No answer. For a very long time. So long, Sam was beginning to think maybe he’d fallen asleep when he said, “You say we have nothing in common. You say this why we can’t be together as man and wife. But maybe… maybe we have much in common. Maybe that is why I can’t stop chasing you, even when you push me away. Maybe that is why I feel like I would do anything, offer you anything, if you would agree to share this bed with me.”
He let out a harsh, ragged breath. “Tell me what you want, zhena, and I will give it to you—”
She was across the room before he even finished the sentence, struggling to get her leg not only over the high bed but also over his big body. But then she didn’t have to struggle because she was lifted into the air, hauled right on top of Mount Nik, his large hands grabbing on to the sides of her face as they erupted into a frenzy of kissing.
36
Nikolai didn’t attend church. Had never thought much about whether he believed in the God his mother had paid homage to most Sundays, depending on whether Sergei was in residence or not.
But having his wife finally come to him felt like nothing less than a prayer answered. To feel her on top of him, her hips grinding on his boxers as their tongues tangled… he came back from their hour of sorrowful tales instantly. Hard as stone and wanting—no needing—very much to be inside of her.
He flipped her over and his hands went to work, dealing with anything that got in his way. The t-shirt blocking his access to her round breasts got shoved up and the band of her bikini briefs got shoved down as he took one breast in his mouth and laid one hand over her core.
His. She had given himself to her. Come to him willingly, and the desire to both possess and revel in her sent his mind into a tangle of conflicting needs.
He decided to satisfy both, moving down her body and taking her with his mouth. Her taste exploded across the flat side of his tongue as he licked her slit, lapping and lapping, until she was squirming beneath him.
“Oh, God, that feels so good. Please don’t stop!” He could feel her hands in his hair, urging his mouth deeper into her wet pussy. “Don’t stop… don’t stop… don’t…”
He did stop. Abruptly. Ignoring her cry of protest, he braced himself on his arms, hovering over her as he asked, “Did you just now have nightmare, zhena?”
She squinted up at him in the dark. “What? No!” she answered, her voice foggy with confusion.
“Did I…?” he asked. “Did I just now have nightmare?”
“No,” she answered carefully, sitting up on her forearms and looking at him with a perplexed expression. “I don’t think so.”
“You had no nightmare and I had no nightmare?” he asked her. “You must be sure before we continue.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, understanding dawning in her voice. “I finally gave in and now you’re rubbing it in.”
“Not rubbing in,” he answered. “You—how do you Americans say—hurt my feelings.”
She laughed, a light sound in the dark room.
And he waited for her to realize he wasn’t joking.
Eventually she did. “You’re serious?” she asked, squirming to sit up some more, as if this conversation made her uncomfortable and she wanted to get in a less vulnerable position.
“Yes, very serious,” he answered, leaning into her, not too hard but firmly enough that she fell back off her forearms. After that, it was easy to get her back beneath him. And keep her there with a well-placed thigh. “No more rubbing in of anything. Not until you tell me you want this. Want me.”
He laid the ultimatum down between them like a stick of dynamite. Potentially explosive in ways both good and bad.
She licked her lips and tried to sidestep it.
“You know I do,” she said, tilting her hips toward him. “You can feel how much I do.”
As a tactic, it was a very good one, Nikolai thought. Feeling how wet she was through the thin cloth barrier of his briefs, his cock punched out to get to her. But he didn’t give in. Instead he worked to keep the strain out of his voice as he told her quite seriously, “This is what you must say: ‘Yes, I want you, muzehnek.’ Give me words, zhena. Give words or we won’t continue.”
He could sense her studying him in the dark, imagined her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out if he was serious about not continuing if she didn’t tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.
He was and she must have read the answer in his still body because she tilted up again, pressing her slit against his erection as she said. “Yes.”
She was a clever minx, he thought. Hedging in such a way that made it that much more difficult to insist on her total acquiescence. But she was his wife, and now that he finally had her in his bed, he would allow no more misunderstandings between them. No more room for misinterpretations.
“’Yes, I want you, muzehnek’—give me full sentence.”
She let her head fall back with a frustrated huff. “I’m not even sure I can pronounce that last word.”
He pressed himself into her, letting her feel his fullness against her naked, wet core. “I believe you can, zhena.”
She moaned. “Fine—yes, I want you, muzehnek.”
She said the words in a rush, but her pronunciation was near perfect and he found himself smiling as he asked her, “How?”
“What?”
“How do you want me, zhena? My mouth, my fingers, my…?” He rocked against her again and gave her a slang Russian term for penis, more than certain she wouldn’t need a translation.
She sounded skeptical when she answered, “You’d seriously be okay if I said your mouth or your fingers at this point? Like if I got mine and didn’t let you get yours afterwards?”
“If you don’t want me other way, I will be… disappointed, zhena, but it doesn’t change question.”
She wiggled underneath him as if she was actually giving his question some careful consideration, and for a moment he wondered if he hadn’t misplayed his hand. His wife was compassionate, one of the most compassionate women he’d ever known. Nonetheless, she could be a she-devil, especially when it came to him.
But eventually she said into the narrow strip of dark between them. “I want you.” Her voice was slightly above a whisper. “No more games, please. I really, truly want you right now. However you want me, I want you.”
Of all the things she could have said. Of all the ways she could have begged, this was the one that made him lose his iron grip on the situation.