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Aleksander knows what’s out there.
He sees the videos on PornHub get more and more immoral, and at first, when videos with words stepdaughter or taboo on the title start showing up in his recommendations, he pulls a face, what the fuck, he thinks, that’s fucked up. What kind of person would get off on that? He ignores it and jacks off to his usual poison: college girls being forced to do anal. He has a sadistic streak – in his fantasies, anyway – it’s the crying that turns his crank. He tries not to think about that.
And then, he sees one more, and another one, and another one. It’s only a matter of time before one particular preview is too good to pass up. He caves, and when he does, he doesn’t quite understand the why himself. Perhaps it’s curiosity, perhaps it’s because Zoya moved to California and he hadn’t seen his girl in person, not in months. Perhaps, it’s just that his taste of fucked up isn’t quite fucked up enough anymore. The creampies and the tears were getting stale, maybe.
The first time he watches a tiny woman get fucked into a mattress, screaming Daddy, stop, please, he comes without even touching his cock.
He sits in front of his computer, dazed, swimming in toe-curling pleasure, stomach covered in his own spend, and thinks, with the sort of clarity that only comes after a good, hard orgasm: oh, fuck, that’s going to be a problem.
The prime of Aleksander’s life is a study of chasing away boredom. The dull, hot, present. Summer term break, out of Dartmouth and back up North in the suburbs, sunburn and iced tea, everything yellow and green. Excitement is a couple lines of coke, a party or two, swiping 80-year-old wines from the cellar, anything to chase away the Londonderry ennui coded into his blood.
Coded into his every day – that boredom. His future, too. Antiseptic, tasting so violently clean. He’s bored with it already, this entire life he hasn’t even lived yet but could see way too clearly. The blood and sweat of medical school, the white dress of a wife, the rush of children on the hardwood floors of a too-big house.
Even further than that – the dead bedroom, the hookers he’ll pay to call him Daddy, the pain of the divorce, the smoke and plastic smell of strip clubs, the cold glass of the new bachelor pad condo, the heartbreak of seeing his children’s daddy issues plain as day, brought on by his own absence and unhappiness.
He’s stuck with it – dust and ash on his tongue, so bitter already of – this future. Coming. Like a tidal wave gathering in the distance. Like off-kilter gravity, a pressure coming from under his feet, pressing him down, crushing him until he is flat against the earth.
He drowns it out: drugs, alcohol, pornography. He’d been doing the first two the week the Starkovs arrived.
In fact, he thinks, he remembers the day they came, but really, he doesn’t.
In his head, he was in the gazebo in the front yard reading a Stephen King book when the moving trucks rolled in. This memory – which is imagined – has a dreamy quality to it: a short Asian woman and her teenage daughter hauling their Liverpool-tinged life into the house next door, which had been sitting empty since Nikolai and his family moved further up to Vermont three years prior. A yellow couch, art supplies, an authentic Stuart Davis, he sees this all through a rose-colored filter, and no one would be able to convince him that it wasn’t real.
The reality is he’d been sleeping off a hangover in his bed when Alina and her mother Katrina moved into their new house.
He’d been out on a rager the night before, partying with people he’d already outgrown from a previous life of soccer star glory and making out with Zoya in the hallways. Ecstasy on his tongue – triggering a nightmare in bright technicolor that he couldn’t escape, because it was created to, for, and by his mind – it knocked him right out for two days straight. He didn’t even know they had new neighbors until one warm night in the middle of June, while smoking a joint up at the roof, he looks up from an adorable dorm room selfie Zoya sent and sees a girl.
She’s young, bottle blonde pretty, hair damp, eyes dark, sad, and curious, and she’s sitting right across from him on a roof of her own, smoking a cigarette. He notices she’s close, close enough to speak to, legs dangling off the flat edge of asphalt shingle. There’s a pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter next to her bare thighs. Bare. Thighs. She’s in her underwear. Black lace ones. And she’s covered in splatters of pink. Paint.
“Am I hallucinating?” he asks – more himself than her.
“Yes,” she answers. “I’m a fantasy.”
Her voice makes him smile – mouth stretching with surprise – hot and British. Jesus.
“What?”
“Nothing, I just didn’t expect that to be your accent.”
“I don’t have an accent,” she says, “you have an accent.”
“Attitude,” he mutters, sarcasm with an eyeroll, “attractive.” He locks his phone and throws it back into his room through the open window – it lands with a thump on his bed. “Have you been there this whole time?” he asks, trying his best to keep his gaze above her neck.
“Are you asking if I’ve been haunting this roof for centuries?”
“Depends, kid – are we going to have a real conversation or are you going to keep up this whole manic pixie dream girl thing you’ve got going on?”
He makes her laugh – makes her tits bounce in her bra. Aleksander is not looking.
“Hot and witty,” she says, “that’s confusing.”
She puts out her cigarette, breathes once, twice, three times. And she lights another one, red-tipped fingers flicking with familiarity over the flap of the pack, protecting the flame of the lighter by cupping her paint-stained hand around the end of the stick. A motion that’s a habit. She drops the lighter between her thighs when she finishes. Thighs he’s not looking at because he has a girlfriend.
God, she’s fucking pretty.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Aleksander.”
“Alex.”
