Chapter Sixteen - KATYA
I need to pretend. This is the part he’s not understanding at the moment. But I’m winning. I’m naked, he’s almost naked, so I take his hand and start walking towards the stairs.
“Hey.” Oliver stops, making me look over my shoulder at him. “Who the fuck put you in charge?”
I don’t hide my smile when he lets go of my hand. “Well, there he is,” I say. “That bossy asshole I’ve come to love. It’s about time you showed up.”
Oliver stares at me, his whole demeanor changed. His fingers begin unbuckling his belt and my heart speeds up with anticipation. He pulls it through the loops of his jeans and reaches for my hands, binding the leather around my wrists and cinching it tight.
“I’m not the one who left, Katya.” His blue-gray eyes burn into mine. They are like a thunderstorm. I see all the anger he keeps locked behind those turbulent clouds and then, in the span of a moment, it disappears.
“Do whatever you want,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m up for it.” I bring my bound hands up to his chest, flattening my palms against his skin.
“But you’re not,” he says. One last lingering look. And then he pushes me away, walks towards the couch, tugging me along by the tether, and bends me over the back of it.
A hard slap makes my bottom burn. I take a moment to breathe through the hot pain and imagine the mark he just left on my skin.
It makes me moan.
Another slap on the other cheek has me gasping.
But then there’s the soothing sensation of his fingers playing with the soft folds of skin between my legs. The pool of wetness shows up, right on cue.
“How should I fuck you tonight, Katya? Bent over like this?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Now.” He has no idea how much I need sex right now.
Oliver grabs my long hair and pulls my head up, but at the same time he leans over my body, pressing his chest into my shoulder blades. His hips grind against the back of my legs, letting me know that his dick is hard. His breath tickles my ear. “In the ass?”
“Please,” I say. “I’m not too proud to beg.”
He pushes my head down and stands up. The heat we were creating is immediately gone. He walks around the couch and stands in front of me.
“Shove my cock down your throat? Make you choke on my balls?”
“Oliver.” I laugh. “What part of ‘whatever you want’ don’t you get?”
“Katya,” he says, mimicking my tone. “What part of ‘I like a little fight’ don’t you get?”
“Can we please fight later?” I shoot back.
He smiles. But drops it just as quick. “Maybe you’re just not into me?”
I scowl at him. And then I stand up and start running. I slip on the polished concrete floors, almost crash into the dining table on the far side of the room, and his fingertips graze my back as I escape around one side of the massive kitchen island.
“You wanna run away?” he yells, his eyes bright with fun as he stares me down from the opposite side.
I place my bound hands on the cold, hard stone and lean forward, taunting him. “If you want it, come get it.”
He moves, I move, keeping the island between us. “What if I just order you to hold the fuck still? Will you obey?”
“Obey your bossy ass?” I snort. “Fuck, no. I’m gonna make you beg for it, Shrike.”
He smiles again and this time he doesn’t have the self-control to hide it. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
“I can’t wait.”
He makes another move, but I do too. My eyes are darting around the room. None of it is familiar. But I might be able to make a break for the stairs.
“No,” Oliver says, reading my mind. “If you run up there I’ll drag you back down by your hair. I’m gonna fuck you down here on this slab of stone. You don’t get a nice soft bed.”
Jesus. My feet are moving before I can think about it.
He comes after me. His boots thundering on the floor, getting closer and closer. I won’t make it to the stairs. He’s right behind me, but I’m not gonna blow my chances by making my move too soon. I dash for the buckeye tree, getting that between us.
Oliver plays along and we circle it, looking at each other through the young tree’s foliage. He breaks off a branch, stripping the leaves off with one swipe down the length. “I can just picture the red welts on your ass cheeks now, young lady.”
“Oh.” I sigh. “A spanking? Do you promise? I might give up right now if you promise.”
“Whore,” he says. “You dirty little whore.”
“Pervert,” I say back. “You filthy fucking pervert. Chasing young girls. Threatening to swat their bottoms red for—”
He lunges, I run, but he catches hold of my hair and yanks me back to him. Strong arms encircle me and the switch smacks against my outer thigh like a threat as he holds my hands to my chest.
“You’re bad tonight, Kat. But I'm gonna give you one more chance to be good. Now…” he says. “Let me ask you the questions again. Would you like to choke on my balls as I fuck your throat? Or would you like me to bend you over and ram my cock into your ass?”
I want to play. I want to say both. I want to beg him to just get started already. But he likes the game and the pretense of a fight. I relax my body, which makes him relax his. And then I squirm a little until I have enough room to turn around and look him in the eyes.
