Demyan & Ana (13 page)

“I know I am.”

“—and I want you to feel like you’re the most important thing to me because I want you to be,” he finished quietly.

Ana laughed, but the sound came out shaky. “You already do.”

“Good.” Koldan swore under his breath, chuckling. He yanked his sodden coat off and tossed it to the side of the pool. The white T-shirt he wore did nothing to hide the hard ridges of his muscular form beneath the wet fabric. Ana’s mouth went dry. “That’s a two-thousand dollar jacket and it’s ruined.”

She continued gawking at his body. “You didn’t have to get in the pool.”

“I think I did. You’re staring, Ana.”

“Yep.”

Because he was fucking
gorgeous
and every part of her knew it.

“Cross-country running and rugby,” Koldan said, smiling slyly. “It’s kept me in good shape.”

“Yep,” Ana repeated. “Don’t worry about sending me running, Koldan.”

Koldan moved in closer until they were pressed tightly together. His hands twisted into the sides of her two-piece bathing suit while he skimmed his nose along her cheekbone. “You okay?”

“So okay,” she promised.

His hand skipped under her top, his palm resting flat on her lower back. “Tell me if you need to stop.”

“I will, but right now, please don’t.”

Koldan took his time to lavish attention on Ana with his hands and mouth. The softest touches of his fingers along her bare skin were aided by the caresses of his lips across her jaw and neck. Ana didn’t rush him to go faster. The slow building of his intent created a spiral of desire twisting inside like silk ribbons.

Water was the most soothing, safe place Ana had ever known, but when Koldan asked her to get out of the pool with him she didn’t refuse. They found themselves in Ana’s old room, still exploring with their hands and lips as wet clothes were shed to the floor. He was beautiful with clothes on, but glorious with them off. His fingers interweaved with hers as he dropped to his knees. Ana couldn’t concentrate on anything but staring at Koldan while he watched her down between her thighs.

His tongue at her slit was heaven. He tunneled in slow at first, his nose nudging along her clit with just enough pressure to send shivers racing down her spine. The tempo of his strokes sped up, his tongue lapping from between her folds to her throbbing nub before she had blinked. Ana’s quiet moan turned into a sharp gasp when Koldan encased her with his lips and sucked, throwing her off into a precipice of blinding bliss.

A tender kiss landed down on her inner thigh. “It should never hurt, Ana. This, what we do, will never hurt you. I couldn’t hurt you.”

Ana nodded; she knew that and he didn’t have to tell her.

“I’m not going to treat you like you’re some breakable doll any other time, but right now, it’s not the same. We can slow down or stop. You’re making the calls here,” Koldan said, standing and keeping their hands locked together. His cock rested between their bodies, but Ana didn’t feel the slightest bit of fear at the sensation of its pulse matching his heartbeat. “Whatever you want.”

The zinging hum from her orgasm was dissipating. Ana wanted it back. With Koldan, of course she did. “I don’t want to stop. I want you.”

When he asked for one, she found him a condom from a package her mother made sure was always available in the dresser, no questions asked. Instead of finding herself with her back to the bed, Koldan had her straddle him. She took him slowly, the slickness from her sex easing the first, full thrust of his shaft. No pain intruded on her moment, just a sweet, burning heat as his cock stretched her full of him.

All the while, her one hand tangled in his short hair at the nape of his neck and her other scored lines down his back. Ana’s eyes fluttered closed as his lips ghosted along the seam of her mouth and his hands drove up her back.

Because it did feel good. So fucking
good
.

Ana shuddered, delicious sparks of pleasure charring her nerves. It was new and that was scary. Her body seemed to know what it wanted and she did what felt right—natural. Koldan allowed her to set the pace and followed her lead. A leisurely rhythm. There was no frenzy to her movements, no rush in her want. The passion still climbed and the fever still raced. It didn’t have to be furious and quick between them to give her what she needed.

The sensation of Koldan’s cock filling her over and over as Ana rode him felt like a drug being fed straight to her veins. His heady groans fell muffled to her cheek. When she came again, she stilled in her bliss, crying out. The final remainders of the walls she’d built shattered. He followed right behind, his shaking hands holding her snug in his lap. The power behind gaining her control and life back again sent a fresh round of emotions rising and tears falling.

