Chapter 24: 21.

- You're bleeding.

I inhaled his words, held them captive in my chest where I heard them reverberate inside my head. A waft of cold air travel up my shirt as he drew away from me.

The place where his lips had once occupied, now belonged to his imprint—a second layer of skin which ached and thawed. A trail of goosebumps made their way down the length of my leg, and I shivered.

Yuri was grinning.

How was it possible? How was it possible that time hadn't stopped altogether, that the floor hadn't splintered and swallowed me whole?

My hand came up to my lips. I felt them stretch open beneath my fingers, moving apart like tectonic plates. My voice sounded foreign. Far away.

- I am?

He nodded. His smile was so bright, brighter than the sunlight spilling into the room. I was helplessly reeled in like a piece of plastic by his ever so blue irises. I was weak to their pull, their ebb. I washed into him, drowned in the movements of his body. His jeans-clad leg brushed along the length of my inner thigh, his woolly sweater rubbed against my sleeve. Neither of us spoke, yet the room was filled with noise. We shifted, rearranged. His chest pressed up against mine. Everything came to a standstill except our hearts which beat like an orchestra of dissonant instruments against each other.

Yuri's fingers hovered less than a centimeter from my lower lip, and like a phantom touch, they already evoked the stinging to come. I swallowed. His eyes glanced down at my lips before he tilted his head and moved in.

The one prayer ingrained in me: Lord have mercy, flashed in neon before my eyes. I wasn't one to pray, at least never with any heartfelt inflection, but then again, my heart had never felt like it was coming apart at the seams.

I didn't think it was possible for the constricting pain in my chest to worsen, until his tongue dart across my lower lip, and I realised: oh. I didn't have the time to react. One second he was there, and the next, he was pulling away.

He blanched.

- I'm sorry. He shook his head as if he couldn't believe what he'd just done. A sheepish smile seeped into his expression.

My insides felt gouged out, uprooted, and squashed against the roof of my mouth. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other under my scrutiny. His eyes darted downwards. He was just about to say something when I noticed my hands fist the fabric of his coarse sweater. My lips crashed into his with a frenzied hunger I could scarcely believe came from inside me. Yuri staggered back, yet I wanted him closer, closer than what was physically possible. The back of his legs hit the chair next to his desk. He jerked in place to steady us. Our lips moved in tandem. It wasn't enough. I wanted to inhale him. I wanted him melting into me. I wanted his skin draped over mine like a fur coat. I opened my mouth.

I wanted too much.

Our teeth collided, and the growing tension, bordering on pain, in my groin snapped. Yuri untangled himself from me, shoulders rolling with silent laughter, and I gave in to an awkward breath of air that fell somewhere on the spectrum between a moan and a sigh of relief.

- Steady. He said it like he was calming a feral animal. I felt my whole body flush warm under his amused gaze.

- Here.

His hand came around the back of my head. We met torso to torso. He brushed my hair back with his fingers—intertwined them in the strands. My scalp ached from the previous night's assault, but I don't think I would've moved had I wanted to.

- Don't bite my face off. He whispered over a growing smile.

It was the fourth time our lips were about to touch. I ought to have known what to expect, yet still, the flutters in my stomach flared to life.

Yuri Karamov's lips danced over mine, not as forceful as my kiss had been, but neither as soft as his previous ones. He rewrote the Scripture on my lips till I was humming the hymns of my most primitive desires. His hands—everywhere he touched, every millimeter of movement—coaxed forth my boldness. I was no longer a statue, but a lump of clay which formed to his contours. His tongue licked a blazing trail over my mouth, and I revelled in the feel of him; rejoiced that my breaths were just as shallow as his and that he wanted this as clumsily and as desperately as me. We stole air where we were able to; a sharp inhale at the other's philtrum, in the dip between each other's lower lip and chin, and straight from each other's lungs. We broke apart and came together in perfect synergy.

I came to with awe when he laid a hand on my chest, and gently pushed me back. His lips were swollen. The contours of his mouth pink with blood perfusion. He grinned.

- Konstantin. His words came out in one quick rush of air, his voice hoarse.

- Have you kissed before?

If it was an accusation, there was no heat to show for it. He licked the red tint of blood on his lips, and I mirrored him.

- I have, I retorted, flustered. It was stupid of me to lie, but I couldn't stand his gloating. It wasn't my first time lying about it either. Rumours around our school had it that I was a womanizer. The whole thing started with a spread of teen idol Anfisa Daveshka and I in an issue of a girl's magazine. I didn't realise that it would cause the ruckus it did at the time. Sprinkle in some shoots alongside other models, and before I knew it, I'd earned a reputation for kissing girls and skipping school to attend parties in the capital. I found the whole ordeal too exaggerated to warrant an explain to why I didn't have those desires. Or that my father would have my head if either of those two things were true.