“Sasha,” he corrects, without knowing why. Every person that isn’t in this house calls him Alex. Even Zoya. Zoya, your girlfriend. “We’re Russian,” he explains.
“Me too. Well, a bit. Half.” she says, eyes going soft now – now that they have something in common except for smoking and sitting in places they shouldn’t be sitting. “Alina Starkov.”
“Alina,” he likes how her name tastes on his tongue, “krasivoye imya dlya krasivoy devushki.”
“What? What was that?”
My weakness for beautiful, corruptible women, he thinks.
“Thought you were Russian, Alina Starkov. Are you full of shit?”
“I said just a bit, Sasha. What did you say?”
He shrugs, wondering if he should lie, embarrassed that he was so forward with a stranger. He remembers – that she already called him hot. The flush of pleasure that came with it. Being hot to the hot girl. This girl, who is very nearly naked. She isn’t shy – back straight, shoulders relaxed – and he isn’t shy either, but – still, he shuts his mouth, weighs his options. Swallows, the guilt he barely feels. Thinks, of Zoya. Zoya, who loves him so much. Zoya, who would never fuck around on him.
There is a right and a wrong, always.
And for once, he chooses well.
“That you have a shit name, kid,” he smiles, cruelly, trying to sell it, “don’t get all hurt about it.”
She nods, and it’s a motion that slowly becomes a rock as she fights her smile. She takes a deep drag from her cigarette, watching him with playful, alluring eyes.
And then she says, in perfect, fluent, Russian, “Ty mne nravish'sya. Ty tozhe lzhets.”
He melts – all shock and desire – as she stands – showing him everything he tried so hard not to see. His self-control – shatters – jaw dropping as he finally, finally, allows himself to look. The black of her underwear is a stark contrast to her skin. Skin, so much skin. Flawless and gleaming under the moonlight. Adrenaline, excitement. He feels high. He is high – but he feels it, the blood draining out of his head and going straight to his cock. He can barely breathe. He’s not quite thinking anymore. No. All he can do is look. Look, and feel the heat of his disappearing joint on the skin of his thumb and index finger.
He’s burning. He’s being burned.
“Good to meet you, Sasha,” she says, climbing into her window headfirst, bending forward, showing off her ass – bare except for a barely-there thong that kills him. Destroys him. The curves of her, all the places he wants to touch, right there. Fuck. Fuck. “See you soon.”
He clears his throat, flicks the joint away, sends it hurtling two stories down, “See you, kid.”
Fuck, his brain whispers to him, you’re in trouble.
One night after the other, up on the roof. Weed and Alina. It becomes a tradition, a habit, something to look forward to. He relishes in never needing to spend his evenings alone anymore – he loves that he doesn’t need to dress up and shower and make himself presentable to chase interaction.
Sometimes, they talk.
“So, you want to be a doctor,” she says, “what kind of doctor?”
“I don’t know yet, I’m still in undergrad.”
“Yeah, but in the dream scenario, what kind of doctor do you want to be?”
“I don’t know, kid. This wasn’t my dream.”
They talk a lot – a lot – and they wore each other down until bits of truth started coming out of their mouths.
“I don’t know, sometimes, I think I should have chosen to go into a different field,” she says, after she tells him of how successful her mother’s latest exhibit in Boston was while she’s stuck doing the occasional commissions for offices. She sounds older than she is. World weary in a way he doesn’t understand.
“Why is that, little girl?”
She shakes her head, and lights a cigarette, “I’ll never be as good as my mother. Maybe I should go into accounting instead.”
“Do you have to be as good as her? Or can you just be, you know, yourself?”
She snorts, “I don’t even know who that is yet.”
Sometimes, she draws, and they don’t talk at all.
He likes those nights.
He gets to be high and gets to watch her without feeling watched himself.
One night, she brings a book up there and asks if she could read him a poem.
“You’re a pretentious fuck,” he says, ignoring the fluttering in his stomach, “and I hate the shit you do sometimes.”
“Come on, you’re such a fucking Debbie Downer. Just a snippet! It’s Richard Siken!”
“Fine, you fucking artist.”
“If there was one thing I could save from the fire, he said, the broken arms of the sycamore, the eucalyptus still trying to climb out of the yard — your breath on my neck like a music that holds my hands down, kisses as they burn their way along my spine — or rain, our bodies wet, clothes clinging arm to elbow, clothes clinging nipple to groin — I’ll be right here. I’m waiting,” she says. “Isn’t that beautiful?”
He nods, conceding.
He loves it, the poem, these nights, and he hates himself for hating that she never shows up without clothes again.
He hates that when they’re finished, he climbs back into his room, and fucks himself stupid thinking of her. Long white hair on his pillow. Black lace. Taste of Marlboros on his tongue. The feel of her ass in his palms. Her voice, deep and distinct, in his ear, stop, Daddy, Sasha, stop.
His mother, a 1970s feminist who married well and retired all her principles in exchange for a manicured lawn and a home gym, takes a liking to the women next door immediately. She is drawn, especially, to Mrs. Starkov, who dresses like a hippie and works on sculptures that sell for millions in her backyard studio. Professionally, his mother told him, Mrs. Starkov still goes by Katrina Hsu, a name even he recognizes.
