Varian Krylov (30 page)

That's got nothing to do with me. And secondly, I don't know what you think I was feeling, watching the two of you. Or what you think I feel, knowing you love him. But if you think any of that . . . undermines whatever I feel for you, you're deluded. And . . ."

Her voice had gotten louder, then shakier, and finally it had broken, fallen completely apart. Now she was just standing there, crying.

"And?" he asked, his tone softening from anger to irritation.

She tried to shake her head “no,” but his fingers were still snaked into her hair, holding her head almost immobile. She pushed weakly at his chest. It was like pushing a warm stone wall. He didn't let go of her.

"And what?" he pressed.

"And," she tried, fighting past the sob choking her, "I don't know what you mean, when you talk about how you feel about me."

"Vanka."

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He released his grip on her hair and carefully, incredibly gently, put his arms around her.

"Vanka. How can you not know?"

"Do you?"

He opened his arms and looked at her.

"Yes, I do. I love you."

She looked like he'd slapped her. Stunned. Hurt.

"What kind of masochist falls in love with a cancer patient?"

"People aren't carton's of milk, Vanka. You don't choose them by their expiration dates. Please, Vanka. Stop trying so hard to protect me. To protect yourself."

He brushed his lips against her, soft and warm, and that soft warmth made her tender and wanting, but when he tried to give her a deeper kiss, she turned her head aside.

“I should go home,” she said, feeling heartbroken.

“I want this to be your home. Here, with me. With Khalid. Don't you want that?”

She nodded, hating herself for how selfish she was being.

When the three of them went to bed that night, for the first time it wasn't Vanka who slept in the middle.

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Chapter Nine

“There are good things about chemo,” Vanka told Sasha. “It's amazing how much work I get done, when I'm too sick to leave the house. I've been an editing fiend. And I haven't had to wax my bush in weeks. Which is nice, 'cause that fucking hurts.”

“Jesus, Vanka,” Sasha laughed. She loved teasing him, embarrassing him a little now and then with reminders that his sister was, in fact, a sexual being.

She shifted on the bed, rearranging the pillows and trying again to find a comfortable position.

“You're going crazy, aren't you?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “It's just the day or so after the infusion, when I'm stuck laying down all fucking day. I do all right, the rest of the time. All the barfing, that's like exercise. Doing crunches. Right up my alley.”

“Just one more to go, Vanushka,” he said sweetly.

“Yep. After next week, I'll be able to walk and eat solid food full time, like everyone else over the age of two.”

“A couple months from now you'll probably be kicking my ass at climbing again.”

“Without the dead weight of my tits holding me back, you won't have a chance.”

“I never did.”

“Hey, would you mind getting me a glass of juice?”

“Course.”

“Pineapple coconut.”

“Rum in that?”

“Three shots.”

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Sasha loped out of the room. Vanka curled onto her side and tried to breathe through the fist of pain grabbing at her. When she heard Sasha's footfalls nearing, she made an effort to smooth her expression.

“What is it?” Sasha asked as soon as he cleared the door.

“Just some cramping. Happens sometimes.”

“I didn't see Galen and Khalid out there,” Sasha fretted.

“No, it's okay. I just need my painkiller. There should be one in the drawer, there.”

She pointed to the top of the dresser. “It's kind of a sucker crossed with a Q-tip.”

“I don't see anything like a sucker,” Sasha sounded slightly panicked.

“In the bathroom. Medicine cabinet. A box labeled Actiq.”

Sasha dashed into the hallway. Vanka breathed. Breathed. Breathed, focusing on her lungs, evading the needles stabbing into her feet and calves, and willing herself to calm, so Sasha wouldn't come back and see fear and pain.

The mattress sank down behind her and a gentle hand caressed her head.

“Here, Vanka.”

It was Khalid's soft, warm voice. Khalid's gentle caress. Khalid touching her lips with the opium lolipop. She took it in her mouth, swirled it inside her cheek. Sucked.

Swallowed.

“Where's Sasha?”

“Galen's talking to him.”

Down the hall, probably out in the living room, Vanka heard their voices.

Something low, indistinct from Sasha.

