Varian Krylov (4 page)

"All right?" he asked.

"Yeah."

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Button by button he undid her blouse, then pulled the left side—the side with the now-darkened blood stain—open, baring her breast and the square of blood-stained gauze that partially covered her nipple.

"I'm going to take the gauze off, okay?"

She nodded.

Carefully he peeled up an edge of tape.

"That hurt?"

"No."

Pinching the corner of her bandage between his fingers, he slowly pulled, lifting the bandage, the white tape clinging, pulling at the delicate, smooth, pale skin of her breast. The incision, dark and thick with dried blood, came into view, a diagonal ridge just below the areola, just before the last of the tape tugged and released her nipple.

Her eyes evaded the sight of the blood-stained gauze as he set it on the counter.

"All right?"

She nodded.

"I'm going to clean it up a little, so I can see better. Okay?"

Another nod.

He doused a wad of fresh gauze in peroxide and gently pressed it to the wound, held it there, lifted, pressed again. She was silent, but when he looked to her face, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."

"I'm going to die," she whispered.

Her words hurt him.

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"They told you that?"

"They don't know yet. But I do."

"This . . . they operated?"

"Today was just a biopsy."

He went on, pressing and lifting, staining the peroxide-soaked gauze darker and darker, slowly revealing the neat incision beneath the dried blood.

"So you're waiting. For the results."

"I know what it is. And I know I'm going to die."

"Vanka. Even if it's cancer . . ."

"My mom died of breast cancer when I was six. She was twenty-nine. Her sister was thirty-one when she died."

The stitches were intact. He started fashioning a fresh bandage. Gauze.

Neosporin. Tape.

"I think I've always known I wouldn't get away with it."

"What?"

"Staying whole. Dying old. Of something else."

He resisted his impulse to reassure, to promise that medicine could do more now than twenty years before, when her mom had died. As gently as he could, he covered her wound with the fresh bandage, carefully pressing the tape against her delicate skin, and pulled her blouse closed, covering her breast.

He understood now. Why she'd come in with him after the accident. He touched her cheek. Gave her a tender smile.

"I'll be right back."

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When he returned a moment later, she was standing in front of the slider, gazing out at the wet L.A. night.

"Let me wash your blouse. Here's something warm for you to wear."

When she didn't move or speak, he tentatively touched her shoulders, then slid her blouse down her arms, realizing as he did so that she hadn't buttoned up. She had a very pretty back, smooth, muscular, defined. He slid his flannel pajama top up her arms, onto her shoulders.

"I should go."

"Stay. I want you to."

"I've put you through enough."

"You haven't put me through anything. I didn't want to be alone tonight, either.

Stay."

Halfheartedly nodding her assent, she began buttoning up the flannel top.

"You tired? Ready for bed?" he asked when he'd put her blouse in the wash.

She looked sort of scared, but nodded her head.

"Come on."

He led her back, to his bedroom, let her pee and use his toothbrush, then did the same. When he came out of the bathroom, he found her standing hesitantly at the side of his bed.

"Do you want to be alone?"

She shook her head “no,” then stripped off her pants.

"Which side is yours?"

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"They're both mine," he answered mirthfully, having gotten a good bit of teasing over the years for his indiscriminate sprawling. "Take whichever side you like, and be prepared to defend it."

She climbed in and he stripped down to his boxer briefs and slid in beside her.

Met her in the middle. He coaxed her onto her side and curved his body into hers, spoon style, curving one arm over her, pulling her close against him.

They laid together like that for a long while. For three or more reasons he was wound far too tight to sleep. From the pattern and quality of her breathing, he knew she was awake, too. Thinking to soothe, to comfort her, he stroked her arm, just lightly with his fingertips over the soft rough flannel pajama top. He sensed her tense a little.

He whispered, "Should I stop?"

"No. It feels nice."