They show up for lunch one day, at his mother’s invitation, and he stands by his open bedroom door to eavesdrop. If he were any less high, he could have joined them, but he did two lines of coke just before lunch rolled around – had no idea they were coming over until they were already at the front door.
“Is that your son, Baghra? Oh, he’s adorable.” he hears a soft, gentle, English-accented voice ask. They’re somewhere near the staircase, where his mother keeps all the framed photos.
“Yes, that’s him. Our Aleksander, wasn’t he a handsome child? Grew up to be one ugly son of a gun,” Baghra says, making him shake his head. He’s so tired of this joke.
“Will he be joining us today, Mrs. Morozov?” Alina’s voice is deeper than her mothers.
Aleksander smiles at her tone, so prim and so proper. Good little British girl. You’re a liar, too, she’d told him that first night.
“Oh, he’s out with his friends,” his mother says, entirely too used to covering for him, “you know how boys are.”
Everyone in this house is a liar.
During dinner that night, his mother regales him and his father with tales from Katrina’s life in Europe, tone tinged with wonder and a hint of jealousy. How she made a piece for some King, how she moved to the States after her husband had died of lung cancer five years ago, how she’s lived in all these big, exciting cities – up and down the east coast, New York, Seattle, Boston – how her daughter is an artist too, a painter, and is headed to Rhode Island School of Design for the Fall semester.
She never told him she was going to RISD.
RISD is three hours away from Dartmouth. That’s close, his brain supplies, unhelpfully, so close. In the same coast. So close.
“That girl,” she says, fondly, in the dinner table, “is captivating. And funny, too! She seems, hmm, sure.”
That’s Baghra speak for that girl will never amount to anything. Aleksander makes himself shut up. Bites his tongue. Until he can taste blood, blood that’s thicker than water.
“Art school is a waste of money,” his father – a fourth generation MD, a son of Russian immigrants, a vision from the future – says in a disapproving tone.
His mother, only ever decent when it’s convenient, hums in agreement, “Yes. But she’s not our child, Mikhail, and what with the kind of environment she was raised in, moving around every few years, rootless and nomadic. It only makes sense that she makes not-so-good decisions. Not like our Sasha, eh?”
His father grins, reaches over to slap him in the shoulder, proud, so, so, proud, “No, not like our boy.”
Aleksander tries to smile at them, these self-aggrandizing assholes he calls his parents. He’s thankful when their attention moves on to their upcoming summer trip to France, the one he disinvited himself from.
As Baghra outlines all the ways she will bleed her husband dry in Paris, Aleksander, as subtly as he could, sniffles and swipes his index finger under his left nostril.
“I think I might be able to come home for Thanksgiving, baby,” Zoya tells him over Facetime one Saturday afternoon. She’s in a café somewhere, a textbook in front of her.
They haven’t been in the same state since Christmas. It’s July.
“That’s months away, Z,” he says.
“I know, but it’s the best I can do. I can’t wait to see you again,” she smiles, and Aleksander looks at her and feels nothing but the cocaine in his system, working him into a euphoric overdrive.
“Yeah, me too.”
“What are you drawing tonight?” he asks Alina one evening. Her eyes are down on a sketch pad –she’s got a charcoal pencil in one hand and an unlit cigarette in another – unable smoke and draw at the same time. “Please tell me it’s still life apples.”
“Just my mom,” she answers, distracted, hands moving so quickly – swipe, smudge, drag – it’s less skill, this, what she’s doing, and more compulsion. She’s so captivating that he wrenches his eyes away and takes a couple of deep breaths.
He leaves her alone for a long stretch of time. He just sits there, smoking his joint, and instead of watching her like he always does, he tends to the buzzing of his phone. It’s midnight – and it’s about nine in the West Coast. Zoya’s texts are a stream of updates – gossip about her study group, funny anecdotes from her classes, complaints about her roommate’s new boyfriend. Names he can’t keep up with, a life he can barely imagine. Ends with, going out to a party tonight. Wish you were here!
He writes back, Have fun, baby. Love you. Wish I was there, too.
He wonders when he stopped meaning these things that he tells her. A strong case could be made for the summer they graduated high school when it became very clear that loving her while she’s in UCLA meant he’d have to miss her all the time.
He’d never admit it, but he just didn’t have the stamina to sustain such a useless emotion.
He did love her. Just maybe. Not that much. Anymore.
“Everything ok? You’re looking a little, uh –” Alina says, “morose. More than usual.”
“Watch your mouth, kid. It’s nothing,” he says, dropping his phone into his lap. “Just my girlfriend.”
“What about her? Did she finally break up with you?”
She’s smiling as she says this – he ignores it, ignores the urge to smile too. Don’t be a piece of shit, he tells himself, Zoya doesn’t deserve that.
“No. And don’t be a cunt.”
She lifts her eyes from the pad – eyes going so fucking soft at how cruel his tone is – and waits for him to continue.
“We’ve been together since high school. Six years.”
“That long?”
“Hmm. No signs of slowing down.”
“Right.”
“No,” he says, “but –” he stops himself before he says something – something he hasn’t thought about enough to mean. “I don’t know. It’s nothing. Maybe uh, I guess,” he struggles, to pull something out. Settles on what’s easiest, “I guess I miss her?”
