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In her memory, Aleksandr still smells muddled with cigarette smoke, so long ago. Had he stopped smoking? Had he lost the habit with his rebirth?
Aleks had believed her, when Alina had said she smoked. Offered her out a cig, tilting the carton in her direction when she asked after it. She had only ever smoked because Aleksandr did, because of how he would lean over and touch the tip of his cigarette to Alina's. A thin imitation of a kiss she so desperately wanted - one that, in retrospect, he knew he was giving her.
Better yet was when Alina would ask for a drag - and Aleks would hand it over to her without a second glance. She'd chase the last of his mouth, secondhand and fleeting yet damp as all hell on the inside of her lips.
Alina just wanted to put her mouth where Alek's had been. More than cigarettes - bites of food, girls, moleskins. ( To hell with the concept of sloppy seconds - Zoya would pitch a fit if Alina knew she had even considered her in the same sentence as the phrase. )
Alina wanted to close the distance between them so tightly that it'd be his spit wetting her tongue, not her own. Wanted it from the very moment she'd laid eyes on him - half shrouded in darkness, Kribirsk colored and blurry around the edges with her delirium. Oh, how she had wanted - like nothing she ever had before, so deeply that Aleksandr could've smelled it on her collar like perfume.
She's sure he can taste it on her lips now, though; even though Alina can't taste him in return.
Aleks' mouth - soft as ever, silk-like - drags away from her lips, wetness following in its wake down to her chin. A hand twice the size of her own squeezes the small of her waist through the layers of pelting. The junction between her neck and shoulder receives a squeeze as well, less gentle than the one given to her waist.
Alina heaves a breath - she can feel her chest rising and falling heavily with every one. She can feel the pressure of it knocking into Aleksandr's chest, illusion becoming tangible with every brush. " Aleks - "
He shushes her, still with his lips against her skin. His hot breath on the layer of saliva he's left sends goosebumps racing up her arms. "Don't speak, Solnishka. Not unless you're to give me what I want."
And hasn't that always been the case, with him? Had her Aleksandr ever bothered with unimportant things? Pleasure for the sake of seduction, words for the sake of communicating, with him.
"I won't," Alina breathes, art in the twist of her hips forward, poetry in the tangling of her fingers into his disheveled hair, "But I'll give you something better ."
Her words see his brows pinching together, his gloved hands tightening their grip on her; as if she'll escape his grasp now, too. "Which is?" Aleks probes, pulling back.
Alina laughs, nothing more than a warm huff of air. " Me, Aleksandr. Now."
She doesn't have to look to know the shaking of his head, the curve he dips his chin into when he's been disappointed. Alina looks, anyway; she wants to sear him into her eyeballs like he's the sun . She wants to go blind from him.
"I'd rather have you here, with me," Aleks tells - begs her. A warm nose ghosts under her jaw, light kisses pressed reverently into the thrumming of her pulse, "Tell me where you are, Alina."
Aleks' lips graze her earlobe, and something building in her gut reaches a fever pitch. A burning flash through the points they connect at - ear to mouth, hand to throat, waist to hand.
Something between them snaps , then; intangible, metaphysical. Holy .
Alina's sharp intake of breath, echoed by Aleks' own, is deafening in the empty room.
The color of him, blurred a bit at the edges, snaps into focus. Hazy blue eyes become piercing - the hand laying at the base of her throat feels warm , even through all their layers.
Everything is still, for a moment. Neither of them dare breathe.
And then, Aleks' hand tightens in a vice grip, and Alina is helpless to the moan that escapes her throat.
"I've got you," Aleks whispers, disbelievingly, and then louder; "I've got you."
He grins down at her like the cat who's caught the canary, and Alina wants .