He presses his palm against her stomach, hard. It makes the fit even tighter, him inside of her. Lili’s vision trips, stutters, the reel of it shorting.
“Can you feel me, sweetheart? Deeper than anyone else could go?”
She nods, frantic. Sweat slides down her spine; she’s near shaking with the tense ache of him inside her, the size of him. On her tiptoes, her body strains to find more room—for the things he demands of her, the things she grasps from him.
It’s unendurable, how hard he is. Bearing down on her, keeping her on that edge, light threatening to fade, this is what insanity feels like. The window is dirty with her sweat, and her breath keeps running short; she feels herself veering dangerously away from the loss she wants.
Squeezing her thighs together, Lili tries to force little shifts of her hips. There’s a shard of pleasure, as she finds just enough space between the glass and him to build friction. “Come on,” she whimpers, near angry. “I want tocome—”
“Then come,” he says. He leans off her, lifting a fraction of his weight away. “Fuck yourself on me, Lili.”
With more space, Lili keeps moving, indecent and desperate. She doesn’t care. She wants this; she wants this so badly, with a single-minded focus that makes everything else—air, water, everything—seem secondary, stupid inconveniences, valuable only for how they allow her to keep doing this: falling apart under him, reduced to her body and then reduced to nothing, thoughts snuffed out like some guttering candle.
“It’s shameless,” he breathes against her ear, leaning down. “How much you want it... there you go, keep going—”
“I can’t,” she gasps out, frustrated and exhausted. “I can’t, I need you to—need you to...”
“What do you need, Lili? Tell me, and I’ll give it to you.”
“You,” she breathes, gritted teeth. “You—just fuck me,please—”
The naturalness of it—how his hands wrap around her waist, spanning her back, as he takes over and takes back control—makes exhausting amounts of tension release from her, as he finally starts fucking her again—fucking her as hard as she wants: harsh, unrestrained, pushing away her capacity to protest or resist, her responsibility to do anything but let that intense sliver of pleasure sharpen, the frustrated weight of climax reached for again and again, a devastated place where she won’t have a name, a voice—
When she comes, it tears inside of her: the sense of her self ripped from her body.
A separation that gives her space.
Breathing room.
Silence.
“Are you sleeping with anyone else?” Lili asks, pulling her shirt back on.
Aleksandr gives a hard, short laugh, looking up from checking email on his phone. “How much time do you think I have in a day?”
She folds her arms. “That’s not an answer.” She tries to push back the irrational, bitter surge of jealousy that makes her want to tear out the hair of nameless women.
“I am not seeing other people,” Aleksandr says, enunciating clearly. He leans against his desk, pulling her between his legs. With one hand, he brushes her hair over one shoulder, letting it fall down her back. “Are you?”
His tone hasn’t discernibly changed, but he’s not smiling.
Lili lifts her chin, mischievous. “Does it matter?”
Suddenly, the humor she thought she’d mustered is gone. The air between them loses its lightness.
“I do not share, Lili.” Nothing resembles humor—a joke, levity—in his demeanor. “I won’t ask again. Are you fucking other people?”
For a moment, she thinks about teasing him.
“No,” she finally says.
“Good.”
“Good,” she grits back, unwilling to let him have the last word.
He raises an eyebrow, letting the moment stretch. It makes her feel like a child.
She scowls at him. He grins, and draws her closer against him.