She purses her lips, and he can almost see her thinking. It’s so fucking intimate, it makes him shiver. He sees it – the joke, the quip, that hides the truth – forming behind her eyes. Fuck. “You should probably work on your delivery. You’re just a tad not believable.”
He grins because he can’t help himself. “What did I say about being a cunt?”
“Hmm,” she says, looking back down again, except she doesn’t really continue drawing. “I think if you’re going to pretend to still be in love with someone, you should do it with more conviction. Go again, say it again, do it better this time.”
Reckless fucking girl.
When she looks up, she looks – shy, bashful, like she understands she shouldn’t have said what she said – isn’t able to hold eye contact for more than a second. Fuck, why are you so cute? She tucks her pencil behind her ear and finally lights the cigarette she’s been holding.
“Well?” she goes, perhaps deciding to lean into it.
He puts his joint in his mouth and pushes up and forward to move closer to her. His roof, unlike hers, is a steep sloping line downwards, and the only reason he never falls is because he has long, strong, soccer player legs that not even his dwindling college workout routine nor his affinity for hard drugs can take away. He leans forward, holds her eyes, and says this as he exhales, “I miss my girlfriend.”
“Nope. Again.”
“I,” he said, tone hard, nearly snarling, “miss my fucking girlfriend.”
She smirks, grabs the pad on her lap, and lifts it up to show it to him. And he comes, face to face, for the first time, with her talent. Her ability to tell the truth.
It’s not Mrs. Starkov. No.
It’s him. Lines and shadows. The way she sees him makes his heart stop – cheekbones sharp, joint hanging off his lips, and hungry, lustful, coveting eyes. Looking at it in the black of her pencil and the white of her paper, he confronts how obvious it really is – the desire that colors their every interaction, the way even just this, sitting and talking is a sin. Even just looking at her – or perhaps, it’s because of the way he looks at her – he’s tempting his own self-control.
He’s not even really trying for control, apparently, that’s what this drawing proves. She’s doing what all great artists do best – holding up a mirror. You’re a liar and I know it, the drawing says. Brazen and fearless.
Aleksander puts his joint out in the space between his legs, watches the tip of it burn into the gray concrete tile. “This whole time I thought you were just a delusional nepo baby,” he says. “Glad to know you’re actually talented.”
“Thank you, Sasha,” she says, scribbling something under the portrait. “that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Just before she returns to her room, she tosses him the whole sketchpad. It lands right on his lap.
Under his face, she wrote her number and the words your favorite cunt.
The blush it triggers doesn’t abate for hours.
He tapes the drawing front side out on his window – so she can see it, every day, how brazen he could be, too.
His parents leave on a Tuesday morning and the minute their car rolls out of the driveway, he calls Ivan, his favorite dealer, and purchases two eight balls and a shit ton of weed. It’s July and he has three whole weeks of peace and he wants to celebrate this miracle with a bender.
He’s got his porn on mute up on his big screen, three neat lines on the flat surface of his Macbook, and a rolled-up dollar bill in his hand, when Alina calls.
“Kid,” he answers, “A bit busy right now, I’ll call you –”
“Sasha,” she said, “I need some help. Like, your help. Person with upper body strength help.”
“What the fuck are you going on about?” he looks at his coke, longingly, knowing already that he’s about to abandon it.
“I have a hundred canvases in the back of a truck right now and a bunch of painting supplies and you’re the only one I know in this town and my mom isn’t here –” she’s babbling, and it makes him grin, how panicked she sounds, “ – and this dude is looking at me like he’s judging me because I can’t handle all of this even though he’s the one who forgot to bring a fucking pallet jack and is rushing me to get all of this out of his fucking truck. I know I sound very much like a damsel in distress right now, and I know you’re laughing – shut up! But I actually am in distress and I just need some help. Please.”
His laughter tapers off into a sigh. She had him at Sasha.
“Alright,” he said, shoving the rolled-up bill in his hand into the pocket of his sweats, and standing up, “give me a minute.”
“Thank you, thank you. We’re outside.”
He turns his television off and puts his coke back into the baggies – a harder task than he thought. He throws them atop his joints and leave the box on his desk.
Aleksander finds Alina out on the street, barefoot and in cut off shorts, standing next to a short man in a baseball cap with his arms crossed over his chest. They’re locked in a stare-off, and Aleksander has never seen Alina look so pissed off. His grin reappears – this is the first time he’s seeing her in daylight and she’s so mad that she doesn’t spot him walking out of the front yard and into the sidewalk, doesn’t see him until he stands right in front of her and announces, like an asshole, “The hero is here.”
Alina’s eyes soften immediately, and she breathes a sigh of relief, “Thank God.”
Aleksander shows off a little.
The canvases are about sixty inches tall, and he can only comfortably lift five at each go, and so he forces himself to fit seven, showing Alina how strong his hands could be. By his third return trip from the studio out back to the truck, he’s sweating under the high summer afternoon sun. He’s not as built as he used to be but – despite all the bullshit he’s done to his body – he’s still a twenty-one-year-old who has spent most of his life as an athlete.
Plus, when he does take his shirt off and tuck it on the waistband of his sweats, Alina looks at him like she knows exactly what he’s doing and he loves it, he loves it – her attention.
Once the canvases are put away, he helps her haul paint cans off the truck, one in each hand.
“So strong,” she mutters, almost to herself, as she struggles to lift one can with both of her hands.
