Under the Skin (28 page)

“Is good they meet Mikhail and not Alexei,
da
?” Mikhail’s voice was calm, but a curl of tension roiled in his gut.  How could he expect Patrick’s family to accept him? He could still scarcely dare to believe that Patrick had returned to him despite all the sins in his past.

Patrick wrapped his arms around Mikhail’s neck. “You know what my mother said? She said I couldn't fall in love with someone who wasn’t a good person at heart. She was right, no matter what name you go by.” He kissed Mikhail tenderly. “Make love with me. I want to feel you moving inside me and know we’re together again.”

“
Ya tebya lyublyu
.”
Mikhail’s voice was muffled as he spoke against Patrick’s skin, lips moving down the cords of his throat and across the chain that held Patrick’s cross. Reaching blindly for the bedside table, he found the bottle of lube by touch, not willing to give up even those few seconds of Patrick’s body against his. He squeezed some over his fingers before sliding them down Patrick’s crease, gliding over and around the clenching muscle without giving his lover the penetration he craved. His other hand teased through the damp curls at the base of Patrick’s erection while his lips sought out the nubs on his chest, moving between one and the other until both were tight and wet.

Patrick undulated on the bed, trying to get more contact. In an effort to sleep at night, he’d worked himself to exhaustion more days than not, and after knowing a lover’s touch, his own hand barely even scratched the itch. It had been months since he’d bothered, making every touch that much more intense now. He buried his fingers in Mikhail’s hair, longer now and flopping around his forehead, trying to urge him to hurry.

As much as he wanted to draw out Patrick’s pleasure, Mikhail’s need was just as urgent. He let the tip of one finger breach the tight portal, rubbing until he found the bump of nerves that made Patrick cry out and arch against him. His hips pressed against Patrick’s as he worked a second finger inside, his cock rubbing Patrick’s, slick with the fluid leaking from both of them. Reaching between them, he caught both their erections in his hand, gliding over them with increasing urgency while his fingers stretched his lover to receive him.

Patrick wanted to take their time and linger over their reunion, but it was all he could do not to come already. “If you don’t hurry, I’m going to come before you ever get inside me,” he warned.

“Would just have to make you come again,” Mikhail rasped, releasing Patrick’s cock to nudge his thighs farther apart. Kneeling in the space between them, he slid his hands beneath Patrick’s buttocks, lifting them and bending to lick over the beaded crown of his lover’s cock before fitting his own into the slotted crease he ached to fill. He groaned as the ridged iris opened to him, squeezing around him as he slowly pressed inside, embracing him as their bodies joined as one.

Patrick’s moan echoed Mikhail’s as his body gave beneath the inexorable pressure. He welcomed the slight burn because it meant they were together again, sharing a bed for tonight and, he hoped, for a long time to come. Mikhail moved slowly inside him, giving him time to adjust, but Patrick wanted to feel it, wanted the physical proof that this wasn’t another dream from which he would wake to soul-wearying numbness.

Fully sheathed in Patrick’s heat, Mikhail leaned forward, his forearms bracketing Patrick’s face. His lips caught at Patrick’s, clinging and releasing and joining again while he rolled his hips subtly, dragging his belly against Patrick’s leaking shaft. “Dreamt of you,” he confessed between kisses, his voice roughened with desire. “Dreamt… of this.”

“Every night,” Patrick answered, his voice breaking. “Until waking was a nightmare and sleeping the only cure.” His muscles seized suddenly as the moment overwhelmed him and he climaxed hard, trembling through the aftershocks, secure in the knowledge he was safe in Mikhail’s arms.

Patrick’s orgasm clenched and shuddered around him, but Mikhail fought to resist being swept under. It was beginning to feel real to him at last, the knowledge that he might be able to hold onto this man, this feeling, for more than just a handful of nights, but even so, he was loath for this time, the first time he could make love to Patrick not as Alexei but as himself, to come to an end. “Patya,” he breathed into his lover’s hair, moving again once Patrick relaxed against him. “My Patya.”

Patrick didn’t know where Mikhail found the control to hold back the way he did, but he could feel himself rousing again in response to the continued stimulation. “My Lyosha,” he whispered in reply. “Is it all right if I still call you that, here where we’re alone?”

“
Da
,” Mikhail agreed, his chest tightening at Patrick’s claim. “No one else ever call me that. I like—” His voice broke on a gasp as Patrick squeezed around him. “Like knowing no one but you ever will.” If the words weren't strictly true, they were the truest thing he had ever spoken on every level that mattered.

