Beastly Passions (23 page)

Taras inhaled deeply and his pupils turned to needle points. A snarl was all the warning she received before he took her by the hips and yanked her towards his face. A hard gasp bounced out and Asha burrowed her right hand in his still damp hair, grasping for purchase as his tongue circled the bundle of nerves and licked all thought from her. She could do no more than ride the small muscle in exceeding rapture while he rolled it around the focal point of her sex and left her lashes to butterfly.

He groaned along with her whimpers and Asha felt herself beginning to step off the proverbial cliff of undeniable euphoria he’d created with just the brush of his fingertips along her skin. His tongue moved to allow his lips to take hold and when he sucked, she could last no longer. Her core pulled at air in search of something to fill it and she was not made to wait because in the midst of her crying out, he mounted her. Taras kept her in her position, just tipping over the side of the mattress as he plunged forward into her still convulsing sheath, meeting no resistance. She slammed her hands down against sheets for lack of anything better to do with them and stared up at him through blurred vision as he pressed a kiss just between her breasts.

The shove of his cock was merciless; as hard and demanding as the man himself. She took every inch of it with nothing less than total elation and begged for more. He gave it to her. Faster. Harder. Closer.

This was different. The sensations. The need. It was all so different. The heat in her belly became unbearable in its intensity. Sweat beaded on her skin, leaving Asha to feel as though she was melting.

Taras folded forward and tapped her thighs as a sign for her to wrap them about his waist. She followed the directive and felt him slide just that much deeper. He caught her gasp in his mouth and pushed it back with his tongue. The hand that hadn’t deigned to hold her wrists above her head played about with her nipples; twisting and pulling until she jerked away and released the most beastly noise as she came.

Her husband grumbled when she clamped down on him, but he only intensified his strokes. Asha tightened her hold on him while her canines distended. This time her quim’s dance milked his length for all it had to offer and her eyes slammed shut at the look of utter delirium contorting his face.

She vaguely sensed herself leaning forward and widening her mouth over his shoulder.

Do it. Mark him.

The thought was so horrifyingly forceful that she lurched backwards like she’d been slapped. Her lids parted to reveal that she hadn’t followed through with what she’d almost done. And sadly, they also revealed Taras’ overt grimace of both disappointment and what could be categorized as definite heartbreak.

Fourteen

“You’re angry
with me.”

Angry? She believed that he was angry? No, that would have been a welcome emotion compared to the complex cocktail he had fisting in his chest. In a moment that she should have been running totally on instinct alone, when she should have been incomprehensibly focused on Taras, she’d stopped herself. Asha had pulled back from marking him.

“Taras,” his wife tried again when he didn’t take the lead of her attempt to talk to him. “That wasn’t…I never meant to…” She let out a hard exhale behind him. “I’m not entirely sure what to say, how to explain myself.”

“I’m not angry,” he retorted softly, turning away from his chest of drawers after withdrawing something appropriate to wear. “Disappointed? Yes. And,”—he searched for the proper word—“confused? Yes. Very, very confused.”

“I can understand that. I can understand why this may be uncomfortable.”

He barked out a laugh and saw her flinch as he tugged a t-shirt over his head. She had already covered herself with her beloved robe after retrieving it from their bathroom. “Uncomfortable? This is such an eloquent way of putting it.”

She scrubbed her hands along her face. “I wanted to.” Stopping, Asha closed her eyes and grimaced. “I wanted to mark you. And it startled me. The compulsion to do so.
That
is what made me pull back. It was an unintentional reaction.”

Gazing at her, he whispered, “Why?”

His wife opened her eyes. “Why what?”

“Why was the compulsion to mark me startling? I experience this same thing daily. I feel it. It walks with me wherever I go. Yet you stand here and tell me that for you to want the same was startling?
Why?”

“I don’t know,” she told him in a sotto voice. “I don’t know.”

“You do,” he accused, suddenly frustrated and feeling despondency that he hadn’t experienced in years. “You know. But you will not say.”

“Taras—”

“When will you decide that I am worthy, Asha?” Taras interrupted, unable to look at her any longer so he cast his gaze to the wall just over her shoulder. “When will I stop being punished?”

“I’m not punishing you.” She took a step closer, but stopped when he snapped his eyes her way. Putting her hands together as though she were praying, she motioned in his direction and quietly said again, “I’m
not
punishing you.”

“Have you not been happy? Have I misread this? Your affection?”

“I have and no, you haven’t misread anything because every and anything I have shown you was because I wanted to, needed
to even. I just,”—she inhaled—“what I crave from you frightens me. And I’m unclear as to whether or not you are capable of giving it.”

“I would give you
anything,”
he rumbled lowly. “I would do
anything.”

“I know,” Asha readily agreed. “I know. But there are no chinks, Taras. In your armor. You don’t tell me of the things that scare you or what makes you rise from our bed at such early hours. You won’t confess your worries to me. There are glimpses, peeks, of what you keep locked away, but you refuse to show me.”

“Because there are things you shouldn’t see.”

“You can murder a man before my eyes, but you cannot deign to tell me about your childhood?”

He scoffed. “We discussed my ancestry.”

“No
,”
Asha denied. “That is not what I asked about. I’ve asked about your
childhood.
Your upbringing. Who you were as a boy.”

“What relevance does this have to who I am now?”

“Plenty!” she shouted. “And you’re blind if you cannot see that.” Her brow furrowed. “Something happened to you, Taras. Something that made you this way. Because you couldn’t run from it, you embraced it. Yet you won’t name it.”