“Sasha,” Galen's voice, low and measured. Careful. “It's not like that.”

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Again, Sasha's voice, garbled and excited.

“Don't leave like this. Come back with me and talk to Vanka. Please.”

“Khalid?” Vanka asked. “What happened?”

“I didn't lock the door. Sasha walked in on us. Only a kiss.” Poor Khalid. He said it so quietly. Stoically. But she caught the note of fear, of sadness in his voice. “Is it working?” he asked gently, stroking her arm, her cheek.

“Yeah. But hold me.”

Sasha and Galen shuffled into the room. Khalid was curled up behind her, holding her to him, cradling her head in the bend of his elbow. She looked up at her brother.

““, Sasha?”

Sasha gazed down at them, his anger melting, exposing a stubborn fear she was used to seeing in her brother.

“Yeah,” Sasha breathed. “I understand.”

“ , Sasha.”

““. I know.” He turned to Galen and told him in a tight voice, “Your secret's safe with me.”

* * * *

Khalid. Instinctively, she sank down in the jacuzzi as he stepped out onto the deck, obviously taking his time.

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“I am sorry to crash your party,” he said, not coming close. “My friend, she received a page almost the moment we sat down. She is a doctor, and she is on call tonight, so she had to go.“

“Sure it wasn't just a ruse to get me naked in the hot tub? I suppose Galen's not in New York, either? He's behind that palm, waiting to ambush me when I rise, naked and wet, doing my poor impression of the Birth of Venus.”

Khalid smiled. “I'll let you have your privacy. I only wanted you to know I was home.”

Vanka looked down, assessing how well the turbulent water hid her body.

“Want to come in?”

“Yes. Do you want me to come in?”

“Yes.”

“Should I get my trunks?”

“That wouldn't be very fair.”

Khalid unselfconsciously stripped out of his clothes and lowered himself into the tub, gracefully, like he did everything.

“You're really an exhibitionist, aren't you?” she teased him for how his cock had swelled and started to rise as he'd undressed.

He smiled. “It is my usual reaction, undressing in front of a lover.”

For some reason that made her blush. It reassured her, looking hard and proving that below the surface Khalid was only a vague, shifting brown.

“Is that how you think of me?” she asked when she was sure of her voice.

“Yes.” He sounded amused.

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“Still?”

“Vanka, I would not have done that the other night, otherwise. For me, fucking Galen in front of you, I was also fucking you. Just as Galen was fucking both of us, in a way, that first night.”

Her face went hot again. She nodded.

“Khalid?” She hesitated, then went ahead. “I'm not ready to . . .” Fuck, what did she want to say?

“What is it you do want, Vanka?”

“It would feel so nice to be held. Like this.”

He moved next to her, put his arms around her. It was good, the feel of his arms circling around her, his gentle strength hugging her shoulder, her back, her waist. But she wanted more. Wanted connection. Locking eyes with him, she slipped astride his lap, searching his face. He pulled her close.

The press of his naked body against hers comforted. She rested her cheek on his smooth, sculpted shoulder, listened with her body to the feel of his arms holding her to him, how his heart beat and his chest swelled against hers with each breath. Even the press of his cock, hard and tall against her belly made her happy. There was none of the guilt, none of the fear she felt with Galen.

“Khalid?”

“Yes?”

“With you and Galen.”

“Yes?”

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“Is it always like the other night? I mean,” she leaned back and looked at Khalid,

“does he ever kiss you? Caress you?”

“The other night he did. After. But usually, no. Really, that was the only time.”

“But,” she pursued, hopeful, “the other day. When Sasha saw you. You said it was a kiss.”

“Yes.”

“Khalid . . .”

“Some things I do not like to say to you, Vanka, because I worry you will think I am speaking against Galen. But I would prefer to be honest.”

“Yes.”

“He allowed me to kiss him, because I did not give him a choice. He could not resist me, that day, because there would have been noise. And your brother was here.”

It hurt her to think of Khalid, who was so loving, never feeling loved. She sat up and tried hard to read those luminous eyes, but they were placid. No trace of pain in his warm gaze.

