Alina's voice, the way she offers up the word Yes in answer to him—
What else can he do but follow her direction? The slight movement of her hand, laying herself bare to him, with his fingers so close, there is nothing else to do but touch her there. The drape of her skirt casts Alina all in shadow, affords her some modesty even as Nikolai draws two fingers through the damp heat of her. Finds her cunt just as promised, and feels his entire body heat in answer.
"What would we have done in your rooms?" Nikolai asks her, a breath of a question against her cheek. "Something like this?"
As he presses two fingers into her, a slow slide of pressure. His hand is so gentle where he cradles her face, listening to her breath, for the sounds he is so desperate to draw out of her.
She yields to him with little resistance, her arousal opening her up to him before his fingers ever need to. Still the blunt probing draws a little gasp out of her, and it's like sparks shooting up her spine, waking up every inch of her. Her eyes roll up before they shut, savoring the sense, but also arching into the lightness of it.
"Saints," she sputters. Her hands come to rest on his shoulders just to steady herself, nails digging in at the twice-wounded spot where her burns compete with the strange dark veins sprawling outward from an old injury. But he's asked her a question. She tries to find words through the fog of her pleasure, but it's like trying to keep above the water when she never learned to swim.
"Against the door." She lets herself imagine it now, too. His cock instead of his fingers stretching her open, filling her. His fingers are thick enough, hot enough, that it's easily done. "Over the edge of the bed. And later, too, while we're half asleep, holding each other."
She'd been left wanting, and there were a lot of hours to fill. A lot of empty spaces inside of her. It wasn't all she'd imagined, between finding him in that gallery and coming to find him this morning. Had they been alone, properly alone, she might have taken his cock in her mouth, not just her hand. She'd thought of how her lips would stretch over it, how he'd taste.
There are reasons, good reasons, reasons she now cannot hold onto except to remember that they have time, that they aren't crossing all these items off the list now. All the same, as his fingers thrust up inside of her, as she finally moans without any real restraint, it is while imagining they might do just that.
Alina recites these possibilities and Nikolai commits them to memory for some future point. He cannot say when, guided as he is by Alina and her desires, by his own tempering understanding of the tenuous boundaries between them. But he will remember that she had thought of them, had wanted them from him.
From him.
That last, that is what Nikolai lingers on.
Will her nails leave marks on him too? The wax hadn't lifted away the wound, and neither will the half-moons her nails score into him, but it feels good. Better to wear her marks than anything else.
"I like to hear you," is a departure from what they could, what they might, what they should be do in the future. The thrust of his fingers is a methodical thing, Nikolai's attention so utterly fixed on her. His thumb presses down, not circling, only pressure where she must surely want something else. "Alina, tell me. Is this what you like?"
As he puts this question to her, his hand leaves her cheek. Flattens across her back, urging her closer so he might put his mouth back to her collarbone, back to her breast. He can't kiss her; this is the nearest he can get, his mouth on her skin as he meets the shift of her hips.
The room is full of wet sounds, underscoring his words, that he might not just mean her little sighs, but the slick sounds of her cunt squeezing around his fingers. Her face feels hot, and she tries to escape his gaze — made easier when he trails his mouth back down her breastbone.
"It's good," she encourages, but even as she says this, the squirming continues, a restless effort to get more friction from his thumb. Like if she could fuck herself on his fingers, she could get that little something else that feels just out of reach.
"It's ... Oh." She sighs, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut once more as his mouth finds the curve of her breast, as his teeth scrape over her skin again. Her split attention makes all of his work feel more intense. It feels like she's babbling, but he said he'd liked to hear her, so she searches for a way to articulate it. "It's like you're everywhere."
She's going to drown in him.
"Just—" She whines. Another arch of her hips, trying to find a different angle, a little more. Enough to finish. And there, the steady push of his fingers up into her and the way she rocks to meet him has his thumb rocking like a fulcrum against her, and a tremor rumbles through her body, makes her muscles twitch, makes her cunt tighten around him. She cries out, tightening her arms around his neck just to hold on. "Yes. Oh. Saints, yes, Nikolai. Like that."
In this moment, Nikolai wants to make her wait. Not as a flex of power, or control, or anything other than she is so beautiful in this moment and he wants to stay here with her.
"You're beautiful," he tells her again; the words might find better purchase with her attention split in so many directions. A litany of other things threaten to follow, but Nikolai thinks better of it, holds his tongue. His teeth scrape along her chest, following the flush of her skin, putting his mouth back to the peak of her nipple.
I want to do this again before we sleep, is a murmur between their minds, his thumb following the squirm of her body, the way all of her weight bears down into the thrust of his fingers. A pleasant sort of fantasy, one he feels has little chance of occurring on this particular day. Still, he tells her, And then again, when we wake.
Over the center of her back, his fingers flex against the arch of her spine and he lifts his head to ask her, "Are you close?"
