Are you going to be my new mama?I can hear Alessandro asking me again.
I could have been,I think sadly.
Slava’s heartbeat is steady under my ear. I count the rhythm—boom-doom,boom-doom—and commit it to my memory as well.
Overhead, the light starts to brighten. The storm is passing.
I push myself up until I’m sitting. “We’ll need to go soon.”
“Our clothes are still wet.” He hooks a finger under my chin and turns me to look at him. “It’ll be a while until they dry.”
I know what he’s really asking me to do. Here, in this lodge where the rain softens to a whisper, and the flames are already flickering low as they cast dancing shadows on the walls.
Sooner or later, we’ll have to go back to the real world.
But maybe we don’t have to go back just yet.
So, I come back down to join him. My lips find his, my fingers reach between his legs, and I stroke him until he’s hard again.
43
SLAVA
I watchBella sleep as dawn pries open the sky with rosy fingers.
Her dark hair spreads across my bicep, and a single arm is draped over my chest right above my heart.
Ever since the hunting lodge, we've been inseparable.
We fucked again by the embers of the dying fire while our clothes dried, faster and more passionate than the first—her on top of me with her palms flat on my chest and her eyes never leaving mine. She rode me with a ferocity and threw her head back with every roll of her hips.
When we returned to the chateau, I swept her into my bedroom, and we fucked on all fours with my fist yanking her hair, and my hand covering her mouth to muffle her moans.
As my cum leaked from her pussy and rolled down the inside of her sweat-slick thighs, she positioned herself until she was looking up at me. Then, she took me in her mouth and guided my hand between her legs until both of us were utterly spent.
But we weren’t satisfied.
Not by a long shot.
Again and again, we came together. On the floor. In my bed. In the shower. Even on the dining room table shortly after midnight while the chateau slept.
And now, as the sky turns another shade lighter outside, I’ve come to memorize and crave the sound she makes when I push inside her—a soft exhale, with equal parts relief and surrender, like she's been holding her breath waiting for me.
I've committed the specific pressure of her fingers on my shoulders and my cock, the way her nails drag down my back when she's close, and the helpless arch of her spine when she comes.
I’m addicted to the taste of her throat and the inside of her thighs and that spot behind her ear that makes her gasp.
I wish I could hold onto those moments forever. Because as incredible and unforgettable as the sex is, it’s the after that leaves me feeling off-balance.
Because whenever we finish and she’s curled in my arms—her breath slowing and her body going slack with trust—I can feel a barrier that had always been there slowly rising back up.
And whenever I feel it, I’m left helplessly waiting for her to wake up so that she’ll climb atop me again, and I can pretend that this time is when I can finally smash that barrier into a million little pieces.
And I know I can only possibly feel this way because I'm hopelessly falling for her. Maybe I’ve been falling for her this entire time. Maybe I fell for her the moment she came into mylife armored in sardonic professionalism and that vengeful fire in her eyes.
Outside the window, the sky is beginning to lighten.
Night is coming to an end, and we’ll soon be departing for New York and all the awful realities waiting for us back there.
