Royal was startled. She had never heard him speak in English. His accent was even stronger than Dmitry’s. She tried to suppress her sudden urge to ask him one hundred questions about their boss. Instead, she kept it simple.
“Where is the basement?” she asked, trying not to look as shocked as she actually was.
Anatoly walked pass her to the bookshelf, grabbed the large wooden furniture by its ends, grunted a little as he shifted the heavy oak and moved it further down the wall. There, as plain as day, was a door. He hit a code on the security system and opened the vault-like contraption.
“You can buzz me from your place on the security sys-tem. Just hit 22#. I won’t be here when you open or when you close. Just at night and early mornings.”
Royal shook her head in amazement. As normal, Ana-toly showed no emotion and with a nod he disappeared behind the door and left her alone.
“Well, I’ll be damned. What else don’t I know about this place?” she asked, taking her shoes off her aching feet.
Letting her long hair down from its bundle, she slowly made her way upstairs to recover from a very tedious day.
Chapter 6
Steam billowed up creating a marvelous and aromatic fog throughout Royal’s marble bathroom. To set the mood for a more relaxing late evening, she had taken some of the candles Dmitry had given her a few weeks ago and lit them around the bathroom and her bedroom. The luminous glow made her feel pretty or at least relaxed.
To purge her thoughts, she connected her IPod and let the music blast throughout the apartment. Chris Cornell sang his heart out on his Euphoria Morning CD, and Royal hummed along.
The hot water cascaded over her body, relaxing her aching muscles and drowning some of her more disturbing thoughts. Unfortunately, there were many of them tonight. She drifted into the haze for a while thinking of Dmitry – trying to figure him out. Her infinite questions consumed her.
Did he really care about her at all? What if she was reading too much into their friendship all along? Dmitry was a millionaire with homes and businesses all over the world. He was beautiful and brilliant. And she was a broke, orphaned virgin with nothing to offer. Did he really take her seriously or was she just something to do for the moment?
The steam curled her long hair dangling down her back and over her long caramel shoulders, cooking through her skin and interrupting her thoughts. She couldn’t tell if it was the heat or her heart,but she suddenly felt claustro-phobic. She wiped the water from her face and took a deep breath.
“Ugh, I need to get out of here,” she said, turning off the violent water rushing from the showerhead.
Wrapping a large terrycloth towel around her body, she opened the door to the congested bathroom and allowed the cloud to drift into her bedroom. Shivering, she dropped the fluffy towel and slipped on her short, black silk robe quickly, trying to minimize her exposure to the cold air blasting through the vents.
Royal sat on the side of the bed for a moment, as still as could be in a daze. Her mind began to drift again, back to Dmitry. It had been so thoughtful to put on such a grand affair for her. However, she was pained by his unexpected interruption. And she was even more pained by his return.
With Dmitry, she could never tell what was next. He was a spur of the momenttype of man, something that was not always a good thing. What bothered her more was her growing connection to him. Was it possible that she was the only one who felt the strong, red emotions? Were all the smiles, kisses and compliments simply kind gestures of a seasoned man who felt sympathy for an underprivileged youth? Had she romanticized their friendship into some-thing more because of her lack of intimate relationships? Her questions were endless.
Blinking fast to push back the tears, she thought about the work that was still left to do and grabbed her notepad off the nightstand. There were other things to occupy her time with besides sulking. Things that had to be done. Feeling sorry for herself would do her no good. Dmitry was probably having drinks with his real friends at that very moment – not thinking about her.
To change her dismal mood, she would make herself a cup of hot tea, sit in front of the fireplace in the living room and tweak her marketing plan.
The thought comforted her. Work. It was the one thing that she could depend on to numb her senses and to remind her that there were things more important than silly, overrated emotions, like not starving to death or having a place to stay.
Remembering what itfelt like for her stomach to growl with no end, to have stomach cramps due to lack of food snapped her out of her thoughts of Dmitry. Grateful for evident and more importantly current blessings, she got up and headed to the kitchen.
