My hand found my stomach in the dark—the paunch smaller now, the body continuing its quiet work of resolving back to what it had been. I stroked it anyway.
I fell asleep imagining what Makari looked like.
Whether he had my hair or his father’s dark wavy hair.
Whether he would have been loud or quiet.
Whether he would have liked pirozhki.
??????
The weight on my chest was restricting my breathing.
I pushed at it in the dark, still half asleep, the instinct arriving before the understanding.
It didn’t budge.
The scent of his body wash reached me a second later and my eyes snapped open.
Vadim.
I placed my hands flat against his chest and pushed with everything I had.
He didn’t move. Dead weight—the specific heaviness of a man who had drunk enough to make gravity personal.
He mumbled something unintelligible and I turned my face away from the smell of stale tobacco and alcohol that came with it.
“Get off me,” I hissed.
“I’ve come to collect my debt,” he said.
The words were slurred. The entitlement was not.
“No. You’ve been happy enough trialling other women for the past three weeks,” I hissed, pushing at him again.
His hands found my top and pulled. The buttons gave way one after another until the cool air settled over my bare skin.
His head bobbed up.
“Oh, hello,” he said, staring at my chest.“I missed you.”
I glanced past him. He had opened my curtains enough for the moon to witness this madness.
I bucked my hips and pushed at his chest again.
That’s when I felt it. The hefty length of him nestled between my legs with only my thin cotton shorts between us.
I squeezed his chest.
Yes. He was naked.
I hissed in rage.
He laughed—his head tilting back with the specific abandon of a man too drunk to manage his own volume.
I wrapped my hands around his neck to choke him.
I couldn’t even get my fingers to meet around it.
