Page 177 of Sexting the Pakhan

He lasts a few seconds longer.

Maybe less.

My orgasm drags his out of him. He grips my hips and thrusts up as much as he can from beneath me, careful of the leg and careless of everything else, then goes rigid with a groan against my chest.

I stay where I am for a moment afterward, sitting on his lap, both of us breathing too hard. My blouse is open. My bra is shoved down. My pussy is still fluttering around his softening cock. His face is pressed between my breasts like he doesn’t want to lift his head.

I pull back first. He lets me, but slowly, his hands sliding from my waist only when I start fixing my clothes.

Neither of us speaks for a second.

Then I say, because I need to be the one to break whatever this is becoming, “You got what you wanted.”

His eyes lift to mine.

“No,” he says. “Not even close.”

24

RUSLAN

We fuckuntil the light changes.

Not in one frantic stretch, but in waves—slow when her body needs it, rough when she climbs into my lap again like she’s spent too many years denying herself and has finally stopped pretending restraint is a virtue. I keep her on top when my leg starts to pull, then on her side with one thigh over mine, then bent over the couch while I hold her hips and take her carefully but deep.

She comes apart more than once, breathless and angry with how much she wants it, and every time she thinks she’s had enough, she looks at me again and changes her mind. I suck her breasts until the skin is flushed and marked, bury my face between them when she rides my cock, and listen to the little broken sounds she tries and fails to swallow.

She leads more than she lets herself admit. I let her. I follow when she wants to be used, when all she wants is release and the relief of not being responsible for everyone in the room.

By the time we stop, the apartment is dim and warm and quiet in that dangerous way domestic places can be quiet. Zoya is flushed, sore, and still trying to act like what happened between us was only sex, as if she didn’t shake in my arms after the last time and as if I didn’t lie there with my face in her hair trying not to think about how easily I could stay.

She checks the time, curses under her breath, and says she has to pick up the girls. I tell her I’ll be fine alone for twenty minutes. She doesn’t believe me, but she goes anyway because mothers don’t get to stop the clock for orgasms or old wounds or the men who crawl back into their lives after inconveniently being shot.

The door closes behind her, and the apartment changes at once.

I sit up slowly on the couch, leg protesting, and listen.

The girls’ drawings are still on the fridge. One of Mila’s hair clips is on the table. Zoya’s coffee cup is in the sink. Everything looks ordinary enough to fool a man who doesn’t know what tension feels like.

Then I hear the lock move.

Not the front one. The back service door near the kitchen.

Very soft, but I’ve been trained to hear even a miniscule movement. That makes all the difference in keeping one’s life.

I’m off the couch before the second sound. Pain slashes through my leg, but I’m already moving, already crossing the room on instinct. I grab the heavy ceramic lamp from the side table just as the door swings inward.

First man through the gap. Mask. Gun up.

I throw the lamp at his face. It smashes against his body.

He fires blind. The shot rips into the ceiling. I hit him before the shards finish falling, slam my shoulder into his chest, drive him backward into the narrow kitchen entry, and wrench his gun hand into the wall until I hear the crack in his wrist. He screams. I rip the pistol free and smash the butt into his mouth.

Second man comes beelining from the side. Too fast to aim. He lunges with a knife instead, low and vicious, trying to open my stomach. I twist sideways, catch his wrist, and ram the first man into him.

All three of us crash into the counter. Plates explode on the floor. The knife skids away. The first man is still half-conscious, flailing uselessly. I shove him down and fire once into the second man’s shoulder. He spins, hits the fridge, stays up.

He charges me. I meet him with the gun in one hand and the counter edge at my back, take the hit, then drive my forehead into his nose. Bone gives. Blood pours.