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Chapter Nine

Dimitri

I couldn’t breathe.

Or maybe I just forgot how. My lips were still tingling, my heart galloping like it was trying to outrun a war horse. My whole body buzzed, like I’d stepped too close to a live wire, and now the charge had nowhere to go but inward.

Petyr had kissed me. Twice.

No, not just kissed. Devoured. Undone me. Pulled me into some invisible orbit I didn’t know I’d been circling my whole life.

I could still feel the pressure of his mouth on mine, could still taste him—bittersweet vodka, salt, and something warm I didn’t have words for. My hands were still clenched in his coat, not because I meant to hold him, but because I hadn’t realized I’d let go of control entirely.

All I could think—over and over like a broken reel—was: So this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

I’d spent my whole life assuming there was something wrong with me.

That I was defective in some quiet, shameful way.

The boys I grew up with, they used to whisper about girls’ legs, breasts, the way they giggled.

They’d sneak glances at magazine covers, draw crude things in their notebooks.

Laugh like they were all in on some great secret.

I waited for that feeling to come. I waited for it to awaken inside me like a sleeping beast.

It never did.

I told myself maybe I was a late bloomer. Maybe I was too serious. Maybe I just hadn’t met the right girl.

But the truth was—none of them made my legs shake. None of them made me want to melt into another person’s skin.

Petyr did.

God help me, all I wanted in that moment was to feel his body pressed against mine again. To kiss him until I couldn’t remember my name. And if there was more, if there were things to learn, things I had only imagined in the dark, I wanted him to be the one to teach me.

Petyr must’ve seen it in my eyes. The need, and the terror. The aching question mark of who I even was now.

He leaned in and pulled me close again. Not for another kiss, but to whisper against the side of my face, his breath warm against my temple.

“I want to make you feel things you never imagined possible.”

I shivered. Not from cold. Not even from fear.

From desire.

He stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers, slow and deliberate. My breath hitched like I’d been sucker-punched in the gut. He looked around the room at the men who weren’t watching us, the shadows that welcomed our secrets, and then reached for my hand again.

I gave it to him without thinking.

Petyr pulled me through another doorway into a quiet, dark room. The heavy thump of muffled music barely reached this far. It smelled of mildew, old water, the faint trace of sweat and something older, more primal. I should’ve been disgusted, but all I could focus on was him.

Petyr turned to me again and kissed me. This time, it was slower, deeper, hungrier. I leaned into him like my body had given up on standing for itself. My cock was aching, hard and hot and straining in my trousers like it had a mind of its own.

I moaned into his mouth. Actually moaned, and my knees threatened to buckle, but I didn’t want to stop.

My hands were everywhere, Petyr’s shoulders, his chest, the sharp angle of his hips.

I needed to know him. I needed to feel something solid because everything inside me was dissolving.

His hands were equally greedy, sliding beneath my coat, then my shirt, fingertips grazing over my skin like they’d been starved for the taste of it.

I gasped again.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was terrified. But I couldn’t stop.

He must’ve felt the way I trembled. Maybe he heard my breath falter again.

Because he broke the kiss, just enough to whisper, “Trust me.”

That word hit me like a slap.

Trust.

I’d been told to trust men all my life. Trust the Party. Trust my superiors. Trust the system. All it ever got me was bruised knuckles and a thousand unspoken things shoved into the back of my throat.

But right now? With Petyr?

I did.

God help me, I did.

I nodded, slowly, and watched the way his eyes darkened. His hands moved to my belt, then paused. I nodded again, more sure this time.

And then there was no going back.

Petyr kissed me again, harder this time. No hesitation, no question. His mouth was hot, demanding, and I gave myself over to it without resistance. His hands gripped my waist, then slid up beneath my shirt, splaying over my back like he was trying to memorize me by touch alone.

When he kissed the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, and then—God—my neck, I nearly collapsed.

No one had ever done that to me before. Not once. I didn’t know my neck could feel like that. Sparks shot down my spine, my skin tightening around the bones like it didn’t know how to contain this new electricity. My hips jolted forward involuntarily, and I gasped, loud and shameful.

And then I did it again.

Petyr kept his mouth there, open and wet against the hollow of my throat, his tongue flicking the sensitive skin just above my collarbone. I made a sound that startled even me—somewhere between a moan and a plea—and my knees buckled.

He caught me and whispered against my skin, “You’re so beautiful when you let go.”

Then, lower, rougher, right against the shell of my ear: “I want you, Dimitri. More than I’ve ever wanted a man in my life.”

My heart slammed into my ribs.

He dropped to his knees, and the sight of him kneeling made the room spin. And then he pressed his forehead against the hard, aching line of my cock through my pants.

I choked on a breath, and my entire body went rigid.

He stayed like that for a moment, breathing in the scent of me, his hands resting on my thighs.

When he looked up, his eyes locked with mine, and something broke wide open in my chest. I’d never felt so exposed, or so wanted.

