Chapter Text
Creation myth: a gladiator rises from rime.
Negative creation: his thaw dances on a womb that is firmament.
••
Alina Starkova is in pain. She is no stranger to this affliction.
The strength of her mind; the frailty of her body — sacrosanct dissonance.
The choreographer, Ruben, says, one to ten, Starkova, give me a number, and she is at a six. It is always at a six, even when it is at a ten.
“Six. I’m fine—”
Panting breaths, stubborn lungs, all the while rolling out a tightness on the oblique head of her adductor hallucis. Too many hours en pointe — but what is that, too many? There’s never been too many Italian fouettés in the history of the entire world. Dull thrums, aches here and there on a supporting leg that’s crumbling — probably — from tears — small, inconsequential, who gives a shit? — on her tibialis anticus. “I’m really fine—” This, the imperfect translation between muscle-truth and feeling. Her thighs are fizzing. Hazy dizziness, even with perfect spotting. What sacrifice, what sacrifice, all of it so small. All of it nothing against one desire. One. The only one that can prevail — enormous, this intensity inside her; perfervid and all-encompassing; a roaring vat of bottomless thirst
— to create perfect lines out of a body that wants only to exist, lazily, in curves.
“I can go again—” and again and again and again.
She can dance until she breaks. She will.
Friday at Gramercy Park — down the street from her apartment, jamón iberico melting on her tongue. Expensive indulgence that has her quick fingers picking fennel out of Zoya’s plate, hungry — always hungry. The Principals are buying Beronia reds by the bottle and Alina nurses a single glass; sipping every time someone recounts an incident they were all present for. Kir-Bataar, stained teeth and arms of steel, wildly gesticulating: And then, the idiot relevés! Forcing a laugh, stuck in Corps mentality, wanting to please.
On her way back to the table from a quick bathroom break — necessary: sighing in a stall, pressing fingers onto closed eyelids, exhausted — she catches sight of a familiar shoulder. An old memory from another life, sitting by the bar: “Oh shit,” she’s saying, eyes wide as she takes in his profile. An unmistakable forehead, the slope of his cheek, lit with warm light instead of shadowed secrets. Her feet are moving, her voice carries. “Kaminsky?”
Fedyor turns. The question in his face morphs into recognition. “Alina!”
He stands, steps into the hug she’d had ready. She laughs when he squeezes. “Dude, it’s been forever,” she says, pulling away, hands on his shoulders. He’s harder than she last saw him. Look at you, all grown up. He lives on the West Coast now. She knows because she sees his photos on Instagram. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just a quick visit, I’m actually here with—” he glances to the left and Alina turns, already smiling at the handsome man perched on a stool; straight-nosed, clean cut. “This is Ivan, my partner. He’s got a photo shoot, press tour thing going on,” he rolls his eyes meaningfully her as if to say, and he brought me along because he can’t live without me. “Ivan, this is Alina.” At her name, she lifts her shoulder, winks: her charm, magnified by its quick rush to the surface. “I used to finger her under the bleachers in high school.”
She giggles at that, flushing. She’s forgotten how quick Fedyor is.
“Oh, that’s great.” Ivan offers a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” she says, meaning it. He was in the closet for so long, I’m so happy you exist, she would have said, had they not just met. “Are you an actor or—?”
“Oh, no.” He raises an eyebrow. “Though, I suppose I am actor hot—”
“Yeah, I can see you on like, the CW, playing some sort of 35-year-old teenage vampire.”
Fedyor bursts with laughter.
“Not thirty seconds into the conversation and you’re spitting in the face of TVD.” Ivan grins, then. “I like you.”
Good. Good, I like to be liked. “If you’re not an actor, then what’s the photo shoot for?”
“I’m just a behind-the-scenes guy,” he says. “The photo shoot is for my friend — client, actually. It's for promos, he’s got a fight in—” A quick look behind her, approaching footsteps. “Oh, there he is. Bleachers, this is Sasha.” Winces, as if he made a mistake, “Aleksandr, Aleksandr Morozov.”
“Hi—” On her first look, she catches nothing but a broad chest, the stretch of white cotton over it, “—whoa.” Her neck tilts, greedily, until she finally lands on a face, and — it’s rivets loosening: she hasn’t had this happen in a long time. Want. What is want? Want to sit on that face. “Oh, fuck off with that,” she mumbles, and his eyes, black, glints. She clears her throat. “Sorry — hi, hello. Nice to meet you —”
Amusement on the edge of his smirk. Too attractive. “Yes, nice. Very.”