As she entered out of her bedroom, she looked across the large living room in its darkness to see Dmitry quietly sitting by the fireplace on the couch sipping out of a crystal goblet with his long legs crossed. He stared into the fire. Thinking. Brooding. Stunned, she stopped in her foot-steps. Her heart pounded in her chest. She caught her fleeting breath and cleared her voice.
“Dmitry?” she whispered softly.
“Royal.” He looked up from his glass but didn’t move. His eyes focused on her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Dmitry chose his words carefully, visibly fighting with himself over what to say.
“Remember in restaurant, I saidthat I would see you later. Well, it’s later,” he said, putting down his glass.
“Yeah, it is,” she looked over at the clock. A quarter past midnight.
He followed her gaze to the grandfather clock and sighed.
“Sorry to come so late. It couldn’t be helped.”
“What was so urgent that you had to come tonight?”
“Don’t you already know?”
“If I did, would I ask?”
There was complete silence. The fireplace crackled.
“You know that you have money to burn when you have the air on and fireplace,” he said,redirecting his sudden discomfort. “It is just like you, you know. To have two forces working in the same room at the same time to satisfy you,and you never even notice.” A smile crept across his face as he looked over at the fire.
“Did you come over to tell me to turn off my fire-place?” Royal snapped.
“No.” Dmitry looked over at her and sighed. “I know that messed up with you tonight. And I wanted to come to you before it was too late to mend.” He smirked. “Tonight was supposed to be special. I wanted to talk to you about us now that shop is out of the way.”
“Us?” Royal’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Dah, I want there to be an us. You can’t tell me you don’t know how I feel about you. Everyone knows. It’s grown to be too difficult for me to hide.”
Royal bit her lip. So he did care. She was relieved, even without clarification.
“I know how I feel about you, but I’m clueless about how you feel about me,” she confessed, voice quivering. “I haven’t had much training in this. So, I’m really confused. I don’t know if you give me all this stuff and all this attention because you think of me as your pet or if you really like me or if you really, really like me.”
The darkness cloaked her face and the range of emotion that flashed over it, but Dmitry could detect her guard down without visibly seeing it. He stood up and walked over to her, towering over her. Taking her chin under his finger, he lifted her head where he could see her face under the moonlight shining in through the blinds.
“Royal, I don’t like you. I love you. There is big difference between the two.”
She looked up, tears in her eyes. Swallowing hard, she tried to control her beating heart. Dmitry’s words sounded like an angel playing his harp.
“Do you know how impossible that is to believe,” she asked, blinking fast to push back her salty calamity.
Dmitry was confused. Why would she not believe him? What had he done? Were the gifts and attention not a reflection of his growing admiration? He tried to simplify his thoughts, foc
using on the primaries of their relationship.
“Why is it so impossible for me to love a woman who is so innocent, so beautiful?”
“Because I have nothing to offer you. And the one thing that I do have, I’m so damned reluctant to give up…even though I want to.” She made sure to clarify her desire. “Men like you are hard to read, Dmitry. You’ve said it yourself. I don’t want to sound like I don’t have self esteem, but it’s pretty hard to battle my shortcomings when everything comes up short against you.”
Dmitry was shocked and humbled.
“But you are worth more than all of my possessions. I will trade everything for you. I mean, don’t you love me even just little bit?” He had to know. His voice ached.
“It would be impossible not to love you, Dmitry.”
“Oh…because of my money.”
“No,” Royal shook her head adamantly. “Not at all. It’s because you make me feel...special, like I’m the only woman in the room. No one has ever made me feel like that.”
“You arethe only woman in the room.” He spoke softly. “Do you love me?” He wanted to hear her say it again.
“Yes, I love you,” she confessed with tears in her eyes.
