“I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this, Natasha. I’m sorry I blamed you. I’ve been an asshole. It’s only because… I needed to push you away. It’s hard for me to think straight when you’re nearby. And I can’t…” —he leans his forehead against mine and slowly shakes his head.
“Can’t what?” I whisper.
“I’m not the guy for you, amerikanka. And you can’t be mine.”
Pain lances through my heart.
The urge to run again, to try to escape the ache of rejection hits me, but before I can struggle for sovereignty, Dima leans forward and brushes his lips against mine.
I go still. After all the things we’ve done, we’ve hardly kissed. He opens his lips, closes them around mine. His hand at my cheek slides around to cup the back of my head, and he holds me steady as he deepens the kiss, firming his lips against mine, tasting me, then sweeping his tongue into my mouth.
I loop my arm behind his neck and kiss him back. Nothing has ever felt so good—this messy, vulnerable meeting of lips, mating of mouths in the middle of a puddle after a rainstorm. My body comes alive, every nerve-ending responding to the intensity of his kiss. My nipples harden under my tight, wet t-shirt, I go slick between my legs.
I shift position to straddle his waist, and then he pushes me back into the mud.
“Natasha.” It’s a lament. Like he’s broken. Like he’s sorry.
Whether he’s sorry for hurting me or sorry for what we’re about to do, I can’t be sure.
He kisses along my jaw, sucks at my neck. “I want you,” he rasps, sounding breathless.
“I want you, too,” I murmur.
He unbuttons his jeans and frees his length, and then he pushes into me, my panties and the boxer shorts easily shoved down. My back sinks into the soft mud as he pins my wrists beside my head and slowly, gently rocks, holding my gaze as if we’re performing some sacred ritual that requires his utmost concentration.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. “You can’t possibly know how beautiful you are to me.”
His words enter me, swirling and spiraling up my center core, received like broken fragments of his withheld love. A few more pieces I will cling to and save for later, for those moments when I try to rearrange and fit them together, trying to make it real. Make it whole.
I love you, Dima.
Those are the words in my head that I want to say, but I hold them back.
He’s already said I’m not for him, and he can’t be for me.
Is it possible to love someone who can’t be for you?
Yes! my tattered heart screams. It may not be logical, but it’s true. I’ve always felt something for Dima, just as he’s always felt something for me.
There’s a rightness when I’m with him. A sense that I know him, even though I don’t. And even after all his rejections, I’m still here, taking whatever he’s willing to give, waiting for the moment when he’s ready to give more.
“Natasha.” He dips his head and nuzzles into my neck, all the while moving in a steady rhythm inside me. “You are summer rain and the sun that shines afterward.” He nips my ear. “You are everything kind and pure in my world. And I’ve been jaded for such a long time.”
He kisses along my collarbone. “I would help you with my fingers, but they’re covered in mud,” he murmurs like he’s telling me a secret he doesn’t want the trees to hear.
I laugh. “I’ll come if you go harder.”
Dima’s eyes warm. His smile is soft and indulgent. “My biggest surprise with you,” he says, releasing my wrists and bracing his hands on the ground beside my head to thrust deeper.
“What?”
“That you like it rough. I never would have guessed.”
“Me neither,” I admit, my eyes already rolling back in my head as he increases the intensity of his strokes, slamming in harder and deeper, but still at a slow, measured pace.
The pressure in me grows, building and coiling tighter until Dima murmurs, “Are you close?”
I nod, my gaze locked on his. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away. He pins me with that beautiful blue stare and drills into me, faster, harder, until need makes his movements jerky, his mouth open.
“Natasha!” he gasps.
“I’m coming!” My muscles tighten around his thick member, and he thrusts even harder and faster, pumping to his finish while I come and come beneath him.
When it’s over, when I open my eyes—I don’t know when I closed them—I find he’s still staring down at me with that same crazy intensity.
“Dima.”
I don’t know why it feels like our first time.
It feels like my first time, ever.
Maybe because sex has never felt so intimate and shared. It wasn’t beautiful or romantic or hot. I didn’t have sexy lingerie on. He didn’t show me his expert moves.