Why hadn’t he fucked her? It was a question he’d asked himself a hundred times in the last days. Yeah, yeah. The vulnerable look in her eyes. Of course. But currently, Danil was at war with the side of himself that hadn’t just taken what he’d so badly wanted. Maybe he wouldn’t have tossed and turned in his bed for the last two nights if he’d just done what his body had screamed for.
He knew it wasn’t just his honorable side that had kept him from having sex with her. It was something more than that. Since he’d broken down and talked to her outside of the coffee shop, he’d broken down all the way and done an incredible amount of research on her. She’d been right when she’d said he’d had a Google party. He’d spent a lot longer than he’d care to admit on Google images. She’d always been beautiful. Breathtakingly so. But that wasn’t what had really gotten him. It was her writing.
There were tons of it that could be found online and in a matter of basically an entire day in front of the computer screen, he thought he’d read everything she’d ever written. Every article was so filled with passion and inexhaustible amounts of research. She wrote with heart, humor, and damn near the steadiest hand he’d ever seen. Her viewpoints did not waver. They were carved out of facts. Frustratingly so. In her investigative pieces, her op-eds, even a few personal essays he’d been able to track down, she brought the reader on a journey, with her as his only companion. She was a truly exceptional talent.
She would have made a hell of a lawyer.
But she was a writer. Only to have up and quit four years ago. Just like that. Disappeared from the writing world. From the internet. From the face of the earth for all he could tell. And she’d turned those apples in her hands in the supermarket. And handed him coffee. And when she’d told him that he was the only person she really knew in Spokane, he’d gotten the feeling that she really meant the world.
So, he could have fucked her in that car, like her body was begging for him to do. But she deserved more than that. More than a few angry, stolen moments in a cramped backseat with his brother’s crumbs littered around.
He could have.
But he hadn’t. So here he was, ripping his carcass up a hill like a mountain goat. He had a few rare hours before he had to be in for work.
“Why in god’s good name do you do this?”
Danil bit back a growl of frustration when he heard Emin’s voice coming from beside him. His brother rolled down the passenger window of his car and coasted alongside Danil, following him up the hill.
Danil didn’t answer. Partly because there simply wasn’t enough air in the world right now. But also because his brother could go fuck himself.
“You run as a man when you could be running as bear. I do not understand you, Danishka.”
Still, Danil ignored him. His annoyed rage was enough to give him a final spurt of energy and he gunned it up the rest of the hill. Danil skidded to a stop and almost keeled over. He planted his hands on his knees and watched his brother park his car in the driveway of Danil’s house.
Great, apparently he had a breakfast date. Emin, a genius with a paintbrush, was notorious for burning water. The man couldn’t butter toast. So he bounced from his mother’s house to his brothers’ houses for whatever meal of the day he was hungry for.
Danil leaned down to stretch out his back and legs. He ignored Emin even as he saw his scuffed boots walk up next to him.
“I ask again. Why would you run as man when you could bound and gallop as bear?” Emin asked.
Danil understood the question. Running was awkward and slow as a human when you compared it to how it felt to run as a bear. But they served different purposes.
“Unless you want to sweat as human. Because you need your human heart to race,” Emin posed philosophically. “Because your human body is not getting its poor little needs met, huh?”
Danil knew where he was going with this and completely ignored his brother, straightening up and walking up his driveway. Emin followed behind, showing no insult at being ignored.
“I am thinking that if you are choosing to race and sweat as a human then it is because you wish you were racing and sweating in a different way. I am thinking it means that the sexy journalist is not letting you race and sweat on top of her.”
Now, Danil had heard enough from his loudmouth brother. He opened his front door and slid in, attempting to slam the door on Emin. But Emin was fast, always had been, and was standing in Danil’s living room before the door even closed.
“Ah. I see I’ve hit nail on skull.”
“On the head, Emin. You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Danil corrected, unable to ignore it.