He sighed, staring down at me. I was comically small, next to him, and I knew I couldn’t drag him if he decided to stay put. But I lifted my chin, defiant...and he nodded and fell into step beside me.
I led him up to the top floor, to his bedroom. I turned on just a single light by the bed, so the room was mostly shadow. Without words, I pushed his suit jacket off his shoulders and began unbuttoning his shirt. His breathing became husky. When he was topless, I knelt in front of him and helped him slip off his shoes and socks, then unbuckled his belt. I heard him inhale tightly, and I saw his cock twitch through his pants. I shoved them down, along with his boxers, and now he growled.
I looked up at him. “Don’t get excited,” I said dryly. “That isn’t what I’ve got in mind.”
He frowned down at me, his cock half hard and rising. But I stood and pushed at him, guiding him into his bathroom and then into the walk-in shower. I turned on the spray and pushed him in. Then I stripped off my own clothes and followed him. When he realized I was naked, too, he tried to grab me, but I slipped out of his hands and started washing him, instead, slicking my hands over his shoulders, his back, his chest, working my way down his body. His cock rose more every time my body brushed against his, but eventually I got him to stand still and be tended to. When I turned off the water, helooked...maybe five percent more relaxed than he had been.Well, it’s a start.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked me as I toweled him dry.
“Because you’re under unbelievable pressure, you just lost a friend, and you haven’t slept in two days. Because I know what it’s like to think you can solve everything by working harder. Sometimes you need someone to tell you to stop.”
“You know this because you had someone like that?”
“No,” I said. “Because I didn’t.”
He looked down at me and scowled, and I felt his protective anger lift me like a wave. I nearly melted right there, but I had a job to do. I pointed. “Lie down on the bed, on your front.”
He reluctantly lay down. I pulled on a bathrobe so I didn’t keep distracting him with my nakedness, grabbed the bottle of almond oil I’d taken from the kitchen, and climbed onto the bed next to him. I was used to him towering over me when we were standing up, but he wasn’t any smaller lying down. As I shuffled over and straddled him, I felt like a bird hopping around on the back of a rhino. My eyes roved over the contours of his back, with its twisting, dark tattoos, then down over the ass I’d admired so many times as I’d followed him around, hard and loaded with power. Lower down, on his right calf, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before, a raised scar, maybe from a bullet.Sothat’swhy he favors his other leg.
I put my hands on his shoulders and then poured a little almond oil over the back of my hand: a little trick to help heat the oil before it touched his skin. I smoothed the oil over the globes of his shoulders until they shone, then started massaging him. He cocked his head curiously, then closed his eyes.
His muscles were like tire rubber, barely giving at all. I went to work, pressing my thumbs deep as I pulled with my fingers, kneading him like dough. As I dug deeper, I started to find the knots and work each one free. The room went quiet except for our breathing. He’d tense under me, then grunt as I bore down on the knot, then sigh as the hard fibers melted to taffy. “Blyat’. Ty obuchen koldovstvu, zhenshchina.” he muttered at last.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re schooled in witchcraft, woman.”
I continued all the way down his back, helping work the tension out of him. “Now roll over on your back,” I told him.
He rolled over, and I started on the fronts of his shoulders. Now we were staring into each other’s eyes, and it was intimate...but not sexual, even if his eyes did keep dropping to the neck of my robe. This was about helping him, healing him. I moved down to his pecs, smoothing my hands over the wide slabs of his muscles and working the tension loose. I could feel his body changing, like a coiled spring slowly unwinding. His breathing slowed and eased, becoming deeper and more regular. He was relaxing, letting go. And then I started to hear a hitch in his breathing, a judder where there’d been smoothness. Things were coming to the surface.
I kept going, kneading the big knots and then the small knots and then the tiny ones, breaking down the walls all his tension had put up. And then…
“Yakov always remembered my birthday,” he said. “Even though I never remembered his. He bought me these dumb fucking gifts. A hat that holds beer cans. A backscratcher.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept going. My job was just to help him get it out.
“Before I opened the casino, I had to do research.” His voice was rough with pain. “Yakov and I took a car, and we drove all the way to Vegas. Three days in a car with him, and then back again! And a week of getting drunk every night and losing all our money. I fell in the pool and ruined my suit.” He paused. “Best week of my life.”
I was just smoothing my hands over him, now, calming him as the enormity of the loss hit him.
“He was always pleased to see me, you know?” Gennadiy whispered. “He was always?—”
He closed his eyes, and I threw my arms around his neck and pressed myself close. I held him like that for a long time, his head on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” he managed.
I nodded. I knew it wasn’t over: he’d be grieving for a long time. But at least I’d helped him start.
Even now, though, I could feel that he hadn’t let go all the way. Touching him like this, I felt so close to him, so entirely in tune with him, that I could feel the anger, rushing like a river, just under the surface.
I knew what it was like to feel that non-stop. To have it driving you, demanding that you keep working, keep pushing. The difference was, I’d found something to stop mine:him.I hadn’t been aware of it until now, but my anger had dropped away when I’d felt the warmth of his protection. I’d been angry at the world for taking my parents and leaving me alone, but I wasn’t alone anymore. Gennadiy’s anger was still there, and still building every day. “Why do you carry all this...rage?” I whispered.
Any other time, I think he would have pushed the question away or changed the subject. But right then, with us staring at each other in that safe, silent room, it was impossible to lie. “Because it protects me from something worse,” he said softly.
I stared down into his eyes, feeling my heart cracking. Hewantedto tell me. He just couldn’t.
I lay down, putting my head on his chest, and cuddled in beside him. I could already hear his breathing changing. He would sleep, now, and that was good.
