“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe a little better.”
Nix and I have been going for walks every day for hours at a time. We have to, because I have so much to tell her. We have to re-do every conversation we ever had, when she asked me about my childhood and family and my life before Kingmakers. I’m giving her all my answers again, fully and truthfully this time.
Nix is getting to know me at the same time as I’m finally understanding myself.
I always wondered if I had it in me to live up to my parents.
I wondered if I could be a man like my father.
When the moment came, when I faced Marko Moroz on my own, I knew exactly what to do.
Because I am like my father. I always was.
Just like my father, all I needed to become the man I wanted to be . . . is the right woman.
I would do anything for Nix.
I CAN do anything for her.
I’m invincible when I’m with her.
I take her hand, our fingers entwining, the gold band nestling between my third and fourth finger.
“Do you want to walk?” I ask her. “Or would you rather skate?”
Nix smiles fully for the first time this week. “Let’s skate,” she says.
I take her to the Medeu rink, perched high in the mountains outside Almaty. The endless expanse of smooth, gleaming ice has just been resurfaced, with barely a skate mark across. The air is so thin that I feel slightly giddy, especially with the loud Russian pop music echoing off the fir trees.
Nix laces her skates, eager to be on the ice.
I take her hand and we push off, gliding over the mirror-like surface, swift as birds.
It’s almost illegal to not know how to skate in Russia.
My father used to flood the grounds behind the monastery. Adrik, Kade, Freya and I could skate almost as soon as we could walk. We played hockey with Timo and Zima.
I tell Nix all this. It feels euphoric speaking to her like this, without having to twist or deform a single detail.
“I played hockey too,” she grins back at me. “My fa—”
She stops, her mouth open before she closes it quickly.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can talk about him.”
Nix is silent for a moment.
I don’t want to ask her this, but I have to:
“Do you resent what I did?”
I killed her father right in front of her. He was trying to hurt her, but still . . . I can only imagine what she must be feeling.
Her eyes are as wet and gleaming as the ice. She fights to hold back the tears, to keep control of herself.
“I don’t resent you,” she says. “I feel . . . I feel like I started to lose my father the day I stepped foot on that ship. I lost the part of him that never existed in the first place. But still . . . even then, once I started to realize . . .”
Her cheeks are burning red and her shoulders heave as she tries to hold back the hurt that can’t be contained.
“Even after . . . I never would have believed that he’d . . .”
I stop skating grabbing her and pulling her against my chest so she can sob without embarrassment, her face hidden from view.
For the first time she cries not for her father, but for what he tried to do to her. For how he turned on her when he believed she had betrayed him.
I let her exhaust herself against my chest, while I rub slow circles on her back with the palm of my hand.
When she looks up at me, her face tear-streaked and swollen, she says, “Everything I believed about him was only a fantasy. Even this great love he had for my mother . . . I can’t help but think that if she was still alive, if she saw all the things he’s done, she would have hated him. And if she didn’t agree with him, if she didn’t do exactly what he wanted, he would have hated her, too. She’s only perfect in his memory because she didn’t live long enough to disappoint him. His idea of love is so fucking narcissistic . . .”
I swallow hard.
“I’m sorry I ever lied to you, Nix. I promise you, I’ll never do it again, not for any reason. I’ll tell you the brutal truth, as long as we live.”
“I know you will,” Nix says. “You never wanted to lie, it’s not your nature.” She laughs, softly. “To be honest, you’re not even very good at it. There were a hundred things I would have noticed if I wasn’t so infatuated with you.”
I laugh along with her, remembering how miserably I failed at not falling in love with her.
Nix and I start to skate again, the cold air drying the tears on her face, brightening her eyes once more until they glint like green glass.
Nix grabs both my wrists and we spin around the axis point of our linked hands. The dark green fir trees and the ice-blue mountains whirl around us like a carousel.
When we leave the rink at last, we don’t return to the hospital. Instead, I take a room at the Excelsior. We’re ripping off our clothes before the door even shuts behind us. Her lips are cold and her mouth is warm as I kiss her. Her freezing hands touch the burning flesh of my chest and stomach.
I take her hands and hold them to my mouth. I breathe into her cupped palms. Then I take her cold fingers into my mouth and I lick and suck them warm.
I reach down and touch between her thighs, over her underwear. She’s wet all the way through her panties. I slide my fingers back and forth in the cleft of her pussy lips, feeling how slippery the material has become. Then I push my hand down the front of her panties and feel that velvet skin, slick with wetness. She has the most perfect natural lubrication, like warm baby oil. I drench my fingers in it, then slide them inside her, making her moan, making her knees buckle beneath her.
I take my cock out of my pants and I put it down the front of her underwear, rubbing it between her pussy lips, sliding it back and forth against her clit. She’s so wet and warm that it feels like I’m already inside her. She rocks her hips, sliding her pussy back and forth against my cock, the elastic underwear holding it pressed tight against her.
I want her aching for me, I want her dying to have this cock inside her.
When my cock is covered in her wetness, I order, “Get down on your knees and suck me clean.”
Nix drops to her knees, her mouth as swollen and sensitive from kissing as her pussy lips. She opens her mouth, allowing the head of my cock inside. I cup the back of her head in my palm and I push my cock deeper, feeling her tongue slide beneath the head and down the shaft.
“See how good you taste,” I growl.
I fuck her mouth, gently at first, then a little harder. My lubricated cock slides all the way to the back of her throat. My balls are already heavy and tight with the built-up load of several days.
I withdraw from her mouth, pulling her to her feet. I kiss her deeply, tasting her pussy on her lips.
I want more.
I push her down on the bed, diving between her thighs. I tear her underwear off her, baring her shell-pink pussy lips beneath the tuft of rose-gold hair.
I could eat that pussy for hours. Her scent is sweet and earthy, like fallen leaves. Her texture is warm, melting honey. I lick up and down her slit, I gently suck on the nub of her clit, I push my fingers in and out of her. I reach up and caress her breasts, massaging and tugging on her nipples until she’s flushed pink all across her chest, down her belly, and up her thighs.
The inside of her pussy is swollen so tight I can hardly get a finger inside. Her clit is aching. She’s right on the edge, dying to tip over.