“Good,” Patrick said, “because that’s how I’ve thought of you for so long.” He ran his hands down Mikhail’s back, stroking muscles until he reached the hard buttocks, urging his lover to move faster now, to find his own pleasure as he had given Patrick such joy.

Mikhail rolled his hips beneath Patrick’s touch, driving deeper and harder. He slid a hand between them to stroke Patrick’s cock, hard again against his abdomen. “Always be—your Lyosha,” he rasped, his thrusts growing stronger as Patrick groaned. “Come with me, Patya.”

Patrick would have said it was too fast, but the sound of the beloved voice, rasping his name with such need and desire, was more than Patrick’s control could stand, and a second climax shook him in its grip, needing only the heat of Mikhail’s release to make it complete.

This time when Patrick shuddered around him, Mikhail didn’t fight it, letting his own climax roll through him in wave after wave of pleasure, each stronger than the last, until his arms gave out and he sank onto Patrick’s chest with a low groan of blissful satiation.

Patrick wrapped his arms around Mikhail’s shoulders, noticing that they were broader than they had been before. “Your new life agrees with you,” he said slowly. “You’re more relaxed, happier here than you were in Chicago. I’m glad you found a place like that.”

“Happy now you are here,” Mikhail corrected, shifting to one hip and rolling Patrick with him without breaking their embrace. “I think I never know real happiness before you.”

It was a comment Alexei never would have made, and it touched Patrick to his very core. He kissed Mikhail tenderly, then changed the subject, not wanting to embarrass either of them. “So, Mike, huh? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to call you that. I’ll get used to Mikhail eventually, but I just don’t see you as a Mike.”

“Is easier for guys at work to say,” Mikhail shrugged. “Sounds strange to me also. Was Alexei for many years. But Mikhail… it would please me to hear you call me Mikhail. Or Mischa—in public. In private I am always your Lyosha.”

“My Lyosha,” Patrick murmured with a soft kiss. “Why Mikhail? Or did Interpol choose it for you?”

“Long ago—before Alexei—I was Mikhail. Seemed easier than getting used to third name. Are many Mikhails in Russia—as many as Mikes in America,” he added with a twist of his lips.

That made it easier, somehow, to think of Alexei as Mikhail. For all that Alexei had been the man Patrick fell in love with, he was a construct in many ways. Mikhail was real, and Patrick looked forward to discovering all the layers of Mikhail hidden beneath Alexei’s persona. “Then maybe I will call you Mischa in public,” he said with a grin. Sobering somewhat, he continued, “Can you tell me what happened after I left you in that alley?”

Mikhail’s expression hardened, as if the memory alone was enough to summon Alexei’s ghost. “I called my contact at Interpol, told him Konstantin was dead. Told him I was finished.” He shrugged. “Was easiest to say Konstantin killed Alexei. All wrapped up with no loose ends. Interpol worked out with Chicago police.” He ran a hand down Patrick’s cheek. “You knew truth, but better for everyone else to think Alexei dead too. That way, no one come looking.”

“So they bundled you off to Oregon,” Patrick said, knowing it couldn’t have been as simple as that, “with a new identity and a new job. I missed you. I know you had to be careful, but did you really have to wait six months to contact me?” He tried to ease the sting of the words by kissing Mikhail gently, but even Mikhail’s closeness now couldn’t completely erase six months of emptiness.

Mikhail’s hand stroked through Patrick’s hair, his expression still solemn. “Wanted to give you time to think. Time for your life to go back to way it was. To decide… if you still want this.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Patrick asked, leaning into the caress. He wrapped his arms tighter around Mikhail’s waist as if he could keep the other man from disappearing again. “I was miserable without you. And remember, I went to admit to Captain Jacobs that you’d spent the night in my bed the night Eddie was murdered even before I found out you were a mole. I’m not sure how much more proof I can give you that I wanted to be with you no matter what.”

Mikhail shrugged with an awkwardness Alexei had never possessed. “I believe now. Without you here… was chance you might say no. Easier not to contact you than risk that.”

“So why did you send me the phone then?” Patrick asked. “I’m glad you did. Don’t get me wrong. Despite Reba’s best efforts, I really was wasting away without you, but why now?”

“Because,” Mikhail said thickly, nudging Patrick’s head up into a kiss, “I could not wait any longer. Even if you say no. I had to take the chance.”

