Page 33 of Charmingly Obsessed

“ S o do I have your permission to say the truth, Diana?” His voice is a low, crackling current of electricity that sizzles along my nerve endings. The fine hairs on my arms stand on end.

“Or is that too… spontaneous for your carefully curated sensibilities?” He leans closer, intensity blazing in his gaze. “Because I already told everyone. The entire goddamn world. I said it! Because it’s the truth. Yeah. The simple truth!”

His bristling, almost feral appearance—the untamed emotion blazing in his eyes—somehow pulls me out of the depths of my own shock.

Why is he talking like this? Like he’s defending himself. From me. He doesn’t need to defend himself from me. I… Who here holds all the cards? Who has all the power? Not me. That’s for damn sure.

“You’re insane. I—I’m not blind. I can see… I can see this is… it can’t be true. It just can’t.”

He laughs then—a harsh, bitter, broken sound right in my face. His forehead thumps against the wall behind me as he leans in, caging me. His body radiates a desperate, almost painful heat. The laugh pours out of him, raw and self-deprecating.

And I feel like I’m suffocating inside this ridiculous, violently pink, rhinestone-encrusted parachute of a jacket.

“Yeah, it can’t be true. It can’t be true, but why , Diana? Why the hell not? You think I’m some kind of… of emotionally stunted clown? Incapable of serious feelings?”

“You’ve completely lost your mind,” I whisper, but the naked, undeniable truth blazing in his eyes is unavoidable.

It seeps into me, a slow, insidious heat, sweeping away everything in its path. And the dam inside me, the one I’ve so carefully constructed over years of loneliness and disappointment, is beyond repair. It’s crumbling. Shattering.

It seeps into me—a slow, insidious heat that sweeps away everything in its path. The dam inside me, the one I’ve so carefully built over years of loneliness and disappointment, is beyond repair. It’s crumbling. Shattering.

“You,” he suddenly growls, his voice a low, menacing rumble. He clenches his teeth so hard I stare in morbid fascination, half-afraid they might break.

“You thought I kissed you as a joke. That first time. In the kitchen. Kissed you! As a fucking joke! And that I’m mocking you now, right? With this… this declaration? You always think I’m mocking you, don’t you? No matter what I do.”

He leans even closer, his presence overwhelming.

“You thought that just now, with the ‘madly obsessed’ bullshit, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”

“I—I…” My voice fails me. “What else was I supposed to think, Mykola? After… after everything?”

He shakes me then. Shakes me hard.

He’s gathered so much of the hideous pink faux-fur fabric of this jacket in his fists that he could probably make two entirely new, equally offensive coats from it.

“That I want you, for example!” he rasps, his face inches from mine. His eyes burn with a desperate, almost painful intensity. “That maybe—just maybe—after last night, after everything we just… did… it actually could be true?!”

He almost screams the words, then visibly pulls himself back from the brink, his chest heaving.

“Or what, Diana? Maybe you don’t want to know that? Maybe it’s too unplanned for you, huh? Too messy? Too much of me, right?”

It’s like the hair near his temples, usually hidden by his artfully tousled sandy hair, has suddenly turned white with strain. He doesn’t look so tanned anymore, so golden. He looks… pale. Exhausted. Stripped bare.

I barely stop myself from reaching out, from touching his cheek, from offering some stupid, inadequate comfort. I can’t fully grasp that any of this is really happening.

It feels like a fever dream. A beautiful, terrifying, intoxicating fever dream.

“I want to know. I just… I don’t understand. I don’t understand you, Mykola.”

“Diana.” His mouth twitches—a strange, almost spastic movement. He presses our foreheads together, hard, like we’re about to engage in some primal, head-butting wrestling match.

“You don’t need to understand me to feel it,” he says, his voice low and strained. “To… to believe it.” He exhales tiredly, a shudder running through his powerful frame. It’s as if he’s fighting against himself—against some internal demon—squeezing me harder, holding me tighter.

“You don’t need to understand emotions to experience them, to accept them. You can’t just… plan them out on one of your goddamn spreadsheets!”

“I am experiencing emotions!” I can’t hold it in anymore. The frustration, the confusion, the overwhelming, terrifying hope—it all bursts out. I grab the front of his soft grey t-shirt, fisting the fabric in my hands.

“I’m experiencing them right now, you infuriating, magnificent bastard! Can’t you see?”