The way Yuri looked at me, calculating every expression that filtered in and out of my face, told me he was reluctant to believe the rumours.

- Who was it? He asked.

- Who? I was taken aback. What was it to him anyway?

- The girl, your first kiss.

I straightened my back.

- I don't know some...girl. Some model.

His eyes burned into mine, unreadable.

- Does it matter? I asked.

There was a long pause, in which the only thing that changed in Yuri's expression was a quirk in his mouth.

- You've really grown up.

Seeing my confusion, he clarified, - Remember when you used to stammer when you lied? You don't anymore.

I heard myself chuckle. I touched my lips. They ached, a tell-tale sign that reinforced everything that had transpired in his room.

- Do you really know? I asked. - From just a kiss?

- You tried eating my face like shashlik. I would be daft not to.

He was smiling.

- Then why did you continue? I teased. - You liked it.

- Of course, I did. You were eating my face like shashlik.

His intonation, the subtle way one point of stress transformed his sentence, turned the butterflies in my stomach into bats. I leaned back against the desk. The palm of my hands cut into the tabletop. Yuri regarded me, waiting for a response. Waiting for what seemed like my rebuttal of the matter. A few seconds of silence died in our midst. His fingers fiddled with the hem of his sweater.

My mind flashed back to all the girls who had fallen for his looks, (some who I knew, but mostly ghosts of girls that I had seen Yuri with at some point) and the ones I'd heard he'd dated who knew the feeling of having their lips pressed against his. I envied them, yet at that moment, I couldn't help but feel sorry for them. They had only known one side of him; the handsome boy with the charismatic attitude. They hadn't been flocking around him when he wore his hair long and had walked around in a hand-me-down school uniform. They didn't know him at all. At least not the way I knew him. And they would never know him in that moment, when the cocksure Yuri Karamov of their dreams, turned timid, and unsure because he had kissed a guy, and had liked it.

I smiled to myself. My chest flaring up with a primal possessiveness.

- I haven't kissed anyone before, I confessed

The seconds dripped onto the floor and formed a pool at our feet.

- I knew that, he whispered. His smile was small, barely there. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I cut him off.

- There were girls...in Rujga, sure. But...I'm not a smooth talker. I can't...I—what do you even say to them? I closed my mouth against the spew of words that wanted out. I steadied my breathing before saying, - I don't think I'm built for that, kissing girls I mean. The mechanisms around that and what to say—

Yuri pressed up against my side, effectively cutting my nervous rambling off. His hand came up to cup my face. The bruising around my eye protested under his touch. I flinched, but I didn't move away. His eyes were so tender; his cheeks the texture of silk, beckoning my touch.

- Ru.

He hesitated. His fingers moved over my bruise. Whatever he was about to say forked on another path, and instead he asked, - Who did this to you?

- I swear to God-, his breath was hot on my face, - I will beat them with a crowbar. Millin's downstairs we could all take the train to Rujga and break their spines. Just—

I flinched and lost all sense of control at the sound of his name. My mind tripped over itself in its hurry to digest the words hanging between us.

Was he here?

- He's here? I asked, glancing at the closed door. My body flashed hot, scalding hot, and then ice cold.

Yuri's eyebrows drew together. He made room for me to move away from under him, but I might have shoved him away. I distinctly remember him floundering as he sidestepped our intertwined legs. I took several steps away from him, towards the windows.

His lingering imprint on my face scalded my skin like molten lava.

- Millin? He asked. His expression was one big question mark.

- He's downstairs, I met him at the market this morning. His papa...

- Ru, what's wrong?

I was shaking my head. I should have known.

I should have known.

- Why didn't you tell me he was here? He could have walked in...and...and...

My words were eaten away by deafening silence. I had whole sentences with faulty syntax, and words; a spew of words, lodge in my throat, ready to be hurled out once I found the brainpower to structure them. I was retreating, scatterbrained, looking for refuge from the way Yuri's face was hardening. My calves hit the bed frame. I plumped down on the mattress.

- So are my sisters, Yuri said. - Surimna? She's always barging in without knocking. So is my mother, and my father. What does it matter? Why is—

- Yeah, but...but still...

I was listening, but I wasn't really hearing him over the roar in my head. It was different. This was different, didn't he get that? We were talking about Millin, with his military buzz cut, and smirks, and unwelcome lours.

- Do you regret it? Yuri's face was carved from jagged moonstone. I wanted nothing more but to reach out and smooth out the harsh lines in his clenched jaw, in his furrowed brow.

- What? No! Does—do you mind...if he finds out? Do you tell him?

There was a second of absolute silence, in which Yuri's expression went completely blank before he erupted into laughter. He swayed on his feet before he lurched forward towards me and came to stand beside the bed, close enough that our knees touched. His smile was the watt of a million suns.

- Why would I do that?