Elongated sounds, junctures of East and West, iron and ice, rumbling. Thick. It’s an accent she recognizes immediately. “Are you Russian?”
He nods.
Fedyor, beside her, remembering: “Oh, right—”
Home tongue, quick and tripping, months without use: “Otkuda ty v Rossii? Moskva?” Her father, just last Thanksgiving, reminiscing about his time in University: The smell, zaychik. Olfactory memories, they last forever. I will never forget it. Smoke and snow. There’s nothing like Moscow in November. I remember so, so clearly. I read a study about it last—
Aleksandr looks surprised — no, relieved. Laughs to himself before answering. “Net. Rodilsya v Magadane; rabotal v Pitere — ty russkiy?”
“Half, uh — chast’. Moy papa, you know?” Delighted, delighted, to meet another. Smiling, widely, up at a welcome stranger. “Ty daleko ot doma.”
“Da. Better, ah, here. Land of the free.” Sobers, for a split second, and she knows truth when she hears it: “Zemlya vozmozhnostey.”
Her heart warms. There is so much, in that. An entire history, similar, probably, to one she’d only been part of once it was well-finished. A history that is spoken of, well and often: paperwork and embassies, the scrawl of signatures, the slow crawl of bureaucracy. They don’t know how brave you need to be, to leave your country — her father, watching MSNBC during Trump’s time in power, disheartened; seeing himself, born and raised in Vladikavkaz, in the flashing faces. The gaunt men he called brothers.
Murmurs kind words based on blind hope, on fortune favors the bold: “Vy naydete mnogo. Ya v etom uveren.”
He smiles, and she wants him.
Brave, she thinks of that.
Fuck, she wants to be that, too.
The mouth she’s staring at opens. “Kak tebya zovut?” The again, implied. Asked in a tone of near disbelief, the same way an innocent bystander would ask an incoming catastrophe: Where the hell did you come from?
“Alina. My name is Alina.”
It’s quick, how men snap into subtle wingman maneuvering: snippets about his fighting, his skill; he can fight Southpaw, too, did you know? And no, she did not. She never had to.
“This O’Rourke fight. It’s a big fucking deal,” Ivan stands, shepherds Alina into the bar stool he just vacated. Closer to Aleksandr that way. She chokes, holding in a laugh. “So many other assholes wanted this. If he wins it, the WBA will have no choice, none, but to give him a title shot. He’s on the cusp, just — very nearly close to a big payday —”
“Honey, he’s a force, undefeated,” Fedyor says. Sales talk made to sound like the beginning of an argument. “What the fuck are you talking about, if?” Turning away, locking together as they walk off, patting pockets theatrically, searching for cigarettes. “It’s not if, it’s when.”
“Jesus, semantics—”
The swing of a door, opening. Street noise filters in, mingling with the rising mess of conversations. Honks of cabs, the breeze of a pop song. Click and close. The wide windows offer a view of the sidewalk and the two idiots on it, lighting up, chancing looks past the gathering Friday crowd to see if their bullshit worked.
Eyebrow high, she looks at Aleksandr — pink-cheeked, giving up the game by openly laughing. He leans close to her, and in hushed Russian, “I’m sorry.” Conspiratorial, “They think I need help.”
“It’s sweet, but—” a giggle that is generous, that is inviting, rings out of her. “They really have no idea what women count as sexy.”
In the corner of her consciousness, she feels prying eyes. Too many eyes, her co-workers — friends — watching as she talks to the best-looking guy in the bar. A strange pride in that, a straightening of the spine, a flip of her hair — that’s right, she thinks, I’m something.
“Oh? That I’m a broke 21st century gladiator isn’t sexy?”
The height of his shoulders, made of corded muscle. The lifted veins on his forearms, small cuts on the back of his hand, the taper of his torso, wide to…less wide. Strength without subtlety. Brawn and bulk, an exact foil to the lissom bodies of her former — lovers? Human dildos? Convenient hookups? Strength that cannot fly in the air, that cannot hold an à la seconde; rooted, instead, to the ground: mutilating, mauling. Her life, her craft, did not prime her to be so drawn to masculinity without complexity. And yet—
“I didn’t say that.”
The smirk on this guy. Fuck.
“Are you bitchless?” she asks, quickly. He barks out a laugh. “Is that why they think you don’t have game?”