What a beautiful dream. To stay tangled in one another, lost to the outside world and drowning in this. Like they've carved out their own little corner of the universe, here, where Aleksander and all of Ravka's woes cannot touch them. Where just for a little while, they are unburdened, and the only weight they have to carry is each other's bodies.
She nods in earnest, over and over again against the top of his head, unable to make words, even though she tries to hold her breath and swallow a moan so that what comes out next might be even a syllable. Instead, it's a hiccup, a soft noise that is choked off as her chest tightens and tightens with the rest of her.
He must be able to feel it. The way her muscles wring tight—trying to hold him in, trying to push him out. There is something luxurious in imagining the simple ability to have each other at their leisure, the idle falling into each other. That's what does her in.
It doesn't feel violent. She doesn't fight it like she does when she's been with Aleksander. He does not sink his teeth into her and rip something free. It doesn't feel like shattering. Her release is a cool wave that a breeze stirs on a lake, something that rolls through her like a pulse, tugging at the strings of all her muscles in all her limbs, that leaves her sighing her relief when those strings snap.
Would he have liked to hear her try to say it aloud?
Certainly. Nikolai is so, so pleased by the sounds Alina makes, the way her words break apart when he applies his teeth just so or crooks his fingers just there.
But it is good too, when he feels the way she comes apart.
His head tips back; she is too compelling. She is incandescent. And there is some aspect of serenity in the way she relaxes, tips into the sensation. Nikolai stretches up to kiss along the line of her jaw as she sighs, breathes out soft sounds as her body clenches around his fingers.
"Breathe," he murmurs against the hinge of her jaw. He is still touching her, fingers drawing through the damp heat of her, seeing if he can pull a twitch or gasp from her even as he encourages her in to lean against him.
As if under some spell, his words put air in her lungs. She tips her head for him, gives him more space at her jaw even if what she really wants is to turn her face towards him, to steal his lips with hers.
The bleary haze of her release settles over her, makes her limbs and head heavy and sluggish. But as he explores her folds, she jolts, surrendering a little whimper that pushes her against him even as her hips twitch back, gaining space from the too-intense sensation.
"Nikolai," she chastens in a rabbit-quick, soft whine—like he's some bully tugging at her hair. She levels her her grip on his shoulders, steadier now.
It's all she needs say. He draws his hand away, settles his fingers at her bare thigh.
"Sorry," is a murmur too, so light as his lips move from her jaw to the newly bared stretch of her neck. "You feel so good."
His arm stays looped securely around her waist. When he leans back, he brings her with him. Nikolai would like to roll her onto her side, tuck her tight against him. But even though Alina isn't exactly pinning him at this point, when they stretch out across the bed, she remains held against his chest.
Last night, he'd wanted so badly to put his arms around her. Now, so rearranged, Nikolai can loop both arms over her, hold her securely. His thumb rubs back and forth at her shoulder as they lay together, breathing in slow sync.
"Don't be sorry," she says as he settles back to the bed, as he draws her against him. It feels good to lean into his embrace, and she lets herself for a few moments, though her skin is still feverishly sticky. She remains there while her breath starts to even out. "Thank you."
But she looks up at him after a few moments, idle considerations that in Alina's eyes look like trouble. She can still feel his erection against her belly. It would pass, she knew, but —
"Will you let me try something?" As sweetly as she asks, she's already reaching under her skirt to tug off her underwear, awkwardly shuffling her knees to keep them together enough to wriggle them down her legs.
A few long moments in which Nikolai closes his eyes. It is not enough time for anything approaching sleep, but it is enough to settle the thud of pulse at his throat, to appreciate Alina's bare skin against his chest.
As she speaks, his eyes open. Aware of the squirm of movement Alina is already engaged in, lifting his head just in time to see the disappearance of her underthings.
"Not today, we said," he reminds her, searching her expression. Remembering the hitch in her voice, the way she'd tripped over the words, these are wards enough against any temptation to bend the tacit understanding they'd established.
"I remember what we said." She huffs this defense out with a little smile sprawling across her lips. "And I'm asking if you'll let me try something."
She doesn't specify further, now. Only meets his gaze with that mischievous glow in hers that seems determined to test the limits of what he would let her get away with, of how much he's willing to give her. A look that delights in driving him a little out of his mind.
Something is such a broad term. There are exclusions, certainly, understandings they have come to together. But the way Alina looks at him now, Nikolai has some suspicion that this is no minor thing she is considering.
His hand sweeps up her back, over the wings of her shoulder blades, down her arm. A grounding sort of touch, for him as much as for her. The withdrawal of his hand had let her skirts fall again, but she is bare beneath them and Nikolai—
Nikolai wants her. He has carried his affection long enough for it to take root, to bloom green and new but no less secure for that newness, in his chest.
What would he deny her? Nothing, apparently. Nothing today.
"Alright," he tells her. "Though I suspect this is about to put me into greater debt with you."