“Because there is no need.”

“There
is
a need. One that far surpasses what you are willing to admit to yourself and me.”

Feeling wary, he opened his arms. “What is it that you would like to know? What would put this ridiculous argument to rest?”

“Why the violin?” Asha queried softly. “Most boys take up an interest in blood sports. Cubs tend to find themselves fascinated with senseless destruction and the like. So what would possess young Taras to pick up an instrument instead?”

Of all the questions…

“You make something so elementary into a trivial idea,” he told her, interlocking his fingers. “I was still very much so interested in blood sports.”

“Yes, but from your account, you were a phenomenon when a violin was placed into your hands. You’ve mastered being refined, Taras, but at that age? At that level of maturity? You took to one of the greatest mechanisms of classical music? Why?” she prodded, unintentionally digging. “What was so incredibly intriguing about it?”

He remained quiet for a moment debating the honesty of his reply. Debating whether or not he should twist the knob to this specific door. “Grigoriy,” he finally retorted. “Grigoriy was the one who placed it into my hands. Grigoriy was the one who demanded I play. That I practice. That I become a
phenomenon 
at the violin. And do you know why?”

Her silence allowed him to continue as he pulled his shoulders back, straightened his spine and lifted his arms. With his right, he mimed holding the instrument just beneath his chin while with his left, he held an imaginary bow. Closing his eyes, he recalled the notes of 
Ave Maria.

“Because it taught discipline. It taught patience. I was not allowed to put it down before perfecting every stroke of the bow. I was not allowed a break or play time until I could impress him with my skill. He would not give me the leeway to quit. I was made to strum for hours. Song after song after song. My posture impeccable. My face serene. My hands elegant and precise in movement. I would perform as though there was an audience larger than just him watching. And I would not move. I would not think to exhale harsher than needed unless I was told that I could.” He continued to render the tune that only he could hear.

“He wanted you to be good? So you could entertain others like a show animal?”

Taras barked out a laugh at the innocence of her optimism. “At the violin? 
No.”
 He shook his head, his smile most assuredly as bitter as the sensation settling in his chest. “Grigoriy did not give a fuck if I were the second coming of Johann Sebastian Bach.” Stopping his gestures, he reached down onto his nearby desk, pulled a letter opener and flicked his wrist just over his left shoulder. Asha’s gasp along with the sound of the blade embedding itself into the wall greeted him. “
This 
is why he demanded I learn. Because it made hands quicker. Mind sharper. It forced me into self-mastery. Each flourish of bow across strings, each flawless note, cultivated my abilities as a killer. As the…attack dog.”

His wife seemed unable to move.

“I was beaten if I did not do as I was told. I was beaten if I did not do as I was told correctly. I was beaten if I did not do as I was told correctly within the allotted amount of time the command was given. The sweet crescendo of a scale had to be paced justly. The lull of a pitch arcing down into octaves had to resemble the quietest of footsteps. I could not stumble over descending range because this would upset pattern and if pattern was upset it meant my actions were hasty and ill thought out.” Taras’ hands balled at his sides. “I was to be polished and subtle so that I could attain the art of moving swiftly when he needed me to hit a man across the back of his skull without making a sound. I was to be elegant and restrained so that I could lure the feckless into false senses of security before putting blade just between the ribs. Grigoriy did not care about the music. Grigoriy did not care about the talent. Grigoriy did not care about the genius. He only cared—he still only cares—about what damage these hands are capable of.” He swung around and stalked towards the painting, yanking the blade from the wall it had buried itself into. “How strong these hands are. How much fear they are able to evoke. I did not 
choose 
the violin, Asha. It was chosen for me. As a means to condition me like one of Pavlov’s beloved pets.”

She stood there,
her eyes solely on him and full of unnamed things.

“The further you dig, the less you will like what it is that you find. I did not lie when I told you that there is very little good or pure about me. I was taken from the street twice,” he confessed. “
Twice.
Men who wanted to exploit my father’s Achilles heel thought it would be me. That I would be what damaged him. They were distraught to find that he would listen from the other side of the phone as they bruised me and mildly say,
‘If you kill him, you kill the only thing standing in my way.’”

Asha covered her mouth with her hands.

“You were correct. There were things I could not run from. So I had to embrace what would aid me when he would not. I have washed rivers of blood from my palms, but they will never be clean. I have drug myself home by sheer will alone covered in death because I was given no options, no escape. I remained here because who else would have me? Where else could I go? What else could I do? Would it make
you happy to carry the burden of these things?” he challenged, angry with himself for revealing so much, for being that vulnerable when he could have simply spun a well told lie. “To look at my scars and know where they came from?”

She walked
towards him.
“It frightens you, doesn’t it? Being open with others? It’s why you tell me to look no deeper in one breath but can’t seem to stop yourself from asking me to in the next.” She came closer and he found himself wanting to back away, not liking the self-examination she was forcing onto him. “If I assume the worst then there is no risk of me being disappointed, is there?”

Taras clamped his jaw shut. “You are analyzing again.”

“No,” she hedged. “I’m 
feeling. 
Right now, with you, I’m feeling. Do you know what?”

“I don’t care,” he snapped.

“You do. You care. You’re simply afraid to say it. Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have ever suggested that we be friends. A man who is as hard, as unforgiving, as you claim to be would not volunteer to be his wife’s 
friend. 
He would assume that she belongs to him.”