His fingers drifted up, into her hair, incredibly soft but a bit tangled, still, from the wind. She sighed quietly as he combed and petted, giving her the sorts of touches she liked best, that always seemed to soothe, to bring on drowsiness almost like a drug. Her hair was slightly damp from the rain, and it smelled just faintly of almond. She shifted and her ass flexed and rubbed against his cock. He couldn't help smiling, almost laughing at himself for having the guile to blush at being found out, that a woman in his bed would feel the evidence that he was aroused.

"You're hard."

He went on massaging her hot scalp.

"Don't worry. I can restrain myself."

"You have impressive recuperative powers, Mr. Ross."

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"That's actually true, but lying in bed with you doesn't exactly constitute proof of that."

"Blood and sickness and morbid talk of disease and imminent death do it for you, do they?" Her voice had a defeated note to it.

"Tangentially, maybe you could say that."

"You don't have a scalpel fetish I ought to be aware of, do you?"

"My real thing is bone saws. Vzzzt, vzzzzzt," he buzzed in her ear, running his finger along her scalp, then her neck, relieved when she squirmed and giggled, anxious after it was already too late that his teasing might have triggered another bout of anxiety, terror, or shock. When she settled down, he realized her thrashing and giggling had him even harder.

"I'm not a fetishist, really. Scalpels or otherwise. But I'm attracted to real things.

Sometimes fear and pain feel more real than whatever erotic games people generally like to play."

It wasn't coming out right. He just wanted her to know she wasn't . . . broken to him.

"So," she said in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear, "you still . . . you'd still fuck me?"

A little charge zapped through his body, indifferent to his brain's certainty that she was just looking for validation. Reassurance that having cancer—breast cancer—didn't cancel her out as a sexual being.

"Like I said. I can restrain myself. Restraint implies desire."

"Because I want you to."

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He carefully crafted his reply.

"You want me to fuck you?"

It was her word.

"Yes."

"Yes."

She was still lying on her side, facing away from him. He slid back a bit, drew her shoulder back, toward him, until she turned onto her back, and after a moment of waiting, turned to face him in the dim moonlight seeping hazily between the dispersing rain clouds. Tracing the outline of her face with the tips of two fingers until all stray strands of hair were off her forehead and cheeks, he pressed his lips to her temple. He was thinking about it.

"You're not a child, Vanka. I won't question what you need tonight. I'll trust you to say something if you change your mind."

"I won't. It's what I've wanted all night."

He could do this. Play the masochist. Begin to make love to a woman he was sure would tell him to stop just as his arousal hit its limit. Again.

It was kindness that overcame his cynical reasoning. But nothing had to overcome his body. He wanted her. Everything about her—everything—had been pulling him to her, all night. The way her bottom lip, like a plump, ripe cherry even without lipstick, begged to be tasted and bitten, the way it curved a little lopsided, to bare sugar-white teeth in her sardonic smile. Her hands, with long, graceful fingers, her warm, sure touch. Her ass, smooth, round as two bread loaves under her low-riding white slacks.

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Her calm competence, her strength and certainty after the accident—on the road, and later, when she'd treated his wounds. Her blatant, frightened arousal out on the terrace. Her pain. Her fear. Her need. All of it fed his attraction. His desire for her.

And her fear. Her fear of him. Her fear of her disease. Her fear of death. He wanted to fuck her while she was full of that fear, because it was so real.

Even her wound. The incision, with its coarse, hair-like sutures. It was raw. An opening in the fragile mortal barrier to death. A mark of vulnerability. Of frail human flesh. It belied all the artifice, the grotesque masks she, he, everyone put forth for others to look at and touch. Her waxed cunt. Her tinted hair. His wardrobe, put together by a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour stylist to give him just the right air of casual urban disarray. That fucking motorcycle of his, bought with some adolescent fantasy of daring, of leaving to chance (and mad dogs with Cujo complexes) the life he'd grown so bored with.

She was looking at him, waiting to see what he'd do. He smiled, pressed his palm softly to her cheek, and took her lips in a small, tender kiss. When he looked at her again, she looked strangely startled for a woman who'd just asked to be fucked. He gave her a chance, but she didn't say anything, so he kissed her again. A little deeper this time, tasting her lips with his tongue, then going into her mouth. She kissed him back as sweetly as he was kissing her, deep but slow. A delicate dance. An exploration.