She had anticipated this answer, evidenced by how quickly she sets about opening his trousers, easing them down his hips enough that she can tug his cock free, take him in her fist. And there's that little flutter of her smile again as her forehead presses to his.
"I thought all that talk of debts was just a way of ensuring we'd be back here," she murmurs. "This is for me. You don't owe me anything."
She lets go of him, but it's a short-lived reprieve before she presses the wetness of her cunt against the length of him. True to her word, she doesn't take him inside. Instead, she rubs herself against him, soaking him with her arousal, making each gliding stroke easier.
Her breath catches and her shoulders twitch when she bumps up against the head of his cock, the way it nudges against just the right part of her, the same spot where she'd been so sensitive before and is only just barely able to tolerate the touch now. The movement stay slow, careful not to get overeager and risk moving too fast or too far and letting him slip inside.
"How does this feel?" she asks him, her voice already rough enough to convey her own answer. A little something falters in her expression as she insists, "Be honest."
There is a flicker of a smile to answer her: Caught.
Yes, all the teasing invocation of debt was to him was a way to link them, draw them back together. Yes, he has a vested interest in making certain there is always something favor to return to her.
Would she keep him? Will she keep him? Nikolai wants to feel certain of an affirmative, clings on to what he can when he doesn't.
Regardless, there is still a moment, when she lets go and raises up over him that Nikolai is rattled towards movement. He says her name, tilting towards uncertainty and alarm, shoulders coming up off the bed before—
"Be careful," nearly overlaps her question, a wrecked groan of a plea. His hands are gripping her so tightly, ten points of pressure where his fingers splay out across her back.
Be honest because Nikolai is not a liar but he is good at dressing up a truth and turning it into some opaque, obscure thing. But Alina makes her demands and Nikolai can do nothing but scrape together an answer for her.
"It's—" he begins, breaking on good, which feels painfully inadequate. "Perfect."
Where perfect is honest, yes, but is wrenched out of him, almost pleading. It is perfect but it isn't enough. It is perfect because it is a reminder of what they have both decided to forgo. Beneath her, holding so painfully still of his own accord, he cannot kiss and cannot rock up into her and thinks his heart might give out under the effort of the combination.
The strangled nature of his reply is its own answer, nearly a better reward than the words themselves. She plants her hands on his chest, fingers barely curled up the slope of his shoulders, ready to shove him back down as needed to assert herself, to keep him from stopping her in a frantic panic.
"Trust me," she chides him.
Despite the authority she musters to say this, the movements of her hips are self conscious. Unevenly paced, a little jerky with inexperience. She is learning how to use new muscles, and for now she lacks grace or rhythm.
"You're so warm." Maybe it's the bloodflow of his arousal, or maybe it's just her own knowledge that it's his cock and not just his fingers that she's rutting against, that it feels as good for him as it does for her, but it feels better. Hotter.
It may even be the precarious nature, how delicate each movement has to be, how they tip on the precipice of something dangerous to them both. Her slickness makes each movement easy, a wetness that clings to his cock and eases the friction, making slippery the rock of her hips, opening the way to one wrong move. "Can you feel how wet you've made me?"
The shift of Alina's weight to pin him back down to the bed is good too, wrenches a gasp of breath out of him as she moves over him. Nikolai likes that. If their position felt less tenuous, he might provoke more of it. But he has the sense that any minor movement of his hips would instigate something neither of them are ready for.
And she trusts him. Or has begun to trust him. He won't jeopardize that.
"Can you come again?" he murmurs, hands finding his way to her thighs. Holding on there, too tightly. Not an answer to her question, but something that feels vital. Something he wants, more than his own release.
Of course he's worried about her. Alina laughs, just one huffed breath that hitches on its way out, a hazy smile curling at the edges of her mouth.
It is a good thing, she thinks, that Nikolai lets her have her way with him: if the tables were ever turned, he would ferret out every reaction he could, learn the shape of her every sigh. He would wring her dry and leave her boneless. She might like that too much.
This is safer.
"I think so," she says, the rock of her hips steadying a little over time. His hold on her thighs is good, solid, keeps her level.
But it's more than that. It's tight enough that she can hope she'll find his fingerprints in the banya later, and trace the constellations of his grip. It feels good, and so does the way that the firm length of his cock glazes over her wet cunt, the way the head bumps against her most sensitive spot, spurring her to molten moans and gasps like candle smoke.
"Can you?" She asks, forcing herself to meet his gaze, heavy though her eyelids are. That is, after all, at least half her goal here. A way for them to share this without crossing the unnamed threshold that they tiptoe up to.
"Yes," is a breath of an answer, even as he tries to consider whether or not he should come like this, with her balanced so delicately over him. "Yes, but I want to see you..."
There's something so evocative about their present position. Her hands braced on his bare chest, over the marks she'd left (the mark someone else dug into his shoulder) and pinning his shoulders to the mattress, his hands pressing bruises into her thighs, the deliberate rolling pressure of her hips.
