Page 78 of Nikolai (Kansas City Reapers)

“Why do you ask?” I had thought our shower would be sensual and fun, but this was a change of subject I hadn’t seen coming.

“Well, you have an accent. So I was curious if you were born here in the States, or somewhere else. Just curious.”

“I was born in Moscow, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” I guided her head back to rinse the sudsfrom her hair.

“When did you move here?”

“When I was seven.” I kept my answers short and to the point, not wanting to dive into a deeper matter on a whim. Instead, I busied myself by lathering up the loofah and running it over her body. However, I could not stop the memories from playing in my head. They were faint, sometimes hard to access, but they were there, nonetheless.

“What was that like?” I could tell she was hedging a little, being cautious of her words, and trying not to cross a boundary. It was unnecessary, although I appreciated her consideration. I preferred bluntness to beating around the bush.

“It was difficult. My childhood was… not an easy one.”

As I leaned down, crouching on one knee in the large shower stall to wash her legs, I heard her sigh heavily; the sound drew my attention back up to her face.

“Did you have something to say?” I asked directly, my eyes meeting hers. I very specifically did not follow the lines of her body downward, over the curves of her luscious breasts that dripped water off of pointed nipples, down to the apex of her well-groomed sex, currently hovering only a few inches away from my face.

As much as I wanted to push her against the shower wall, throw one of her legs over my shoulder, and devour her delicious cunt, now was not the time. This conversation could get very heavy, very quickly, if I wasn’t careful.

“I don’t want to cross a line,” she admitted almostshyly. I had to admit, I was a little taken aback by her reserved demeanor. It was out of character, to say the least.

“Ask.” It was a snippy response, but I didn’t want to draw this out any longer if I didn’t have to.

“Will you tell me about it?” she asked, nervously biting her lower lip as I stood up from washing her legs. I couldn’t think of a real reason to deny her. It’s not like it was a secret or some triggering issue that would send me reeling back into flashbacks. It was just something I hadn’t talked about much.

“I was born in Moscow to my parents, Mikhail and Katarina Ivanov. We weren’t well off, but not many were back then. There was a lot of chaos in Russia in the eighties and nineties.”

“Oh right, that was when the Soviet Union fell apart, right?” she asked, turning in the shower’s spray to rinse the lathered soap from her body.

“Yes. I grew up right in the middle of the collapse of the Soviet Union,” I explained. “The country was at war off and on for years, and it was, honestly, a bit of a nightmare. I don’t remember much, either because I was just so young or because I have blocked a lot of it out. I don’t really know which. My father was involved in many political protests over the years. I honestly have very few memories of him. He was always out working for the cause, leaving my mother, my little brother, and I at home.”

“You have a brother?” she asked, her eyes turning towards me.

“I had a brother,” I corrected her carefully. Her eyesgrew sad, her mouth opening in a shocked, silent gasp of realization.

“Niko…” she muttered, her words trailing off. She obviously didn’t know what to say. No one ever did, which is why I rarely talked about it.

“It’s ok. It was a long time ago. My little brother died when I was only six years old. He was not even two at the time. There was a massive outbreak of diphtheria in the aftermath of the collapse. He was so young. It took him quickly. He just wasn’t strong enough. With all the turmoil in the country, healthcare was barely available. Or so it seemed, back then.”

“I can’t even imagine,” she whispered, reaching for the shampoo and motioning for me to turn around. I crouched down slightly, allowing her enough space to wash my hair. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had someone wash my hair. The feel of her fingernails lightly scraping against my scalp sent shivers down my spine and somehow made the retelling of my tragic childhood just a little easier.

“It was hard. So, yeah,” I continued with a heavy sigh. “The outbreak took Dimitri first.”

“First?” she asked, guiding me to step back into the water’s spray to rinse the shampoo away before grabbing the loofah herself.

“Yes. It was only a few months later that my mother fell ill with the same disease. For her, it wasn’t quick. It was long and brutal. With my father gone all the time, there was no one left to care for her but me.”

“How did you not get sick?” she whispered, running the loofah over my body slowly. In any other situation, Iwould have found the strokes of her hands sensual and arousing. But this wasn’t that kind of shower.

“Mother was able to get me a vaccine. They were hard to come by, and rare as hell. But with the work of a few neighbors, she was able to get me inoculated, sparing me from transmission. It was an agonizing few months, watching her grow weaker, getting sicker every day until the disease finally claimed her life.”

“What happened then?” she asked, shifting behind me as she moved the soft loofah in circles over my broad back.

“I stayed there, laying in bed next to her body until my father returned,” I answered, my voice growing cold, almost clinical as I recalled the events from those dreadful days.

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