Technically, the town owned the house, and it was only on loan to the sitting mayor as a job perk. But since Eva had managed to garner an unparalleled job approval rating during her short time as mayor, Alexei doubted they’d be moving anytime soon.
“Hey, Dad,” Aaron said, when he came through the door. He was playing a videogame, something that involved logs, rivers, and a lot of jumping on the player’s part, but he paused it as soon as his father came in.
As usual, pride and love filled his heart when he saw Aaron after a long day, and he once again thanked God for aligning the stars so he could have him in his life. It pained him to think if Eva’s good friend and his business associate hadn’t made their unlikely marriage, he and Eva might never have met again, and who knew if his son would have ever sought him out?
But instead of going down the path of what might have been, he forced himself to go back on dad duty, which he’d discovered he thoroughly enjoyed over the past two years. “Does your mother know you are playing video games on a weeknight?”
“Yeah, it’s a reward for getting an A-plus on my math test today. And I only get to play for half and hour until the laundry’s done, then I have to fold it and go to bed.”
Alexei chuckled. Despite the fact that Eva was close on a deal that would bring a college to Drummond, he had the feeling Aaron would choose an out-of-town school if only to get out of laundry duty.
“Do you want me to help you fold?” Alexei asked. It had been one of the two days a week he drove into Dallas to conduct business there, and he was a little tired from the long commute home, but he was also proud of Aaron for doing so well on his math test.
“Nah, I’ve got it. Is that the newspaper?”
“You have not read it yet?” Alexei handed him the paper, which had a picture of Eva on the front, smiling in her Dad’s old office, which had also received a rather colorful redecoration. The article’s headline read, “MAYOR IN BLUE JEANS.” Alexei had already read the glowing feature about one of the nation’s few, black, female mayors, who had managed to bring a collection of new business to her sleepy Texas town in a relatively short time, and he was surprised Aaron hadn’t.
“Yeah, I read it online but not in the newspaper. You know Mama. She got busy and forgot to tell Berta to pick one up, and by the time I reminded her, it was too late. They were all gone.”
Of course they were. How often would a piece on their small town be featured on the front page of the Dallas Times? He was sure the limited number of copies printed in Drummond were gone before lunch time. Though her father had been taken by surprise when Eva not only ran against him for mayor, but won in a landslide, it was now no secret how beloved the new mayor, who had turned around the town’s future prospects, was. It also helped that nothing ever happened in Drummond, and in less than two years, Eva had revealed the father of her son to be a Russian billionaire, married him, and run against her father for mayor. They probably would have voted for her for the soap opera alone.
“She was kind of bummed,” Aaron said. “You should go give her a copy now.
“I will do this, and I will see you in the morning.” He pulled his son close and planted a kiss on his head. Though Aaron had recently declared himself too old for baths and getting tucked in at night with a bedtime story, he had yet to complain about the many hugs and kisses he still received from both of his parents.
“Night, Dad.”
Alexei wondered if he would ever get used to the heart-stopping joy of having someone call him “dad.”
His extended family back in Russia still would not talk to him or even receive him in their homes, because of what he’d done. But, sacrificing the esteem of his aunts and cousins had been well worth it. And whenever he felt a tug of guilt about what he’d had to do to his uncle in order to protect his family, one look at Aaron alleviated it.
“Goodnight, Son,” he said, climbing up the stairs.
But he did not end up giving Eva the newspaper when he walked through their bedroom door.
Mostly because he found her there naked, except for a mini-skirt, her hair plaited into two long French braids, holding herself braced against their dresser drawer with her back curved so her behind stuck out in the most tantalizing of ways. This particular drawer was much more expensive than the flimsy plywood one they’d had back in grad school, but he recognized the scene immediately. And he knew without asking that she was wearing nothing underneath the denim that encased her still-delectable rear end.
“Hey, Lexie,” she said, grinning at him over her shoulder. “You know what, it was so hot today, and it occurred to me I never kept my end of that laundry bargain we made. Do you remember what you wanted?”
He set the newspapers aside on an armchair, already swelling inside his pants with desire for her. He stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves before coming to stand behind her, close enough that she could feel his presence if not his touch. Yet.
“I believe I said I would touch you here…” He covered her left breast with one of his hands. “And here…” He unbuttoned her mini-skirt, his erection growing even harder, when he parted her pussy lips with his index and ring finger and rubbed her clit with the middle one.
She groaned, her head falling to her chest, just as it had those many years ago. “Lexie,” she moaned.
He rubbed three fingers against her clit just long enough to get her primed, before moving his fingers down to tunnel inside of her.
The position was wicked on his part—it was enough to get her excited, but because he was no longer working her clit, not quite enough to get her off. As a consequence, she worked herself on his fingers, making them slick with her desire, but still unable to get what she wanted from them.
He watched this play out, the sight of his wife squirming making him just as hard as if he’d been stroking his own length, as opposed to simply resting it against her back.
“Is there something you want?” he asked. “Something you’d like me to give you?”
“Lexie please,” she said. “Your fingers, they’re not enough. I need you inside of me.”
The sound of her begging nearly got her exactly what she wanted. He had done a complete one-eighty since South Padre and now hated to deny his Eva anything. But they had a scene to play out, and she wasn’t perfoming her part correctly.
“I like that you are begging, but you have not said the right name yet.”
“Lexie…” She grabbed his hand, and was now pumping it into her in a frenzy.
“No, that’s not the name I want to hear.”
“Alexei, oh hell, Alexei. Please, I want you. I want you insi—“
She didn’t get any further than that, because he turned her around and lifted her onto the drawer in one swift move, and before she could finish asking for it, he was already inside of her. “Marry me,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked, barely coherent. “We’re already married.”
He stopped moving and looked deep into her dark brown eyes. “Say you will marry me.”
For a moment, he thought she would laugh. Make a joke or not agree just to be ornery. But in the end, she simply smiled at him, the most beautiful smile in the world, and said. “Yes, baby, I’ll marry you.”
And then he was pumping into her again, glorying in her, loving her, until the present blended into past and they were young again, celebrating her saying yes to his marriage proposal by making love on top of their cheap plywood dresser, until her breaths started coming out in short gasps. And they both shattered at the same time, their souls exploding into a thousand pieces and reforming in the present as two people who loved each other openly and honestly.
As they came down, breathing hard, Eva let out a shaky laugh and batted her eyes at him. “I hope that didn’t come too late, Lexie.”
He laughed himself, hardly able to believe his luck, that this woman was now his wife, that she had given him the son he hadn’t even known he needed, that she could still make him instantly hard again with just a bat of her pretty brown eyes.
“Kotenok, it is never too late. I think we have proven that.”
Then he started to move inside her again.