25. Katya

I had gotten Maxim to take me shopping again for everything from curtains and blankets to food and bandages for Yuri.

Nothing can really keep my thoughts from looking back at Yuri, even though I tried as hard as I could.

I wanted nothing more than to continue lying in his arms that afternoon. My body limp, throbbing, satisfied from his rough but incredibly satisfying fuck.

Being with Yuri was like being burned alive. Every touch, every glance, every thought set off an inferno inside me.

It was always that way and I would never get used to it, never take it for granted.

That’s the way it was with him. Never easy, never boring.

He wasn't the quick to laugh type. He was a hard and intense man with the force of personality that has its own gravity, and he sucked me in.

It was the way he wanted me. The way he needed me. The way he hungered for me —that deep and desperate loneliness from which he reached out for me with such a desperate need that everything in me responded to it. I loved to be needed the way— I needed it.

He was an asshole, a grump, and hard to be in the same room with most of the time, but he was right. I did make the mistake of falling in love with him. I loved him and had to accept that.

I had to surrender to that fact.

Maxim was very different from Yuri: quick to laugh, very playful, very flirtatious and mischievous. There was something childlike and innocent in him. He must have frustrated Yuri often, but he trusted Maxim above everybody except Anton. Maxim has all those qualities that Yuri has strangled out of himself.

Anton was more like Yuri—or had become more like Yuri over the past few years. They shared a loneliness and sadness —Anton, from the death of his wife and young daughter—Yuri from … birth? But even Anton could smile and have it reach his eyes. Anton didn't have the weight of the world and the responsibility of the Bratva on his shoulders like Yuri did.

When the shopping was finished and we drove home, I retreated deeper into my head, thinking about Yuri. The closer I got to home, to Yuri, the faster my heart beat and the warmer my skin got.

The sex was always amazing— even the gentle, spooning sex like this afternoon. But even during sex, Yuri was still distant, far away, somewhat restrained. I wish we could work everything out—our hangups, our emotional distance, everything— through sex but that was just dreaming. That was avoiding life and avoiding making a decision.

I was pregnant. Three separate pee tests had confirmed it. I had to decide, end this with Yuri and go away from the Bratva but I couldn’t just yet. In a few days maybe …. I was just making it harder, I knew, but just a few more good days could last me the rest of my life. I hoped so.

We were like one person sometimes during sex but after, it was like Yuri would flip a switch and go away, become quiet again and withdraw into himself. He would look at me with cold eyes, like I was a stranger, like I was intruding, or trespassing in some place he didn’t let anyone in.

I was a million miles away, thinking of Yuri, when suddenly the car stopped, we were in the driveway, home.

Maxim helped me bring the groceries and supplies inside then went up to the garage apartment. Yuri was somewhere but hadn’t shown himself, even while I was putting the groceries away.

Then I felt warm breath against my ear, “Did you have a good time?” Yuri asked in a low, angry voice.

I was sensitive to his anger, his grumpiness, his mercurial moods were something I’d gotten used to. His anger relaxed me, just nice to hear his voice.

“Spending your money is always a good time,” I told him.

His silence was unnerving. He just kept watching me putting everything away and then the same when I went into the bathroom to take off my makeup and change into the nightgown I just bought. Not quite lingerie but pretty close. The silence was unnerving, and his eyes felt like sunlight on my skin. Yuri used that silence on me before, like a weapon to put me off balance, making me defensive. Make me start babbling just to break the silence. Why was he attacking me with his silence? All I wanted to do was love him. But of course, Yuri would make that hard as possible on me.

“I prefer you sleeping naked next to me,” his voice pierced the silence from the bed.

He was on the bed taking off his pants, slowly unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning the top button of his jeans and slowly unzipping his fly.

Of course, I was watching with rapt attention like a cat watches a mouse or a bear watches salmon jumping upstream. The air around me immediately felt charged like before a thunderstorm and my throat dried up.

I tried to swallow, watching Yuri kicking himself out of his jeans, revealing his red underwear, then he shucked them off too, his cock springing to life between the V muscles of his hips.

My body was ready almost immediately. My heartbeat sped up along with my breathing, all of this was automatic for my body at this point. It has always been like this since the first time. And like that first time I can’t stop this if I wanted to — and I did not want to. I loved watching him and seeing how much he wanted me, how much his body wanted me, his cock growing and showing his own heartbeat speeding up with every throb. He wanted me badly, but he didn't like that he wanted me so much. That was what was behind the silence.

That realization hurt. It hurt a lot. It was pain deep inside, somewhere dark, but like Tasha's mammalian dive reflex, my body was on autopilot and didn't care about the twinge of heartbreak deep down. It's my chance to feel close to him and I’m going to take it, no matter if he shuts me out after. I won’t allow myself to panic or go straight to the hurt. I wasn’t going to skip the fun part and go straight to heartache. That would just be stupid.

This is the fun part.

“God, I want you,” I managed to say. It sounded like a cry of desperation. In it was sort of surrender. I wanted the freedom, the release, the freedom from thought that I had this afternoon, but I couldn't just forget about that searing pain deep down. “I’m going crazy here. I don't know what we have if anything. Every day I hope it becomes clear, becomes something real. And every day feels like a dream that I can't quite hold onto. What do you want from me? Other than sex and for me to be a little bratva wife?”

He answered me with silence and agitation, but I wasn't going to walk out of this bathroom until he answered me, or until he walked over to grab me and throw me over his shoulder and carry me to the mattress.

One or the other.

No in between.

“Finally, you're being honest with me, so you deserve a little bit of that same thing from me. You ask me what do I want from you? The answer is: Everything. I want everything from you. But I can't have it.”

“But you can. Of course you can.”

“You know I can't. And you know why.If I get lost in you again, I betray all these other people who rely on me. I betray the Bratva. I betray Dmitry, again. The closer I let you, the easier it is for my enemies to use you to get to me. To hurt you because they know how much I need you to be safe. You know that. That's why I have to keep you distant."

“So, you want me by your side but not an equal just a pet there for you to use when you need me. You talk like there haven’t been other women. I know there have been others. What was your excuse with them?”

“They weren’t you. They didn’t matter. There’s nobody who I’ve let come half as close to me as I have you. I told you, I tell you all the time: Dmitry died because I saw you crying and went to comfort you. I abandoned him and betrayed him for you, and he died. And all this mess because of that. That one moment when I forgot myself and what I had to do. I can’t do that again.”

“Do you think I want to love you as much as I do like this?Or at all if it was my choice? Because I don't want to, not one bit of me. But I've surrendered to it, and I’m brave enough to take a chance and not be a coward and run away from it like you.”

Shit.

That was too far.