Cake

  They fell to the bed and he rolled off, disappearing for a few seconds and returning quickly.

  “I think we need more champagne.” He kissed her shoulder and padded out to grab the bottle and glasses as every muscle in her body jumped and twitched.

  Chapter Seven

  Three times.

  “I don’t even know where all that energy comes from. I mean he moves all slow and silky. But he’s tireless. And, wow, he’s got quite the recovery time. I can’t even lie.”

  Kelsey and Zoe sat in the living room, a pizza box on the table and a stack of DVDs for movie night near the television.

  “Damn. Get some, girl.” Zoe waggled her brows.

  “I totally did. And then a few hours later I left, but he drove me because he said he didn’t want me riding my bike in the dark. I asked him up, but he said he needed to get back to work.”

  “You’re a muse now, too?” Kelsey winked.

  “Maybe certain parts of me. Or maybe it was his way to put some distance between us. Who knows? I’m trying to play it cool. I know how he is and I know he’s got all these defenses up. And look, I get it, I’ve seen enough of the ex to understand.”

  “Whatever, she’s a loon. But it looks like she’s gone away, so there’s that.”

  “He’d better not fuck and dash.” Zoe sniffed as she cracked her beer open.

  “He’s not what he tries to portray to the outside world. He’s a nice guy. Yes, he’s bossy and imperious and totally spoiled. But there’s more to Gregori than what you see at first glance.”

  “Speaking of that. So…equipmentwise you’d say? Standard? Deluxe? Premium?”

  “Presidential suite.”

  This sent the room into laughter.

  “He’s a genius at everything. Everything.”

  Kelsey and Zoe clinked their beer bottles to hers. “Well done.”

  They watched movies, drank beer, ate too much junk food and talked a whole lot of shit. In short, it was a really great evening. It’d been a while since she’d had any guy stuff to share so that part was nice, too.

  In dire need of something warm, and something sweet to go with it, Wren locked her bike up and headed into Cherry Street Coffee House. The morning had been miserable. Cold and wet. But inside, warm, coffee-scented air greeted her.

  They knew her well enough to start on her Americano while she perused the pastries and settled on something delicious-looking with cherries and slivered almonds.

  “Well, hello there, kotyonok.”

  Smiling, she turned to take Gregori in. He looked really yummy. Better than anything in the pastry case, that was for certain. His sweater was heather gray, shoved up his arms enough to show off his ink. Those long legs covered in black pants that sat low on his hips. His hair was loose.

  But the hotness of all of that was nothing compared to the way he looked at her, eyes half-lidded and sexy. Her heart fluttered a little as she smiled up at him. “Hey.”

  He bent to brush his mouth over hers, which she hadn’t expected but appreciated anyway.

  “On a break?” He looked her over, that slow, meander from her toes up to her face.

  “I’m done for the day. I just needed some caffeine and something stuffed with fat and calories.” She indicated the pastry. “What about you?”

  “I had business, too, and was on my way home when I saw your bike.”

  Oh, that was nice. “Want to join me?”

  He nodded and slid into the seat across from her.

  She realized it was the first time they’d been together outside his loft or an event of some sort.

  “You know, before we were distracted—” he smiled as he said it and it sent a shiver through her “—the other day, we were talking about art school. We talk about my art all the time, but you’re stingy with yours. Tell me how you ended up there.”

  “In art school?”

  “Yes.” He eyed her plate and she slid half the pastry his way. The man had such a weakness for sweet things. He grinned at her. “Thank you.”

  “I went to college right after high school. My mother, one of them, Tara, she’s very big on planning your future. I had good grades in high school and did really well on the SAT so it seemed like the next logical step. Go to college, get a degree. Get a good job.” She shrugged and sipped her coffee.

  “But I always had these side projects. I took a summer class and started comic books and graphic novels in my spare time. I told myself they were a hobby. Design, that was a marketable career skill and so I kept my focus there.”

  “But you didn’t like it.”

  She shrugged. “No, I can’t say that. I did like it. I still do. But it wasn’t what I thought about all the time the way I did my art. I met Zoe, my roommate, and we hit it off right away. She was at my apartment and she saw one of my notebooks. She told me flat out I was stupid to be wasting my time at college when I had all this talent.”

  He nodded. “I agree. You are very talented.”

  She fought a blush. “She encouraged me to at least consider art school. I sat in on a few of her classes at Palomar and it became this idea I couldn’t stop thinking about. I’m sort of, um, driven. Once it became something I allowed myself to imagine, to take seriously, I couldn’t stop.”

  He snorted. “Driven. That’s a decent word for a reality that is far more intense.”

  She tried not to laugh and failed. “I’m ambitious.”

  It was his turn to laugh as he reached out to squeeze her hand briefly. “As you say. Ambitious. Like a dog with a bone is more accurate.”

  She cocked a brow at him. “Anyway, so I talked it over with my brother. He’s solid. Great at giving advice. And he told me not to waste my life and to go for it. He said I’d never look back and wish I had taken less chances. So I went to my mothers and confessed everything.”