Did she want him to touch her breast—the unhurt one? Or was she lying there, hoping he'd keep his hands out of the top he'd lent her? As a test, he brought his hand down from her cheek and faintly brushed over the curve of her tit on the way down to caressing her smooth, bare thigh. She didn't flinch, or make a noise or protest. His palm 37

slid over her warm, soft skin, feeling the strong muscles in her thighs, the firm round curve of her ass, the dip of her at the small of her back, taut and narrow, the softer, vulnerable feel of her belly, the ridge of ribs as his hand glided up, in the heat of the air trapped between her body and the shirt, and curved over the firm swell of her breast, over the soft smooth skin he'd seen was pale and free of tan lines, and, just lightly, his fingertips brushed over the raised, textured flesh he remembered as a delicate pink, over her hard nipple. She just went on, breathing deep, kissing him. With the pad of his thumb he pressed that firm nub of pink flesh against the side of his index finger, his whole hand gently squeezing her breast, and she sighed softly against his mouth, arching against his body.

For a while he went on like that, kissing her, caressing her as slowly, as carefully as he would a virgin, noting with pleasure, but also with a discerning concern for how it was all going for her every little sigh, every writhing movement, striving for her arousal, on guard for any sign she was anxious or afraid. Maybe he needed her fear, the way some people need love, to feel assured and alive and complete, but he wasn't such a selfish ass that he'd take it at her expense on a night like this. There was very nearly as much pleasure, as much satisfaction, giving her what she needed, as taking what he did.

He'd had her sighing and wiggling so long, he knew she'd be wet. Savoring the thought, the anticipation, his hand left her breast slowly, took its time over her belly, the skin hot and smooth, back and forth between hip bones, feeling the architecture of the body under that hot, tender flesh. The edge of her panties. The feel of the silky fabric under his fingertip sent a surging force to his cock. He loved that, touching that article of 38

clothing, knowing he was about to go under, touch her sex. It didn't matter that he'd been there already with his mouth. The anticipation was fucking hot. All his fingertips touched down, just below the little belt of elastic along the top, and slowly slid down over the slippery nylon. What color? He'd forgotten. Even through the panties it was obvious she waxed. No pressed down puff of pubes, no rough stubble. Perfectly smooth. Down, down, over the little hillock, down, to the soft contours at the apex of her thighs, the narrow hills and the hidden fold of valley between. His cock throbbed in anticipation, aching to press between, dip into her wet heat.

With his middle finger, he rubbed gently along that little valley, feeling that the crotch of her panties was moist, hearing her little groan as he teased her clit through the thin fabric. She spread her legs a little, and her hips arched a little now and then, pressing her cunt more firmly into his hand. Sensing her eagerness, he finally slipped his hand inside her panties, circled his fingers a few times over the delicious soft smoothness of her waxed mound, then curved his fingers down, between her open thighs, and found her silky wetness with the tip of his middle finger. Fuck, his dick was throbbing. He took his cunt-wet fingertip up to her clit and painted it with her juice, enjoying the twitch of her pelvis and the sound of her gasping a breath through her clenched teeth.

She was ready. He didn't want to make her cum first. He wanted her itchy, squirming with need when she took his cock for the first time. And he was ready, hard and aching, even though she hadn't touched him. At all.

She'd returned his kiss, sucking his lips, licking his tongue. But that was it. Maybe the way he'd stopped her before, when she was going to suck him, had put her off 39

initiating anything. By way of encouragement, and because anything resembling the missionary position was out, with his knee chewed up and screaming, he wrapped his arms around her and rolled onto his back, pulling her astride him.

She went on kissing him, but he sensed that some of the excitement had faded for her with that move. He sat up, palmed her ass, one cheek in each hand, and pulled her against him. Thrilled where it counts by the feeling of her crotch pressed against the underside of his hard-on, he pulled two buttons from their holes and bared her uncut breast, sucking her hard nipple hungrily between his lips, licking the pressure-stretched tip of her tit eagerly until she groaned.