Varian Krylov (34 page)

It was easier when she went up on her knees. She could watch the thick shaft of her cock emerge as she swiveled her hips back, and watch it sink into him again when she pulsed forward. Little by little it got easier. She stopped fretting about doing it right as sensation and instinct took over.

When she ran her nails up the inside of Khalid's thighs, his abs flexed as he caught his breath. Joy rose up in her, big and buoying. She watched as Khalid's expression reflected her smile.

More and more the acrylic cock felt like her own. Part of her body. Each little pulse of her hips charged her sex with a surge of pleasure, the hard swell of the egg rubbing and bumping inside of her, her wet, swollen folds grinding and sliding over the stem curving between that ovoid root and the hard shaft she was pumping into Khalid's ass.

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Khalid's golden eyes flickered over her, watching her face, the pulse of her hips, the flex and sway of her scarred body. She wanted him to look. Felt wanted and strong under his gaze. He smiled again, then gasped and furrowed his brow as she traced the silhouette of his cock against his lean belly with the pad of her index finger. When she curved her fingers around the hard girth of his shaft, he groaned a little, his eyes flashing between her face and her hand as she caressed him.

The warm weight of him in her hand, the delicate velvet of his skin shifting over his rigid length as she stroked him, fed her want. Fascinated, she watched the bead of nectar swelling at the tip of his cock, then painted it over the plump dome. All along, she worked her hips between his thighs, watching how his lips parted, how his belly quivered, how the light flared behind his eyes.

She squeezed a fat dollop of lube into her palm, eager to watch the pleasure rippling through Khalid's expression, through his body. But he caught her wrist.

“Already I am too close,” he warned, his voice uneven. “Please, don't let me finish before you're ready.”

“I won't,” she promised, somehow touched by how vulnerable Khalid sounded, just then.

She brought the little puddle of lube in her palm between his cock and belly and lifted her hand until the tip of his cock dipped into the gelatinous pool. Khalid gasped, and his hips bucked under her, jolting her with a deep, prodding pressure that brought ripples of pleasure behind it. Slowly, she slid her hand down the length of his erection, then up, just as slowly, then down the underside this time, glossing his cock.

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Every slow stroke of her grip up the length of his hard-on, every pulsing squeeze and swirl of her hand over the full, flushed head provoked a startled gasp, a quiver in that taut, umber belly, a flicker in those golden irids. Vanka listened to every sigh, watched every twitch of every muscle in Khalid's face, enjoying keeping him at the edge, careful of letting him slip over.

And all the time she was fucking him, pumping her cock in and out of his ass, every little movement stirring her nerves, swelling her pleasure bigger, heavier. But there was no struggle. Her pleasure was like a rolling sea, and she was swimming for the joy of it, without a destination.

But a moment later she was slipping under, her pleasure swallowing her.

Whimpering, rocking her hips in little desperate movements, she let go, her cunt spasming around the prodding hardness buried deep inside her, wave after wave of pleasure rippling through her.

She focused her gaze on Khalid as she came back to herself, and the look on his face made her face go hot.

“My god,” he sighed, “you are so gorgeous to watch. Fucking and coming and blushing.”

Vanka sank onto her hands to kiss him, to feel the heat and strength of his body against hers, to feel his arms holding her to him. After a long, deep kiss, after catching her breath and feeling her strength coming back, she gave him an eager smile.

“What do you want, Khalid? My mouth? Or do you want to fuck me?”

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Still holding her, almost clinging to her, he answered in a frayed voice, “Please, if you still have strength, fuck me and caress me, as you were. I want to finish like this, with you inside me.”

His words, the way he looked at her as he said them roused her sated sex all over again. Fuck yes.

She kissed him again, deep and wanting, like all of him could never be enough, and pulsed her hips a little, her breath hitching at how bare, how raw all her nerves felt after her orgasm. Staying with him, right there in his heat, where their lips could touch, she worked her hand between them, sheathed his cock in her grip.

Now, as she pumped her cock into him in a gentle rhythm, every pulse of her hips drove her hand up and down his cock. She kissed his lips, breathed his sighs.

