Anastasia slid down the wall and buried her head in her hands, beginning to cry quietly as she cursed the tears that sprang to her eyes.
No, no, no... I can't let him hear me.
She was torn over the quickly discarded belief that he would be someone different, someone who might break her from this cage — and the realization that he was just like every other priest before him.
Except he wasn't even a priest, and he probably wanted her dead for what she’d done.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head there, letting the tears fall. The crushing weight of her past, of a childhood devoid of love and full of judgment, went sweeping through her, making her feel as if she was being pulled apart at the seams.
She let out a stuttered breath and forced herself to put a lid back on her emotions, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand and standing up. She smoothed her skirts, looking at the clock and realizing that it was barely past daybreak.
There were a few hours to go until her lessons began... and she prayed she wouldn't spend the whole time thinking about Mikhail's body pressed against hers and how his grip felt on her wrists. He had seemed even more massive as he had held her against that wall...
Stop it! Christ, Anastasia. That man would love to see you hang. It would help if he weren’t so... domineering.
She let out a grunt of frustration and tossed herself on the bed, unable to decide if she was nervous or excited for this to truly begin.
???
Mikhail watched as Anastasia stormed off, the threat hanging in the air between them. What were they doing? He knew that her loyalties were fragmented at best, and she wanted to change things. They couldn't seem to get past their personal hurts enough to have more than a few minutes of conversation.
We've spent the past fifteen years orbiting one another in our own ways... neither of us has seen the sun.
Both Mikhail and Anastasia were victims of a system that had wounded them grievously and brought them to their knees.
They were each so blinded by their obsession to cover their scars that they couldn't see their injuries were the same.
Mikhail grunted as he stood, letting his hair down and running a hand through it as if he could shake out the tension. His whole body felt tight.
That damn woman.
With a glance and a thought towards her door, Mikhail stood up and headed into his room. He shut the door behind him and felt like he could breathe, if only for a second, with two walls between them. He laid down on the bed, unable to shake the strain from his muscles.
"Proklyataya baba," he cursed under his breath, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. Since their argument, he had been painfully hard feeling Anastasia twist underneath him had nearly driven him mad. It would have been so easy to close the gap between them, to grab her face and pull her into an angry kiss.
Despite his fury towards their past, he had spent the first few days of their time together aggressively fighting the urge to imagine what she would feel like underneath him; having her pinned against the wall had given him everything and nothing.
"Forfuck'ssake," he hissed, giving up.
Mikhail's hand went straight to the band of his canvas pants, losing all sense of hesitation and pushing them down until his cock sprang free. He wrapped a hand around himself, immediately beginning to stroke as his head rolled back against the headboard.
He tried to force himself to think of something else — anything other than Anastasia. Her eyes, that blonde hair, those perfect, pouting lips... His breath picked up until it was ragged, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he fought back angry grunts. God forbid she hears him.
"Yebat," his control shattered, and he forced out a guttural sound that was almost inhuman. He stroked himself faster and faster, trying his hardest to keep his mind on someone else.
He finally found a rhythm while imagining some faceless woman to occupy his dangerously possessive thoughts. The closer he brought himself to finishing, the more his mind flickered back to Anastasia, to her body pressed against his, that angry fire in her eyes, her blonde hair.
He twisted his hand just the way he liked, finally discarding the suffocating need to ignore his thoughts of her. He let images of her flood his mind, tension coiling at the base of his spine as he stroked faster, his lips drawing in a ragged breath to keep from making too much noise.
He clenched his teeth, imagining what it would feel like to touch her skin, to slide his hand between her legs and bury himself deep inside of her.
The thought of it broke him, his release rushing through him so violently he bit down on his fist as hard as he could to keep from shouting, coming as hard as he ever had to the thought of the woman he'd sworn he hated.
???
Anastasia waited until it was approximately five minutes past his commanded lesson schedule before she emerged from the bedroom, purposefully late.
Mikhail was sitting down, his ankle resting on his knee and a curious look on his face that she couldn't quite place.