“
Shhh
, I got you,” she heard Koldan breath. “It’s okay,
krasivyy
.”

It was, now.

And it would only get better.

Epilogue

Demyan

“You want me to come with you?” Ana asked. “Koldan can watch Vera.”

“No,” Demyan said, a pressure bearing down on his throat. “I want to be alone for a while. Just me.”

Ana seemed to understand. “Okay. Come to Auntie, Vera.”

Demyan handed over his squirming child, her calls for him rising louder as he walked up the pathway past the gravestones. Nearly six months to the day had passed since they put the love of his life in the ground here. The doctors took Gia off life support on the fourth of December, only three days after Vera was born. Then, they buried Gia just five days later. The ground hadn’t been frozen enough for the burial to be held off until spring.

Too many breaths from his lungs.

Too many beats from his heart.

Demyan missed her funeral because he couldn’t stand to go. He couldn’t watch the casket go down. Ivan called him a selfish bastard for the choice, but Gia’s father didn’t understand. Demyan didn’t know how to explain that dirt should never have covered her first. Instead, he stayed at the hospital with Vera and rocked her until his arms were numb and the tears had stopped coming. Demyan hadn’t let another tear fall after that day.

No matter how many times someone offered, Demyan refused to come to the graveyard. This was the first time and he wasn’t entirely sure why he had even come today. The two calla lilies in his hand shook from the tremors rocking his fist clenched around the thick stems. 

The first six months of his daughter’s life was spent in a haze of grief and the black bleakness that came along with anguish and agony. He barely remembered learning how to feed and burp her, or even change her diaper. The sleepless nights weren’t really sleepless when Demyan couldn’t sleep at all.

Life was waiting for him to move again. The world hadn’t stopped turning just because his ended. It might have been better if it had.

Demyan stopped at a sleek, black marble headstone. Her name was crisp, clear and bold across the middle. The dates were haunting to him. The sound of his daughter’s babyish giggles traveled up to his spot. The coldness started seeping in his veins again.

Gia was so much more than this place. More than a marker and a grave.

She was his first kiss. His best friend, even when she couldn’t stand him. She’d been the first person he met coming off the stage at his high school graduation and she was the same six-year-old girl who held his hand when he walked into kindergarten. Her initials were carved into the bedpost of the bed in his old room, on the trunk of the tree in his parents’ backyard, and anywhere he’d ever traveled, he left a piece of her behind. That way, if he ever had to go back alone, he could always find where he left her memory.

He had fifty-six movie stubs, one for each one they went to when they were teens, in a shoebox in his closet. All the concert tickets they saw together were in the box, too. The black hair elastic she wrapped around the bedroom doorknob in his old room at his parents’ so she wouldn’t forget it was still there. Her ballet flats were still in his car.

“Papa gone,” Demyan said, rolling to his back in the sand.

Gia skipped around his body, kicking up the wet sand on the beach in Little Odessa. Demyan could see Ma talking to Gia’s Papa. Ma was crying.

“Gone how?” Gia asked.

“I don’t know. Gone. Ma said.”

She fell down beside him, a tiny, sandy hand finding his. “I’m here.”

Demyan smiled. Gia was never gone.

She was his life. He only ever knew her.

All of his days were marked with her fingerprints. She left nothing on him untouched.

“You coming, Demyan?” Gia asked. The bottom of her yellow summer dress was muddied from their exploration in the woods. She kept trying to wipe it away, huffing in that way of hers, but the dirt was still there. “Well, are you?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

She was seven. He was six.

“You going to follow me?”

“I’m always gonna follow you, Gia.”

“Good, ‘cause you don’t know the trail.”

Demyan blinked out of the memory, feeling a heaviness rest on his chest.

Another one slammed into him just as fast.

“How much do you love me?” Gia asked.

“What do you mean love?”

The sounds of her tenth birthday party echoed in the background, but they never did play well with others, so they had hidden themselves under a table. Someone called for Gia, but the two didn’t move from their hiding spot.

Gia drew a purple heart on the floor. She was probably going to get in trouble for that. “You know, like love.”

