Varian Krylov (12 page)

"Are you very fond of that outfit?"

What the fuck was he on about? She tugged her underwear up and stepped into her skirt.

"I'll buy you a new one."

"What?" she snapped. "What are you talking about?"

"The only reason I'm letting you get dressed now, is because of how much I'm going to enjoy ripping those clothes off you, as soon as you're done."

She pulled the knit camisole she'd taken to wearing instead of a bra down over her breasts and stomach.

"Like hell."

Come on. Do it. Just try. Never in her life had she so wanted to hurt someone, needed an excuse to unleash such seething rage. Staring him down, she slipped her blouse on and closed it, button by button, bottom to top.

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His head cocked, he looked at her from under his brow and took a step toward her. She balled her hands into fists. She'd never hit anyone before. He took another step, kept his eyes locked on hers, daring or reading her. Her nails sank into her palms as he hooked a finger behind the top button of her blouse, pulled until the fabric stretched taut against her back, and yanked, snapping threads, The button shot away somewhere.

She hit him. With all her strength, with her closed fist. In the face.

His face flushed. His eyes went red and watery. He looked startled. Hurt.

A second later, though, he seemed to pull into himself. Consolidate. He grinned and gave a chuckling little "Heh."

Then he moved in again. She tried to block, to hit his hands and arms away as he caught the lapels of her blouse, but he didn't falter or slow. Twice there was a ripping, snapping sound, as he jerked, one, two, and tore her blouse open. Yanked it hard, down her arms. She caught it in her fists for a moment, but that was like being cuffed or tied. In the end, she jerked her hands free, herself.

"This is even more fun than I expected," he gloated, lewdly rubbing the bulge at his crotch.

Oh, she was going to fucking kill him.

He moved in again, trying for the skirt this time, and she swung hard with her fists, kicked at him, going for his knees, his groin, wanting to hear him cry out in pain, wanting to make him crumple to the floor in agony. She landed a few blows, made him grunt, shook him loose, forced him to abandon his grip on her skirt, on her camisole to block her knee, her fist, her foot. But he never stopped. Not even a pause. He had her 107

bent over the arm of the couch as he peeled her skirt down her hips, her thighs, whipped it free of her feet. She thought she knew what was coming, but then his heat, his weight was gone. She stood, turned, faced him.

He came at her. She swung. Hit him hard in the face. He hadn't even tried to block. To step back, out of her reach. He just took it and kept coming. Neither made any attempt at defense. He never tried to deflect a blow, she never tried to get away or cling to what he was after. It was all offence. Him coming at her, grabbing, pulling, tearing cloth, her swinging, striking, beating.

Now he was battered and she was naked.

Something—a hand, a knee—knocked her down. Galen was on her, squaring her shoulders to the floor, flattening her under his weight, working her legs apart with his knees.

"Get the fuck off me," she huffed as his hands abandoned her shoulders to work his fly open.

Fuck. Fuck. This was not happening.

Both her hands closed into tight fists, she started punching. Anything in range.

His face, his head, his shoulders, his arms. But, flat on her back, with him on top of her, her punches were lame. Weak. She dug her claws into his hair, pressed her thumbs to the hollow beneath his brows. She'd gouge his fucking eyes out. He caught her wrists, bent her arms back until her knuckles pressed into the carpet.

"No!" she shouted as she felt his hard prick pressing against her sex.

"No?"

"No," she hissed, her jaw clenched, her teeth bare.

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Like living statues they were still, except for the quivering of tensed muscles, and frantic breathing. A rage swelled up in her, so big it felt like she'd split open. She wanted to hurt. To kill, even. She wanted to hear screams and see tears and know she'd caused them. She wanted blood. Galen's blood. Or her own.

Galen moved, just a little, and she felt his cock shift against her.

Vanka panted and glared. Her wrists were locked in his hands, her body immobilized, crushed to the floor under his weight.

She planted her feet, flexed her hips, and took him in. Galen shuddered and paled. She'd made real and irrevocable what he might never have done.

"Vanka . . ."

She moved against all the weight meant to hold her still, fucking him.

