Page 17 of Ascendent
“This isn’t the time. Not now. Not with all this. If you want to keep him, and keep Russia, youwillkeep your mouth shut. And your hands to yourself in public.”
Sergey exhaled. “I know,Ilyukha. I know what I have to do.”
Chapter Four
Sasha turned down Yuri,Mikhail, and Ruslan’s invite forbliniat the GUM after working out. He’d had enough people for one day.
Sergey and Ilya were gone when he made his way back to Sergey’s apartment. He’d taken a spiral route, crisscrossing the palace, avoiding security teams and the roving patrols of the Kremlin guards. Along the way, he’d mapped their routes, timed their passages through the halls, noted when the safest, most clear route to Sergey’s door was.
Security had been stepped up in the Kremlin since the coup, but Sasha was a familiar face, it seemed. No one batted an eye as he passed the patrols, the guards. They nodded to him and looked away.
Sasha showered quickly. The water was too warm, and he turned it down, all the way down, until it was just the frigid cold of the Moscow River pumping through the pipes, snowmelt from the north pouring over Sasha’s skin. He stood in the water, face upturned. Would he freeze from the inside out or the outside in?
Sergey’s presence was everywhere, saturating everything, making him dizzy. He couldn’t think, not with Sergey attacking his every sense. Sergey’s soap, Sergey’s shampoo. He felt like an invader, like a man who had broken into someone’s house, who was using their belongings as if they could worm their way inside the life, inside the soul, of their obsession. He palmed off the water, hurried out of the shower.
He toweled off—Sergey’s scent in the towel,govno, he breathed it so deeply, held it in his lungs—and then draped the towel over the shower door to dry. He straightened it just so, perfect right angles, half inside half outside the shower. Dressing, he fled Sergey’s bathroom. The scent clung to him, embedded into his skin, extruded from his pores.
The bed stilled him, made his steps stutter, halt.
That divot in the mattress, the dent in the sheets. The tangle that looked like a hand had grasped, squeezed. If he crawled into the sheets, buried his face in the mattress, would he smell Sergey’s release? Hear his shouts, his groans, like pressing his ear to a shell? Could he taste him, if he found a drop of dried come to press his tongue to, wet the cotton sheets and sucked?
Would Sergey let him suck him off again? Swallow his cock, feel his heaviness on his tongue, taste everything about him—his heady masculine musk, the crispness of his soap, a hint of sweat. Milk moans and gasps from him, until Sergey curled around him, gripped his head, pulled his hair. Until his taste exploded, feeding Sasha, feeding that part of him that was hungry all the time. That begged for satisfaction. For a cock to suck dry.
He turned away, braced himself against Sergey’s dresser as his knees wobbled. How long had it been since––
Never again, he’d sworn. Not after—
Never, ever again.
His promises ofneverhad all fallen flat when it came to Sergey, though. Never would he kiss him. Never would they become anything. Never would he let Sergey lure him into temptation. Never would he put Russia’s future at risk, not for the carnal debasement he craved from Sergey.
Never would he allow any harm to come to Sergey.
His heart clenched as his stomach hollowed out. He hadn’t been strong enough to withstand Sergey, hold up against his affection, the way his body and soul called to every atom of Sasha’s being, dragged him closer, until he was caught, until he was free falling into Sergey and all of his warmth, the shine of his soul. He couldn’t withstand the sun, couldn’t fight gravity pulling him into Sergey’s orbit.
But he had to protect Sergey. No matter what that meant, what that took.
Even—
Swallowing, Sasha looked down. His hands gripped the edge of the dresser. Sergey was his sun, he always had been. Maybe Sasha was a comet, a chunk of ice and dust hurtling for him. Maybe he was breaking apart, shattering in his radiation, in the heat that melted Sasha away.
Maybe Sergey would break him, strip him down past all his defenses to the barest bone, and then more, until he was cells and naked atoms hurtling toward the sun, always wanting more, even when it meant his complete and total destruction. Would he smile as his last atom burned away?
Maybe he’d slingshot back into the stars, disappear forever on a loop into infinity. If he went beyond Neptune, beyond Pluto, would he still feel Sergey’s heat? Or would he freeze again, disappear in ice and dust and nothingness? The sun would keep on spinning. It always did.
Maybe he was the moon, trapped in Sergey’s orbit, the world rising between them forever.
His orbit trembled. He felt the world creep closer.Occultation, his mind threw up.When an object is hidden from view. When another object passes between.
His barren, frozen dust screamed for the sun’s rays, for his light and heat to brush his surface. Sergey tried, he tried so hard, to reach him.
But the world kept rising between them.
Occultation. Eclipse.
He fled.
He kept to the stairwells and the access tunnels, evading the patrols and Sergey’s security team like a parasite, like an infection evading the host. What would the world do when they found out? How would they react? Jack and Ethan had endured the world’s censure, had endured the Americans’ fickle fascinations and frustrations. How much worse would the reaction be here, in Russia?