“Ma tells me she loves me,” Demyan said, turning his palm over so Gia could doodle on his hand.

“No, not like that.”

“Papa tells Ma he loves her. Like crazy, he says. Like nobody knows.”

Gia grinned. “Yeah, like that. Do you love me like that, Demyan?”

“I love you like I love you, Gia.”

Everything. Every. Single. Moment.

All of it had been spent with her.

“I’m sorry,” Demyan whispered. “I should have waited for you. You should have been my first, too. I thought you didn’t want to be like that with me, Gia.”

“We’ve always been like that, Demyan.” She wiped the wet lines from her cheeks. “Do you love her like you love me?”

“Nobody loves you like I love you. I don’t love anyone like I love you.”

He tried to pull up memories of his childhood that didn’t include Gia in one way or another. Not one came to mind. His younger years were spent chasing behind her. Most of his teenage years were spent learning how to love her in an entirely new way.

Life was a killer. It had taken everything from him. He gave it all to her and it was gone.

Demyan pulled open the front door and once more, handed his heart over. “Gia.”

She was beautiful even when she cried.

“I can’t do it. I can’t marry him, Demyan. He’s not you.”

Demyan pressed the heel of his palms to his eyes to rid the burning sensation behind his lids. The air coming from his lungs felt hot and thick as it rushed out in painful pants.

“How am I supposed to do this without you?” Demyan asked, staring up at the sky. He didn’t want to think of Gia in the ground, so he refused to look there. “I don’t know how to be me without you, Gia. Because there’s nothing left here. Nothing inside me. I keep looking, but I can’t find it. I’m empty. I needed to learn how to hide the way I felt, but I can’t remember how to feel anything, now. It’s gone. I am so cold without you.”

Demyan turned to look back at his six-month-old daughter in her aunt’s arms. She was waving to Koldan and smiling brightly in her cheerful, innocent way. The only thing his baby needed to be happy was love.

He wasn’t sure he knew how to give that anymore.

Vera was his child, the one thing he had left of Gia, and he didn’t know how to love her.

“She is so beautiful,” Demyan whispered. “She’s got my black hair, but your curls. The shape of my eyes, but blue like yours. Every time I look at her, I see you staring back at me. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to live when what made me feel alive isn’t here.

“People break, you know. It’s what we were always told. Their hearts break. Apparently, I’m not like everybody else, Gia, because I fucking shattered. There are shards of me everywhere. There’s nothing that can put me back together.” Demyan kneeled down, placing the two calla lilies on top of green grass. “One for me and one for her. I can’t come back here again. I just won’t. But, I wanted you to know I loved you. God, how I loved
you
, Gia.”

As fast as Demyan made his way up the path to Gia’s grave, he left it. The harshness of his deadened emotions froze his veins with every step he took.

“Papa! Papa!”

Vera babbled louder the closer Demyan came to where his daughter, his sister, her boyfriend still stood waiting.

“Demyan?” Ana asked.

“Can you watch her for the rest of the day?” Demyan asked.

Ana shifted Vera on her hip. “Sure, if you want.”

“Good. Thanks. I’ll move her car seat over into Koldan’s truck.”

“Demyan, Gia would—”

“Don’t, Ana,” Demyan said. “Don’t ever mention her name to me again. Just
don’t
.”

With that, he turned to the direction where he parked his vehicle earlier. He didn’t miss the sad question trailing behind him.

“Why doesn’t he cry?” Ana asked.

“Broken men don’t know how to,” Koldan replied quietly.

Demyan had to agree. Every bit of pain came from his own hands. He allowed a man to be invited into the safe haven that was his family’s home. Ana’s attack followed. The way he handled that issue led to Gia’s murder. Lives around him were irrevocably changed because of his choices. It was the worst and truest form of devastation. That’s who he was.

The least Demyan could do was save his daughter from being hurt by him, too. He didn’t want to wake up one day and realize that he resented his innocent child for keeping him from following her mother like he always promised to.

There was one other thing that stayed nailed to the back of Demyan’s mind, too. Liam Dolan. The man promised to take two of the things Demyan loved. He only took one.

All Demyan ever did was ruin beautiful things.

Vera wouldn’t be one of them.