Not just for my body, but for me. Like I was a secret he’d been aching to uncover.

My pulse thundered in my ears as his hands moved, slowly, reverently, to my belt. The clink of metal echoed louder than it should have in the quiet room. I was trembling so hard my knees knocked together.

He paused. “Shhh… it’s all right,” he murmured, rubbing my hip with one hand. “Trust me.”

That word again.

It still made my spine go stiff. But this time… I breathed through it. I looked down at him—his hands, his lips, his warmth—and nodded.

“I trust you.”

The words came out hoarse and raw.

He gave me a small, devastating smile.

Then he unzipped my pants, slow and unhurried, like a man savoring every second of unwrapping something precious. He slid his hand into the opening and palmed me through the thin fabric of my underwear. I shuddered, my legs threatening to give out completely.

“Petyr—” I gasped.

He leaned in and mouthed me through the cotton. Soft, hot, wet pressure. I cried out—sharp and guttural. I slapped a hand against the wall behind me to stay upright.

No one had ever touched me like this. No one had ever wanted me like this.

And then he hooked his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and pulled them down.

The cold air hit my cock, and I moaned, embarrassed by how hard I was. How much I was leaking already.

Petyr didn’t seem to mind. He stared at me like I was the most breathtaking thing he’d ever seen.

And then he took me into his mouth.

I swore. Loudly. My hips jerked. His hands gripped my thighs to hold me still, but he didn’t stop. His mouth was so hot, so wet. He sucked me slowly, letting me feel everything. His tongue curled around the head, then flattened beneath the shaft, and my entire body caught fire.

I threw my head back, staring blindly at the ceiling. My hands scrabbled for purchase, one of them finding his hair, the other gripping the edge of a rusted pipe.

It was too much. Too good. I didn’t know anything could feel like this.

I didn’t know I could feel like this.

Every nerve in my body was awake, screaming, begging for more. His mouth worked me with a rhythm that was both reverent and obscene. He moaned around me, and the vibration made me cry out again.

“Petyr, I—I don’t think I can—”

He pulled back just far enough to whisper, lips brushing my slick, aching tip, “Let go, krasiviy.”

And I did.

I gave myself over, because I didn’t know how not to. Because the second his lips wrapped around me, the world I thought I knew—the silence I’d lived inside, the numbness I mistook for peace—split open like glass under pressure.

My hands trembled as they slid into Petyr’s hair, unsure at first. Not because I didn’t want this, God, I wanted him, but because I didn’t know what I was allowed.

What I deserved. But the second I gripped him, something changed.

My hips moved a little, then instinct took over, and I found myself thrusting into his mouth, gentle but rhythmic, driven by something older than fear.

I looked down at him. Petyr. On his knees for me. Willing and hungry. His eyes were closed, his mouth so warm, so impossibly wet around me. The way he moaned sent vibrations up my spine, rattling my ribs. I didn’t know I could feel this much and still stand upright.

Then there was movement, and a man stepped into the room.

My entire body seized.

It was like ice water poured straight down my back. My heart clanged in my chest. A high-pitched, helpless whimper burst from my throat, raw and startled, like a wounded animal. Shame and terror punched into me in equal measure.

But Petyr didn’t stop.

His mouth stayed on me, his hands gripped my thighs, steadying me, owning me. His eyes flicked up—calm, steady, certain. Not a word passed between us, but I understood what he meant.

Let him look. I’m not ashamed of you.

The man blinked, turned, and left.

But I couldn’t shake what had just opened inside me. The terror, the desire, the need, twisting together in some storm of uncontainable feeling. My legs shook. My breath came fast, and not just from pleasure, but from something closer to grief.

No. Not grief. Something being undone.

The pressure built so fast it scared me. My hands clenched tighter in his hair, not to guide Petyr but to anchor myself. My entire body coiled with something I had no name for. I didn’t know what was happening—I didn’t know I was this close.

And then it hit.

The orgasm tore through me like lightning, lighting up every inch of me from the inside.

I cried out, and my voice cracked, high and desperate, and I wasn’t even sure if I was crying or laughing or dying.

My body convulsed as I spilled into his mouth, wave after wave, and Petyr—he moaned like he loved it, like he wanted it all.

I wanted to collapse.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. My entire body buzzed, aching and alive. I looked down, dizzy with the aftermath. Petyr still knelt in front of me, chest rising fast. His hand was around his own cock, slick with his release. He’d finished. Watching me. Tasting me.

Petyr wanted me that much.

He stood slowly, his eyes never leaving mine, and pulled me into another kiss—slow, deep, filled with something I wasn’t ready to name. His tongue brushed mine, and I tasted myself in his mouth. I startled, gasped, and then leaned in harder.

My cock twitched again, impossibly, as if my body hadn’t gotten the message that I was already spent.

And when the kiss broke, our foreheads touching, breath mingling in the dimness, Petyr looked into me the way no one ever had before.

And he asked, softly, “What now, handsome man?”