It takes them what feels like fifty trips in total, and by the time they’re through, even Aleksander wants to sock the bitchy delivery dude, who just watched them sweat and pant and struggle with a bored, unimpressed look on his face. Unable to help himself, Aleksander holds up his middle finger as he drives away, walking backwards into the grass covered walkway lined with flowers that lead right to the studio. It’s hidden partially by the trees in Alina’s front yard, and by the tall concrete fence that separate their houses.
“Thank you,” Alina says, fingers stroking over the red indents the heavy cans of paint left on her palm. “I really, really, appreciate this.”
Aleksander just nods, thinking that the rose flush of her cheeks is thanks enough.
“And I’m sorry, I know you said you were busy.”
“No, not really,” he said, careless under the heat, running his hand over the lobelias in flower beds, “I was just about to do a bunch of coke.”
Her hands stop and drop, and her dark eyes are wide, “What? Coke…caine?”
“Are you surprised?” he asks, genuinely confused. All he’s ever done in the entire time they’ve known each other is do drugs in front of her.
“Are you fucking with me?” she says, starting to sound upset.
Aleksander takes a step back, but she follows, hands reaching out to grip his slick shoulders to push him against the concrete fence. It’s hot on his bare back. “Why would you do that to yourself?” she sounds concerned, outraged – he expected none of this, and can’t, for the life of him, remember why he blurted out the truth. He’s too used to her, he realizes.
“Kid,” he starts.
“No, shut up, don’t call me kid,” she says, very nearly shouting. “Shut up. You – you fucking idiot. Cocaine?”
“Hey!” he goes, holding her wrist and pushes it away from his body, “lower your fucking voice. You don’t get to tell me to shut up. You shut up, what the fuck do you care, anyway?”
“Why would I care that you’re doing cocaine at 10 o’clock in the morning?”
Aleksander snorts, still holding onto her, “Oh, would the afternoon be better for using? I had no idea you were such a fucking expe –”
It’s her lips that shut him up – and for a single second, he’s so surprised that he just stands there, eyes wide open, looking down at her. And then. He melts. And the kiss – it explodes. Aleksander groans, closing his eyes, taking it, this gift, sucking her lower lip into his mouth. It’s her who opens her mouth, her who touches her tongue on his, leading, and he hates it. He fights her for it, hands flying to wrap around her neck, to pull at her hair. He sucks on her tongue, and fuck, the way she moans, the way she submits, the way she pulls him close by the waist, it kills him.
Dude, his brain tells him as he reaches around to squeeze Alina’s ass, to pull her close and press her belly against his cock, you have a girlfriend.
He wrenches himself away, hands flying up, palms out, like he’s been caught committing a crime.
Alina is panting, looking at him with wide, apologetic eyes, hands clenched into fists over her heart.
For a long minute, they just look at each other, the guilt of what they’ve done thrumming between them. Or perhaps it wasn’t guilt at all that is so electric, perhaps, it’s the obvious desire to continue even when they shouldn’t.
“We can’t do that, kid,” he breathes out, “I – I can’t do that.”
She nods, “Alright. I –” her eyes drop to his erection, tenting his gray sweatpants, before closing her eyes, tight. She whispers, “I understand, I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” his tone is so, so soft, “I’m sorry. I – fuck, Alina,” he looks down, telling his cock to calm the fuck down, telling his heart the same, “I should go.”
“Okay,” she sounds so fucking timid, it makes him want to grab a hold of her little tank top and yank her to him, “okay. Alright, Sasha.”
But he doesn’t – he doesn’t leave – he stands there and looks at her and wants her and tries to leave. But he just can’t seem to move his legs.
Alina’s bed smells like vanilla and her cunt is so fucking sweet.
Aleksander moans into it, mouth open against her, tongue flicking over her clit. Her skin smells like sweat, and he relishes that he got to watch how her body made that, got to watch her exert effort and can now taste it on her. Sweat and cunt – it’s a taste that makes him lose his mind. He’s too sober to feel so high. She’s moaning, and whining, loves it, buries her hand into the thick, dark mass of his hair and pulls.
“Kid, fuck, you taste so fucking good. My favorite cunt,” he whispers, and as if he can’t take even just a single second not having her on his mouth, he melts back into her, a thumb spreading her open, lips kissing and brushing on her clit. His jaw unhinges, and he sucks her into his mouth.
“Oh, my god,” she sobs, “oh – my god, please don’t – stop.”
He shakes his head, slowly, feeling her clit move and throb under his tongue. He’s never going to stop. He takes the hand gripping her thigh open and moves it under his chin, to brush thick fingers against her opening. She’s so wet – her own slick, mixed with how sloppily he’s eating her – and the tip of his index finger just slips. Inside. He’s careful, slow, fucking her first with just the tip – forward and back – giving her more each time, until its buried as deep as it could go. She’s tight, hot, her walls snug around his one finger. He twists until the flat of his palm is brushing against his chin, dripping of her. He grinds, sucks, and then, he crooks his finger.
Aleksander opens his eyes as Alina screams – her hips lift off the bed, one hand gripping his head, and another wrapping around her throat.
Oh, he thinks, she likes that, too. Okay.