She's learning, he knows. Even like this, flushed and aching for release, Nikolai is so attentive to her. He recognizes the way she has adapted, what she has learned even in this short stretch of time balanced over him. Some part of him likes this, likes knowing that they have shared some pieces of knowledge back and forth in the course of this.
"I want to see you come this way," he tells her, breathless. Even now, he cannot quite suppress the squirm of movement, as if he'd sit up. "Not with me inside, but this is so close—Alina, please."
All these things they are denying themselves, holding in reserve. Nikolai wants this pantomime of a thing they could have, someday, when she trusts him better and he has proven that her trust is not misplaced.
So close, indeed. She can hear it in his voice how fervently he wants her, like she is something holy and delicious. It soothes a wound that she has carried inside of her for years, maybe for her whole life.
A little overeagerness from either of them could spoil things, but she can see in his face how he wants that too, aches for it. She does, too. Wants to be full of him and let that chase out the memories of anything else. If it was an accident, who could blame them?
His hunger, the risk, they both push her higher and higher towards that familiar peak. She grows tense, her movements more jerky, and it is only his grip which keeps her firmly restrained. They rely on each other's leverage.
"I'm close," she tells him. She hadn't been able to get the words out before, but she is the one holding the reins now, driving this onward. And she knows she can't surrender herself to the feeling, not fully. Not without losing his trust, passing the hurt that she carried onto him. "I want to. For you. I want—"
Her legs tremble. The muscles of her arms tighten, and then her abdomen too as her mouth falls open, her eyes pressing tightly shut. Each buck of her hips is a desperate, searching thing, hounding out the pleasure. A noise like creaking in the back of her throat, half-pained as she just barely tips over that edge. A whole shudder runs down her body, thighs locking up.
"I know," is a ragged groan of a thing, because he does. He knows. Surely they want the same things in this moment.
Alina tips, and Nikolai's fingers dig harder into the flexing muscle of her thighs.
"Show me, Alina," he breathes, even as he feels the echoing shudder in his body at the way she grinds down onto him. When he fumbles a hand between them to touch her, it's not only the need to see her come apart. It's to ward against the possibility that he won't be able to stay still, that Alina will rock down and his hips will come hitching up to meet her.
It would be so easy. They both know this.
So he gives her his fingers, encouraging her off balance. It wrings a wreck of a groan out of him as the slide of their bodies tilts off-center, but the friction is enough.
They will be a mess, he knows. Even as he shudders and gasps behind the curtain of Alina's hair, this thought sticks in his head. Recalls her stained kefta. Thinks now of her stained skirt, of how her thighs will be wet with him.
He draws her forehead down against his, fine tremors running through his body. Says her name, reverent and tender. Doesn't quite manage to loosen his grip where he clutches her thigh still.
She misses the sight of his worshipful gaze—Aleksander might have prayed to her like her cunt was a holy thing, but it had a harsh and patronizing bite to it that she cannot find in Nikolai's awe. But as Alina's forehead presses to his, as she turns her face to press her nose against his cheek, she cannot focus on that.
It is just enough that he keeps his fingers brushing against her when she is paralyzed by pleasure, both the assistance she needs and a bulwark against the mistake that she knows she could not resist. It prevents him from slipping to notch against her opening, as much as she wishes he would, as much as she aches with the empty need to feel him stretch and fill her. Her climax hits with the suddenness of a punch.
The soft rumbles of satisfaction crack on his name. "Nik—" becomes a protracted moan, loud enough in his ear to warrant wondering who else in the boarding house may have heard them. Alina doesn't care. That sound drags out of her in one wobbly note until she is out of breath and only sputtered sounds creak out.
If they were anyone else, if their lives could just be a collage of iterations on this moment, she would marry him right now.
She presses down against him, both seeking more and seeking a reprieve from the gentle friction of his fingers, which keep her at her peak even when she cannot chase out more. Then, the stuttering movements of her hips resume, smooth yet urgent. He needs her with her. Her fingers curl on his chest, nails biting down into his skin like she cannot help but leave marks in him.
Later, examining the collection of marks, Nikolai will consider: what exactly had tipped him past the breaking point?
In all the collection of sensations, was it Alina's nails digging half-moons into his chest that broke him apart?
Maybe so.
Maybe it is how she almost says his name, or the way her body shudders and shivers over him, or how wet she is, how flushed her skin is just now. All of these are such fine things in combination, and there is such novelty in hearing his name—
Maybe it is the intimacy inherent running warm between them, built up so tenuously and linked into place now.
It might matter to Nikolai later, when he is alone with all that's happened in the past twenty-four hours and can't help but try to turn it all over in his mind. But right now, all of it converges and overwhelms what last dregs of self-control he had left.
