“What, my kisska?” Vaslav asked, hoarse with his own anticipation. He did well to hold back from just going in on her the way he wanted to. Sometimes he did, and no matter what, he rode her hard, let her sleep well, and loved her softly in the mornings.
If they were good mornings for him, that was. Good meaning his migraines were gone, if not minor, or he wasn’t stuck in the bathroom on his knees.
If not, every step she took throughout the day, and the twinges that followed from where he held her too hard or otherwise, served their purpose to mark the man’s territory until he was back again. Her body was his—to use, please, or tease. She wore every tiny bruise and lovebite like she was the canvas, and those marks were his art.
Choke me; fuck me ... hurt me, she wanted to say, but every racing desire she let slip through her mind didn’t quite feel like enough.
“Love me,” she told him before his lips came down on hers for a fervent kiss.
God knew he would.
Vera only had one thought left for Vaslav to bleed away with the rest of her rationale and self-control: Happy New Year to me.
*
The rap of knuckles against the dining room table drew Vera’s head up from the pages of her latest book. As it turned out, Mira was also a big reader and had amassed quite a selection of novels in her set of suites on the third floor. While she had already filled her available shelves with books, the rest piled up on stands and in corners, all with cracked spines and dog-eared pages.
Vera’s favorite kind of book.
A well-loved one.
“I found something I thought you might like to see,” Mira said where she stood in the alcove between the dining room and kitchen. In her hands, she held up what appeared to be an old photo album.
“What’s that?” Vera asked.
Mira shrugged. “Vaslav’s mother—well, years ago, I worked for her. She wasn’t a particularly sentimental woman, and wasn’t one to display her memories and trinkets. Once when I had some extra time, I put this together for her but ...”
Trailing off, Mira lifted her shoulders again as if that was explanation enough to clear up why she had the album and not the woman it was meant for.
“She also isn’t one for gifts that don’t come with a price tag attached,” Mira added with a roll of her eyes. “If you get what I mean.”
Ah.
Yeah, Vera did.
“Could I see?” she asked.
Mira smiled. “Of course, that’s why I got it out. Well, I thought of it after you had asked last week if there were any other pictures of Vaslav’s mother other than the very young ones in the main entry.”
Those toddler-aged black and white glamor shots of a white-haired tot weren’t exactly what Vera had been looking for, either. Nonetheless, Mira promised to look for more, and so she had. Having no one else except for Vaslav to talk about his mother—which he wasn’t keen on doing—Vera took a chance on Mira.
And struck gold.
A woman who had not only worked under Natalia Pashkova as a caretaker for years, she also considered herself a friend of the woman once.
But you have to understand, Mira had said when she told Vera that fact, you only really think you’re her friend for as long as she needs you.
Even though the book she’d been reading was just starting to get to the best part, Vera flipped it shut and shoved it across the table to make room for the large, leatherbound album Mira placed in front of her. Only an initial was embossed on the front.
A cursive N.
“It’s not chronological or anything,” Mira explained as Vera flipped open the sturdy cover to find the first thing memorialized between sheets of plastic was a newspaper article.
Socialite Natalia Pashkova Marries Sixth Husband.
Vera’s brow jumped high at the political name attached to the headline. A man with significant power in the Federation.
“That barely lasted six months,” Mira noted. “One of her longest, and not her last.”
Huh.
“She was mid-forties there?” Vera asked, pointing to the age the article wrote attached to a grainy image of a thin, willowy woman draped in white silk and hanging off the arm of a man turning away from the camera. Her husband, Vera thought, but she couldn’t be sure.
Mira nodded. “Hmm, oh, yes. In the right light, if she’s not been binge drinking for days then she barely looked a day over thirty right up until these last few years. Age caught up quick.”
Vera considered all the different things she knew about Vaslav’s history with his mother just by the comments he made. It prompted her to ask, “How much of that was thanks to his money paying for her youth?”
A smack of Mira’s lips echoed in the room.
Vera hummed knowingly to herself. Yep.
Like she thought.
“Anyway,” Mira said, pointing to the album as she backed away from the table at the sound of Marrow’s echoing bark from the rear of the house. “You’re welcome to look through it. I showed Vaslav once, but ... well, you know how he is.”
Oh, Vera could only imagine.
Mira went searching for the cause of Marrow’s bark that continued without a break between each sharp woof. In the rear of the house with Vaslav’s den and enclosed porch, the dog had all the warmth, scraps, and stuffy toys to destroy that he needed. He only left the house for a total of an hour or two a day, depending on the temperature, and the dog even held his faculties for a full day if he truly only wanted to go out once. Between her husband, and Mira, Vera didn’t have to do very much for Marrow or handle him. He didn’t go further into the house than the back hallway leading to Vaslav’s den in the rear, and they’d only had one run in late at night when the dog melted into the shadows.
She really hadn’t known that Vaslav left the door open between the den and the porch for the dog, and he forgot to mention it when he asked her to grab the day planner he kept on his desk as a running to-do list and reminder of other important tasks.
Sometimes, he used it as a journal, too.
Her suggestion.
Everyone needed a place to get out their thoughts, after all.
“Marrow, stop!” Mira yelled into the hallway as Vera had just started to flip through the next pages of the album. Finally, she had a picture—several, actually—to put a face and more details on the life and story of a stranger Vera wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to know.
Even if she had asked Vaslav not to have the visit with his mother; at the time, proclaiming it to be for her own cowardice because of what she’d done. Maybe she was just immature enough for Vaslav to believe it, but had she said it was to benefit the woman’s mental health, she didn’t think he would have cared.
In fact, she knew he wouldn’t.
The woman was dying, anyway.
Slowly.
The cirrhosis would do it eventually as her son had no intention of paying for a liver transplant in another country for a long-term alcoholic that had abused and tortured him for years while piddling away his wealth. It wouldn’t matter, as that probably wouldn’t help or succeed in the end. It was what it was—Vaslav’s exact words to Vera on the day they stepped out of the Roseville facility.
So be it.
His mother’s sordid history didn’t need to be entirely dug up by Vera simply because she had nothing else better to do with her time, apparently.