He puts another finger inside her, pushing her down, a silent reward, for being perfect, and he starts to fuck her. Hard. The pads of his fingers drag roughly against her g-spot, a stark contrast to how gently he’s mouthing at her clit. Alina opens her mouth to scream, but no sound comes out. Aleksander closes his eyes, and hums. Such a good fucking girl.
“I’m gonna come,” she whines, and he pulls off her. All the way off, fingers out, mouth just inches away. Her hips lift, seeking him out, but he flows with her, “No, no, no, Sasha.”
“Shh,” he goes, “calm down, little girl.”
She’s not coming if she’s not coming on his cock. He tells her so.
She moans, and a single tear slips out of her right eye, still closed from the pleasure.
Aleksander grins, pushing up from where he’s kneeling on the floor to stand above her. She’s a wreck, jean shorts still hanging off one knee, tank top ripped in half from when he tried to get her naked as fast as possible after throwing her in the bed, tits still trapped in a sports bra.
“Calm down, kid,” he strokes a hand up her thigh, and it makes her tremble. “I’ll take care of you.”
He has no idea where all this self-control he’s displaying is coming from – but it feels so deeply rooted inside of him. He’s never felt more at peace.
Just as he thinks this – she ruins him.
She says it in a whisper, so, so quiet. Almost – not for his ears – not calculated. He hears it anyway, in the silence. Nothing here but them – the slide of skin, the scent of vanilla and paint, all alone here. What it does to him – to his body, his head – is indescribable. He pushes her up, kneels on the bed, “What did you call me, kid?” he asks, just to check, just to be sure he’s not losing his mind.
She flushes, a shade of embarrassed he’s never seen on her. Never, ever. Not this girl, whose fearlessness is a color she paints with – he wants it. He wants it. He wants her to say it again.
“Sasha,” she whispers, looking into his eyes now. This liar.
“No, that’s not it,” he says, pushing her knees wide, “that’s not what you said.”
“I don’t –” she gasps, whines, as he pushes his sweats off and shoves the tip of his cock into her. Gentleness, all gone. Mind, gone, too. He’s going too fast – fueled by lust. “Aleksander!”
“Don’t lie to me, you fucking cunt.” He says, more pleading than admonishing, “what did you call me?”
She groans and shakes as he shoves into her, rearing back and fucking in, stretching her wide open. He’s too big to be so reckless, but she’s so warm inside, and it’s done, he’s not pulling out of this cunt ever. “No?” he asks, and he moans at pleasure flooding her eyes even though she was not ready, unprepared for his size. He leans down and gives her a gentle kiss on the lips, “You don’t want to say it?”
She sobs, and out comes more tears out of her eyes and fuck, doesn’t that make him harder. He pulls out, halfway – “Don’t, Sasha, don’t.” – planning to punish her with emptiness, but pivots, at the last minute, because he can’t bear it – and shoves his way back in. Hard. Alina is crying now, stretched to the brim around his girth, arms around his shoulder, gripping him close. “Please, Alina,” he begs, “say it.”
She nods before she does it, brushing her nose against his. Gives in. Gives him everything he wants.
“Daddy,” she whispers, “daddy, fuck, you’re too big.”
Aleksander’s brain short-circuits, groaning into her mouth, hips snapping against hers – quick, hard, fucking her into the mattress. His hands shove her arms away, and he rears up on his forearms, for more leverage. One hand chokes her, gripping hard on the side of her neck, the other, shoves one side of her bra down. Watches her breast bounce from his thrusts.
“Perfect little girl,” he groans, “again.”
“Daddy! Fuck, please, it’s too much,” she moans, dragging nails down his back.
He slaps her breast, and when that’s not enough, slaps her across the face. Lightly. The impact puts a dazed look in Alina’s eyes, eyes rolling into the back of her head. Pleasured by the pain.
Fuck, fuck. Pain slut.
All his self-control drains out of his body.
“That’s right, good girl,” both of his hands move to her ass, to haul her hips up, so he can go deeper. He drops his mouth on her chest, bites down on the neckline of her sports bra and pulls back, taking it with him as he goes. The straps are yanked down to her shoulders – trapping her arms – and he finds that he likes that, that she’s immobile, that she can do nothing but bury her nails into his back and take it. “Taking everything I give you. God, what a good fucking girl.”
She moans it at him, free now, now that she knows it’s safe. Daddy, over and over again.
He can’t believe she’s real.
He can’t believe he’s real.
Just as that sinks, he starts losing it. He starts losing everything. Every thrust is getting rougher, and her moans are tinged with agony. He tells her, “I’m gonna come, kid.”
“Inside me, Daddy?”
Jesus Christ. “You safe?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, do it.”
He rears back, slaps her again, right across her face. Hard, because he knows, instinctively, that’s how she likes it. She groans, and only spurs him on by letting more tears fall, “Lie,” he growls, “say you’re not. Beg me not to come inside you. God, Alina, I’m gonna come.”
She gets it, immediately. Gets him. Tells him, smooth with it – “fuck, Daddy, pull out, pull out, please” – sharing his breath, sharing his mind. You’re gonna marry this one, his lust-addled brain tells him, this is the one you marry. “I’m not on anything.”
“No,” he says, playing, loves it, the lying.
“No, Daddy, you can’t, not inside, no, no, no, stop, stop, Daddy, I’ll get pregnant.”