"Vanka, wait."

But she didn't wait. She thrust up against him, sudden, urgent, until his stiff resistance gave way to a violent, quivering response. She was fucking to punish, to hurt, and she came hating him, and he came after, looking like he knew it.

After, he looked sad. But not repentant. When he kissed her lips, he did it so softly, so tentatively, she thought to herself that he did it—ironically—in the manner of asking permission of a virgin while he was still buried deep inside her.

"Listen, Vanka."

She couldn't even move. What choice did she have?

"I know what you think. That I brought you here, that I had Khalid fuck you for our

. . . for my amusement. That somehow it means I don't think much of you. But I . . . this was for you.” There was a long pause. "Understand?"

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She wasn't sure.

"Well," he said when she didn't answer, "you'll see. But the main thing, what I'm trying to tell you, Vanka, is that, you shouldn't take my way of being, and my way of being with you, as a dismissal. Or a condemnation. I'm a slut. And a bit of a twisted fuck. But from the night I met you, almost from the moment I met you . . ." Galen rolled his eyes and laughed at himself. "I take you seriously, Vanka. And I care for you."

He kissed her again, still tenderly, but less hesitantly. He pulled out, rose, and offered her his hand. She took it, let him help her up. Her body felt slack. Drained. It was more than the fucking and the struggle. Her body was used to more strenuous exercise than that, if not more violent.

"Can I use your shower? Your cum is running down my leg."

Did she still want to hurt him? Or was she hoping for some comfort?

"Sure," was all he said, but he put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her to the bathroom.

"Can I stay with you?" he asked after he'd opened the faucet.

"OK." She didn't know how she felt about him, just then. Something about the night had been a mistake, it seemed. Her mistake.

"How hot do you like it?" he asked, holding his hand under the threads of water jetting from the shower head.

"Hotter," she said when she'd felt the steaming streams.

He adjusted the knob, stepped into the tub, and again proffered his hand. Vanka put her hand in his and stepped beneath the darting water. Galen gave her a steady 110

look, stroked her hair, and said, "I think you'll be glad to know, I'm sterile. And I'm clean.

So don't be too worried, about the condom."

She didn't care. She didn't know if she was feeling brave. Or just indifferent.

Galen soaped up a washcloth and tentatively touched it to her shoulder. She was too tired to protest. Or she didn't mind. She didn't know anymore. Little by little he worked the cloth over her skin, his fingers gently working the muscles beneath, all down her arm, kneading her biceps and triceps, working down, massaging the smaller muscles in her forearms, the heel of her hand, her fingers, then back up, to her shoulders, all down her back, over her glutes, the backs of her thighs, her calves, her ankles. He turned her, then up again, washing her feet, her shins, her knees, her thighs, her hips, swirling gentle soapy circles over her belly, her ribs, her breasts, her chest, her throat.

He kissed her and she tasted the metallic tang of blood. His split lip. From her fist. That he was hurt made her want his kiss. For her it wasn't tenderness, closeness, at first. But then it was. His kiss, his embrace, the warmth of his body against hers seemed to fill all the places left hollow by her anger. His closeness, their togetherness soothed.

When they stopped and let go of each other, he had that slightly hurt look of deep feeling. Like love, but with him it was something else.

With his fingertips he traced the contours of her face, then drew his touch down her neck and over her breasts. Not foreplay. Just learning her. She watched him, felt him, let him. The symmetry of his movements fell apart as both hands converged to cup and caress the hurt breast. Holding it, he ran one fingertip over her scar, so lightly the damaged nerves barely sensed it.

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"Khalid's right. Your scar's pretty."

He gave her one of his reading looks.

"How does it feel, when I touch it?"

"Kind of numb. Kind of . . . strangely ticklish."

"It doesn't hurt?"

"Not your touch. There's a burning feeling, though, sometimes."

He bent, kissed the pink crescent of raised flesh, rose, and kissed her lips.

