She catches my face in her tiny hand. Thumb over my jaw. “I do. I really do.”
I survive the meal by sheer will. Every time she feeds me, her fingers brush my mouth and my pulse turns reckless.
Every time her lips close over my fingertips, I have to count backward from ten in Russian so I don’t drag her across the table and ruin the Olivier salad with what I actually want to taste.
When she opens the box and sees the bracelet, she bounces with joy.
She settles over me and the heat of her is a shock straight through wool and good intentions.
I’m hard in seconds. Embarrassingly, achingly hard. And there’s no table to hide behind anymore.
She extends her wrist. “Put it on?”
I do. So careful.
Then she feeds me zefir and eats from my hands like it’s intimacy she’s starving for.
My body reacts.
She shifts once. Just once. The softest part of her presses down on the hardest part of me.
A helpless sound crawls out of my throat. My hands snap to her waist on pure instinct, fingers digging in.
“Kroshka?” My breath scrapes out rough.
“Yes, Vitaly?” Her voice is innocent, but her mouth is sin against my neck, lips tracing my pulse, claiming it.
“Will you come home with me?” It comes out need, not invitation. “I’ll make medovukha. Something sweet to finish the night. Just us.”
“You don’t have to treat me like glass,” she says, straddling me fully now. “I adore you, Vitaly. I’m not going to break.”
I answer by sliding both hands down to her thighs, gripping hard enough to leave tomorrow’s fingerprints, and pulling her flush against where I’m straining. “Then don’t ask me to be gentle,” I say against her mouth, voice shredded.
She gasps.
“Wait,” she says.
And the word slices everything open. My chest goes cold.
“I moved too fast,” I say immediately. “Forgive me, kroshka. I thought.”
She cups my face, kisses between my eyes.
“No. You beautiful, sweet man.” Her mouth drifts to mine, brushing, tempting. “I want you. Inside me. Now. Here.”
Her hips grind down again, and my vision blurs. “But I need to be honest with you before we go any further. About my family. What loving me means.”
The ice melts. My breath steadies.
“Tell me.” I brace. Because I haven’t told her what loving me means. The danger. Oksana.
She keeps moving in my lap.
“I have several I love. At home. They know about you. They know what’s happening here.” Her nails rake lightly along my waist. “They’re ready for you to be part of us.”
“Several.” My hands tighten on her hips. “You have lovers?”
The word sits wrong in my mouth.