Gazed into Khalid's eyes, warming and pulling her to him like two fiery suns. Her own need was creeping up on her again as she fucked him, keeping her grip tight for a few slow, deep thrusts, then softening the touch of her hand as it slid over the length of him, feeling him twitch and shudder under her as she swirled her hand around the swollen head.

Khalid's fingers curved to the back of her head, keeping her close, and he took her kiss, sucking at her tongue, biting her lip, then releasing her mouth and holding her gaze with his. Every breath was a groan, now, staccato little pants, then a long gasp for air, then around again.

He was right there, and her own nerves were ratcheting up for another climax.

She humped needfully, tiny little urgent thrusts, begging for it, going after it, pulsing her grip up and down the length of Khalid's cock, incredibly hard now. Yes, there, fuck, yes, 324

she twitched into him, groaning her climax through clenched teeth, riding it out, her cunt spasming as Khalid's mouth opened in a low growl and his hips flexed up to meet hers and a wet heat seeped between them, thick and slick against her belly, her chest, on her hand.

She focused to find him already gazing at her, realized he was stroking her hair as they panted, their breathing, the thumping of their chests slowing, slowing. Sweet Khalid. He looked so, so happy. Or sad.

“Khalid?”

He gave her his placid smile, and touched her lips with a small kiss.

“Later I will tell you,” he said, his voice uneven.

They showered together. Vanka put Khalid's hand on her cock and guided him, and the ovoid bulb slipped from her body. He held the sculpture in his hands, studying it.

“Still it's pretty. Like art,” he said. “So smooth, so clear, like glass. And now I see, the architecture, how it stayed inside of you.” He smiled, touched her cheek. “And twice you came. I worried you would not, like this.”

Then he soaped and washed her crystalline cock, end to end. They took their time, bathing each other, dried off, and curled up in bed. Wove their legs together, wound their arms around one another.

“Khalid?” It was dark now, and she couldn't see his face, but she knew he was right there, an inch or two from their last kiss. “What was that look? Earlier, after we'd finished?”

There was a long silence in the dark before Khalid finally spoke.

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“It is only that it has been a long time since I have made love.” There was another long quiet. She waited for him. “Of course, I love Galen. But you know already, we are only tender when we are not fucking. And you and I, we were tender, before, but we did not feel then as we feel now.”

“No.”

“I had forgotten how big that feeling is.”

Vanka pulled Khalid to her, cradling his naked body against hers.

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Chapter Eleven

Vanka turned a doe-eyed gaze up to Galen.

“Please, you've got to help me.”

“It's all right,” Galen averred, pulling her to his body with a protective, possessive arm, “I won't let anyone hurt you.”

Galen and Vanka cracked up, and even Khalid's quiet smile gave way to a soft laugh.

“I swear to god,” Galen said, “these people have never heard of irony. I'm pretty sure the writer's on a twenty-four-seven suicide watch, seeing what they're doing to his screenplay. Poor kid.”

Galen took a hit off the joint—the remains of Vanka's old chemo stash—and passed it to Khalid. Vanka watched him put the joint to his lips and draw on it, the cherry flaring and glowing for a few seconds, watched him draw the smoke in, hold it, and calmly release it. When he'd smoked in front of her that first time, early in her chemo, she'd been a little shocked, and when she'd said so, Khalid had commented that marijuana doesn't poison the body the way alcohol does. "Cannabis is a natural thing,”

he'd said. “It grows. It is not manufactured in a chemical factory like alcohol or McDonald's french fries."

“The worst thing is the woman they want to play Rosa,” Galen went on. “I mean, she's a perfectly good actor. But it's ridiculous. Her character's the same age as mine, and they want this nineteen-year-old to play her.”

“That is terrible. Next to her you must look very withered,” Khalid teased, deliberately missing the point.

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Galen sank onto the sofa laughing. Then his laughter dried up. “I need to get out of this thing.”

“How's that work?” Vanka asked. “You've signed a contract, haven't you?”

“Subject to my approval of the final script. So I have an out. I just hate to do it.

I've never backed out of a project before. But,” he went on, taking the joint from Vanka,

“I seriously don't have it in me anymore to invest months of my life in a project I don't love. I loved the original script. I loved my image of what the movie would be. But it's turning into bullshit. My work is turning into bullshit.”