Dmitry smiled like a new born seeing his mother for the first time. His suspicions had been correct. His timing was not off. It had been hard to come to her for fear of possible rejection and how it would affect their working relationship, but she had made is easier for him now. She loved him.
“Would it be absurd to see yourself dating a man like me? I mean, I know I am older than you, nearly old enough in some countries to be your father, but…”
“It wouldn’t be absurd. I’m just not fully sure what type of man you are, Dmitry?”
Dmitry’s eye twitched as if the answer was far too complex to explain, even to her.
She shifted her weight to one side and put her hand on her hip. As she took a deep breath, Dmitry watched the swell of her breasts under her robe. In the sudden outpour of emotion, she had forgotten that she was naked with the exception of a small slip of silk fabric, but he had not.
“I want you so bad it hurts,” he whispered running his fingers over her collarbone. He watched her breaths quicken. She looked up at him wantonly, lips formed for a kiss. He could not resist her or the throbbing below controlling him, pushing him to have her. His fingers caressed her soft silk. Pulling her to him, he leaned down and grabbed her by the waist. He picked her firm, volup-tuous body up in his arms and held her at eye level.
She smiled at him.
“So you’ve broken in my house; we’ve confessed that we love each other; you’ve picked me up; I guess I know what’s next.”
“Umm...are you afraid?” he asked, carrying her to her bedroom.
“Yes,” she nodded. She wasn’t expecting for him to ask for her now. His sudden assumption, however, prevented her from backing down. In fact, she wanted to make love to him. That in itself was a foreign emotion to her. She had never desired someone the way that she desired him.
“Don’t be afraid. I make sure that you enjoy.”
Dmitry had never seen her hair down before and en-joyed very much how naturally beautiful she was. Smelling of vanilla extract, its mass fell down her back and around her shoulders in an inky, full mane. She wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulders while he carried her. The trip was short.
The candles had created a beautiful aroma of sandal-wood and jasmine and the large bedroom casted a romantic glow over Royal’s body.
“Are you sure that you didn’t know that I was com-ing?” he asked amused.
“This wasn’t for you.”
“It is now.”
Dmitry sat her down on the bed carefully, marveling at the contrast of her dark skin and the monochromatic comforter. His liquid eyes looked almost silver in the dark; they barely blinked. Taking off his suit jacket, he kept his gaze on her. She lay in bed waiting for him, still covered by the silk robe, clinging to it nervously. Watching his every move, her eyes became bigger as he approached. Clothes still on, he crawled in between her long, shapely brown legs and rested his elbows beside her.
“This is our first kiss,” she said, voice quivering.
“Umm…among other things.” He raised his brow at her.
Slowly, Royal lifted her head as she felt Dmitry’s mas-sive arms swaddling her like a blanket. She rested back in his hands and wrapped her arms around his neck. Like when they first met, they caught each other in a mesmeriz-ing gaze – happy to have finally arrived at this moment.
Still smiling, Dmitry dipped his head and carefully, slowly kissed the fullness of Royal’s sweet lips. He met her wet mouth with a gentle greeting, tasting of wine and chocolate. She barely responded at first, but the more she smelled his cologne and felt his hard body between her thighs, the more her lips parted and her own body came alive.
They wrapped themselves in a passionate embrace, synchronizing their kiss to move with the ebb and flow of the moment. Angelic. Erotic. Beautiful. She felt herself drifting away in a sweet euphoria of her own. Kissing him was like floating, like the first high of some dangerous and illicit drug. The inviting shape of his full pink lips drew her in more, and she moved past the initial shock of being there with him and began to kiss him deeper, stronger.
He moaned a little as she opened up, exciting him more by the moment.
Inhaling his cologne as he ran his hand down her sto-mach, she felt the robe open. His hands brushed against her hot skin causing her to gasp. A new tingling sensation ran through her.
He caught her lips and kissed them again, releasing her only to push closer to her body. Her long thin fingers glided through his fragrant hair as she tasted his kiss, curling her fingers in his large blonde tendrils. It felt like cotton.
