“Look at me,” he whispers as he roams two fingers over my sex, over swollen skin full of feeling.
I keep my eyes shut. Viktor is my anchor. But he’s also the man pulling me out to sea.
“Come back to me,” he growls.
I open my eyes.
“There you are.” He kisses me as he works me. He thrusts his tongue into my mouth as he lengthens his stroke. I take hold of it, sucking it. Something inside me knows to do this. He’s stroking me harder. I suck his tongue harder as a signal for more.
He groans. Agony or ecstasy, I cannot tell. It’s how I feel, too.
With his other hand he presses my hands back to the carpet with renewed force. His domination gives me a helpless feeling that makes me crave his touch all the more. I’m a creature living on his touch like a vine living on air.
I release his tongue, and he growls and nips my lip, then he sucks it, sharply, painfully.
I make a sound of protest. We’ve gone too far. I’m losing something essential.
I gasp as he begins now to lick my ear. His tongue is rough and hot there. A glittery, floaty sensation slides through me. The rawness inside me is like a beautiful waterfall of tears.
He grunts as he slides his tongue deeper into my ear. I hiss out a breath. Every thought leaves me.
Like sliding through the universe. He told me that’s how it would feel. He’s right. He invades me in this untoward place and sets me spinning through the stars. His massive fingers stoke a fire between my legs.
“Tanechka,” he breathes, low and rough, pressing onto my hand above my head, reminding me that I’m safe.
I try to fight the orgasm even as it rolls through me. But the feeling takes me over, carries me. His fingers are deep inside of me. I spin on, wild with feeling, stars in my mind. I cry out. It’s too beautiful. Too deep and too vast.
A wilderness of stars.
It’s only after the feeling leaves me that I realize the horror of what I’ve done. I push him away and scramble back, buttoning my pants, pulling his shirt around me, sitting against the end of the bed.
I’m shaking. I feel crazy.
“Lisichka.”
“Don’t call me that!” Everything’s wrong. Everything’s different.
He smiles. Happy. Or is he mocking me? He would take everything from me! Rage boils up from nowhere. I feel hot and crazy. A puppet out of control.
And suddenly I’m on top of him. My hands are around his throat, one thumb pressed against the side of a little bone in there. I have only to snap that bone.
Chapter Nineteen
Viktor
I look into her angry blue eyes, into the heat of her hate.
She’s a gorgeous angel of vengeance, skin flushed, hair wild. My dress shirt hangs open, no longer covering her breasts.
She trembles as she grips my neck, but her command is complete.
“Tanechka,” I say. “Take what you need.”
“You’d try to hurt me?”
“Do what you have to.”
She narrows her eyes. “You want me to kill you?”
My heart pounds. Is this my old Tanechka? Or is this just the nun, pushed to the brink? “Tanechka?”
“You’d die to make me remember? You’d die to take me from Jesus?”
The nun, then.
“Answer.”
“Yes, I’d die to bring you back, to have you back in this world. I’d do anything.”
“Because you love me?” She spits out the word love, showing her distaste for it, or perhaps for me.
Yes, she’s the nun, but she’s poised to crush my windpipe nevertheless. I shake, waiting.
“You love me so very much that you’d take all that I cherish in order to get me back?”
I have the wild sensation that she could crush the guilt and shame from me with one single squeeze. “Do it, lisichka. I deserve it.”
“You’d corrupt me from my heart’s desire to be a nun?”
“The old Tanechka would never kneel and pray to a god. The old Tanechka knelt before nobody and believed in nothing.”
“And the old Tanechka cannot change?” She’s wild, dangerous.
But then, just as quickly as she attacked me, she eases off, looking at her hands. She stands. “No matter what you’ve done, you’re loveable. You are worthy of God’s love.”
“Stop talking about God!”
“God knows your heart, and he loves you. He knows you, and he still loves you.”
I surge to my feet and slam my fist into the wall, feeling the skin break. “Stop talking about God!”
I slam my fist in again and again.
“I don’t want God’s love.” Plaster breaks around my knuckles, gouges my skin. “I don’t want your stupid prayers!”
“Stop, Viktor!”
I keep on. I’m out of her reach. She can do nothing to stop me.
I think of her face the day I shoved her into Dariali Gorge. The way she pleaded with me. The way she clung to me. Predatel, I called her.