When he comes, it is with a shout as he fills me with his seed.
We hold onto one another, getting our breath back, and Bohdan puts his forehead against mine.
“Say you’ll stay.”
As a dancer, you must place your trust totally in your male partner. If you make a jump and they don’t catch you, you’re going to get hurt. I might not have made the best choice when it came to Jasper, but I’ve always chosen my dance partners well. They’ve always caught me. Now, I put myself in another man’s hands.
I swallow and I make the leap, trusting that Bohdan will catch me.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll stay. For a while at least.”
There’s so much we need to talk about, though. I pull my clothes on and look at Bohdan as he rearranges himself.
“I need to tell you some things though. I lied when I said I was on the pill. I can’t have children. I had an accident that damaged my reproductive system.”
“An accident?” he asks.
“Yes, it genuinely was. Car accident, and the seatbelt did a lot of damage to me. I can’t have kids.”
He smiles at me as I bite my lip, watching his reaction.
“I’ve never really wanted kids,” he says. “But if you really did, there are things we could look at, but all that is a long way down the road.”
“I don’t want kids either.”
“Really?” he asks.
“Yeah, I always feel like the responsibility would kill me. Like, I don’t think I’d handle it well. I also think, and I’m not being horrible about Mother now, but I didn’t get the best upbringing in many ways, so I think I wouldn’t be a good mom.”
“You’d be an amazing mom,” he says. “I’m on the same page, though. I don’t want to bring kids into this world. It’s fucked up, and dangerous, and I don’t know. I feel as if it’s a dark place. Always have, I suppose.”
I laugh a little. “Maybe it’s our Russian souls.”
“Maybe,” he says. “The thing is, Dasha. Kids are not a deal breaker for me. It’s not something I think I want, and if say one day you really did, then we can revisit it. Okay? But I don’t care that you can’t have kids, other than the fact that I care you had to go through that.”
“I don’t know what my future holds, Bohdan,” I tell him. “I’m agreeing to stay for a while, but I don’t know what beyond that.”
“I get it,” he says. “And it’s all I ask. That you give us some time, and a chance.”
I kiss him once, and then I turn to go upstairs. “How about we take a turn in that pool; it looks amazing.”
“You’ve got it,” he says.
**
Bohdan wasn’t lying when he said he’d build me a dance studio. He already has the plans for it, and it’s astonishing. He showed me last night. I’ve been here two weeks now, and something about this place is magical. It seeps into your soul. The warmth, the blue sky, blue sea, and the green verdant hills. I honestly think Northern Corfu is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to a lot of pretty places. There’s something so peaceful about it. Jasper calls me every day, and I mostly ignore those calls because what can I say to him?
My lawyer is indeed a shark and says that I will get most of what I’ve earned over the years, which is now stashed into Jasper’s savings, back. The big issue is the house. Jasper managed to muddy the waters with what were his earnings and what were mine, and now the lawyers are having a hard time proving the house is from my sweat and tears. I’ve realized I don’t care. So long as I can afford to live, and so long as I am free from Jasper, I don’t care about the house. I’ve instructed my lawyer to offer Jasper a deal. Jasper keeps the house, the cars, and all the tangible assets, and I get the liquid assets, the cash in the accounts. It will be more than enough for me to start over and leaves him enough to be able to keep on living to a certain lifestyle standard he’s clearly used to. I’m hoping it will be enough to stop him from trying to contact me and keep things going. I want rid of him so badly. I also want him to stop abusing any other girls in the future and I’m going to talk with Bohdan about it at some point.
“This can be where we create a barracks, essentially.” The deep tones of Andrius drag me back to the present moment.
We’re looking around the land they have bought to build their training school on, and it’s stunning. There’s an old farmhouse that is massive, then a stable block, two cottages, a row of three barns, about ten acres of land, some of it wooded, and a whole host of other smaller buildings.
“See, there is room to build here and here.” Andrius points to a plot of land surrounded on three sides by trees, but with views on the last open side down to the sea.
Cassie claps her hands together like an excited child and hugs her partner, Konstantin. “It would be amazing for us to build here,” she says. “One house for us, and one for my grandparents.”
“So who gets the massive farmhouse?” Konstantin asks.
Andrius shrugs. “I thought we could split that. Make it into two homes. You could keep that front entrance, but then split the other side of the house off and have a side entrance. If you guys would prefer, you could live there. I only suggested this plot for you so you could have your grandparents near you, but separate in their own building. I’m genuinely easy on how we do this. I don’t give a fuck whether I live in the farmhouse or whether Violet and I build something new. Either way, we can make this work, and it will be a great place to live.”
“I’d prefer to build something new for us that we can have next to my grandparents,” Cassie says.
“So who would you share the farmhouse building with?” Konstantin asks Andrius.
He shrugs again. “Reece and his lady, or Bohdan.”
Bohdan is looking beyond us to a patch of land off to one side, about half an acre away. “What was there?”
Andrius inspects the plans opened out on an old table in front of him, held down with a stone on each corner. “An old grain mill, gone now.”
“I want to build there,” Bohdan says.
Andrius clears his throat. “I thought if you wanted part of the farmhouse that might be a bit less expensive.”
“I’ve got a few million tucked away. I think that will cover it, don’t you?”
“You have?” Konstantin turns to Bohdan, brows raised in surprise. “I know I paid you well, but damn; you didn’t waste it on fast cars and loose women, did you?”
“Nah, and I didn’t waste it on Hermes wallets and Ferragamo shoes either,” Bohdan says with a wink.
Konstantin scowls, but Cassie snort-laughs behind her hand.
“I put it into savings and investments, emerging markets mostly.”
“You have a good broker then?” Konstantin asks.
Bohdan shakes his head. “No, I do it all myself. Keep pretty liquid so I can move it around quickly if needs be.”
“Did you make a big loss in 2008?” Konstantin asks.
“No, because I moved things around. I made money. Had some shorts and hedges mixed in too.”