He comes, saying her name. Alina, projected into her head even he has says it aloud, reaches up to sink his fingers into her hair. Doesn't kiss her. Their breath mingles and their noses brush and she trembles over even the light press of his fingers. Says something else, low and thick and fond in Ravkan, affectionate and pleading all at once.
Words made pretty for their honesty, wrecked and urgent and said nearly into her mouth, they are so close. It all comes to the same thing: Stay a little longer, Alina, even if all they can do together is sleep.
This is better. For all the fluttering fear that rose in her belly because of her own vulnerability, it is so much better to see how he squirms, to hear him uttering her name like a prayer, to watch how his expression twists. He's beautiful. She wants to kiss him, but wants to hear him more. So she lingers, impossibly close, letting the new wetness that stains the inside of her skirts cool.
As she sinks into him, she lifts her hands, slowly, to cradle his face. To savor this closeness. Then she buries her face against his sweat-slick neck, collapsing fully, sweat mingling. She strokes his arm, steady and slow, an assurance before she can muster words.
"I'm not going anywhere," she murmurs finally, her voice still ragged with the dregs of feverish hunger as well as the fatigue of physical effort. There is a burn in her thighs that tells her this is enough for now, and she makes a happy if creaky little noise as she shifts her hips to stretch them out, shifting herself just to the side of him lest either of them have cause for lingering concern about the closeness of their bits.
Her breaths are heavy still, coming in tandem with his. She plants one hand on his chest so she can feel his ribs expand. The moment feels indulgent, luxurious. When has she ever had the opportunity to just linger like this, to hold and admire? She shifts her head back onto the other side of his pillow, lifts her gaze to search his face again, admires the sheen of sweat and the flush of his cheeks and the way his lips part to draw in more air.
Smiles, a little goofily, as she realizes that she can have this, if she wants it. He has offered it to her. And she already loves him a little for showing her what it could be like, could come to love him more, maybe.
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What else can he do but follow her direction? The slight movement of her hand, laying herself bare to him, with his fingers so close, there is nothing else to do but touch her there. The drape of her skirt casts Alina all in shadow, affords her some modesty even as Nikolai draws two fingers through the damp heat of her. Finds her cunt just as promised, and feels his entire body heat in answer.
"What would we have done in your rooms?" Nikolai asks her, a breath of a question against her cheek. "Something like this?"
As he presses two fingers into her, a slow slide of pressure. His hand is so gentle where he cradles her face, listening to her breath, for the sounds he is so desperate to draw out of her.
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"Saints," she sputters. Her hands come to rest on his shoulders just to steady herself, nails digging in at the twice-wounded spot where her burns compete with the strange dark veins sprawling outward from an old injury. But he's asked her a question. She tries to find words through the fog of her pleasure, but it's like trying to keep above the water when she never learned to swim.
"Against the door." She lets herself imagine it now, too. His cock instead of his fingers stretching her open, filling her. His fingers are thick enough, hot enough, that it's easily done. "Over the edge of the bed. And later, too, while we're half asleep, holding each other."
She'd been left wanting, and there were a lot of hours to fill. A lot of empty spaces inside of her. It wasn't all she'd imagined, between finding him in that gallery and coming to find him this morning. Had they been alone, properly alone, she might have taken his cock in her mouth, not just her hand. She'd thought of how her lips would stretch over it, how he'd taste.
There are reasons, good reasons, reasons she now cannot hold onto except to remember that they have time, that they aren't crossing all these items off the list now. All the same, as his fingers thrust up inside of her, as she finally moans without any real restraint, it is while imagining they might do just that.
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From him.
That last, that is what Nikolai lingers on.
Will her nails leave marks on him too? The wax hadn't lifted away the wound, and neither will the half-moons her nails score into him, but it feels good. Better to wear her marks than anything else.
"I like to hear you," is a departure from what they could, what they might, what they should be do in the future. The thrust of his fingers is a methodical thing, Nikolai's attention so utterly fixed on her. His thumb presses down, not circling, only pressure where she must surely want something else. "Alina, tell me. Is this what you like?"
As he puts this question to her, his hand leaves her cheek. Flattens across her back, urging her closer so he might put his mouth back to her collarbone, back to her breast. He can't kiss her; this is the nearest he can get, his mouth on her skin as he meets the shift of her hips.
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"It's good," she encourages, but even as she says this, the squirming continues, a restless effort to get more friction from his thumb. Like if she could fuck herself on his fingers, she could get that little something else that feels just out of reach.
"It's ... Oh." She sighs, lips parted, eyes fluttering shut once more as his mouth finds the curve of her breast, as his teeth scrape over her skin again. Her split attention makes all of his work feel more intense. It feels like she's babbling, but he said he'd liked to hear her, so she searches for a way to articulate it. "It's like you're everywhere."
She's going to drown in him.