  What a night that had been!

  “How did that go over then?”

  “They want the best for me. All parents do. So there was a kerfuffle.”

  He burst out laughing, the sound so rich and sexy several heads turned their way. “I love the word kerfuffle.”

  Wren had to laugh as well. “No one does kerfuffle better than my family. Mama Nell, she’s a midwife. A nurturer. She’s all about following your bliss and being artistic. She was for it right away. She’s got enough of her own artistic endeavors so she understood on a few levels just how important everything was to me.”

  “But not your other mother?”

  “Like I said, Tara’s the grounded one. She didn’t want me to just give up two years into a four-year degree. So my brother told me to show them my work.” Warmth coursed through Wren at the memory of how her mother’s face had gone from wary to proud in a few pages of that notebook.

  She looked up at him, finding his gaze on her mouth. “Tara told me it would be a crime for me not to pursue the training I needed to follow my dreams. They even help with my tuition. You know the rest. It’s not that I think art school is the magic answer to my life’s problems or anything like that. But my brother was right. I won’t ever look back and think of it as a waste. No matter what I end up doing.”

  “What was it like for you? Growing up with two mothers?”

  Most people wanted to know, but didn’t ask.

  She shrugged. “At first it wasn’t a thing. It was just my family. The people we were around had two moms or two dads, a mom and a dad, whatever. Family to me was who you went home to, you know? When I was in third grade and my brother was in fifth grade we went to Washington, D.C., to a march. We rode on an airplane and saw the Lincoln Memorial. It was all very exciting. At the rally there was a counterprotest.” She frowned at the memory.

  “Mama Nell was so angry. Not at us, but at these people with their signs. She tried to shield us, you know so we couldn’t see. And Tara said to her, this is how it is, Nellie. You can’t protect them from hate. You can only fight back with love.”

  A storm passed over his features. “The people w
ith the signs are garbage. They are against everything. They hate everything. Pitiful way to exist.”

  “It wasn’t the last time I saw that sort of thing. My brother had a girlfriend in high school whose parents made her break up with him when they found out about our moms. But to me it’s just my family. We have a great group of friends and relatives all around us.”

  It angered him to imagine that scene through a child’s eyes. Adults should know better. But she wasn’t one to let anyone define her. It burned so brightly within her he rather felt like a moth at times. Fluttering to get closer.

  At the same time, she unfurled slowly, like a flower. She was a person who listened more than she spoke so each detail she gave up peeled another layer away and rendered her even more irresistible.

  Her gaze had been somewhere else. On a memory most likely. Her focus sharpened and she smiled at him as want washed through his system with a crash.

  “You said you were done? Do you have some time?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  He tossed some money on the table as he stood. “What I have in mind would take at least two hours if I’m very creative.”

  She stood, blushing just a little.

  “And as we both know, I am, indeed creative.”

  He wanted to race back to his loft, but it was only a few blocks and so he walked with her as she kept her bike next to them as they did.

  She locked the bike and they rode up to his loft. Walked down the hall. All as he wrestled back his need to rush, rush, rush.

  Once inside he locked the door and backed her against it. “Now then.”

  He slid his hands up her sides, up her arms as he lifted them above her head—all while he thought about exactly what he wanted to do to her and with her.

  Bending his knees slightly, he settled in to take her mouth. A mouth he’d been fantasizing about for nearly the last year, and most especially since she’d had it wrapped around his cock just days before.

  She tasted of cherries and coffee, of everything sweet and lush and he wanted more. She arched into his body, rubbing hers against him.

  He let go of her hands at the wrist and pulled her shirt off as he nuzzled her throat. She made that sound he’d come to crave the last time they were together this way. A groan laced with need. A plea and a demand all at once.

  No camisole today. Just a bra that he got rid of immediately, his hands moving to her breasts to squeeze before his fingers found her nipples to pinch and roll.

  She slid her hands down and through his hair, holding his head as he licked against the skin of her shoulder. Salty and warm.

  “I didn’t say you could move your hands.”

  Her laugh was breathless. “Will you punish me then? What sort of haughty Russian discipline do I have to look forward to?”

  He shifted to look into her face, nipping her bottom lip. “Is that what you like then? Do you need to be taken in hand?”

  He pinched her nipples harder.

  “If the hands are yours? Yes.”

  He muttered, frustrated that he couldn’t lick all the parts of her he wanted to right then. “I dislike it when I can’t get at every part of you I need to.” He stepped back and the absence of her skin against his felt worse than it should have.

  He shifted his thoughts to getting more of her.

  “How can we fix that?” She toed her shoes off, pulled off her socks and moved to him, yanking his shirt off and licking his chest, pausing to tongue and then tug on his nipple rings.

  Her hands slid all over his skin, nails scoring his sides, over each rib, digging in at his back to pull him closer.

  He spun her and they ended up in a tangle on the rug in his entry. “You have some super sex moves, I must say.”

  He kissed her again because she made him happy. Nearly as happy as the way he felt skin to skin with her. But not enough skin. She reached between them to undo his pants.