And then… then I start shaking him. Trying to shake him. Pulling and tugging at his shirt, at his shoulders. He stops my hands, his grip gentle but firm. And I stop him, my hands tangling in his hair. And we kiss…

…yes, we kiss. We move, somehow — stumbling, clinging — toward the living room, toward the enormous plush velvet couch that witnessed our earlier… activities.

I grab his hair, pulling and twisting, refusing to let go even as he comes down on top of me. His weight is a delicious, possessive pressure, pinning me to the soft cushions.

Mykola pulls off my hideous pink jacket with a grunt and tosses it to the floor. My boots follow. And then… we stop trying to rush. To finish. To conquer.

Instead, our lips meet in a desperate, searching exploration. He moves my panties aside with a practiced, surprisingly gentle flick of his thumb.

He thrusts into me, and I pull his hair harder, needing something to hold onto—something to anchor me as the world tilts and spins. I need to move my hands. I need to touch him. I need to hold on.

Now he’s pushing into me, deep and slow, dragging me toward him—toward the brink. A profound, almost primal shock courses through me as he fills me. So hot. So hard. So him. It’s as if I’m learning for the very first time that men even have cocks.

I feel him everywhere — inside me, around me, consuming me. I look at Mykola, at his beautiful, tormented face, and I can’t believe this vital, elemental part of him is moving inside me. Alive. Impossibly, wonderfully real, thick and long.

His grip on my thigh is like steel. Our gazes lock, becoming one shared look—a silent understanding that pins us in this undeniable intimacy.

Mykola makes a strange, guttural sound deep in his throat and drags me deeper into the couch. Deeper into him.

“I want everything with you, Diana. Everything,” he exhales, his breath hot and ragged against my face. “Without you… nothing. I don’t want it.” His voice drops to a broken whisper. “Be mine. Please.”

His eyes are feverishly bright, darting over my face as if memorizing, branding every detail. I nod, unable to speak, unable to do anything but agree.

“Be mine.”

“I already am,” I moan, the words torn from me. My fingers dig into his skin, dragging, raking, needing to leave my mark on him too. “I already am yours, Mykola. I want… I want…”

“What, darling?” He follows my dazed, unfocused gaze but never loses his own intense focus on my face. “What do you want, Diana? Tell me. Anything. Everything.”

“I want you to be,” I manage, wiping my nose inelegantly on his cheek before hiding my face against his warm, sweat-slicked skin, “only mine. I… I need you to be only mine.”

He laughs then.

A joyous, unrestrained, impossibly happy sound that seems to fill the opulent penthouse. It chases away the shadows and makes everything around us brighten, sharpen, come alive.

“Deal.” He kisses me everywhere—uncoordinated, frantic, hungry kisses on my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids, my throat. “Easy. Done. I agree. Only yours. Always.”

I want to stroke a stray, wheat-colored strand of hair that’s fallen across his temple, damp with sweat. But the movement doesn’t happen.

It’s as if time itself has frozen, fractured. A shimmering, impenetrable shell forms around our bodies—still moving, still gasping, still straining with each deep, possessive thrust.

And inside this strange, timeless shell, there are no seconds or minutes. No verticals or horizontals. No right or left. No up or down. There is only the boiling, elemental force of our contact—our connection. And it’s about to explode, consuming us both.

“My sunshine,” he whispers, his lips brushing my cheek, voice thick with emotion. Drops of sweat slide from his high, aristocratic forehead onto my ears, my neck. “Why are you crying? Why the tears, baby?”

“Because I’m an idiot,” I manage, biting my lips, reaching for him blindly as his restless mouth covers mine again. “A complete, hopeless idiot,” I sob against his lips.

“Then let’s be idiots together.” Mykola presses his face to mine. “Together, Diana. Everything. Just the two of us. Always.”

When he sweeps the heavy, ornate jewelry box, the stacks of leather-bound first editions, the ridiculously expensive scented candles off the antique mahogany nightstand with one swift, impatient motion—sending them crashing to the plush Persian rug below—I only exhale deeply. A sigh of surrender. Of acceptance.

We end up higher on the couch, somehow, almost sitting, tangled together, his legs entwined with mine. Now I can brace myself with my palm flat against the cool, smooth surface of the low coffee table. Which comes in very handy.

Because he slams into me then with a wild, almost savage ferocity. And for some insane reason, I agree with each deep, punishing thrust out loud. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I keep tilting my head back, arching my neck, exposing my throat, offering myself to him.

Then, he suddenly pushes my knee aside, opening me wider, deeper. And the next three thrusts… they climax in an explosion. A shattering.

An explosion inside me. Deep, deep inside. And I can’t scream.