“No, it’s — in America, it’s harder, you understand? I can’t tell a woman I want her in a language I can’t speak.”
He glances down her legs, crossed; one foot not-so-unconsciously hooked around his leg. She doesn’t move, not even when he drags his eyes, unapologetically, up the body she only ever uses as an apparatus for art. Maybe she leans back — maybe to give him a better view. An act from instinct, not practice. When was the last time? When was the last time I wanted someone so badly?
“So you’re telling me you’re slinging dick all over St. Petersburg?”
He starts. “I walked right into that. That was entrapment. You trapped me.”
“Hm.” She moves her leg up — a single inch. His left cheek sinks into his mouth. “I am trying.”
Brave, brave. Is this brave or stupid?
This close, he smells of soap. Herbal musk, citrus cut. This close, his browbone reveals itself to be prominent. Beard as thick as she imagines it could be. The weight of his stare, thicker, flickering with coalescing decisions; thinking? Feeling? What does he see with those eyes?
Holding a stare and an attitude, she realizes then, needs the same muscle. Her core, buried in the center of her body, where all her thew pulls, even at rest. Wet with want, soaking in self-control. You’re so full of shit, you don’t even have to talk to get pussy. Look at you. Doesn’t break the long silence through sheer grit.
When he runs a hand through the thick mass of his hair, she wonders, is it nerves? Do I make you nervous? Just a tick? She wants to know. She wants to see inside his clothes, inside him, to get to the bottom of him and sink into whatever she finds there. Are you as strong as me?
“Yo, hey, are you guys about done?” English. From neither of them. Alina finds Fedyor back, blinks at his face — so familiar yet so out of place in this brand-new memory. The air, suddenly, is stained by Marlboros. “We should really go, take this party back to Brooklyn.”
Ivan, smirking. “You’re welcome to join us, Alina. The hotel bar isn’t bad.”
“Nah.” She jumps off the barstool. “Ty—” grabs Aleksandr by the shirt, just for second, barely half a second, and drops her hand, “—poydem so mnoy.” Is giving Ivan reasons before he can stop her— “He needs someone to talk to, really talk to. How long has he been stuck with you two?” A real question made rhetorical. Raw hunger, concealed with good humor. She turns her head, “Kogda vy v posledniy raz razgovarivali s kem-to, kto vas ponimal?”
Foreign tongue, playing along. “Too long.”
She grins.
“Too long. Exactly.” She steps away. Forward. “Comrade is mine for the night.”
Fedyor and Ivan share a look, loaded. A kind that would be rude to read into — private and for lovers. A second passes, and then two. Finally, Ivan groans.
Part worried, part petrified to ruin his friend’s fun, “Look, I, ah — he has a photoshoot tomorrow, Bleachers.”
Oh, come on—
“This fine.” It’s Aleksander who speaks, already pulling a suit jacket on. “It’s only talk — I go back to hotel in few hours.”
“You see? It’s fine.” Waves her fingers at Fedyor, bye now, before thinking better of it and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. The right thing to do, for an old friend who just did her a favor without even trying. “I’ll have Cinderella home before midnight—ah, well, yeah, sorry—where is home?”
Ivan gives her an address. Brooklyn hotel, a room on the 7th floor. He has his key card. A phone number, call if you need anything. Anything. Reminders, please, for the love of God, don’t make him do anything that can potentially break his hands. Or his knees. Every other part of him is free game. As they do this — logistics; this tedious thing adults do — Fedyor motions to Aleksander. A quick nod to the side. A let’s go. Aleksander squeezes her hip as he walks past. “Ya vstrechu tebya snaruzhi,” whispered to her ear.
The sprint back to the table filled with people she spends her life with — Alina has done slower chaînés.
Zoya, confused — “Where the fuck are you going?” — watching as she pulls her secondhand Bottega from the purse hook under the table. “Who are those guys?”
Similar questions from the other Soloists, yeah, are they single? Off-hand laughter, curious looks from the Principals. Gossip is the glue that knits a Company together, and Alina, she has the gift of foresight — sometimes. It’s in the air, the hunger for a filthy one. It’s always the ones you don’t expect, they’d say. Little Alina, the gangbang queen.
“Oh, they’re friends from high school.” Half a lie, not white, not black, somewhere in the middle, where it is safe. “Old friends. From home.” Throws bills at the table, fast. “I’m sorry, you guys. Gotta go.”