  He reared up and got his pants unzipped and she pulled them from his body as he reached and did the same with her pants and panties.

  And she was naked, looking up at him with a smile, her eyes a little glazed, her nipples dark and hard, her breath a little fast.

  He licked across one nipple and then the other. He liked to know what made her squirm. What brought that sound he loved so much. What made her arch and sigh softly. And he wanted to do all those things to her repeatedly.

  She scissored her legs and ended up on top of him. Her smile sent a shiver down his spine.

  “Do you plan to ravish me, then?”

  “I hope your mom won’t see the rug burn I plan to leave you with.”

  “It has been some time since she’s seen my naked ass.”

  She bent to lick up his neck. “That’s not the only place you’re going to have it.”

  He watched, unable to move, as she kissed down his belly and his cock and back up again, this time grabbing him at the root, angling to take him into her mouth.

  He hissed at the heated wet, at the slick slide of her tongue against his cock, the tip digging in just under the crown. She palmed his balls, pressing her fingertips just behind as she knelt between his thighs, holding him open to her.

  He growled when she took him deep, his fingers sifting through the softness of her hair. “I want to fuck you. Don’t make me come just yet.”

  She pulled all the way off and sent a full-body shiver through him as she licked her lips before speaking. “You said two hours. If I recall the last time, you had far more impressive recovery time.”

  She was going to kill him. That was all there was to it. But, as she said before, he’d go out doing something he loved.

  She kept on, sucking him back into her mouth over and over until he rushed headlong into a climax so hard his teeth tingled.

  Wren was still in the process of kissing his cock after pulling off when he reared up and she was on her back again. His eyes alight, he dipped to kiss her hard and fast. She held his shoulders as he did, as he nipped her lips and licked over the sting. He moved to her chin and jaw, to the hollow below her ear until her inner walls clenched.

  “Someone likes that spot,” he murmured, his accent making her even hotter.

  “If we’re talking about me, hell yes.”

  He continued to kiss and lick her neck, down to her shoulder, across her collarbone and down to her nipples. The scratch of his beard was just right, too much and not enough all at the same time. He used the edge of his teeth to make her writhe on a gasp as pleasure surged through her cells.

  That was before he settled on his knees between hers and dragged her ass up to his thighs. She wrapped her thighs around his waist to stay in place.

  His gaze roamed over her body with such naked greed she wanted to preen around. There wasn’t a moment when she thought about the pooch in her belly when he looked at her this way.

  He spoke under his breath in Russian for a moment as he drew his hands from her breasts to her thighs over and over, his thumbs moving closer and closer to her pussy until he finally slid her labia apart and exposed the heart of her to the cool air.

  “You’re beautiful. Powerful.”

  Flattered, her skin heated in a blush as he slowly stroked the pad of his finger around her clit, using the hood to brush against it.

  She licked her lips as he continued to slowly torture her closer to orgasm. Thank heavens his talent extended to her body as well as his canvases. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the way his hands stroked, caressed, cupped, pinched and thrummed. Concentration lined his brow but every time he licked his lips, she gasped, she was so connected to him at that moment.

  Every movement was intentional as he drew her closer and closer to climax so that, by the time it rushed through her, bringing her back to arch, her legs to tighten around his waist, she nearly sobbed with how good it was.

  When she managed to open her eyes, he stared at her, a bemused smile on his lips. “I think we need some champagne and to move to my bed for the next
round. What do you say?”

  What else could she say but “Yes, please”?

  He stood easily, bringing her to her feet as he did, but instead of moving right away he pulled her close and kissed the remaining teaspoon of wits she had left right out of her.

  “Now, champagne and fucking.”

  Wren figured there were few better ways of spending a Wednesday afternoon and followed so she could ogle him without interruption.

  “It feels delightfully bad to swill champagne and have sex in the middle of the day. You have a pretty awesome life.” She laughed as he pushed her back to his bed and followed.

  “I do have a pretty awesome life, as you say.” He popped the cork and handed her a glass, clinking his to it. “Better when it’s a lovely bicycle messenger in my bed instead of being frustrated in front of a canvas and feeling as if I’ll never create anything good again.”

  She’d seen him frustrated and blocked, yes, but this was a glimpse into his vulnerability in a way he hadn’t shared before. She was touched he’d be vulnerable in front of her.

  He drained his glass before she could say anything, pulling her down with him. She stretched to put her glass on his bedside table and let him bring her back to slide her body across his.

  “See? I knew I was remembering right about your recovery time.” She reached down to give his cock a squeeze to underline the point.

  “My cock likes you. Clearly.” He rolled his hips, thrusting into her fist.

  She swung a leg and sat up, astride him. “I’m glad. Let’s see how much more it does when I’m finished.”

  They settled into a bit of a routine. They both had full lives. But in between they saw each other, had great sex, talked about art and music and got to know one another on a different, new level. He remained skittish but it didn’t really bother her. She knew without a doubt that what they had, that connection, was something special. Wren wasn’t in any great hurry to name it. It was what it was and that was all right with her.