That’s what does him in. Pregnant, I can’t get anyone pregnant. So. Fucking. Wrong. Addictive. He presses his lips against hers as he comes, as deep inside her as he can be, as deep inside anyone as he can be. Her walls shake around him – coming, too, groaning and crying into his mouth, taking his breath away.
“Oh, Sasha,” she moans, “thank you. Daddy, thank you.”
After that first time, they lie side by side in her bed, sharing a cigarette and holding each other’s hands. The sun is high up in the sky, and neither of them can barely move.
“Kak ty uznal?” he asks her. How did you know?
She smiles and looks at him with mettlesome eyes. His bold girl. “How did you?”
One more cigarette, one more kiss, and Alina tells Aleksander, “Mom is coming home soon. If you want to fuck me again, you better be quick about it.”
He can’t bear the thought of being away from her.
“Let’s go to my house then.”
Alina leaves a note on the kitchen counter that reads, Gonna go see a friend. Don’t wait up!
Alina breaks the quiet of his house, and finally, finally, it’s a home.
He pulls his curtains until only the tiniest pricks of light filter in through its sides, until the thick fabric covers the window that looks out into her room. They don’t need the roof anymore.
This time, he takes his time. Their phones on the nightstand, their eyes on each other. He has her stand in between his legs and removes the clothes she’d just put on off her body – unbuttons her sleeveless blouse, unclasps her bra, and with gentle hands, peel it off her breasts. Grips the hem of her skirt, and slowly, slowly, pulls it down her legs.
She’s wearing a thong, sitting high on her hips, and he can’t believe how close he is to her skin. Close enough to kiss – and so he does, lips gliding over the softness of her stomach – close enough to touch – and so he does, hand rising from her thighs, up her ass. Holds her in his palm and feels the goosebumps as they form on skin – exactly the way he wanted to that first night they met.
“Sasha,” she whispers. “I never want you to stop touching me.”
He nods, nose brushing over her belly button. “I never will.”
Her squeak as she is lifted off her feet, her white hair on his black sheets, the fondness and softness in her eyes, all exactly the way he imagined.
He can’t believe his luck, can’t believe she’s in his room.
“Jesus, Alina,” he whispers, leaning in for a kiss. “You’re all I fucking want.”
Aleksander finds a new addiction in her lips. For a long time, this is all they do, touch lips and tongues and push their faces close, closer still. Her palm finds its way to his jaw. She strokes the days-old beard there with warm fingers, making him hum, making his cock twitch. He wonders what she’s thinking, wonders how they will ever entangle themselves from one another. He feels hopeful and hopeless at the same time – and he’s not sure what precisely is making his blood sing so loudly – if it’s the fact that what he’s doing is so wrong yet feels so right, or just the fact that she’s here, so firmly in the gray, in his arms.
This, he thinks, as she bites his bottom lip gently on a suck, is the best day of my life.
This kiss – it expands, eventually. To necks, chests – he leaves soft kisses on the swell of her breasts, apologetic for being so rough with them earlier, flicks his tongue on her nipples until she’s panting.
They are honest, the way they should have been since the beginning. The words – they say strip them clean – these are the words they should have said the first time, but it’s too late now. All tenderness, lust that looks too much like another thing.
“I’ve wanted this for so fucking long, Sasha,” Alina tells him, as he kisses down her stomach, once on her cotton-covered clit, and further down, to her thighs, to her calves. His lips trace invisible lines all over her body, kisses as clues, telling her how without words that he shared the same longing with every press.
“Since when?” he asks, words muffled against her ankle.
“Since the beginning,” she whines, hands reaching for him. He follows. “You were so mean to me, you kept being mean to me, and yet looked at me like – God, exactly like that.”
Like that. A desire so clear it jumps off a drawing.
Mouth to mouth again, Alina using her feet to drag his sweatpants – he’s hard and the gray is wet with pre in the front, wet for her – down and off him. She tangles her fingers on the thin string of her thong – to pull it off – but he leans back on his knees between her legs and slaps her hands away.
“Is this the same thong from the night we met?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she whispers, “maybe.”
“It stays on, then.”
She smiles, “This your little fantasy, Daddy?”
He leans forward, kisses her on the cheek, thank you, “Not a fantasy anymore. You’re real, after all.”
“I’m going to say something disgusting, and you’re going to hate it,” he says, as she pulls her mouth off his cock. She has one hand wrapped around him, stroking up and down, hypnotic, and another cupping his balls. Aleksander can barely think. “But I’m going to say it.”
She hums, and with a voice fucked on cock and screaming and moaning his name, asks, “what is it, Daddy?”
Her hair is tangled up in his hand, white tethers. He tightens his grip, pulling on her scalp, pulling her close, until she cries out, mouth forming a perfect o around his tip.
Alina sucks, all the while flicking her tongue at the sensitive underside of his head. His heart is beating so fast in his chest, it feels almost like he’s suffocating. It takes everything in him not to pull her down, to make her choke on his cock, in that way that doesn’t make anything but his ego feel good. Controls himself because he could tell that even if she didn’t like it the first time he pulled her close enough for her nose to brush against the hair at the very base of him, she still would do it again, if he made her. Because she is her, and he is him.
