cradle her head in the nook of his arm and allow her breasts to brush tantalizingly against his chest.

  STILL. TORTURE.