But then he returns the intimacy. “Kat….Kat.”
It’s too much for me. A cry of pleasure echoes around our tiny room, and my internal muscles seize.
“Oh, fuck,” Adrian mutters, going still for me, then pumping faster than ever until he reaches his own shouted climax. His fingers close around my throat–I don’t think he even realizes, and I go with it, letting him squeeze out my breath. It brings on another equally strong orgasm, and I come and come beneath him, all over his cock.
“Oh shit, Kat.” He releases my throat like it’s a hot iron. “Baby. Malyshka. Kit-Kat.” He strokes my neck. “Are you all right? I’m sorry.”
My eyelids flutter open, and I give him a dreamy smile. “I’m good. I loved it.”
“Gospodi.” He pulls out and drops beside me. “I thought I hurt you.”
My smile widens. “You did.”
His gaze turns fond, a smile playing on his lips. He kisses the bridge of my nose. “Beautiful, wild, funny girl. What will I do with you?” He backs off the bed, removing his condom and disposing of it.
“Keep me,” I suggest.
Adrian
I arrange Kat on the cot with her head in the proper direction and lie down beside her.
Her words, keep me, bounce around in my head.
I want to keep her. To take her back to Chicago and fall madly in love with her while doing bad things to that hot little body of hers.
“Why were you living in England, Kat?”
“I already told you. My father sent me away.”
“But after prep school. Was it your choice to stay in England?”
She rolls into me, resting her head on my shoulder, sliding her hand up my t-shirt to run her nails through the hair on my chest. “Yes.”
“Why? You said you don’t have friends there.”
She doesn’t answer, which makes me suspect there is an actual reason.
My heart thuds with an unpleasant notion. “Was it for a guy?”
Her light laughter relieves the jealous choke-hold on my throat. “No. I stayed for pottery.”
“What?”
“My last year of prep school they got a new art teacher. She talked them into buying a pottery wheel and a kiln, and she taught us all how to throw pots. I fell in love.”
“You love pottery.” I don’t know why I find that so satisfying. I guess I’m just happy that she has something. Something she loves. Something to work for. To believe in.
That’s all any of us really need, isn’t it?
For the past year, mine has been finding Nadia and then revenge. The ideas consumed me. Changed me. Made me into a hard, brutal man.
What if I’d found something so sweet and simple and perfect as pottery? Some art form that trained me into a meditative flow. Something that allowed me to get quiet without brooding. To make beauty with my hands instead of enact violence?
Maybe that’s what Nadia needs to heal herself.
Kat lifts her head to look at me. “Are you laughing?”
“Never,” I promise. “Why would I laugh? I love that for you.”
She lets out a muffled giggle. “You do?” Her smile is so sweet and pretty it hurts. It makes me stupid and reckless. To think things I have no business thinking.
“Absolutely. It’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. What do you like about it?”
She considers, nibbling on the inside of her lower lip. “In order to throw a pot, you have to really get centered. I mean, your thumb has to be centered in the clay, but that means you have to center, as well.”
“Are we talking spiritually? Or Physically?”
She lights up, like she’s pleased I asked. “Both. That’s the thing!” She leans up on one hand and looks down at me. “I feel like I’ve been unbalanced my whole life. Like I don’t know what center to orbit around. I was clay plopped on the wrong place on the wheel.”
I brush my thumb over her nipple because her breasts are too beautiful to ignore, especially when one is in my face.
“And now you’ve found your center?”
“Well, no, not exactly. But I’m trying to figure it out. Clay showed me what I was missing–that I was off my axis. Why I always felt out of control and searching for something.”
“So how do you center now, Kateryna?”
She draws in a breath. “I don’t know. But I feel closest when I’m working with clay. Like getting it centered helps me to do the same.”
I try to push back the desire to become her center. To provide the axis she orbits around. To never let her flounder or falter again. She needs to find that for herself. It’s selfish and foolish to think I could ever be that for anyone. Still, I want to be it for her.
“If I got to keep you, Kateryna, I would build you an art studio,” I murmur. “And I’d install a kiln right in the building for you. I wouldn’t ever care that you were covered in clay dust every time I got you naked.”