"Just—" She whines. Another arch of her hips, trying to find a different angle, a little more. Enough to finish. And there, the steady push of his fingers up into her and the way she rocks to meet him has his thumb rocking like a fulcrum against her, and a tremor rumbles through her body, makes her muscles twitch, makes her cunt tighten around him. She cries out, tightening her arms around his neck just to hold on. "Yes. Oh. Saints, yes, Nikolai. Like that."
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In this moment, Nikolai wants to make her wait. Not as a flex of power, or control, or anything other than she is so beautiful in this moment and he wants to stay here with her.
"You're beautiful," he tells her again; the words might find better purchase with her attention split in so many directions. A litany of other things threaten to follow, but Nikolai thinks better of it, holds his tongue. His teeth scrape along her chest, following the flush of her skin, putting his mouth back to the peak of her nipple.
I want to do this again before we sleep, is a murmur between their minds, his thumb following the squirm of her body, the way all of her weight bears down into the thrust of his fingers. A pleasant sort of fantasy, one he feels has little chance of occurring on this particular day. Still, he tells her, And then again, when we wake.
Over the center of her back, his fingers flex against the arch of her spine and he lifts his head to ask her, "Are you close?"
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She nods in earnest, over and over again against the top of his head, unable to make words, even though she tries to hold her breath and swallow a moan so that what comes out next might be even a syllable. Instead, it's a hiccup, a soft noise that is choked off as her chest tightens and tightens with the rest of her.
He must be able to feel it. The way her muscles wring tight—trying to hold him in, trying to push him out. There is something luxurious in imagining the simple ability to have each other at their leisure, the idle falling into each other. That's what does her in.
It doesn't feel violent. She doesn't fight it like she does when she's been with Aleksander. He does not sink his teeth into her and rip something free. It doesn't feel like shattering. Her release is a cool wave that a breeze stirs on a lake, something that rolls through her like a pulse, tugging at the strings of all her muscles in all her limbs, that leaves her sighing her relief when those strings snap.
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Certainly. Nikolai is so, so pleased by the sounds Alina makes, the way her words break apart when he applies his teeth just so or crooks his fingers just there.
But it is good too, when he feels the way she comes apart.
His head tips back; she is too compelling. She is incandescent. And there is some aspect of serenity in the way she relaxes, tips into the sensation. Nikolai stretches up to kiss along the line of her jaw as she sighs, breathes out soft sounds as her body clenches around his fingers.
"Breathe," he murmurs against the hinge of her jaw. He is still touching her, fingers drawing through the damp heat of her, seeing if he can pull a twitch or gasp from her even as he encourages her in to lean against him.
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The bleary haze of her release settles over her, makes her limbs and head heavy and sluggish. But as he explores her folds, she jolts, surrendering a little whimper that pushes her against him even as her hips twitch back, gaining space from the too-intense sensation.
"Nikolai," she chastens in a rabbit-quick, soft whine—like he's some bully tugging at her hair. She levels her her grip on his shoulders, steadier now.
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"Sorry," is a murmur too, so light as his lips move from her jaw to the newly bared stretch of her neck. "You feel so good."
His arm stays looped securely around her waist. When he leans back, he brings her with him. Nikolai would like to roll her onto her side, tuck her tight against him. But even though Alina isn't exactly pinning him at this point, when they stretch out across the bed, she remains held against his chest.
Last night, he'd wanted so badly to put his arms around her. Now, so rearranged, Nikolai can loop both arms over her, hold her securely. His thumb rubs back and forth at her shoulder as they lay together, breathing in slow sync.
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But she looks up at him after a few moments, idle considerations that in Alina's eyes look like trouble. She can still feel his erection against her belly. It would pass, she knew, but —
"Will you let me try something?" As sweetly as she asks, she's already reaching under her skirt to tug off her underwear, awkwardly shuffling her knees to keep them together enough to wriggle them down her legs.
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As she speaks, his eyes open. Aware of the squirm of movement Alina is already engaged in, lifting his head just in time to see the disappearance of her underthings.
"Not today, we said," he reminds her, searching her expression. Remembering the hitch in her voice, the way she'd tripped over the words, these are wards enough against any temptation to bend the tacit understanding they'd established.
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She doesn't specify further, now. Only meets his gaze with that mischievous glow in hers that seems determined to test the limits of what he would let her get away with, of how much he's willing to give her. A look that delights in driving him a little out of his mind.
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His hand sweeps up her back, over the wings of her shoulder blades, down her arm. A grounding sort of touch, for him as much as for her. The withdrawal of his hand had let her skirts fall again, but she is bare beneath them and Nikolai—
Nikolai wants her. He has carried his affection long enough for it to take root, to bloom green and new but no less secure for that newness, in his chest.
What would he deny her? Nothing, apparently. Nothing today.
"Alright," he tells her. "Though I suspect this is about to put me into greater debt with you."
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"I thought all that talk of debts was just a way of ensuring we'd be back here," she murmurs. "This is for me. You don't owe me anything."