A dizzying rush shot straight to my head as blood permeated my face.

- He's not all that bad, you know, Yuri said, looking down at me. - He's got some issues, but Ru, so do you.

- Mine are nowhere near the size of his. You know, I saw him making out with Adriana. In a family café. In the middle of the day.

I looked pointedly at him, but he only stared back, his expression blank as if what I said didn't phase him.

- See, that's your issue, he said. - You think Adriana's somehow better than him. It takes two to kiss in case you hadn't noticed, so if you're gonna blame Millin, you might want to blame your cousin as well. But you won't, will you?

I opened my mouth to refute him but closed it just as quickly. I swallowed and reconsidered.

- It's not the same, I said. - You know it isn't. He's a guy and she's a girl.

- No, you mean he's a Brommian brute, and she's an Arash princess.

I sighed, - That's not it.

- Enlighten me. Yuri's face twisted up in that cruel way I had seen once before.

- It has nothing to do with him being Brommian, I said. - He gets girls this way, that way, willy-nilly, what does he want with my Adriana? She's an elite gymnast, she doesn't have the time to be playing around. Besides, she's a girl. How would she know if he's being genuine with her? He could say whatever, and by the looks of it, he already has because he has her wrapped around his finger. It's unbecoming.

- Unbecoming? He scoffed. If I had hoped that my reasoning would calm him, I was proven wrong. Yuri's expression was barbwire and toxic radiation.

- Why are you making your cousin out to be the victim? She has a mouth, and a will of her own, doesn't she? Is it that impossible for you to grasp that-, he faked a shocked gasp, - she might actually like him? That there might be a quality to him worth liking? All you see is a Brommian brute who refuses to conform, and why should he? There's nothing for us here! It irks you that he has the most popular girls in town fawning on him. Girls like him, and it makes you boil because you've been told there's a proper way. The Arash way, with your outdated, superfluous language, and a stick of perfect manners up your butt. You look down at him, and you dismiss him. And yes, that internalizes in the long run. It does, and it turns into aggression. He's—

- I look down at him? I cut off. I was floored, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

- How would he know? We haven't spoken in years. When I tried, he talked over my head. He deliberately spoke in Brommin so that I couldn't understand. He doesn't even look at me, and you know why.

I stared at Yuri, held his gaze, and spit the rest of my words, - It's because I'm Bikjaru Arash. I'm the son of a count.

I dared him to deny it. When he didn't, I said, - Yes, he is a brute, but it has nothing to do with him being Brommian. He's stupid and dangerous, and a bully, and...He's unworthy of my cousin.

I didn't like Yuri's expression, didn't like the way I couldn't tell what emotion was dominating at the time. His eyes were clouded by a storm waiting to wreak havoc.

- What about me then? His voice was low. - I'm cut from the same cloth as him. We were rocked in the same cradle as infants. Am I worthy of you?

I jerked back in chock as if he had physically struck me.

- Why do you do that? I asked. I hardly recognised my own voice.

- Do what?

Why did he always insisting on putting a wedge between us by making this an 'us versus you' thing?

- Do what, Ru? His hand came up to touch my ear. His cold fingers tugged on my earlobe before they found their way to my temple. He tucked a few strands of hair behind my ear.

- Don't you think I want to be more like him? Don't you think I've tried...but I can't. I can't...I—I don't—there are rules, I said, exasperated. - This is the way I was raised, and I can't change it any more than he can.

- Don't you get it? I don't look down at you. I want to be like you, be cool, and suave, and not care. I just...I don't want to care, but I do. I care what they say. I care about this. I pointed to my face, at where I imagined the angry bruise was staring back at him.

- This used to be the only place where I could forget, where I wasn't different from you, or Millin, or your sisters. I considered this my second home. Your parents treated me like I was their son. But this town-, I shook my head, - it won't let me forget who I am. What I am. My name is...is...a collar. So please-, I felt my Adam's apple bob as I swallowed, - when I'm here, when we're together please don't pull it any tighter than it already is.

Yuri's gaze softened. He didn't step back, and I didn't free myself from his searching gaze.

- Okay. He was nodding. - Okay.

He drew back, miles into himself. His eyes glazed over, absentminded. His fingers drew cold scribbles on my scalp. I couldn't tell who, out of the two of us, was more soothed by his action. I leaned into him and rested my forehead against his torso.

We stayed like that until our breaths became the only measurement of time passing.

I felt, rather than heard, Yuri's stomach growl in hunger. I chuckled against him in the awkward silence that followed. My head felt heavy, my muscles strained when I craned my neck to looked up at him.

- We should probably head downstairs, I said.

He wore a lazy grin, - Yeah, we probably should.

He leaned in and poked my bruised cheekbone. I jerked from the pain.

- Be prepared for a lot of questions, he warned.

My protest died on my lips. My stomach churned, and it wasn't from hunger.