“Dude?” Zoya, high-pitched; fretting, ill-placed. “There’s three of them? What are you thinking?”
Alina flashes her a calm smile, exhaling through it. “I told you. They’re friends, it’s totally safe.” She throws her coat over her shoulder, straightens. A twitch in her calf, easily ignored discomfort — four-inch heels are nothing compared to the agony of pointe shoes.
“Hey, wait. Hey—”
“I’m so sorry, but I really gotta go.” The last word, “I’ll see you Monday, alright?” And she’s gone.
Outside, crisp air. As fresh as the city can be, with ice still stuck to the concrete. The street, loud with colors: the white and blue of a police car, the red flashes of a beacon. What looks to be some dispute between a cab driver and young — younger — NYU kids has curses blooming bruise-purple in the air. Clear, quick Swahili, followed by the alright, alright, let’s calm down of a de-escalation attempt.
Aleksandr doesn’t even look, shoulders relaxed, watching what he deems to be a better show on her face. “Want to say where you’re taking me?”
She decides to be honest. “My apartment.” Loops an arm around his. “My bed. I have a fire escape, too, if you want to see that.”
“Ah.” Bombshell smile, so easy on the eyes. “Of course.”
“I can rethink the plan, if you want me to.” She tries to loosen their arms, but he tightens his bicep, and she’s stuck. “We can see the city, go dancing—”
“No.”
Of course, like he already knew. Perhaps he did when she did: back at the bar, the first time their eyes met. “Okay, good.” She breathes in — they’re only a few buildings away. A few more minutes. “Aleksandr, the boxer from St. Petersburg.” Clucks her tongue in a horse call. I’m fucking him, and he’s fucking me. “I bet you have an incredible sob story.”
Facetious way to put it — his bravery, his life. An immigrant at a time like this; the world, barely recovered from a close brush with annihilation. Everything, on a downward trend. How low can we go? But it’s easy, it’s easy to talk and joke with him. Easy since the beginning, not an hour ago.
“I have a few.” Gentle, smiling. A man about to get laid. She sighs, relieved. “What about you?”
“Not a single sob story, unfortunately.” Fortunately. “I’m very, very boring.”
“I mean, what do you do?”
She stops, throws her purse on his chest. He lets her go, then, knowingly.
She goes into fourth — tricky in heels, but not impossible — feeling for balance on her legs, placing weight where she needs it. His eyes, her spot. It happens all at once, the turn: one leg on relevé, the other on passé, arms going into first. She does another, just to show off; dress fluttering around her burning thighs, winter wind kissing the wet between her legs. Lands as gracefully as she could onto her tipped feet, smiling through the ache on her arch.
Not perfect, but close. It would be better en pointe.
“Ballet,” he says, making one word sound like praise.
“Why do you sound happy about that?”
They resume position, arms locking back together as they walk through her too-fancy neighborhood. He doesn’t hand her bag back, its strap wrapped twice around his index finger.
“I like ballet.”
She snorts. “Why?”
“It’s a very…technical sport—”
“—art.”
“—that requires years of dedication and practice and perseverance.” He licks his lips, vibrating in his skin. “I admire difficult things.”
She can’t help herself, doesn’t have to, now that they’re alone. “You are so full of shit,” she says. “No one like you likes ballet. They like ballerinas.”
He grins at this, chuckling through his teeth. “Well, you have to admit, ballerinas are incredibly flexible.”
“And you’ve always wanted to fuck one.”
So Russian, this one.
“And I’ve always dreamt of fucking one, yes.”
She leans in, lips finding the swell of his shoulder. You’re a pig, words she swallows because she doesn’t mean them. Want me, too. “Stick with me, Aleksandr. I’ll make all your dreams come true.”
They become magnets, giggling at the stupidity of her clichéd line, closing in on each other. It’s wonderful — Alina has forgotten her exhaustion. The thrumming pain in her body, background noise. The pleasure of a good man’s company, she thinks, is so underrated.
They’re two doors from her building when he nods to a traffic light up ahead, “See that red light?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll kiss you under it.”
She glances at the black-painted door of her home, and smiles as they walk past.
“Okay,” she says, wanting, wanting — where is this coming from? This want? “Just a little taste?”
“Yes, an aperitif.” He drops his arms to hold her hand, and she lets him. “Just to see if we’ll have a good night.”
“There’s a lot riding on this kiss, then.” Skip in her step, and he huffs, amused. “What if I’m a bad kisser?”
