Varian Krylov (28 page)

Made him ache.

“Goodnight, Galen,” Khalid whispered at his ear, then turned and went out the door, closing it silently behind him.

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Chapter Eight

“Khalid.” The golden eyes, Khalid's tranquil gaze answered and waited. Galen's throat went tight. “I want Vanka to come live with us.”

No shift of expression. Just that mute harmony of perfect features, and that quiet gaze. His own breathing was erratic, and Galen struggled to smooth it out, focusing on that to relieve the agony of waiting for some sign from Khalid. His shirt felt damp, clinging uncomfortably under his arms, sticking to his back, and his hands, moist and he pressed his palms to his thighs to dry them and keep them steady until finally there was the hint of Khalid's faintest—his most ironic—smile.

“But Galen. You and I do not live together.”

The tightness in Galen's throat swelled and rose, but everything else in him dropped and shrank. He'd been an idiot to think—

“It's a good idea, Galen. Between the two of us, we can take care of her, when she's not well.”

Galen was afraid to speak, so he just nodded.

* * * *

His smile made her realize she was smiling, too. That she'd been smiling for she didn't know how long, lying there, looking into the dark, warm depths of Galen's eyes, purring like a cat under his soft, warm hand as he caressed her belly. This euphoria, she knew what it was.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked, his fingertip teasing in a circle around her navel.

“Mmmm?”

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“Khalid and me. You never ask.”

“What would I ask?”

“Lots of things.”

“What would you tell me?”

Galen grinned. “I don't know.”

His finger feathered over a hip bone, along the low-riding waist of her sweats, just an inch or so above where her pubic hair would be, if she still had any. The tickle faintly, pleasantly tugged at her ab muscles.

“Just . . .” he started again, still smiling, still looking into her, “I know Khalid's told you things. True things. And I want to make sure you know, that you feel, god, I don't know. Safe. With us. I don't mean your physical safety. I mean . . .”

Now she was grinning. Galen rambling. Embarrassed. It was endearing.

“Of course I do. I feel good, safe, with the two of you, in a way I never have with most people. People like David. Like Sasha.”

“Really?” Galen's grin was still there, dimpling his cheek. And his eyes were tearing up.

“Yes. Really.”

He sighed and cupped her face in his hands, kissing and nuzzling.

“Vanka.” She waited, something knotting her stomach. “I want us, the three of us, to live together.”

For a second, she thought she'd laugh. It was sudden. Reckless. It didn't even make sense.

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Then there was a spark of anger. She wouldn't be taken in like some sickly puppy from the pound to be cared for and looked after. If hanging out at her house night and day, holding her hand through chemo was getting old, getting in the way, he should just fucking say so. He didn't owe her anything. And she'd get by fine on her own. Not like she was fucking bedridden.

But his face. God, he looked so hopeful, his eyes fixed on her like he was willing her to say “yes.”

And then she thought of Khalid. Of the “true things.”

“All right,” she said, only then noticing how her heart felt swelled up in her chest.

“Yes.”

In a lot of ways, it was perfect. She moved in with Galen and Khalid, and her dad, who'd insisted on staying in L.A. during her treatment, moved out of Sasha's. Her brother was too shamed by filial piety to let his dad stay at a hotel, but he was going crazy living under the same roof. Sasha had never been close to their dad, like she was.

And this way, not renting her place out to strangers, she could come back when things didn't work out at Galen's.

* * * *

Bare feet padding across the wood floor went still just behind her, then there was a flutter of tiny kisses at the nape of Vanka's neck.

“Morning,” Galen said.

Vanka swiveled around on her stool at the breakfast bar to face him. “Morning.”

“Mmmm,” Galen mused, “apple flavor.”

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With more little kisses he played at sampling the taste of the Golden Delicious Vanka had sliced and nibbled at. The teasing touch of his lips, the brush of his stubble, the nudging of his nose had Vanka giggling. They went on, nuzzling and murmuring, all Galen's little coos and touches making Vanka warm and happy. But then she glanced down at his cock, half hard, pushing at the front of his boxers.

“I'll go put some pants on.”

