Ryan was staring down into my face. He looked far more sober than I felt.
“We can’t do this. We’re both too fucked up. This is the vodka—”
“Wrong,” I snapped. “This is what we really want. The vodka just got us to drop our inhibitions.”
“It’s still not right, and you know it. I know what I want. Even when I’m sober all I want to do is get inside you. I think about it constantly, and some part of my brain is continually plotting it. And I would always wonder if this was me manipulating you.”
I squinted at him. “You don’t have to make that decision for me.”
“Vodka doesn’t make decisions for you, either. Yet you slapped me. Something I’m betting you wanted to do but would never ever do while you were sober.”
I let out a long breath and looked away. He was right, of course. But damned if I was going to admit that to him. I’d been counting on a good orgasm tonight. Jerk.
He relaxed against me, as if seeing that reason had finally seeped through my vodka fog. I could see why Russians loved this stuff.
“Gray, I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t pity me.”
“I don’t. I’m just saying I’m sorry. I—I’m sorry I hurt you and I’m sorry about how I did it.”
He pulled back, rolling away from me, but he didn’t leave the bed. He reached up and rubbed his eyes. His boxers were misshapen around the huge bulge of his erection. My own swollen arousal was causing no small discomfort inside my panties.
Goddamn him for still having his wits. I could have used a good orgasm tonight. An amazing one. Given to me by him.
But he was right. We were drunk and hurting, and this wasn’t a good idea from any angle.
To my shock, he started to laugh. It was a quiet, huffing sort of laugh. An ironic laugh. “I have to admit…I was wondering why you were being so nice to me all the time. Why you weren’t showing your emotions. I would have slapped me up a few times, too, in your place.”
I didn’t feel like laughing. I just stared up at the ceiling, blinking, trying not to cry. Trying not to show still more emotions. Instead I cleared my throat. “You already carry a pretty damn heavy burden of unnecessary guilt. No need for me to add to it.”
He was silent for a moment, and I turned my head to stare into his face. He looked…stricken. As if that hadn’t even occurred to him. His brow wrinkled. “You were trying to protect me?” His voice shook when he asked it.
I didn’t reply, just stared, just watched as the emotion crossed his features and then was gone. He’d just proven to me that I was right. His guilt was pulling him down and killing everything that was inside, every living piece of him. And the mere belief that I was too good for him was proof of that.
Puzzlingly, he reached out with the back of his index finger and lightly stroked my cheek. “Gray…”
I just shook my head, for once speechless, emotion tying my tongue. Emotion that I wish could show in my face. But the tears wouldn’t come. Tears I wished would speak for me, tell him how deeply I felt for him, how much I cared in spite of my earlier anger.
The tears wouldn’t come.
My voice was a scratchy whisper. “Please, Ryan…no.”
He slowly pulled his hand away, as if reluctant to stop touching me. “Okay.”
For a long time, we just lay like that, him staring at me, me staring up at the ceiling, wishing for tears.
“Vodka wasn’t such a good idea, was it?” he said finally.
I laughed. “That’s the first thing you’ve said tonight that I can agree with.”
“Huh. Okay. Be right back. I need to prep us so we aren’t so hungover tomorrow.” He left and returned with a huge jug of ice water, two glasses and a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet.
He poured us each a glass and we clinked them. “Down the hatch. We have to do three of these in the next hour. And we should take the aspirin as soon as we can, too. We’re at high altitude, so it’s going to hit even harder than normal.”
I sputtered on the gulp I was currently swallowing. “I am not getting up to pee on my tweaked leg that many times.”
“I’ll carry you.”
“Wow, free rides to the bathroom and I don’t even have to date you.”
He stared at me for a moment before finishing his first glass of water and then poured us each a new glass.
“Are you?” He asked in a thick, hoarse voice and then cleared his throat and elaborated. “Going to date this dude—Aaron?”
I sat back and stared at him, still comfortable with being blunt with him through the fog of my inebriation. “That depends.”
He looked up. “On what?”
“On what happens after the test flight.”
His forehead creased and he was at first visibly confused, sipping at his glass of water and staring at me. He took a deep breath and let it go. “Your dad just wanted the best for you.”
I shook my head. “He wants to control me. But I’m an adult. And you’re an adult. And we do have choices, even if you refuse to see it that way. If we decided to go forward with this after the test flight, he has little leverage. He’ll have nothing to hold over your head.”
“But he’s still your father.”
I nodded. “Yes. And my relationship with him is between me and him.”
His face was utterly passive. I could almost see the gears turning in his brain, but his eyes were flat, inexpressive. I couldn’t tell whether he loved the idea or he hated it. My heart started double-timing, and of course, the clicking of my prosthetic valve gave me away.
His eyes lowered to rest on my sternum, but he didn’t smile. Didn’t do or say anything.
He hissed out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Your dad’s threat wasn’t the only reason I broke things off.”
I stared, at once stunned he’d tell me this and yet not overly surprised at what he was saying.
“I don’t care what he said to you. What horrible, hurtful things he said. You can’t believe it. You can’t believe those things about yourself.”
