She smiled to herself. Even when she was on top he was still in charge. She’d never thought that would be something she’d get a kick out of. Yet, here she was. Just living in his house.
Looking at the clock on the wall, Dora realized that it was getting close to when Danil would be home. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She needed a job. A spark of inspiration hit her as she wandered back through the main hallway.
Hurrying to her phone she was grinning and laughing with Katya on the other end of the line in moments. Dora studiously took notes on every instruction, checking the fridge and cabinets for ingredients as she went.
An hour later, the babka was in the oven, and Dora wiped down the counters and washed the last of a few dishes in the sink.
She felt, rather than heard, Danil behind her. She turned, startled, and he stood in the doorway of the kitchen. His tie was pulled loose, the first two buttons of his shirt open. He pulled off his suit coat and laid it on the back of a kitchen chair as he moved toward her, slowly, like an animal on the prowl.
When he was only inches from her, Dora turned to face him and he reached around her to turn off the faucet.
“You’re at my sink.” His voice was low and gravelly as he pulled the tie of her apron, letting it fall to the ground. He grazed his fingers over her cheekbone. “You have flowers on your skin.”
“Flour,” she corrected him automatically.
He ignored the correction and pulled her out to the center of the kitchen. He started walking a slow circle around her, his eyes taking in every detail of her. Dora flipped around to keep facing him as he stalked a slow circle around her.
“You stand here. Like woman.”
“What do you mean? Of course I’m standing like a woman. I am a woman.” She wasn’t sure why she was nervous. There was no reason to be nervous. This was just Danil. But as he came back around to face her, she saw something in his eyes, something she’d only glimpsed before. This was the animal inside him. Danil was finally letting him out of the cage.
“No. This is not what I mean. I mean you stand in my house. Your hands in my sink. Your feet bare. You use it like it is yours. Like you are my woman.”
“Well,” Dora blushed, confused and a little flustered. “You were the one who kept telling me to make myself at home. ‘I am home’,” she imitated him in a thick accent. “‘You live here’.”
“No, Dora,” he took her by the chin. “You live in my lap,” he corrected her, waited for her to blush even deeper. “And I do not say this to criticize. I say it because this,” he gestured at her, there in the middle of his kitchen, “it pleases me.”
He planted a kiss on her lips, softer than she was expecting. It was at odds with the fire that burned in his eyes.
“You use my home like it is yours. Because it is. And now you will use me like I am yours. Because I am.”
He took a step back from her and she swayed for him, ready to be touched and stroked and undressed. But he was simply staring at her. Undressing himself.
He started with his tie, whipping it out of his collar and then tossing it aside. Next was his button-up shirt. First he untucked it from his suit pants. And then came the buttons at the wrists, then the ones down the middle. He tossed that aside as well and didn’t hesitate when he went for his belt. His undershirt. He toed off one shoe and then the other. And then his pants were gone too.
Danil stood in front of her, with the eyes of an animal. The body of a jacked, hairy, Belarusian action figure. And a pair of tight boxer briefs that were straining to the edge of their mortal limit.
Dora’s mouth was dry. But pretty much everything else was wet. She was having a little trouble getting air in and out of her lungs, but she was a tenacious woman. She made it happen.
Dora cocked her head to one side. “You want me to…”
“Use me. Yes.”
“Just checking.”
Dora took a step forward and then another, noting the way his eyes dilated, his breath quickened. She walked the same path around him that he had around her. Her eyes taking in every godly inch of him.
Before Danil, she’d been into trim guys. Slim waists, lean muscles. But that was shot to shit now. He stood before her, a tank of a man, straining at the very edges of his own body. Yeah. She was pretty sure there was no going back from this.
Well, when you stood at the edge of the waterfall, you could either turn back and swim upstream, or you could take the plunge. Dora didn’t have to stop to consider what her choice was. She had a lot of talents. But she’d never been a strong swimmer.
Dora pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it on the pile of clothes next to him as she stood at his back. Danil turned at the sound.