Patrick framed Mikhail’s face in his hands as he returned the kiss, trying to invest the full weight of his need into the connection. His fingers traced the scar on Mikhail’s temple, all his doubts blown away like smoke before a breeze. “You waited six months too long,” Patrick said finally, breaking the kiss. “Where you are is where I want to be. It’ll take some time to arrange, but I’m sure they need cops in Oregon too.”

The tension investing Mikhail’s frame eased at Patrick’s words. “I wanted you to be sure.”

Patrick rolled Mikhail to his back, pinning him lightly to the bed. “I’m sure,” he said, his voice deepening with emotion. “I risked my career and my life to be with you in Chicago, both in meeting you each time I did and in starting to tell Jacobs about us. I didn’t do it on a whim, and while you’re a sexy bastard, I’d like to think I’m not quite that shallow. I can’t pinpoint the moment I fell in love with you, but I know when I realized it. When you came to meet me at the warehouse still smelling of sex and told me you’d had to come because you needed me, not some mindless release. You made love to me that night, face to face and in a bed like lovers instead of against a wall or in a restroom stall like a trick you’d picked up on the street corner. And every moment since then has only added to it. Everyone noticed the change in me after you were gone, even if Reba was the only one who knew why.”

“You should not have had to risk life for me,” Mikhail protested, though he did not try to escape from Patrick’s loving hold. “I may not have killed cop, but there are many other crimes I am guilty of, including killing Konstantin.”

“And if you hadn’t killed him, I probably would have,” Patrick reminded him. “He was trying to kill me, in case you’ve forgotten. We’ve been through this, Lyosha. I fell in love with you knowing you worked for the
vory
. You might not have given me a full list of every crime you committed in the name of bringing them down, but I don’t need it. All I need is you.”

Mikhail might never understand why Patrick was so willing to forgive his past, but he was not going to continue to argue the point. It was much easier to raise his head and reclaim Patrick’s lips, knowing it was a liberty he would no longer have to restrain himself from partaking in. After remapping every corner of the sweet cavern, he let his head fall back to the pillow, a small smile playing on his lips. “So,” he said, “you mention this Reba several times. Should I be jealous?”

“Only if you want to be adopted too,” Patrick said with a sharp laugh. “I’m gay, Lyosha, in case the last hour didn’t prove it quite nicely, and Reba is very definitely a woman.” He sobered. “She’s a friend. She listened when I needed to talk and let me be quiet when I needed companionable silence. She backed me to the captain when I took risks, and she helped me bring Evgeny Surov down last month. He’s been charged with racketeering, money laundering, pandering, and trafficking in stolen goods. It’s not murder, but he’ll do some time in prison for it.”

Pushing up onto his elbows, Mikhail stared at Patrick. “You arrested Surov?” he confirmed. “Why?”

“I know it’s a drop in the bucket,” Patrick said, “but you walked away from your revenge. It seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t know if I’d ever get to tell you, but I wanted to have some good news for you if I saw you again.”

Mikhail closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, they were dark with emotion. “For long time, I never thought beyond revenging Piotr’s death. Was only purpose I had until I met you. You make me see there is still good in life. When Konstantin nearly kill you, was last straw. Was no way but to shoot him, but once you were safe, it was over. No more death. When I talk to Interpol, I tell them I was done.”

“I thought, well, hoped, anyway, that was why you left,” Patrick admitted. “I’m glad I could give you a reason to want more than revenge. You sacrificed your revenge so we could have a future. The least I could do was bring down Surov.”

“You were right when you say no matter how many we bring down, more will replace them,” Mikhail said softly. “Still is hard to walk away, to think of new life with sexy cop boyfriend and no troubles.” He ran a hand down Patrick’s back, lingering over the smooth curve of his buttocks. “Some of men at vineyard volunteer at youth program in Salem. I go with them sometimes, help when I can. Is little enough, but something.”

“It’s not little anything,” Patrick said. “It’s a huge deal for kids to have someone believing in them. When I worked undercover with the gang unit, I realized that’s what most of the new inductees to the gangs were looking for. Someone to care about them. You’ll volunteer at the youth program here. Reba and Cragin and Captain Jacobs and whatever rookie gets foisted off on them will keep trying to right the wrongs in Chicago, and I’ll get a job here in Dundee or somewhere and do my part too. More might keep coming to replace them, but people will keep stepping up to stop them too. It might not always be us, but that doesn’t mean we lose the fight.” He rocked lightly against Mikhail, feeling his lover’s arousal beginning to reawaken along with his own. “Now, unless there’s something else you’ve forgotten to tell me, your sexy cop boyfriend would like to make love to his sexy gardener lover. If that’s okay with you.”