Galen gave her a robe—one of his or Khalid's that almost touched the floor—and she went with him to his room. Khalid was in bed, sitting up by a little lamp on the nightstand, reading Camus's L'Etranger. When they entered, he gave them a placid smile, and set his book down. It wasn't until she saw him again, and saw that smile of his that Vanka wondered what Khalid's role had really been in what had happened. It could wait, though.

She barely wondered at the strangeness of the situation, at the strangeness of her reaction to it, as Khalid turned on his side to welcome them both into the bed, with Galen slipping her robe from her shoulders and settling her between them, kissing and caressing her face as Khalid fit the front of his body to the back of hers, and curved his arm against Galen's where it draped over her waist. Like wolves in a den they slept, naked, huddled all together.

* * * *

Tickles. A line traced by a fingertip down the back of her arm. That's what woke her. The memory of the voice saying her name came back to her after.

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She stirred and turned and looked. Galen smiled dozily down at her. Slowly, slowly, reading her, he brought his mouth to hers, gave a soft kiss. Then he went deeper, then surfaced again. Kissed her ear.

"All the times we've fucked, and we've never made love," he sighed, then nuzzled under her hair, against her neck.

"Where's Khalid?"

"In the shower. He takes long showers."

It wasn't that she was afraid of Galen, but there was something so poignant in his tender looks and touches, after the way they'd been the night before, she was actually trembling. He seemed to notice, to think of retreating, but she gave him an uncertain smile, touched a fuchsia welt she'd made by his left eye, and he came back to her, carefully, touching and kissing her as gently as she'd ever been touched by any man.

* * * *

The bathroom was thick with steam, Khalid looking like a ghost, like a dream there in the mist.

“Yes.”

"I thought you said she was the masochist."

"Come on, Khalid. You know I never mind getting roughed up a bit."

"Yes, but I should think you'd be a bit more careful with this asset," he said tenderly, gingerly touching a bruised swelling on Galen's cheek, then running the pad of his thumb over the cut in Galen's bottom lip.

"I trust you, Galen. As much as I trust myself."

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"Not absolutely, then?"

"Certainly not. But I think I know you well enough to know, when I hear what I heard last night, that I don't need to come running to rescue this woman you know. But you put me in a very bad position. I don't know her as I know you. I don't trust her as I trust you. If she believes, if she decided that you raped her, if she should file charges, I'll wish I hadn't been here last night. For your sake."

"There's no question of that, Khalid."

"You're sure you know her as well as you think?"

"Yes."

"You risk something—you risk a great deal—to play these games with her, the way we've played. But, knowing you as I do, I realize you've thought all of that through already. That you're willing to take this risk."

"Not willing. I need to."

"I understand, Galen. Obviously. And of course, the decision is yours. I can't prevent you from jeopardizing your life. Just please don't jeopardize mine."

Galen nodded. Khalid relented, smiled his closed-lip smile, and gave Galen a tender kiss.

"You know something?" Galen asked after.

"Hmmm?"

"She never cried. Not once. Not even a little."

* * * *

Driving Vanka back to the hotel, a knot of anxiety twisted around in Galen's gut. It should have been Vanka. He'd expected it to be Vanka. But it was the thought of Khalid that made the knot tighten, winding around and around itself.

“You can just drop me at the corner.”

Without answering Vanka's suggestion, Galen drove on, up to the valet station, pocketing the receipt and coming around to take Vanka's arm. He only grinned in answer to her questioning look, and she let him get into the elevator with her. Even after last night, she was letting him play with her like this. That alone put the bulge in his shorts. For a second she hesitated when they got to her door, but he caught a faint smile as she slid the key card down the slot and went in, letting him in after her.

As the heavy door locked behind them, she looked up at him and went still.

Galen watched her, savoring the little thrill of her uncertainty as she waited, wondering what he would do. It was tempting—fuck, ridiculously tempting, all things considered—

to tell her to strip, to watch her peel off every article of clothing he'd torn from her body the night before, to push her to the edge once more, but in a different way. But, strangely, he wanted the other thing more.

Moving in close, warming at how she caught her breath when he touched her, Galen brushed his lips against her smooth, pale cheek, over the delicate little ridge of her ear, and said,