“We’ll go very slowly,” Dmitry whispered, cupping her breasts in his large hands.
Royal eyes opened wide. Excitement and urgency mixed like a strange medicine in her blood. Her heart raced, beating against his own like a drum.
“Wait,” she stopped. Planting her elbows in the bed, she glared up at him.
Dmitry stopped and sat up. His eyes focused in on her, their diamond prisms flickering in the darkness.
Royal took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She swallowed hard.
“I…need a minute,” she panted, pulling her long ten-drils from her face.
Moving from in between her legs, Dmitry ran his hands through his own hair, trying to calm the beast that had been nearly released in him. “Okay, baby,” he said, allowing her to crawl out of the bed.
“Just a minute,” she said,lifting her index finger. “I’ll be right back.”
“Alright,” Dmitry said, watching her run into her bath-room and close the door behind her.
Leaning against the wall, Royal looked at herself in the mirror. She wiped his kiss from her mouth and went to the sink. Running water over her face, she tried to stop her shaking hands. She was in complete shock. Peering at her reflection, she took the towel and wiped her face. Her cheeks were fire red.
The weight of her actions consumed her. Twenty-three years of waiting and here she was about to do it. Her heart started to race again. The sound clearly audible through her chest. Twenty three years.
God, please let me be making the right decision, she prayed silently. I hold on to it for twenty three years, but I meet this guy and in less than three months it’s thrown all away because of some diamonds and money.
She berated herself, but inwardly she knew that he had given her much more than material gain. He had given her true and utter happiness.
What if I do it wrong, she continued as she grabbed her toothbrush. What if I’m just horrible at this? She opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed her toothpaste and deodorant.
The climate was much different outside of the bath-room. Dmitry sat back on her pillows with his hands behind his head listening to her rattle through the cabinets and the water running. He yawned an
d pulled himself out of the bed.
Pealing out of his clothes one slow layer at a time, he watched the door, waiting for her to finish her unneeded beauty regiment. Once he had pulled the covers back and put his clothes on her dresser, he heard the racket stop.
The door slowly opened, illuminating the bedroom as she walked back out. She stopped at the entryway with the robe tightly tied around her waist. Perfume floated out and tickled his nose.
Dmitry sighed when he saw her. She was absolutely breath taking. Her long hair was pulled up in a pony tail. Her caramel-colored skin while only slightly revealed, glowed in the darkness.
She eyed him curiously as he stood up and walked to her.
Royal didn’t speak. She could not. Her eyes were stuck to his colossal naked body. Muscles rippled through his tanned skin from his neck down his long muscular torso pulsating with little intricate muscles in his stomach through his large shaped legs to his giant calves. Besides the perfection of his muscular frame, there were also many tattoos. There were stars, crosses, butterflies, words in Cyrillic. What did it all mean? She took his body in through her eyes and was now more nervous than ever.
Realizing her inexperience, Dmitry gave her a reassuring smile. With a tender kiss on the forehead, he ran his fingers down her arms and grabbed her hands to pull her to him. Leaning down, he kissed her again, holding her face in his large hands. His sweet passion relaxed her. She felt herself melting into his embrace again, forgetting about everything including the large member that poked at her ribcage.
Still kissing her, Dmitry pulled at her robe again. The soft fabric hit the floor and exposed her long perfect temple. Feeling vulnerable, she curved into his body and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her skin felt like the silk against him. He picked her up quickly and carried her back to the bed.
“Are you ready now?” he asked, laying her down again.
Royal sighed and touched her head. “I think so.” She had a nervous smile on her face.
Dmitry crawled into the bed, in between her shaking long legs and bent down to kiss the delicate crease between her hip and thigh. He ran his fingers down the length of her flat stomach, caressing her skin. Complete perfection. He marveled at her softness, the muse-like form of all her limbs.
Dmitry's Closet Page 7