He breathes in, and says it, the truth, “I’ll do anything you tell me to right now, kid. Just don’t stop sucking my cock.”
She gives him the mercy of not shaming him nor laughing at him. Instead, she smirks and asks, “Anything?”
“Anything.”
“Break up with your girlfriend,” she whispers, and put him back into the warm wet home that is her mouth. The slip of her tongue, the faint graze of teeth, the ridges of him, brushing the roof of her mouth, her lips, kisses on his shaft – fuck, he thinks, fuck, I love you. “Break up with your girlfriend and be with me, Daddy.”
He wishes he could say that he felt even just the tiniest pricks of hesitation, but he didn’t.
He's been with her, he realizes, since that first night up on the roof.
“Anything you want, kid,” he breathes, watching her swallow him down, “anything, I promise.”
The next time, on their knees, her back to his chest. Rutting like animals – slipping into a fantasy so comprehensive in their own minds, a fantasy they’ve already brushed against and now share in reality. Her arms, locked together in her back, held by the tight grip of his fingers. Rooftop, he reminds himself, is her safeword.
“Stop, stop,” she’s whining with fear, real fear, undercut with the backward grinding of her hips, driving his cock deeper inside her with every thrust. “Daddy, stop it, please, you’re hurting me.”
He’s rough, still, but he can’t pull away for more than a few spaces, she’s so fucking tight and it’s a weakness – his need is a bottomless well. His other arm is around her neck, gripping her shoulders, and he’s moving just enough to brush the head of his cock, forcefully, against the front wall of her cunt. It’s hot – inside her – fucking scorching. She’s all boneless trust, silent screams, letting him plunder all the parts of her he can touch, letting him whisper filth into her ear.
“Stop,” he mocks her, low and rumbling and mean, “if you wanted Daddy to stop, you wouldn’t be so fucking wet, would you, little girl?”
“No, no, fuck you,” she’s crying, fuck, fuck, it’s sick that he loves that, “I can’t help it.”
Aleksander shoves her down the bed – hands so fucking quick, talented, cruel, man – releasing her arm and gripping the back of her neck and pressing down. “No?” he goes, “you little liar.” He fucks into her – hard – punishment, “cursing at Daddy when you know you’re enjoying his cock. Be an obedient little girl and tell Daddy you love it.”
“No, I don’t, Daddy,” she says, every word tangled up in hair and desire, “Stop it, you can’t touch me like this.”
Fucking hell, this girl.
“Stop,” she repeats, one hand reaching back to stroke a gentle hand on his thigh. “please, Daddy, this is wrong.”
All the wrong, mixed with all the right, it drives him insane, drives him to strike at her ass, so plump and exposed for him, thong off to the side. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls, and he can’t recognize his own voice as he fucks her and hurts her, hand cracking down on flesh with enough force to make her scream, beating on her until her ass is red, and she’s a stammering, whimpering mess, “lying little cocktease.”
When she comes, she comes on pain, begging her daddy to let her go. His spend, hot and abundant, shoved deep inside her, is the soothing balm. She cries into his pillow, tears flowing until she is clean. He holds her close, aftercare, gentle, baby, I’m right here, you’re okay, shh. He shows her the hand he used to spank her, how red and swollen it is. She grips his wrist and kisses his palm, “thank you for everything you do for me, Daddy,” she says.
And finally, calm falls.
The future, for the first time in his life, doesn’t look so bad.
Aleksander makes good on his promise.
Alina is dozing on his chest, his come still fresh and trickling out of her cunt, staining the black of her thong with the thick, white of him. He’s exhausted from so much physical activity in just a single day. He hasn’t come this much since he was a teenager.
He reaches his hand over to the nightstand, careful not to jolt Alina, and retrieves his phone.
The time says, 12:10 AM.
Zoya’s messages are a familiar string of texts. All updates, no questions. Someday, he hopes she can forgive him, yada yada yada, but he’s not holding his breath. He presses on her name, and it rings twice before she answers, “Baby,” she says, bright and cheery, “why didn’t you Facetime? You know I prefer that.”
Aleksander strokes a hand on the soft curve of Alina’s lower back, feeling so warm and sated he can’t bring himself to feel anything else. “We need to talk, Z.”
After he breaks her heart, Zoya cries and curses at him and screams, “how dare you, you sociopathic fuck!” in his ear. He nods, agreeing, even though she can’t see him. All he can think of is, this is fair, this is a fair reaction. I just fucked another girl for nearly 13 hours straight.
In the end, she asks him, “What’s the truth, Alex? Is there someone else?”
Aleksander presses a silent kiss on Alina’s forehead, no guilt, no remorse. “No,” he says, “Jesus. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
One minute, they’re asleep, and then, the next, they are awake.
Tangled in each other. Alina’s entire body is draped on top of him, breasts mashed against his chest, her face is in his neck, her heartbeat an echo of his. Fingers buried in her hair, resting against her scalp. His other hand has a tight solid grip on her waist, arm a manacle over the curve of her back. Legs puzzle pieces. He can feel her cunt, still wet, pressed up against his left thigh. Every breath he takes is filled with her, stopped by her.
So this, he thinks, is what contentment feels like.
“Good morning, Sasha,” she whispers against his skin. “I had such a good dream.”
“What happened?”
She hums, “I don’t remember but I think, you were there."