Not even knowing why, or what she would do, she stopped him. Hooked her feet behind his calves. For the first time, Galen looked vulnerable to her, his cock straining helplessly against the boxers, something like an apology flickering through his expression.

“I remember what I promised,” he said. “I was just being playful. I can't help it if this one,” he pointed at his blatant erection, “has other ideas.”

Galen's vulnerability did something to Vanka, sparked an unfamiliar kind of want.

Eyes locked on his, she touched him through the thin cotton of his shorts, feeling a little thrill, not at the heavy, swollen heat of his cock, but at Galen's startled expression. Barely touching, she traced the upward slanting outline of his stiffening erection, sensing the veined texture of his shaft, the swell of the head behind the soft weave of fabric.

Galen's look, his hesitant smile, were more tender than hungry until she curved her fingers around him in a firm grip. His lips parted in a gasp and a little shudder rippled down his naked torso. He leaned in to kiss her, but Vanka covered his mouth with her fingers. Now it was hard to read him. Consternation. Excitement.

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“Put your hand down,” she said when he curved his hand at her neck, smiling to hear the echo of his words on her own lips.

He grinned back and let his arm hang at his side as she slowly slid her hand down his stiff cock, cupping and caressing his balls, noting with a weird sort of detachment the texture of the hair under the fabric, the warmth, the weight of the delicate roundness in her palm.

But his wanting, intent stare, how his mouth was open, breathing, slightly panting against her fingers—that excited something in her. Something above primal instinct.

Grinning, eager, she took her hand from his cock and said,

“Make yourself come. I want to watch.”

She guessed at the shifting shapes of his features. Disappointment. Amusement.

Arousal.

“All right,” he said when she took his fingers from his lips. “Right here?”

“Right there. Take those off.”

Holding her gaze, he pushed the elastic down, baring his pale hips and his stiff, pink cock, and let his shorts drop to the floor. He brought the pads of four fingers to the underside of his prick and drew his touch along the delicate ridge there, from just above his balls, up the the flare of the full, flushed head.

“Do you touch yourself like that? When you're alone?” she asked him.

“Sometimes.”

He closed his fingertips over the head of his cock, teasing the swollen dome for a few seconds, then wrapped his grip around his shaft and thrust his cock into his hand with a slow flex of his hips. He did that for a while, fucking his hand as if it were the body 268

of a partner. Then his hips stilled and his hand stroked up and down, fast and frenzied for a while, his fist tight, then languorously, his fingers in a loose circle, brushing over his rigid length, his other hand working over his balls.

Each time she looked up, his eyes were locked on hers, and a couple times her face went hot, and he grinned. Little by little, his face flushed, his breaths got shallow, rapid. His muscles—his belly, his hips, his thighs, his arms—were flexing, almost twitching. Then his brow furrowed in two deep, vertical shadows, and, still watching her watch, he came, jutting his hips forward, arching back and spattering his belly and chest. And then he stood there, watching her watch as he breathed through the quivering after, as he came back to himself. Then he grinned.

After he'd mopped up with a damp towel he came to her. There was no surprise, but Vanka admired how at ease he was, naked, his cock still flushed and heavy, while she sat there, clothed and untouched. Nuzzling up to her, the heat from his body curling around her, he purred by her ear,

“That was fun.”

“Was it?”

“I liked how you watched me. And I liked that you asked something of me.” He kissed along her cheekbone, kissed along her hairline, kissed her ear. “Whatever you want of me, Vanka, I'll be happy—excited—to give you.”

* * * *

“Is that what you're like, when you're writing?” Galen asked Khalid without taking his eyes off Vanka at her laptop.

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Khalid looked up from the book he was reading. Vanka, curled up in the yellow leather armchair, stared intently at her screen, her hands scampering blind over the keyboard they'd memorized long ago.

“No. My writing happens in my head, not at the computer. That is just . . .

transcription? Is it the same in English?”

“Yeah.”

“Writing, I almost forget the computer is there. Only some small, obedient part of my brain silently tells my fingers to spell out the words for me.”

“Whereas Vanka forgets we are here,” Galen teased.

