It was hard as hell not giving in to her request to suck my cock, but I knew it was right. She’d had a hard evening and I hadn’t wanted to risk her feeling sick. But my alternative to her request did nothing but amplify my desire to sink myself into her, and now my balls are as blue as her beautiful fucking eyes.
I’m so wired, I couldn’t sleep if my life depended on it, so I watch Annika do so. I try to keep my hands off her, try to prove to myself that I can be this close and not have to touch her, but I fail miserably. I stroke her hair, her cheek, her back, loving the feel of her against my palm.
Are all arranged marriages like this? I wonder if my father ever felt this way about my mother? Definitely not toward the end, that's for fucking sure. But in the beginning? Was it like this for them? This need, this addiction to be a part of one another?
My thoughts finally, blessedly, drift away from my aching cock and turn to my parents. No, I don’t think it’s possible that they shared anything like this. My father might have loved my mother at one time, but my mother? I don’t think she ever did. She did though, I know, love Pyotr and me. Before she lost her mind at least.
I let out a small growl of discontent as my heart pulses with sadness. I miss her. I don’t want to. I want to be mad at her. For what she did to us, especially Pyotr. Whatever happened in that house when those two were alone all those years, it messed him up bad.
“Kirill?”
Annika’s voice is soft and full of sleep, and it pulls me from my thoughts.
“Go back to sleep,devochka,”I command, and again, that gentleness I don’t recognize coats my deep voice, taking away its sting.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, turning on her side to face me. She reaches her hand out to my thigh, and even though I know the touch is innocent, it burns through the fabric of my sweatpants and into my skin, causing my cock to throb with need.
“It’s nothing,” I reply, massaging my fingers against her scalp.
She shakes her head, her blue eyes hazy with sleep as she looks up at me.
“It’s not nothing,” she whispers, hugging herself closer to my leg. “I can tell.”
I raise a brow as I look down at her.
“Oh?”
She nods.
“Do tell.”
She reaches toward my face, drawing the nail of her pointer finger gently across my left brow.
“When you’re upset with what you’re thinking, you get a little vein right here,” she explains. Her finger then trails down to my mouth and so very gently traces the line of my top lip.
“And when something is really bothering you, you push your top lip just a little between your teeth. As if you’re trying to stop yourself from saying what you’re thinking out loud.”
I look down at her in awe. Only Edik has ever known me well enough to decipher my minute expressions. As thePakhanof our organization, I learned long ago to keep my facial expressions guarded. To always look emotionless and impassable so that my thoughts can’t be used against me.
“How do you know this?” I ask.
Aside from sex and a few fleeting moments here and there, we’ve barely spent time around one another. Her schedule is busy and so is mine.
Her lips twitch into a soft smile that has my heart racing.
“I like your face. It’s hard not to look at whenever I get the opportunity.”
Her answer has me smiling like a fucking school boy receiving his first love letter.
“You do, huh?” I ask, stroking her hair.
“Mhm,” she murmurs with a nod. “So tell me. What’s on your mind? I have a feeling it’s not your usual work stress.”
Again, her perceptiveness marvels me and I actually find myselfwantingto tell her the truth.
“I was thinking about my mother,” I confess.
Annika’s brows furrow and she sits up, placing her legs over mine in an almost protective gesture.
