* * *
Alina’s phone alarm went off at six, the room in darkness. She looked at his back, could see from the set of his shoulders that Demyan was awake. As her eyes grew accustomed she could make out the bruises. Her hand moved to his shoulders and she felt the despair and the tension in them. ‘Demyan...’ She wanted more, wanted to know more, and she wanted to give now rather than be taken.
Demyan closed his eyes as her hands worked his shoulders, rolling onto his stomach and almost giving in to the bliss of her bottom on the small of his back as her hands soothed him and then her mouth on his neck. He turned over and looked up at her.
‘I make coffee...’
‘Demyan...’ She didn’t understand him, could feel him hard, nudging against her, and it had been okay when he had been showing her, teaching her, but it apparently wasn’t okay now. So badly she wanted to make love to him yet, like Demyan, she refused to beg.
‘Two sugars,’ Alina said, and rolled off.
He kissed her sulking mouth. ‘You remind me of a much nicer version of me,’ Demyan said, and got up.
‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’
‘Oh, it is.’ He pulled on black jeans. ‘I’d better get dressed, I don’t want to scare the florist...’
As Alina lay there, trying to fathom the unfathomable, Demyan added two shots of cream to his and two sugars to hers and was glad that they would have visitors this morning because it would be rather too easy to head back to bed and start over again.
He had far too many feelings for Alina and he would prefer not to examine them.
‘Demyan...’ Alina had other ideas. She really wanted to talk and it would be far easier out of bed. She was at the top of the stairs and wrapped in a towel, Demyan at the bottom holding the coffee, when the door opened and both were met by angry, accusing eyes and teenage rage.
‘Is this the reason you don’t fight for me?’
‘Roman,’ Demyan shouted as the coffee landed on the floor, but Roman wasn’t waiting to listen to his father. Hurling abuse, he turned and ran.
‘Some souka shows up and you...’
‘Roman!’ Demyan roared. Alina fled back to the bedroom and sat on the bed, her head in her hands, as the door slammed, only to be opened by Demyan and not even closed as he sped out after his son.
The alarm went off just to confuse things and Alina sped down and was punching in the numbers, wearing only a towel, as Libby arrived. She gave a very subtle eyebrow rise at Alina’s appearance and then glanced down at Alina’s waitressing uniform on the floor.
For Alina, to have her private life, her very new, very private sex life, exposed like that was excruciating.
She dressed in yesterday’s clothes but the hooks on her bra had been flattened by Demyan’s less than patient attempts to get it off.
She doubted he kept safety pins!
And it wasn’t just the eye roll from Libby but the florist coming in as she tried to make the bed.
Alina took herself out of the way as best she could, standing in the terrace garden as the royal couple and their entourage made their way through. There was no sign of Demyan.