She lets go of him, but it's a short-lived reprieve before she presses the wetness of her cunt against the length of him. True to her word, she doesn't take him inside. Instead, she rubs herself against him, soaking him with her arousal, making each gliding stroke easier.
Her breath catches and her shoulders twitch when she bumps up against the head of his cock, the way it nudges against just the right part of her, the same spot where she'd been so sensitive before and is only just barely able to tolerate the touch now. The movement stay slow, careful not to get overeager and risk moving too fast or too far and letting him slip inside.
"How does this feel?" she asks him, her voice already rough enough to convey her own answer. A little something falters in her expression as she insists, "Be honest."
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Yes, all the teasing invocation of debt was to him was a way to link them, draw them back together. Yes, he has a vested interest in making certain there is always something favor to return to her.
Would she keep him? Will she keep him? Nikolai wants to feel certain of an affirmative, clings on to what he can when he doesn't.
Regardless, there is still a moment, when she lets go and raises up over him that Nikolai is rattled towards movement. He says her name, tilting towards uncertainty and alarm, shoulders coming up off the bed before—
"Be careful," nearly overlaps her question, a wrecked groan of a plea. His hands are gripping her so tightly, ten points of pressure where his fingers splay out across her back.
Be honest because Nikolai is not a liar but he is good at dressing up a truth and turning it into some opaque, obscure thing. But Alina makes her demands and Nikolai can do nothing but scrape together an answer for her.
"It's—" he begins, breaking on good, which feels painfully inadequate. "Perfect."
Where perfect is honest, yes, but is wrenched out of him, almost pleading. It is perfect but it isn't enough. It is perfect because it is a reminder of what they have both decided to forgo. Beneath her, holding so painfully still of his own accord, he cannot kiss and cannot rock up into her and thinks his heart might give out under the effort of the combination.
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"Trust me," she chides him.
Despite the authority she musters to say this, the movements of her hips are self conscious. Unevenly paced, a little jerky with inexperience. She is learning how to use new muscles, and for now she lacks grace or rhythm.
"You're so warm." Maybe it's the bloodflow of his arousal, or maybe it's just her own knowledge that it's his cock and not just his fingers that she's rutting against, that it feels as good for him as it does for her, but it feels better. Hotter.
It may even be the precarious nature, how delicate each movement has to be, how they tip on the precipice of something dangerous to them both. Her slickness makes each movement easy, a wetness that clings to his cock and eases the friction, making slippery the rock of her hips, opening the way to one wrong move. "Can you feel how wet you've made me?"
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He has. He does.
The shift of Alina's weight to pin him back down to the bed is good too, wrenches a gasp of breath out of him as she moves over him. Nikolai likes that. If their position felt less tenuous, he might provoke more of it. But he has the sense that any minor movement of his hips would instigate something neither of them are ready for.
And she trusts him. Or has begun to trust him. He won't jeopardize that.
"Can you come again?" he murmurs, hands finding his way to her thighs. Holding on there, too tightly. Not an answer to her question, but something that feels vital. Something he wants, more than his own release.
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It is a good thing, she thinks, that Nikolai lets her have her way with him: if the tables were ever turned, he would ferret out every reaction he could, learn the shape of her every sigh. He would wring her dry and leave her boneless. She might like that too much.
This is safer.
"I think so," she says, the rock of her hips steadying a little over time. His hold on her thighs is good, solid, keeps her level.
But it's more than that. It's tight enough that she can hope she'll find his fingerprints in the banya later, and trace the constellations of his grip. It feels good, and so does the way that the firm length of his cock glazes over her wet cunt, the way the head bumps against her most sensitive spot, spurring her to molten moans and gasps like candle smoke.
"Can you?" She asks, forcing herself to meet his gaze, heavy though her eyelids are. That is, after all, at least half her goal here. A way for them to share this without crossing the unnamed threshold that they tiptoe up to.
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There's something so evocative about their present position. Her hands braced on his bare chest, over the marks she'd left (the mark someone else dug into his shoulder) and pinning his shoulders to the mattress, his hands pressing bruises into her thighs, the deliberate rolling pressure of her hips.
She's learning, he knows. Even like this, flushed and aching for release, Nikolai is so attentive to her. He recognizes the way she has adapted, what she has learned even in this short stretch of time balanced over him. Some part of him likes this, likes knowing that they have shared some pieces of knowledge back and forth in the course of this.
"I want to see you come this way," he tells her, breathless. Even now, he cannot quite suppress the squirm of movement, as if he'd sit up. "Not with me inside, but this is so close—Alina, please."
All these things they are denying themselves, holding in reserve. Nikolai wants this pantomime of a thing they could have, someday, when she trusts him better and he has proven that her trust is not misplaced.
(cw: refs to dubcon)
A little overeagerness from either of them could spoil things, but she can see in his face how he wants that too, aches for it. She does, too. Wants to be full of him and let that chase out the memories of anything else. If it was an accident, who could blame them?