Vanka looked at Khalid, trying to read his thoughts.

Later, when they went to bed, Vanka said, “You sleep in the middle, Galen.”

He went a little still for a minute, then smiled and gave her a soft kiss on the lips and said, “All right.”

When the three of them settled in, Galen curled up behind her, spoon fashion.

She would have said something, but then she felt Galen shift and twist a little, and a moment later she felt Khalid's hand on her waist, tucked under Galen's hand. And as her anxiety ebbed away, it left bare all the heat, the fretful tickling crawling through her, feeling Galen's body so close, so warm, the rise and fall of his chest against her back, his breath breezing through her hair.

* * * *

In the pale morning light Galen nuzzled and kissed, little touches of lips across her forehead, on the bridge and tip of her nose, on her chin. Under the covers he snuggled his bare feet against hers. Through the wall, she heard the shower running.

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“Look at you,” Galen cooed, tracing her regrown eyebrows, combing his fingers through her half-inch of hair. And then he really looked, his gaze penetrating right into her. Her face went hot.

Galen smiled. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He looked so happy. He looked in love. And that look of his made that thing happen where she felt like she was overfilling with helium, flooded and light and warm.

But at the center of her happiness there was a cold, dark spot.

“Galen?”

“Hmmm?”

She was going to ask, had he told Khalid that he'd missed him, too? But instead she only said, “I'm happy you're back.”

* * * *

As Galen watched through the glass, taking in the slow, arduous rhythm of their bodies, he laughed at himself, relieved Vanka had turned him down all those long weeks ago when he'd suggested they do yoga together. He'd have been disgraced.

Vanka, now, only a couple weeks into her cautious foray back to her exercise regime, was doing poses that pushed the limits of his own strength, and with more grace and flexibility than he'd ever had. In every asana, in every transition between, she was as lithe and lovely as Khalid.

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They'd been together. Galen could just tell. And little by little, the more sure he was, the less he felt the weight of some large anxiety pressing down on him. Like a burden he hadn't known he was carrying had been lifted.

What hurt, a little, was how outside he felt. Left out of the little knowing looks they exchanged every now and then, their huddles, their murmured conversations he stumbled on two or three times every day.

* * * *

“Where are you off to?” Galen asked as Vanka tossed her cell phone and wallet into her purse and grabbed her car keys.

“I'm meeting up with Brods at the Lava Lounge.”

“And we're not invited?” he teased.

“Absolutely not. Brods hasn't had me to himself in weeks. We've got a lot of boyfriend trouble to catch up on.”

“His or yours?”

“Just one of the reasons you can't come along,” she teased, grinning and looking up at him from under mascaraed lashes. He went warm and soft, seeing her so eager for her night out. She seemed healthy. Happy.

“Fine.” He pulled her to him to hug her good-bye, but then he didn't want to let go. She felt so good against him, smelled so good. Her cheek was warm and smooth against his lips. “Have fun. Say 'hi' to Brods for me.”

“Will do.” Vanka smiled and slipped out the door.

The moment Galen heard the latch click, his gut did a little flop. But it wasn't until ten or fifteen minutes later, as he sat on the couch flipping through a script, that Khalid 330

approached him. When he heard the other's quiet steps, his pulse sped, but kept his eyes on the script.

“Vanka has left?” Khalid asked.

“Yes,” Galen tried to sound matter-of-fact.

Khalid's light tread faded away toward the bedroom, and Galen's whole body strained to discern what he might be doing back there. Maybe that was a drawer being opened. Galen could picture Khalid reaching down, his long fingers closing around the clear bottle of lube with the white cap. But he was taking too long. The house was almost silent. Was Khalid setting up the restraints—affixing the cuffs with their tethers to the bed frame?

Galen's eyes had zigzagged over the same meaningless patch of text a dozen times. He gave up. Gave in. Closed his eyes—it was safe, when Khalid came back, it would just look like he was reading—and let his mind go.

When he really heard Khalid approaching again—not the imagined footfalls, followed by the imagined command and ten different conjured coercions—Galen worked to keep his breathing slow and even, to wipe away the expression of expectation he knew had settled over his features. He looked up—he couldn't resist—