His eyes flicked up to me. “He didn’t say a damn thing that wasn’t true, Gray. That’s the whole point.”
Something dark and dangerous clamped around my throat. A sudden vicious anger at my own dad. My face flushed, but before I could needlessly rant about him, Ryan took a breath and continued.
“I made a choice because I had to. And that choice told me a lot. I chose to fly again over being with you and that, right there, means he was right. Any man who would make that choice doesn’t deserve you.”
My hand knotted in the bedspread, and I struggled to find something to say. Speechless and desperately wanting those healing tears—like in the early days when I could sob alone into my pillow. I craved that cathartic release, but I was denied that too, just as I’d been denied the orgasm I’d so desperately wanted.
Ryan seemed to be watching me carefully.
“You don’t need to protect me anymore at your own expense, Gray. You can tell me that I hurt you. You can be angry at me. In fact, it makes it easier for me. I understand anger. I don’t understand…” He shook his head.
I looked away. My voice, when I finally spoke, was surprisingly even and calm. “Yes, you hurt me. But you hurt yourself more, and I think that’s truly what this is all about. Breaking things off was not about not deserving me. It was about your belief that you don’t deserve to be happy. That you need to keep punishing yourself.”
He sipped at his water and pointed to my glass, silently urging me to follow suit. For long minutes we sat in silence, drinking water, sending each other furtive looks.
I wanted to smash sense into his head. Maybe that’s what the slap had been about. But my frustrated and desperate actions while drunk would only be something to regret in the morning.
And hopefully we wouldn’t have to add hideous hangovers to that regret.
I set aside my final glass of water. “I have to pee,” I d
eclared.
Ryan obediently stood and put his glass on the nightstand. Then he bent and picked me up. And though it didn’t take a drunk woman to be attracted to this amazingly gorgeous man, I had to admit to myself that my hormones were raging still from that intense make-out session. His arms came around me and pull me to his hard chest. With me in his arms, he made his way out the bedroom doorway and into the bathroom. This only served to ramp up my senses all over again. He gently deposited me near the toilet and then turned and left, shutting the door after him.
And he waited just outside to pick me up and carry me all the way back. Once he laid me on the bed, he checked my wound under the bandage to make sure I hadn’t started bleeding again.
Suddenly, he yawned. “I should probably go collapse,” he said.
“Or you could just collapse here. This bed is big, and it’s not like anything’s going to happen. And I’m going to guess that the pull-out bed sucks.”
He laughed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”
I pointed to Keely’s untouched side of the bed. “Sleep there, then.”
Much to my astonishment, he put up no resistance. Before he settled next to me, however, I crawled under the blanket and slowly, so did he.
“My brains are pickled,” I said.
“That’s the idea…nice and numb. Feels great, doesn’t it? Long live vodka.”
“Mmm. Do Russians really drink it to keep warm all winter?” I asked as he settled in beside me and my head fell against his massive shoulder. He hesitated. We were still wearing just a small amount of clothing—him in just his boxers and me in my panties and t-shirt. And we were under the covers together. Everything within my vision and my perception glowed crystal clear and burned hot with the buzz, but I was all too aware of my own fatigue, too.
“Naw, vodka would never keep you warm in a Russian winter. You have never ever known cold like that.”
“You spent a lot of time there?” I looked up at him.
He smiled. “In Star City. Where they trained us to go up in the Soyuz.”
“Mmm.” I closed my eyes, liking the way his shoulder felt under my head. “I wish I could have been an astronaut.”
“You would have been an excellent astronaut.”
I started laughing. In the state I was in, that was the most hilarious thing in the world. I fell back against my pillow. “You’re so funny,” I slurred.
His hand came up and he hesitated before he touched me. “You aren’t going to slap me if I touch your hair, are you?”
I swallowed a thick lump in my throat. “I’m sorry I hit you. I shouldn’t have.”
His hand went to its intended target, sifting through my hair. His voice was quiet when he responded. “It didn’t hurt—at least not in the way that you think.”
He yawned again, covering his mouth with the back of his hand while lightly stroking my hair with the other one. His yawn prompted me to yawn, which prompted another from him.
“So, you’re okay to turn off the lights?” I glanced at him.
He was silent for a long time, then quietly he said, “Yes, you can turn them off.”
I noticed he had regulated his breathing and was staring up at a fixed point on the ceiling.
With a quick count of three, I flipped the switch on the light and plunged the room into darkness. I listened closely for any change in his breathing. He did not appear to be moving.
“It might be dark, but I have something to focus on. I never get tired of listening to the tickety tock of your heart.”
I reached up and sifted my fingers through his short hair, closing my eyes. “I wish…” I said faintly, and even I could hear the extreme sleepiness in my voice. “I wish you could see yourself the way I do. That you’re deserving of so much more than this shame, torment and pain.”
He did not reply, and I felt myself relentlessly tugged toward dreamland. After long minutes of silence, my hand dropped, and my eyelids fell.
He turned, then and lightly kissed my hair. Then he whispered something I didn’t understand. Was it slurred? No. It was Russian. He said something to me in Russian, for some weird reason.
