Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,76
kiss him. My fingers move over the sensitive flesh of his neck, hoping to infuse myself with some of the cologne he wears.
I like to smell of him. I like to rub my body all over him.
“You are teaching me bad habits, Solnyshko,” he tells me.
“How so?” I ask innocently.
He turns around and tugs me into his lap, burying his face in my neck and inhaling me. I try to kiss him. To get him going because I know he won’t stop once I do. But he doesn’t let me get that far. He grabs my hands and keeps them trapped between us. Then he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me against his chest.
And then he just looks at me. For too long.
This is the thing I don’t like. And I’ve noticed it happening more and more lately. It is intimate, having someone’s eyes on you with no intention of doing anything other than looking. Seeing you.
“I want you,” I tell him.
His hand crawls up my back and reaches for my hair, tangling it in his fist and pulling it tight so that I can’t move my head.
“You want me to do dirty things to you,” he says.
“Yes.”
“What if I just want to look at you?” he asks.
“I don’t like it,” I answer.
“I don’t care,” he replies.
It’s obvious he’s going to do whatever he wants. So I just wait, trying to hide by burying my face against his chest. He plays with my hair, and even though he is hard for me, he doesn’t do anything else.
It confuses me. This type of intimacy from him. One minute he wants all of me. And the next, he backs away. Never letting himself get too close. I just try not to think about it. But when he holds me like this, it’s hard not to. To ask him things that I shouldn’t even be thinking.
Like if he cares.
Like if there will ever be more.
Instead, I ask him other things. Questions that give me small pieces of him. The only thing I can ever really have. Stolen moments. Pieces of his life and his heart. That’s all he has to offer. And I don’t have anything to offer him. Except for my broken thoughts and demented soul, stitched together by my frequent bouts of insanity.
“Magda thinks that we are alike,” I tell him on a whim.
He is quiet, contemplative. His eyes moving over my face again. His hands holding me close.
“Do you agree?”
“Yes,” he answers.
He doesn’t elaborate, and I can tell he doesn’t want to. So I ask him something else.
“Can you teach me something in sign language?”
He blinks at me, and this makes him smile. “I do not know sign language,” he tells me. “So no, probably not.”
“Oh. Well shouldn’t you though?”
He just shrugs. “I never learned. I was young when I lost my hearing. The circumstances did not allow for learning. So I learned the only way I could.”
“To read people.”
He nods, and I touch his face.
“I wish I could read you sometimes.”
“All you ever have to do is ask me,” he says.
I want to. We both know that I want to. But I don’t. Because I am scared. And I think, Alexei is too.
“I kind of like it,” I tell him instead. “That we touch each other to communicate. You touch me a lot.”
“I like it too,” he admits.
But he doesn’t have to tell me. I feel how much he likes it beneath my ass on his lap. The biggest turn on between us is him knowing that I accept him and me knowing the same.
“It’s strange,” I tell him honestly.
“What is?” he asks.
“That you can’t hear,” I answer. “And yet, you are the only person who has ever really listened to me.”
“I will always see you, Solnyshko,” he tells me. “Always.”
“You make me feel,” I whisper.
The words are both an accusation and a confession.
But Alexei does not retreat or shy away. If anything, he indulges in me further and I know the time for cuddling and intimacy is now over. He lifts up my dress and discards it, leaving me in only a bra and panties. But like they often do now, his hands move to my belly first.
“How is my baby?” he asks.
“Big,” I tell him. “Like his father already.”
Alexei smiles at me. And it’s beautiful, that smile of his.
“I think it’s a boy too,” he answers. “I would like that.”
And then he kisses me. It’s soft and sweet for about two minutes before he