His hunger, the risk, they both push her higher and higher towards that familiar peak. She grows tense, her movements more jerky, and it is only his grip which keeps her firmly restrained. They rely on each other's leverage.
"I'm close," she tells him. She hadn't been able to get the words out before, but she is the one holding the reins now, driving this onward. And she knows she can't surrender herself to the feeling, not fully. Not without losing his trust, passing the hurt that she carried onto him. "I want to. For you. I want—"
Her legs tremble. The muscles of her arms tighten, and then her abdomen too as her mouth falls open, her eyes pressing tightly shut. Each buck of her hips is a desperate, searching thing, hounding out the pleasure. A noise like creaking in the back of her throat, half-pained as she just barely tips over that edge. A whole shudder runs down her body, thighs locking up.
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Alina tips, and Nikolai's fingers dig harder into the flexing muscle of her thighs.
"Show me, Alina," he breathes, even as he feels the echoing shudder in his body at the way she grinds down onto him. When he fumbles a hand between them to touch her, it's not only the need to see her come apart. It's to ward against the possibility that he won't be able to stay still, that Alina will rock down and his hips will come hitching up to meet her.
It would be so easy. They both know this.
So he gives her his fingers, encouraging her off balance. It wrings a wreck of a groan out of him as the slide of their bodies tilts off-center, but the friction is enough.
They will be a mess, he knows. Even as he shudders and gasps behind the curtain of Alina's hair, this thought sticks in his head. Recalls her stained kefta. Thinks now of her stained skirt, of how her thighs will be wet with him.
He draws her forehead down against his, fine tremors running through his body. Says her name, reverent and tender. Doesn't quite manage to loosen his grip where he clutches her thigh still.
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It is just enough that he keeps his fingers brushing against her when she is paralyzed by pleasure, both the assistance she needs and a bulwark against the mistake that she knows she could not resist. It prevents him from slipping to notch against her opening, as much as she wishes he would, as much as she aches with the empty need to feel him stretch and fill her. Her climax hits with the suddenness of a punch.
The soft rumbles of satisfaction crack on his name. "Nik—" becomes a protracted moan, loud enough in his ear to warrant wondering who else in the boarding house may have heard them. Alina doesn't care. That sound drags out of her in one wobbly note until she is out of breath and only sputtered sounds creak out.
If they were anyone else, if their lives could just be a collage of iterations on this moment, she would marry him right now.
She presses down against him, both seeking more and seeking a reprieve from the gentle friction of his fingers, which keep her at her peak even when she cannot chase out more. Then, the stuttering movements of her hips resume, smooth yet urgent. He needs her with her. Her fingers curl on his chest, nails biting down into his skin like she cannot help but leave marks in him.
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In all the collection of sensations, was it Alina's nails digging half-moons into his chest that broke him apart?
Maybe so.
Maybe it is how she almost says his name, or the way her body shudders and shivers over him, or how wet she is, how flushed her skin is just now. All of these are such fine things in combination, and there is such novelty in hearing his name—
Maybe it is the intimacy inherent running warm between them, built up so tenuously and linked into place now.
It might matter to Nikolai later, when he is alone with all that's happened in the past twenty-four hours and can't help but try to turn it all over in his mind. But right now, all of it converges and overwhelms what last dregs of self-control he had left.
He comes, saying her name. Alina, projected into her head even he has says it aloud, reaches up to sink his fingers into her hair. Doesn't kiss her. Their breath mingles and their noses brush and she trembles over even the light press of his fingers. Says something else, low and thick and fond in Ravkan, affectionate and pleading all at once.
Words made pretty for their honesty, wrecked and urgent and said nearly into her mouth, they are so close. It all comes to the same thing: Stay a little longer, Alina, even if all they can do together is sleep.
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As she sinks into him, she lifts her hands, slowly, to cradle his face. To savor this closeness. Then she buries her face against his sweat-slick neck, collapsing fully, sweat mingling. She strokes his arm, steady and slow, an assurance before she can muster words.
"I'm not going anywhere," she murmurs finally, her voice still ragged with the dregs of feverish hunger as well as the fatigue of physical effort. There is a burn in her thighs that tells her this is enough for now, and she makes a happy if creaky little noise as she shifts her hips to stretch them out, shifting herself just to the side of him lest either of them have cause for lingering concern about the closeness of their bits.
Her breaths are heavy still, coming in tandem with his. She plants one hand on his chest so she can feel his ribs expand. The moment feels indulgent, luxurious. When has she ever had the opportunity to just linger like this, to hold and admire? She shifts her head back onto the other side of his pillow, lifts her gaze to search his face again, admires the sheen of sweat and the flush of his cheeks and the way his lips part to draw in more air.
Smiles, a little goofily, as she realizes that she can have this, if she wants it. He has offered it to her. And she already loves him a little for showing her what it could be like, could come to love him more, maybe.