“You won’t be.”
“What if you’re a bad kisser?”
“I can make up for it.”
Laughter, bright under moonlight. “Oh, is that right?”
He nods, serious; an authority on the matter. “I won’t disappoint.”
“In my experience, men who say that often do.”
Under the traffic light, he drops her bag on the ground, so he may spin her around — hand extended overhead, grip loose enough to let her spin. Spin right into his chest, and the smile on his face, a curve over the beard. It’s warmth under her skin, and not for the first time, she feels a pang of mourning for perfection that is ephemeral. His hands around her waist, pulling close, moving up, caressing; his fingers trailing over her shoulders. A brief touch on her neck, and just like that — all I’ve ever wanted. She feels the callouses of his palm against her jaw. Strong hands, tilting her head up. Will I remember this, just as it is, tomorrow? This scene out of a fantasy. A long-buried flip book of images. A miracle she’s only ever imagined, storybook-quality. A handsome man, dashing warrior, with a kind gaze, full of requited desires.
He leans forward and her training kicks into gear — feet arching into demi-pointe, bridging the gap; reaches, reaches, reaches, thighs and arms and hope — until their lips are touching.
It’s a mess. What should be a simple affection — the first kiss, the very first — and he treats it like a fight to win.
Matches her move for move, breath for breath. Nowhere close to just a little taste; no, a precursor to devouring, instead.
Aleksandr’s not afraid to break her, this much is certain. He bites her lip, forces her open; smashes their teeth together so he can take more, taste more, get deeper. Not greedy, but eager — oh, fuck it, yes, perhaps a bit greedy. In his mouth, she tastes the same emotion that’s been brewing between her legs: wanting. A wetness. She doesn’t mind the spit gathering between their chins, the burn of his beard, the tight grip he has around her face, holding her so closely, as though afraid she’d pull away.
I won’t, I won’t. She’d laugh if she could, but could is no match for what is, and what she is doing is kissing back.
Gravel-lined words, panted into the wet hole of her mouth: “How far away is your flat?”
With each inhale, the spice of his skin coats her throat. She doesn’t know how to answer this question, how to explain. There’s a strange acidity to her insides; an electric cleanliness. She turns her face a single inch and presses a kiss to his palm.
“Alina.”
“Hm?”
“How much further? Is your flat?”
The pink of her desire melds unpleasantly to the red of her embarrassment. “We — it’s —” breathes in, to calm her heartbeat, and she really cannot say it out loud. Biting her lip, she points somewhere behind her back.
They’ve had so little time, and already — by the scrunching of his nose, the furrowing of his brow — she knows what a question looks like when it is in his face. She doesn’t want that — she doesn’t want to be confusing to him—
“It’s — it’s back there. We walked right past it.” Bears down and tries for mettle, stomach tight. “I just really wanted you to kiss me.”
And that is all it takes for a smile to find its way back to his eyes.
“How much have you had to drink?”
In her small black and white kitchen, heat turned up, shoes off. The air is tense with control, reservoirs of strength running dry as they both hold up each end of a pretense — that they are still sane, thinking humans. That there isn’t a bedroom two feet away, or a couch right there — so close — or a countertop right behind her, or a floor under their feet.
Alina has never had to think of her apartment as a collection of surfaces to be ravaged on. “A few sips of red wine.” Now, it’s all she can think about.
His eyes have gone past dark. Tone gentlemanly, he says, “That’s good.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t really drink,” he admits.
“Never?”
“Never.”
“In recovery?”
He relishes in her bluntness, smirks as he pushes off the pantry door he’d been leaning on. “No, I just don’t like it.” Moving closer. Alina puts the glass of water she's holding down; a shake in her grip, mind full of a shattering. “My poison is much sweeter.”
“The blood of your enemies?”
Hums, “That’s right.”
Cages her in with his thick forearms, hands flat on the subway tile of the counter. His head tilts to the side, and she senses a waiting, a waiting for her.
Half-step forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Wouldn’t want to get on your bad side, then.” Hops up, and is pleasantly unsurprised that he catches her with ease. She wraps her legs around his waist, locks her ankles; presses a gentle kiss to his right cheek — does this instead of licking it, like she wants to, air-light in his arms.
“Alina,” he whispers. “I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about.”
She kisses him before he can force out the last vowel. Gentler than she did out on the sidewalk, a welcoming thing — that doesn’t quite last. The air shifts with a snap, oxygen is made fire. A spark is allowed to ignite and the blaze begins.
