Page 21 of Break Me Apart
There’s a pause, then a shuddering breath. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t walk,” he whispers, his voice rough with desire. “I want you to ruin me. Bite me, mark me. And when you’re done, I want you to come so deep inside me I can taste you for days.”
“Fuck, detka.” My hand stutters on my cock; my vision blurs for a second at the filthy, perfect image he just painted. “You’d let me fill you up until you’re dripping with me and my teeth marks all over you?”
“Yes— fuck yes.” His breaths are coming in short, desperate gasps now. I can hear the wet slap of his palm. “I’d take it all. Every. Fucking. Drop. Oh God—”
That’s it. That’s the fucking end of me.
“Caiden, blyat!” His name tears out of me. My spine locks, my cock kicks violently in my grip as I come with a guttural groan. Ropes of my release paint my hand, my fingers still stroking through the mess as my orgasm wrings me dry. His own groan echoes through the phone, and I know he’s right there with me; the sound of it is almost enough to make me hard again.
Then he lets out a shaky laugh. “You’re a fucking monster,” he mutters. “No one has ever made me come that hard from just words.”
“That’s because no one else knows you like I do,” I tease, my voice still rough with post-orgasm gravel. “No one else knows exactly how to make you beg.”
He exhales sharply, the sound almost a whimper. “Fuck you.”
“Oh, detka, you wish.”
I get the excuse to leave base just after lunch the next day, which is the closest thing to divine intervention I’m likely to get in Murmansk.
Some paperwork needs to be dropped off across town, and because nobody else wants to drive the rattling death trap we call a pool car, I take the keys before anyone can change their mind. The heating in the thing works when it feels patriotic, the passenger door sticks, and there is a noise coming from somewhere under the bonnet that sounds expensive, but it moves, and that’s enough.
I tell myself I’m going because Niko has been riding my nerves for two weeks straight, and I want answers I can’t get out of him. I also tell myself I am not interfering, I’m just checking in, being a decent brother, using an errand that already exists.
That part is less convincing.
The roads are filthy with old snow and grey slush. Murmansk always looks half-tired this time of year. The buildings are tired, the sky is tired, the men shovelling outside shopfronts look tired, and the sea off in the distance has that hard steel colour that makes you think getting in it would count as a suicide attempt.
I drive with one hand on the wheel and the other drumming against my thigh, going over every conversation I have had with Niko this past month and getting more irritated the more I think about them.
He says Cassie is struggling, she’s tired, the baby has been difficult, she’s had a bad day, then a bad week, then a bad patch, each explanation laid down so casually you would think we were talking about something mechanical.
What kind of struggling?
What kind of tired?
What kind of bad?
Niko has never been good at asking for help, even when it matters. He will ask to borrow money, ask to borrow a jacket, ask you to lie to a sergeant for him while he runs off for a cigarette, but ask for help when he’s actually frightened?
No. He would rather chew his own arm off.
Which is exactly why I’m driving across town in a car that sounds haunted.
Cassie and the baby are still in the same flat. It’s a concrete block on a street that manages to look bleak even by local standards. I park badly — because the space is half ice and half wishful thinking — grab my jacket, and head up the stairwell.
By the time I reach the right floor, I’m already annoyed.
Not at Cassie or Niko, at the whole stupid situation.
I knock once and wait.
Nothing.
I knock again, louder this time. I hear movement inside, then a pause by the door, as if whoever is on the other side is trying to decide whether I’m worth answering the door for.
When the door opens, Cassie looks at me like she has had to fight her way up from underwater to do it.
My irritation drops clean out from under me.