He’s not smiling when I spit in his face.
And I don’t have a chance to appreciate his surprise. Because he’s dragging me over to the couch by my hair.
He bends me over and then the sting of the branch across my ass makes me howl in pain.
That mark will definitely haunt me when I try to sit down tomorrow.
“In the ass it is,” he says, spitting back at me. Only his spit runs down the crack of my ass and his fingers rub it in.
Then there’s a pause. The sound of him opening his zipper. A moan as he flicks his cock up and down, from my pussy to my ass. Rubbing his lube in deeper and dragging my wet juices into the mix.
I brace for the pain.
But he leans over me again. The way he was just a few minutes ago before I ran. And he says, “Next week I’ll be rough and hard. Next week I’ll make you scream. But tonight”— he kisses the spot of skin he owns just below my left ear—“tonight is just practice for what’s to come.”
He stands up, both hands on my hips as his cock presses into my ass.
It still hurts. It’s been way too long for it not to hurt. But he goes slow. And he’s gentle. He is patient, and good, and careful.
It makes me cry, he feels so good. The tears actually run down my face when he’s fully inside me. Hips rocking just enough to keep me wanting more. Not enough to make me come.
But then his fingers find their way between my legs and he begins to rub my clit as he pumps harder and harder with each forward thrust. He still has the branch in his other hand and he drags it up and down my back, pausing to snap it against the skin with just the right amount of force to excite me further.
The stroking becomes faster, more urgent. His hips begin to pound, our skin slapping together. A sound that carries up into the high ceilings and echoes in my head as the reality of where I am, who I’m with, and what I’m doing finally takes over. Finally wipes away the past ten years and sets me free.
I come on his fingers just as he pulls out and shoots his warm semen all over my back.
He stands behind me breathing hard and I let myself collapse into the seat back of the couch.
He steps away, returns, and then he wipes my back with his shirt. I stand up and turn to face him.
I can feel his relief like it’s my own.
His hard body glistens with sweat. Outlining the cut of his muscles like he’s a work of art. I want nothing more than to take his picture right now. But I don't have my camera and my phone is somewhere in a pile of clothes across the room.
So I memorize him instead. I bring my bound hands up and drape them behind his head, fingertips desperate to hold on. To keep him forever.
He is my god.
Oliver reaches under my knees and lifts me up. And then he carries me upstairs and into the master bathroom, setting me on the counter.
We shower. He fucks me against the tile wall. So slowly in the steam, it all becomes a dream. The water runs down us like rain. Like we are trees.
“I will kiss you here,” he says, his mouth just below my left ear. Right where the silver-white scar starts. The first cut that ruthless man made on my body all those years ago. The same spot where Oliver tried to erase it with tattooed words.
“And here,” he says, kissing my left shoulder and reading his second set of words tattooed over the much deeper cut that man made on my body.
“And here.” Oliver drops to his knees and kisses the scar across my ribs and then the two just below my left breast. I never told him how it happened. I never told him about the first cut across my neck as my parents watched. Both of them beaten purple with bruises. They were huddled on the ground and I was so afraid they’d never get up from that floor. That I’d be left alone with this man.
He used a scalpel for the first cut. It was just a threat. A light tracing of the blade starting at my left ear and sloping down across the dent in my throat, before rising again and stopping just below my right ear.
I remember the blood. And the heat of it. The smell of it. He barely cut me, but the resulting mess was profuse.
I panicked. What happened next was my fault, because I panicked. My fingers were clasping onto the man’s wrist. At first desperately trying to pry then away from my neck. But then he said, “Shh,” into my ear. “Be still. Because if you move this blade will end your life.”
So I stopped fighting and stood so still I was made of stone.
The blood was too much and I freaked out. Twisted in his arms. I was only eleven. I can’t hate myself for the way I reacted. I was just a kid. I was naked, bound, my parents looked like they were dead or dying. And they had my little sister in the next room. She was only seven at the time. They let her play with dolls. She had a fantasy tea party with her dolls in the next room while we were being tortured.
The man dropped the scalpel and I wiggled away. Not far enough away. No. That’s not what happened.
Because he had a knife too. Not as sharp and precise as a scalpel, but sharp enough to make the next three cuts in my flesh as I fought him off.
The wound in my shoulder was deep. Someone in his organization had to stitch the muscle back together before they even thought about repairing the outer layer of skin.
The slices down my ribs were just a graze. Just enough to leave pink marks on my pale body for six months.
