“My cheek. You must not—”
“Come on. Once more.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll win.”
“No, you won’t.”
A tickle of aliveness on my cheek. “Cheek. You think I’m stupid.”
The tickle goes away.
“One more try,” he says. “Please?”
“Fine.” I wait.
Nothing happens, aside from my heart pounding madly in my chest. The waiting is so tense that I laugh. It seems to last forever, the waiting. And then I feel warmth on my neck.
“Neck,” I breathe. And then I feel his lips touch my skin there. I hiss out a breath. “It’s not fair. You can’t kiss me after I caught you.”
“Sorry,” he whispers, pulling away. “Another,” he says. “Feel me, little fox.”
I breathe in. He’s not touching me except for where his hand covers my eyes, but I feel him with every sense. I feel him stir the air around my body. I smell his sweat, and I see him strong and savage in my mind’s eye. Most of all I feel him with my heart. The love and the fear I have for him spins wild. It seems too big, suddenly.
And then the space between our lips thrums with life. The space is empty but full. Excitement grows in my chest. I wait. It’s excruciating, this waiting. It doesn’t feel like sinning when his hand is over my eyes.
“Guby,” I whisper in the moment before he takes my lips in a warm kiss. A single kiss. He pulls away, but I feel him hovering near. He sucks in a breath, as if to breathe me in.
I don’t want him to breathe me in. I don’t want the blank space. I want him around me. “Once more.”
Suddenly his lips are on mine again. He kisses me hard and hungry, consuming me roughly. It feels ancient and familiar, and in that moment, I’m not lost. I’m clinging to him.
I slide my hands to his hair, so smooth. I pull. “Yeshche,” I say into the kiss. I don’t know why I should ask for more like that. The want comes from somewhere distant. From the moon, from the pink bubbles in my glass. I set my hand over his, still covering my eyes. “And keep your hand there.”
“No.” He removes his hand from my eyes. “I want you to see what I am. What we are. You used to like when I was hard, when I truly gave you more. You liked when I played the bad man while fucking you.”
My pulse races. “I would never like that.”
“You used to say that sex is not a place for smiling faces.” He slides an hand over my hair, smoothing it down. “You never wanted smiles as we fucked.”
“I would not…” I trail off, unsure what I meant to say.
“You would,” Viktor says. “Oh, you would. You’d say, ‘Take everything.’ You wanted me to be hard, to be other. You liked it when I had clothes on and you did not.”
I shiver, remembering how I’d felt the night he touched my bare skin, telling me about my scars, the night he ripped my tunic. He was clothed, and I wore only a slip. I used to like that?
“You enjoyed when I acted like I wanted to use you, as though you were a beautiful, tender offering for me to heartlessly devour. That was very pleasurable for you.”
My face feels hot. My neck feels hot. All of my skin so hot. “That’s not that kind of woman I am now.”
“Sometimes I’d play a mental trick on myself where I would imagine another man had tried to move in on you—I would imagine it, and then I’d put my nose to your beautiful neck and breathe in your scent and go fucking wild. I’d press your hands over your head and fuck your brains out and make you mine again. You enjoyed when I had that feeling in me, when I was lost with this feeling of madness.”
I try to force myself to look at his hands only, but my eyes travel over his hard arms, corded with muscle. My mouth goes dry as I imagine him lost to such a feeling. As I imagine him taking his fill of me, heartlessly devouring me, wild and out of control. Every nerve ending on my skin comes alive at the thought of him pushing me down and taking me like that.
He smiles. “Now my secret’s out.”
I open my mouth to protest, but the words fall from my mind.
“We’d sometimes be sent into group situations, posing as strangers in public places. I had to pretend not to know you. I enjoyed that because I’d see you anew, from the eyes of a stranger, and I’d have to treat you coolly, but inside my hunger for you would rage.” He smiles at the memory. “You’d always taunt me a little bit, because you knew. And you had stranger sex fantasies. You loved anytime I played the dark stranger. When we’d finally be out of the place or off the job, we’d pretend we were still strangers and be fucking sometimes before we hit the car. In an alley, often. We’d talk to each other in our stranger roles. I would push you up against a wall and take you as a stranger. Like I told you before. It was true.”