‘I won’t!’ She just kept talking, telling him over and over that she wasn’t going to listen, till he put his hand over her mouth and told her that she would listen.
Alina bit him, dug her teeth into the softness of his palm and bit down and then bit harder. As he gave a stunned ‘Ow’, she released him.
She stared wide-eyed, unable to believe what she had done. She could taste him on her shocked lips and she waited for a slap, or ‘souka’, or for his true colours to show, still not understanding they had long since been revealed to her.
‘Bad girl!’ Demyan said, shaking his hand, which throbbed. She really had sunk her teeth in. ‘Bad girl!’
He started to laugh, as Alina stood there incredulous, not just at his reaction but that she had bitten him. He brought out every part of her—the wild, the shy, the timid, the good, the bad and the animal—and she was crying and laughing and just helpless when he pulled her back to the arms she craved.
His hands roamed over her. She could feel his warm palms over her arms, down her waist, over her bottom, over and over as if he’d missed her body for ever and ever. She wanted him to stop, wanted to tell him to get his filthy, Nadia-stained hands off her, but just one more moment...
One more.
He was kissing her face, her cheeks, her eyes, his lips wet with her tears. ‘Here or bed?’ he asked. ‘I tell you here or bed.’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ There was nothing he could say. An occasional mistress, even a regular one.
She couldn’t be that, yet right now how she wanted to be.
‘Here or in bed,’ Demyan demanded.
And who was she to deny that she wanted his words, wanted some hope of closure? She prayed for anger to return and make a sensible woman of her as she heard his appalling excuse. The thought was enough to part her face from his.
‘Does your ex-wife not understand you, Demyan?’
‘You understand me,’ he said, ‘or one day you will, but for now you understand me more than anyone.’
Okay, so he won a brief taste of her lips, but Alina tried to stop herself, pushed on his chest to lever her mouth from his for her lips just refused to obey her command to desist.
‘Are you staying together for the sake of the children?’ she taunted.
‘Child,’ Demyan corrected. ‘Really he is a young man but, to answer your question, no, I would never stay for the sake of the children.’ Because he was now sure she was pregnant, he wanted to make himself clear. ‘I tried it once. I will not make the same mistake twice.’
‘Then why?’ She sobbed it, almost screamed it, so loudly that passers-by turned round. And finally she did not care what others thought of her, her hurt was too much to contain. ‘How could you go with her? How could you not come and find me...?’
‘Because this messed-up Russian had a lot to sort out before he came to you. A lot,’ he reiterated, ‘but I promise you, I have not slept with Nadia, not one kiss. She leaves me cold. She has left me cold from the first time I slept with her.’ He grabbed her hand and crudely brought it to his crotch. ‘Nadia...’ he said, and smiled at her. ‘Nadia...if you wait a moment it will go down.’
‘Stop it,’ Alina begged. ‘Stop your games, your lies.’