“And here,” Oliver continues, bending down in the shower to take his kisses to my hip.
That cut scraped bone. It lingered and got infected too many times to count. It was bright red for years. Only in the last six months has it even started to fade.
Oliver covered my scars with his poetic words the night I left Fort Collins. He inked them on my skin. Carved his reassurances into me.
I will kiss you here.
And here.
And here.
And here.
You express me better than I express myself.
You shall be more to me than my poem.
Poems were always Oliver’s thing. He wrote poems for me, but he only wrote them on me. On my naked body after sex. In pen, or marker, even paint one time.
We would fuck, and he would write, and sometime I’d just sit there and enjoy how slow and silent the world became when we were together. Sometimes I would read out loud to him as he composed. Dirty stories I would snatch up for pennies in used bookstores. Victorian-era erotica filled with masters, and spankings, and sex.
I don’t know how something so fucked up could be made into something so beautiful.
But he did that.
Oliver did that for me.
After the shower we go to bed. Spent, happy, satisfied.
But I am so restless, I can’t sleep. So I just lie there, wrapped up in his arms. Barely able to understand how I got here.
I’m awake when his phone buzzes in the pocket of his jeans on the floor.
I’m awake when he turns on the TV to watch a cable news update about his friend, Nolan, in California.
I’m awake when he whispers, “I’ll go get him,” into the phone, and then ends the call.
I watch him through nearly closed eyelids as he dresses. Then kiss him back when his lips press to mine in goodbye.
“Stay here, Kat. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
But as soon as he leaves I get up and find my clothes downstairs. Because it’s starting now. This really is the beginning.
When I get home I go right to the drawer with the disposable phone in it. My fingers press the keys on the keypad, typing out the message I had memorized weeks ago.
I set the phone down on the coffee table and wait. Staring at it as my heart races with uncertainty.
It takes seven minutes and twenty-one seconds for it to ring.
I tab the call button and press it to my ear. “Yes,” I say.
“Good job,” he says. “I will assume you were busy working and forgive you for not answering my earlier calls. But if you don’t pick up next time you know what will happen. Phase two starts now.”
As soon as the disposable phone call ends, my real phone buzzes in my pocket. “Hello?” I ask, after tabbing the accept button.
“Hey,” Lily says. “I was just walking over to the Fort Collins Theater for coffee and saw your lights were on. Do you wanna meet me down there?”
I hesitate.
“Unless you’re busy?” she adds.
We don’t usually meet up this early in the day. It’s barely six AM. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“I have an early class, remember? That stupid photography one that I took to get my art requirement over with.”
“How dare you,” I huff.
“Well, any class that is two hours long and starts at seven in the morning can kiss my ass.”
“Lily,” I say, chastising her language.
“Sorry. But I’m a grown-up now. You might as well get used to the fact that I’m not as innocent as you think. I say fuck too.”
I tsk my tongue at her. “And studio classes are the best.”
“Maybe for an art fart like you,” she laughs. “But I’m pre-med, sis. I have no use for a two-hour photography class. They tell us we’ll be well-rounded. But all I really need to know about photography is that my phone has filters on it that makes me look good. Do you want to come for coffee or not?”
“Yes,” I say. “Let me throw some clothes on and I’ll be right down. Get me a latte and a muffin.”
I end the call and go look at myself in the mirror. I don’t have time for a shower, but I splash some water on my face and pull my hair back into a ponytail before changing out of yesterday’s clothes.
I arrive at the FoCo Theater seven minutes later, looking around wildly for any of Oliver’s relatives. But now that I have actually made contact, I’m not as nervous as I was about being in here.
“Katya!” Lily calls from a corner table. The place is already packed with students and Lily is sitting with a whole group of them.
“Hey,” I say cautiously when I approach the table. I don’t want to have coffee with her friends. “I see you don’t really need my company this morning.”
“Oh, just sit, you antisocial freak.” Lily hands me my latte. The warm cup feels good on my chilled fingertips. “This is Lauren, Kelly, Michelle, and Angie. They’re all part of the Antimony Association.”
I narrow my eyes before I can stop my reaction. “Hmm,” I say, recovering. “I’ve never heard of that society. What do you girls do in your little club?”
“We’re not a society, Miss Kalashova,” Lauren says. “We’re just a science group who have a scholarship event every spring. Lily here has signed up to compete. We’re all about helping people find a way to realize their dreams. And by the way, I love your last name. It’s so… Cold War, right, girls?”
