Page 52 of One For my Enemy

He broke off when she kissed him again, restless fingers tugging at his coat. “Take this off,” she insisted gruffly, and he stared down at her, indignant.

“Haven’t you been listening?” he demanded, but she only stepped out of his arms, pulling her sweater over her head and watching his gaze drop. “I—Sasha,Sasha,I just said—”

“You want me to burn for you?” she asked. “Then watch me burn.” She slid his jacket from his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, and shifted to fumble with the buttons of his shirt, her fingers grazing the skin beneath each one with every inelegant progression. She felt each pulse like a congratulatory thud of progress at her touch, her hands at once impossibly sure and helplessly unsteady.

He watched her, barely moving, until she finished to wrench his arms back, the sleeves caught around his shoulders. “Now would be the time, Lev,” she said impatiently, and he blinked, suddenly leaping to help her, one arm snaking out to wrap around her waist the moment it had been freed.

The kiss between them then was brutally communicative, the rest of the conversation transmuted to touch. He asked permission and she gave it, her hips aligned with his; she begged him and he relented, tugging her backwards to fall against him. She remembered his first kiss, how easy it had been, how difficult, how untamed and how helplessly delicate, and this was that and more, a thousand tiny earthquakes; when his hands slid to the curve of her hips she sighed between his lips, a moment of tender softness.

He leaned his head back, eyeing her.

“I’m your enemy in the morning,” he whispered. Fair warning.

His hand traced the shape of her scapula, fingers brushing the length of her spine and then curling upwards, possessive.

“I’m your enemy tonight,” she said, and kissed him again.

III. 4

(Blame.)

There were certain things from which Stas Maksimov had always turned his head, unseeing; a necessity at times, being the husband of Marya Antonova and therefore beholden to Baba Yaga’s labyrinth of secrets. As a Borough witch, Stas knew his wife had kept a number of things from him, replying to many of his questions with a smiling, “Do you really want to know, Stanislav?” and he would no doubt demur, opting not to interfere. Betraying his wife was never an option.

From time to time, though, there were things he couldn’t ignore, being not entirely blind.

“Whatever you’re doing, Yaga,” Stas said quietly, resting his hand on his mother-in-law’s shoulder as she busied herself among her herbs, “I beg you, do not.”

Yaga didn’t answer. She was a proud woman, and while she’d thought well enough of Stas throughout his relationship with Marya, she’d certainly lent him no favors. He was the man who had married her favorite daughter, he knew, and nothing more than that.

In this, as in most things, he had no place in her regard; but still, he hoped she would listen.

“I love my wife,” Stas reminded her, feeling a cruel, savage pain at the thought of it:loved.“I loved my wife well, and I will mourn her just as fully, but nothing good will come of this. Don’t make her life a cause for vengeance, and certainly don’t make a monster of her, Yaga, please—”

“She didn’t love you,” Yaga replied coldly, a blow as crippling as any. “Not as she loved me, Stas, or her sisters.” She was silent for a moment before adding, “Not as she loved Dima.”

Stas flinched. He’d heard enough in his time about Dimitri Fedorov, a man he barely knew and tried desperately not to hate, but only scarcely managed. Dimitri’s was a name only used as a weapon, and was certainly nothing Stas wished to hear now, while he was mourning his wife.

I promise you I’ll never see him again,Marya had said to Stas about Dimitri once while still early in their courting,and you may trust my word on that without fail, if only because if I do, I may never come back to you at all.

“She loved me,” Stas corrected carefully. They had shared a life together, after all, and during that time, Marya had never spoken Dimitri Fedorov’s name aloud. For close to twelve years she had been Stas Maksimov’s partner, his wife and his friend and his lover, and whatever shape her past had taken before him, not once had she failed him. Not once.

“She loved me,” he said again, “and I know you wouldn’t cheapen our life together simply because you are suffering, Yaga. Maybe she never loved me like she loved Dimitri Fedorov, but there are other loves. There are better loves,” he informed her, defensive, “loves which enrich us, which don’t cost us our lives and our sanity—”

“This is not your business, Stas,” Yaga told him, cutting him off just as Marya’s bodyguard Ivan materialized in the doorway.

Stas turned, glancing up briefly at Ivan’s entrance, and then instinctively looked away; his stomach twisted in agony to witness the look of anguish on the other man’s face.

Clearly there had been many men who’d loved Stas’ wife. Hard enough coming second to Dimitri Fedorov, but to imagine a hopelessness like Ivan’s… impossible. If it had been Stas in his place, he thought, could he have brought himself to love her still, knowing perfectly well there was not one man before him in her esteem, but two?

Yes,Stas knew silently, and could not bear to see it written so plainly on Ivan’s face.

Stas Maksimov, who had always known his own luck in being Marya Antonova’s choice, suffered once again the blow of knowing she was gone. No other man could claim his pain; their meager sufferings were built on imagination, on delusion. Only Stas had possessed the fortune of loving the woman herself, and only he knew what torment it was to truly lose her. It clawed at his chest to watch Ivan martyr himself, as if only his devotion had mattered.

“Do you need me, Yaga?” Ivan asked her solemnly, and she shook her head.

“Your duty is to Sasha,” Yaga reminded him. “That was Masha’s request of you, wasn’t it? See to it Masha’s wishes are met. That’s what you can do for me, and for her, and nothing else.”

Ivan nodded. “Yes, Baba Yaga,” he said, and stepped away, sparing a brief look of contempt for Stas. The intention was clear enough:You let her go,Ivan’s expression accused.You couldn’t keep her. You didn’t protect her.

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