“Don’t,” he murmurs.
I move again, and he groans.
“Come on,” I whisper.
He growls something in Russian into my ear and moves his hips against mine, sinking himself deep, the edge of the desk digging into my spine.
I gasp, sparkles flickering through my vision.
“Kostya, make me come again,” I whisper.
He pulls me onto him hard, again and again. My legs are still wrapped around him, my toes curl, and I know I’m going to have a bruise tomorrow where I’m up against the desk but I don’t give a damn. I feel like I’m disintegrating and being carried off by the wind.
Then Kostya puts his lips to my ear and says something in Russian, a long string of rough, guttural consonants that send prickles down my spine. He fucks me again and I squeeze my legs around his waist, right on the brink.
“Oh, fuck,” I whisper, and then I come so hard I almost can’t move.
I feel like I hit a brick wall but in a good way, stunned and gasping as my body takes over and it’s all I can do to hang on and ride this out, jolt after jolt as Kostya groans into my ear. Just as I slow, I can feel him pulse and then explode inside me as he pushes me hard against the desk, his face in my neck, my arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Finally, we go still. We’re both breathing hard and I can feel Kostya’s heart beating against my chest.
“Below never at no,” he murmurs.
I stroke his hair.
“What?” I ask.
He squeezes my hip in his hand one more time and then sits up so we’re face to face.
“Sorry,” he says, a lazy smile lighting his gray eyes. “Fucking incredible.”
He kisses me one more time, and then we untangle ourselves clumsily until we’re both standing. The concrete floor isn’t as cold as I was expecting, and I look down at my feet.
I’ve still got the ugly Soviet tube socks on.
I just start laughing.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kostya
Hazel doesn’t get dressed before she walks to the bathroom, still laughing at her socks, and I watch her walk away. I never want her to put clothes on again.
Once the bathroom door shuts, I take the condom off carefully, tie a knot, and drop it on the desk. There, at least, I won’t forget to deal with it.
There’s a surge protector on the desk, lying there like a dead eel. The monitor cables are splayed over the desk, and I think I bent one of them when I ripped it out. Not to mention when I unplugged everything that was below the desk.
This stuff is going to take forever to reboot. You’re supposed to turn computers off, not rip the cords from their sockets, but it’s not like I’m sorry.
I came so hard I forgot English. I’ve spoken it fluently since I was a kid. Hell no, I’m not sorry.
Hazel pads back in and then leans against the doorframe. Nothing but socks is a good look on her.
“I guess we should plug everything back in,” she says, eyeing the computer.
“We should,” I say, looking at myself reflected in the glossy black screen. “But for the record, I’d rather watch you walk around the bunker in nothing but socks.”
“I’m improper enough fully dressed,” she says, and walks to the other side of the desk, leaning over it on her hands.
I stand and lean in as well.
“I know,” I say, and kiss her.
We get dressed, I flush the condom and pray that it doesn’t clog the pipes, and then I spend the next fifteen minutes lying on the concrete floor as we figure out what plugs into where. If this were a regular computer, it wouldn’t be so bad, but of course it’s not. It’s a super-secure, top-secret, ultra-powerful government computer, though all that really seems to mean is that the tangle of wires involved is nearly impossible.
I hear a thump on the desk above, and then Hazel sighs.
“Okay,” she says. “Try plugging in the monitor now.”
“Which cord is that?”
A thick black cord wiggles. I grab the end and push it into the surge protector, then wait.
And wait.
“Motherfucker,” Hazel mutters.
There’s a pause.
“Oh!” she says.
I hear duct tape unwind and tear, and I pull myself out from under the desk, peering over the top as she does something with the tape behind the monitor.
“You broke the hell out of this,” she mutters.
“I had a good reason,” I say.
“Tell me if it’s on,” she says, and wiggles something.
The screen flicks to life.
“Yes, there,” I say.
She tapes something very carefully, then pulls her hand away.
“Still?” she asks.
“We’re good,” I say.
First, the computer has to scold me for improperly shutting down, then check that I didn’t fuck it up too much, THEN re-catalog a library or some bullshit. Finally, I’m logged into the video conference again, and the second I do, a screen pings and pops up with Niko’s face on it.
“Oh, Kostya,” he says, like he’s surprised.
“We had technical difficulties,” I say.
He just nods. I can’t tell whether he believes me or not.
“We’ll probably be cleared to leave in the morning,” he says. “But not before then.”
Hazel’s still standing behind the monitor, watching me. I look at the clock and realize that it’s two in the morning.
“Hold on a moment,” I tell Niko, and mute the microphone, then walk around the desk.
“What’s going on?”
“Still nothing,” I say, and put my hands on her shoulders. “We’re here overnight, though. Go to bed.”
“You sure?” she asks, flattening one hand against my chest.
“Unless you want to listen to endless, boring details on air traffic control in Russian,” I say.
“Not particularly,” she says. “You’ll be in?”
“Soon, I hope,” I say.
I kiss her again and force myself to keep it short and nearly chaste, because Niko’s waiting.
“Call me if you break the cable again,” she says, and walks out.
I watch her go, disappearing into the pitch-dark dormitory room. Then I turn and look at the back of the monitor, which is half-covered with some sort of duct tape harness keeping the cable in place.
I’m probably going to be hearing about that soon, but right now, I still don’t care.
I un-mute myself and sit. Niko sighs.
“Okay,” he says. “Status report...”
After forty-five minutes, Niko’s finally gone through everything important. He’s got circles under his eyes, and I probably do too.
I sign off and walk back into the main room of the bunker, open a cabinet, grab a flashlight, and then hit the lights. Everything plunges into pure, inky blackness, the kind of darkness that only exists when you’re fifty feet underground, so thick it feels like it’s running through your fingers.
I turn the flashlight on for a moment, see where the furniture is, and turn it off again. Even as a kid I kind of liked the dark, because it made me feel invisible, and sometimes that was what I wanted.