They have a good giggle at my expense. I look at Lily. She smiles and pretends that didn’t just happen. “Kat,” she says, “if you participate every year you’re eligible for the grad school free-ride scholarship when you’re a senior. I’m totally winning that prize to pay for med school.”
“Mmmmhmmm,” I say, taking a sip of my latte. “So are you girls… local?” I try not to seem suspicious but I’m not sure I pull it off.
“Yeah,” Lauren says, who seems to be the leader of the little clique. The others just giggle and smile. “My dad is a rancher over on the Western Slope. Michelle’s mother owns seventeen doggie daycares that got their start in Aspen.”
“I’m the token snob.” Michelle laughs. “What can I say?”
“And Kelly and Angie are first-generation college students who grew up in North Denver.”
“We’re the token thugs,” Angie says. Kelly laughs with her. I force a smile.
“Well, science nerds. The whole lot of you,” I say. “I’m afraid I’m an art nerd from way back. But it’s been nice to chat with you.” I look at Lily and nod my head. “Walk me out, sis.”
The girls all call out a goodbye and Lily whispers something about being right back as she follows me out to the street.
“What did I tell you?” I ask, never breaking my fake smile.
“It’s not a sorority. And God, I don’t see the big deal anyway. They’re a bunch of middle-class do-gooders, Kat. Don’t start with me. You know I have a hard time making friends. And it doesn’t help that you forced me to go to this stupid state school. All my friends from Parson went to Ivy League schools. I could be at Cornell right now.”
“We can’t afford Cornell, Lily,” I say in my most tolerant voice. “That scholarship wasn’t enough to pay for the dorms, let alone the education. Twenty-five thousand I can swing on my own. Expecting me to find an extra sixty grand every year is just delusional.”
“You don’t need to do it on your own,” she says.
My back stiffens. How dare she. After all the things I’ve done for her over the years.
Be calm, Kat. Just be cool. “We’ve had this discussion a thousand times in the last four years,” I say with a fake, pleasant voice. “I’m not taking that money to pay for you. I pay for you, Lily. Me. No one else. You will never be in debt the way I was. And I’m pretty ticked off that you even brought it up.”
“I get it,” she snaps. “But just because Mom and Dad were mixed up with some bad people and you’re paranoid about me running with the wrong crowd doesn’t mean I can’t have friends in school. I’m tired of this bullshit.”
“Language, Lily. I’m warning you.”
“I’m warning you. Stop mothering me. I’m not your child, OK? I’m your sister. The Antimony Association is a bunch of nerdy wannabes. And maybe they’re not my first choice as far as social groups go, but I don’t have a lot of options since I’m stuck here in Colorado going to a school nobody cares about.”
I’m about to explain that antimony is a silver metallic metal, but then she’d just say, So what? And I can’t get into the whole silver connection with her. So I don’t bother. These girls really are nobodies anyway. Rancher’s daughter? Doggie daycare empire? First-generation scholarship students? I mean, please. They aren’t even close to being top-tier Ivy League recruits. The Silver Society wouldn’t give them the time of day, let alone build a chapter around them. In fact, they are probably the perfect group of friends for my baby sister. Rational middle-class people.
I sigh and give in. “OK. You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made a big deal about it.”
But Lily’s angry face doesn’t dissipate. She crosses her arms and stands her ground.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “Really. They’re harmless. Nerds.” I offer a smile as my olive branch.
“They’re nice,” she insists. “And I want that scholarship. Lauren is the head of the club and she likes me. Michelle is going to take over when Lauren leaves next year, so I need to be friends with her too because I’m going to be competing with Kelly for the senior scholarships. We’re both freshman.”
“I said OK.” Now she’s got me on the defensive and I don’t like it. “I’m sure they’re all very nice girls. Maybe you can… bring them over for lunch one day? Hmm? My treat?”
Lily considers if she should relent and forgive me or dig in her heels. But we’re not fighting sisters. We’ve always been close. So she smiles and says, “That would be great. I’m sure they’d love to meet you for real. I mean, you’re kinda famous, right?”
“No,” I say, laughing. “No. Do not tell them what I do, Lily. You will ruin your chances at that scholarship for sure.”
“What?” she asks innocently. “You’re just an eccentric photographer.”
I laugh again. “Right. Stick to the story and you’re fine.”
“Thanks,” Lily says, leaning up to kiss my cheek. “I’ll call you later. I gotta get back. We were having a riveting conversation about proton pumps and ion channels.”
“Riveting,” I say. She smiles one more time, then turns away and disappears into the crowd of people lining up inside to get coffee.