Like why would I understand something he said in Russian?
I fell asleep just as the answer came to me. He said something he didn’t want me to understand but that he had to say aloud.
Sleep took me then, mercifully, or I would have been up half the night trying to figure out all the possibilities.
Chapter 17
Gray
Many hours later, sunlight filtered in brightly through the window and stabbed my eyes. Only then did I realize that we’d been too drunk to have the forethought to lower the blinds. With a groan, I squeezed my eyes shut again. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of a pounding headache at my temple that I’d been expecting. Not that I was all that experienced with hangovers, but there was only a vague, dull ache behind my eyes and my mouth was dry with an awful taste in it.
I was certain the real punishment would come when I got out of bed.
It appeared that sometime during the night I’d grown too warm, and instead of being logical and kicking off the covers, I’d torn off my shirt instead. And my legs and arms were inextricably entangled with the larger, heavier body next to me.
The first thing that I noticed was his earthy smell and the feeling of being wrapped up in him. Then the sensations immediately brought back those few weeks in which we’d have sex every night only to fall asleep exhausted—and naked—in each other’s arms and wake up that way shortly before having sex again in the morning.
The memory of it, in combination with this current situation, was enough to have that heat of arousal crackle through me as I became more aware of him, his arm lying over my waist, his bare chest pressed to my naked back, the hand cupping my uncovered breast. His steady, slow breath in my hair. His hard erection pressed against my butt.
Damn. Not good. Or rather…so good. The nipple under his rough hand had long since tightened under his touch. But I couldn’t let myself lie there and endure that torture, so I moved, because despite the headache, I was hornier than hell and his nearness was not making it any better.
As I pulled my arm out from under his, the grip on my breast tightened.
Damn. What exactly was he dreaming about? I scooted my butt away from his body, but my legs were both pinned by his.
I wiggled them out from the tangle, and he shifted slightly, giving a small moan.
“Ryan,” I called.
He came awake quickly, like he typically did. “Yes?” he answered in a groggy voice.
“I need to go to the bathroom. I can’t get up.”
His hand twitched. He seemed to be unaware of where it was, and I swallowed, feeling the zing of his touch from my nipple straight down to my core. He stroked my nipple with his fingers and I jumped.
Then I firmly grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away, pushing myself to sit up as he rolled onto his back and freed my legs from his. His eyes immediately fixated on my chest. As the air was chilly in the room, now, both my nipples were perky and saying good morning to him. I grabbed the sheet and used it to cover up, glancing around the bed and floor for my shirt.
“Why is your shirt off?” he mumbled in a clearly disappointed voice. “Did I miss something fun?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you think you blacked out and can’t remember sex? Wait—do you remember last night at all?” I bent and grabbed my t-shirt from the foot of the bed and slipped it on. It ended up inside-out, but I didn’t bother to fix it.
He was rubbing his eyes through closed eyelids. “Yes, I remember last night. I only had six shots.”
My eyebrows rose again. Hmm. I’d only been around him truly drunk once—that time in Houston. He’d been pretty sauced then, but I had no idea how much he’d had to get him into that state.
“Ugh, I feel gross,” I said, smacking my lips together.
Ryan sat up then. “Don’t go anywhere. I have a remedy.”
“It’s okay. I’m not that hungover.”
He ignored me, getting out of bed. The first thing I noticed, of course, was the huge morning wood in his boxers. Well he had touched and looked at my boobs before I’d covered up… Tit for tat. Literally. I bit my lip.
“Don’t move,” he said as he left the room and slowly went up the stairs. He was gone for a good ten minutes and I had to pee. In addition, I was increasingly apprehensive about whatever this “remedy” was.
Just when I was going to go hide in the bathroom anyway, I heard him come down the stairs again. He entered the room with two small glasses partially full of a grayish-yellow liquid. That shit did not look appealing.
“What the hell is that?” I recoiled when he proffered me a glass.
“Pickle juice. Raw egg. Ukrainian hangover remedy.”
I scooted back when he pushed it in my face, shaking my head vehemently. “No way.”
“It works every time. Watch.” He tipped his glass to his face and downed it without so much as a shudder.
“You also eat disgusting reconstituted astronaut food while floating around in zero-g so I’m not buying.”
He put his empty glass on the nightstand and sat down. “You have a crappy taste in your mouth and a headache. If you get up, you’re going to be sick to your stomach. The salt from the pickle juice and the protein from the egg will restore the balance of salinity and enzyme level in your blood.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You are shitting me.”
He nudged it at me. “Just down it all at once. You won’t even taste it.”
I gritted my teeth and took the glass from him, peering down from the top.
“Don’t look at it,” he said. “Like a boss, Gray. Do it. Do it,” he chanted.
I narrowed my eyes at him and followed his advice not to look at it. Plugging my nose so I wouldn’t have to taste the crap, I slung it back. It was salty and viscous—a little slimy and thick. And though the taste wasn’t altogether gross, the texture of the raw egg was. Eww. Worse than a raw oyster, which I’d only had once in defiance of my father, who had forbidden me from eating raw foods for fear it would cause me medical problems.
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