Until she touched his cheek. And as she brought her other hand to his face, as she traced along the edge of the thick, silky waves of his black hair. Then those golden eyes shone with a deep hurt, and suddenly Khalid, who was always so quiet, so stoic, seemed fragile. Hurt.

The way she wanted to touch and kiss him was an ache, deep and irresistible, maybe like the need that compels a mother to hold and nurse her baby. She pressed her lips to his in a long, tender kiss, kissed his cheek, his ear, caressed his face, kissed his eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth.

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Between kisses she gazed at him as she stroked his full, soft hair. His placid smile was gone and he looked up at her, vulnerable. Almost frightened, she thought.

That aching tenderness welled up in her again. Not like that euphoria she felt with Galen—that helium feeling that always felt like it would swell and rise and swell and rise until it tore her apart from the inside. This feeling, this love, was warm. Tranquil.

Love. “Can someone love more than one person?” Galen had asked her that the day she'd first come back, afraid he'd be angry to see her. In the weeks after, she'd only thought about Galen and his love for Khalid, and whether Galen could love her, too.

She kissed Khalid, whispered her love for him, held him, caressed him, kissed him, told him again. She loved him. Galen loved him. She loved him.

When she laid her cheek on his shoulder again, and they were still, holding each other close, she could feel his body trembling against hers.

“My dear, dear Vanka,” he whispered, “I love you, too.”

Later, when they curled up together in bed he stroked her cheek and cradled her in his golden gaze, tranquil again.

“Your book,” Vanka said. Khalid glanced up from his laptop. “A lot of the elements are autobiographical.”

“Yes.”

“The scene where Tahar gives himself to Rachid. Is that a scene from your life?”

Khalid's serene gaze settled on Vanka for a long moment before he answered her.

“No. That was only a kind of fantasy.”

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“It's a very moving scene.”

“Moving?”

“And profoundly erotic.”

“You didn't find it . . . perverse?”

“No.”

“No? How no?”

“I read it as an act of deep love. On both sides.”

Khalid smiled.

“That's how it is to me, also. People usually read that scene as a kind of submission on the part of Tahar, a kind of self-debasement. But for me, that scene is about two people having a lot of pain, a lot of need, and in that moment, each sees what it is the other needs, and offers to provide it. The physical act is only a very small part of it.”

“I thought,” Vanka tried, tentatively, worried her French wasn't good enough, that she'd misunderstood the meaning of the passage, “that Tahar wanted to offer himself, because he was the only person not bound by law to do so. He was the only person from whom that offering could be simply, purely, one of love.”

Khalid just smiled.

“Sorry,” Vanka laughed. “I mangled it, didn't I?”

“No,” Khalid's voice was soft.

“And Rachid, when he accepts Tahar, it's kind of a surrender?”

“Yes.”

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Three nights later, when Khalid had gone back to the study to find a book he wanted to loan her, Vanka rose from the armchair, took a small bottle from her bag, and went to the dining table. She took the cap from the bottle and set both on the table to her right. She unfastened her belt and the fly of her slacks, and let them slip down, low on her hips. Even through her shirt the dark stained wood was cold against her chest and belly as she laid her torso flat on the tabletop and gripped the edges. The surface was smooth and hard against her cheek. The gleaming wood gave off a faint, pungent scent of oil.

Waiting, she felt her heart hammering against the table, and then the first footfall sounding in the hallway reverberated through her gut. He wouldn't want this. Her. He'd be disappointed, insulted, that his beautiful dream, distilled to perfection with his pen, had materialized in the form of a mutilated girl. She kept her face toward the wall as his footsteps traversed the length of the hall, the living room, then drew so close, now she could hear the rustle of his clothes. To keep from jumping up, taking it back, she gripped the edges of the table harder, anchoring herself. Two soft steps. Then, from behind her, Khalid's voice.

“Stand up.”

No. Of course, no. A blush flared up her mutilated chest, up her throat, over her cheeks. Vanka straightened to standing, “sorry” already parting her lips, but she couldn't turn around. Khalid's thighs pinned hers against the edge of the table.

In his sure, soft voice Khalid said, “take off your shirt.”

That wasn't in the story.