“I am impressed. If I had to work with you hovering over me, commenting on every little thing I do, I would never have written one chapter. It is why you have never seen me writing.”

“Hey,” Galen said, tapping the bottom of Vanka's foot with his. “You've been at that for hours. Take a break. Why don't we all have a soak in the hot tub?”

Vanka leaned closer to her screen, scrutinizing some detail there, fingers clicking and stroking. Then she leaned back and looked up. Her eyes were so bloodshot, looking at them made Galen's eyes start to water..

“You two go ahead. I want to finish editing this segment.”

Galen looked over at the little plate of food she'd hardly touched since he'd brought it to her two hours earlier, back to her bloodshot eyes, already focused back on the screen of her laptop.

“Come on. Seriously. You need to rest, now and then. You'll wear yourself out,”

Galen pressed.

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Vanka looked up, and said, her voice soft as usual, but edged with a tone she'd never used with him before—a tone he'd heard her use with David, with Sasha—“Galen, this is how I work. I'm in the middle of something, and if I walk away from it now, I'll lose the thread. So, I'm going to finish what I'm doing. Then I'll take a break.”

“All right,” Galen relented, just as Sasha and David had.

“These things are not like adding up a column of numbers,” Khalid said to him in the kitchen, stroking his arm. “With writing, with what Vanka is doing, we cannot just make a mark by our place in the column, and later pick up where we left off. If the thing is coming, we have to let it come. Later, it may not be willing.”

“She's supposed to be taking it easy. Taking care of herself. Did you see her eyes?”

“Galen.” Khalid reigned him in with a deep look from his luminous eyes. “I know this is something you understand, from your work. There's a need to seek, to find the thing which will be the perfect reflection of our talents, of our beliefs, of our heart. That is what Vanka is trying to do, right now. And the fear that we have, that possibly we will never create that one perfect thing during our life, today that fear is very close to Vanka.”

Galen sighed. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” Vanka called over without looking up from her laptop, “you two gonna get in the hot tub? Or are you just going to hang out in the kitchen talking about me?”

“Eh. I think I'm more in the mood to read, anyway,” Galen said, picking up a magazine and lying down on the couch opposite Vanka, not even realizing until he was settled that he'd grabbed one of Khalid's French rags.

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* * * *

“Vanka.” When she turned Khalid was standing in the doorway, watching her pack. He moved so quietly, if she wasn't looking right at him, most of the time she had no idea where he was. “What are you doing?”

“I'm going home, Khalid.”

“Is this not your home, Vanka?”

“No. It's a lovely place to visit, but it's not my home.”

Khalid sat down on the bed, beside the bag she was filling with tanks and socks and panties, each pair of boyshorts, every thong traveling single, its matching bra stuffed away in the top drawer of her dresser, awaiting the day she decided once and for all she wouldn't be stuffing, and she'd drop them one by one into a sack and drop them off at Good Will.

“Why is this not your home, Vanka?”

“I just need my own space, my own place. You and Galen are the best roommates and the best nurses ever, but I can't be around other people twenty-four-seven.”

“So we've hovered too closely?” he gazed up at her, smiling. “We just wanted to look after you while you've been sick. After the chemo.”

“I know. And you weren't hovering. I just want to be home. In my place with my things, by myself for a couple days.”

“Please sit down with me for a minute, Vanka.”

His eyes worked like fetters, pulling her down beside him.

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“You seem to me today a little bit as you seemed to me that day Galen left for Chile. But you and I know each other much better now than we did, then. You tell me you are doing something because it is what you want. But as you smile at me, you look sad. Now I think I know you well enough to understand. Again, you are pulling away from your own happiness because you are afraid of being trouble for us.”

“Khalid—“

“Please, Vanka. There is enough pretending in my life already. You cannot be kind to me by lying to me.”

She bit back her retort, her denial. “You and Galen. I'm always between you.

You're never alone with each other, because one or the other of you is always taking care of me. When you are both in the same room, I'm there. Literally between you, half the time. So I know—“

Khalid calmly gazed at her, waiting for her to say it.