Both trained in speed, precision; body-intelligent, even with their eyes closed, wrapped up in each other. He drops her on a perch, ass hanging off the counter, a bit of leverage so he may free his hands; rips the clothes right off of her body. Her, clawing at his shirt, nails digging up his abdomen — hard, hard muscle — until their arms are a blurred tangle of intent. Mouths forcing apart to focus — get naked, now, now, now. Fingers pulling at a belt, the snap of metal on leather; fingers hooking through lace, making holes, the whisper of silk down her legs.
So much bulk on him, transparent virility, heft.
It happens all at once: sliding further into the counter, her legs lifting up and out, the sound of his hefty knees, hitting the floor. “Look at that,” he has the gall to growl, spreading her cunt open. “All for me.”
Recognizes the hunger of his tongue, swirling between her legs as it did in her mouth. Too impatient for teasing, pleasure that jars. She’s so fucking wet — she can feel how wet she is against his mouth. “Please—”
She doesn’t need that — to beg.
He gives it all to her, generous, generous. Lips, tongue, the tip of his nose on her clit; his beard against her thighs; fingers dipping, slipping through plump onto the pleading hole of her cunt. Just a taste, she thinks, when — wait, go back — he stands, and forces his soaked mouth onto hers. She tastes herself, and sinks further into heat, made hotter by salt and musk.
His fingers do not stop, pumping into her; swallows her overwhelmed whimpering. A twist of his wrist, and she’s crying out, head falling back onto a cupboard. He’s found her little spot. Fuck, fuck—
“Where’s the bedroom, sweet girl?”
She can’t hope to form a word and he cannot resist the pull of her body long enough to be patient — lips falling to the tips of her breasts, sucking at her nipples, fingers finding an all-new rough. She’s too wet to know if there’s one, two, or three inside her.
A hard suck. “Where the fuck is the bedroom?” Absolute violence, in the even calm of his voice. “Tell me or I’ll fuck you right here.” He presses a harsh kiss to her neck, words vibrating on her skin: “Throw you down on the floor and fuck you on your knees like an animal.”
She wants that, wants that but doesn’t — my knees are gold, darling, and so are yours. Breathes out quiet instructions — so turned on she’s making Russian chime softly — “The hallway. First door. On the left.”
Aleksandr loses another shred of sanity as soon as her back hits the bed. Perhaps, it was his last tittle.
Jaw unhinged, he finishes the job he started in the kitchen, relentless. Pertinacious. Massive hands on her thighs, keeping her flat and open and still for his mouth. Her hips swivel in ways it hasn’t in years — dancing to a rhythm that demands a singular end. One. It’s there in the trill of his tongue. Come. The growling coming off his chest, meeting her keening. Come all over my face.
Neither him nor this body — abused and untouched for years, weakened and prone to submission — give her much of a choice.
She takes to the air.
Weeks later, she will describe this as a punch to the gut — though she’s never been punched anywhere, really, and most especially not in her soft, white underbelly. An imperfect description, to be sure, one that implies pain where there was only pleasure.
Zoya cringes at the phrase as soon as she hears it, and Alina, quick, understands that she will never be able to translate into words what happened that night in her bedroom; that it will live, inside her, as a memory without an appropriate metaphor.
“That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
“No, no. It was, it was—” she sighs, then, already resigned. “It was like, I couldn’t breathe. Like, he couldn’t bear to let me breathe — I, ugh, I’m explaining this poorly.”
Really, she just meant — stupefying. It was stupefying. What he did with his mouth made me so stupid.
Eyelids fluttering open. Shaking, still; blown to pieces in her own bed, and she is looking at the stranger she met at the tapas bar she can only afford on Fridays. What’s your name? What’s mine? How did we get here? He is kneeling on the floor, beard soaked with wet. The moonlight catches his smirk, slivers of light bouncing off shining lips.
“Good?” Pleased bleeding into the overwhelming hunger, clear, in his eyes.
She should be frightened to be so watched — blood still rushing fast under her skin; pressure ringing in her ear. No, she should be terrified that someone, out in the world, so removed from herself, can have as much command over her body as she does; that someone can make her thighs tremble this way, in slick, slithering sweetness. A complete absence of pain.
“Yes. Fuck yes.”
Delicate laughter — happiness from a most intimate glory. “I told you I won’t disappoint.”
“A man of his word,” she thinks and says. “What a rare thing.”