Page 7 of Volatile

I’m vain, I don’t give a fuck who knows it, and my niece has gentle hands, so I won’t get wrinkles from her massaging the moisturizer into my skin. My training hasn’t paid off with her drinks, but it has when it comes to my skincare routine because she taps my chest and says, “Down.”

Dipping my head to remove any strain from her arms, I look up into the light as she applies the roller under my eyes. Once she’s done, we swap roles and I take out all of the kid-safe products that Inessa has approved. Most of them are just water-soaked pads that won’t have any benefit, but Vero closes her eyes and tilts her chin up as she sighs.

I kiss the tip of her nose once we’re both successfully relaxed and pampered, then pick her up. Her face falls back to its naturally grumpy state as we walk through the house, following the trail of water she’s spilled. I can even see which bathroom she used, and all of the fuckers are awake.

Extending my voice as I get closer to the kitchen, I force more playfulness into it as I ask, “None of you thought to stop her getting water out of the fucking toilet?”

We all have roles in this family. Mine is to go along with whatever’s said, don’t cause shit or add anything heavy to the burden of life. Inessa’s is to mother us all and she scolds me for my language as though we’re saints or some shit.

“Keep going, Vitali, and it will be soap next.”

But Stasi is sitting next to her, pretending to be a cold-hearted bitch, refusing to look at me as she says, “You’re full of shit so it’s easy to understand how she got confused.”

Sitting Verena with the other kids, I purposefully stand too close to Stasi and dip down so only she can hear my whisper. “And your mouth was full of my dick last night. Can you still taste me?”

We have a system that works — I fuck her, and she fucks me back. The only thing that we disagree on is her personality change when the sun comes up. Stasi is fueled by two things – coke and cum. I’ve never seen her go skiing but everyone knows about her partying habits and the rumors build truth when she’s always fresh faced and bright eyed in the morning no matter how hard I fuck her.

She tries to block the seat beside her by grabbing the chair leg, it just draws my attention to it when I was going to sit there anyway, and I pull it back, ignoring the way the legs screech against the floor from the force of her grip. Once I’m seated, I keep one hand under the table and hold her thigh. I’ve never seen her eat anything other than leaves. She’s like a giraffe: all tall lines and elegant as fuck but she survives on shoots. Her delicate hands slowly caress my thigh, and she moves down, covering my scarred knee. My body tenses and I drop my hold on her thigh, hating that the scars are there for everyone to see.

When the pit opens up in my stomach, I try to fill it and steal Viktor’s plate. It’s always been there since I was a kid, in Russia eating was a way to feel comfort when Len or Anika turned the house into their own porn studio. I couldn’t hear them if I focused on the food that Vlad had squirrelled away in his room. Not when Val would hold his hands over my ears and turned me so my back was to them. Now it’s for the familiarity. You can’t be pissed when you’re eating; food is warmth and nourishing, and there’s no fear of it being taken away.

My nephew is a shithead teenager and kicks me under the table as he tries to stab my hand with his fork. “Get your own plate.”

I smile widely at him and holdmyfood up. “I already have one, get me seconds when you get yours.”

He smirks, narrowing his eyes at me before turning to the woman who haunts me even in my dreams, and asks, “Stasya, do you want to watch a movie with me?”

She never lets me call her by the diminutive version of her name, but she smiles at the little shit and stumbles through her agreement. “Yeah, of course.”

It’s slow and unsure, but she agreed, so I do the sane thing and invite myself along.

“What we watching?”

They both turn to me as I cut up my food and load my fork. Viktor was the first of the generation for too many years, and he’s a spoilt little fucking brat who doesn’t remember all the shit I’ve done for him as he pushes his chair back, declaring, “You can watch whatever you want. Alone.”

He goes to his mom and smiles sweetly at her, being a snitch. Dani’s going to tell me off like I’m a child for stealing his food, so I tune it out as I focus on my girl.

“Since when do you let people call you Stasya?”

She sips her coffee, removing all the emotion from her voice to say, “Only the ones I like.”

Stasi’s bad for a man’s ego and she knows it. But I have a good memory, and I lean into her, refusing to allow her to forget.

“You liked me enough in the middle of the night.”

There’s no tell that she’s affected as she continues drinking her damn coffee while my dick hardens at the mere thought of her. This woman has me on a thread, and I love and loathe it in equal parts. She tugs it as she drops her voice to whisper, “I had an itch, consider it successfully scratched, Vartanov.”

I’m surprised she doesn’t pat me on the head to say job well done as she gracefully sets her cup down and stands. There isn’t a hair out of place and her ass is directly in my eye line as she walks away from me to go into Vlad’s office with Dima and Vanya entering after her. My head automatically tilts as I watch her beautiful ass. Fuck, if she didn’t look so good walking away from me I’d hate it a lot more.

Rough fingers jab my temple, causing my head to move back into an upright position as Val blocks my view, then a napkin hits my chin at the same time as his need to open his mouth.

“You’ve got some drool.” He takes the seat beside me and looks in the direction my girl left before smirking to himself and shaking his head. “You don’t stand a chance with her.”

Jokes on him because I’ve been fucking her for a year and one day I’ll wake up with her beside me. I haven’t figured out the logistics, but I’m close to drugging her perfect ass to make sure she’s there when I wake up. It’s the decent thing to do since she puts me to sleep but she never stays. She even straightens the sheets, removing as many traces of herself as possible when I can’t forget her.

Stasi is my obsession, at first it was because she’s beautiful, but the more I’m around her, she’s become an equation I want to solve. I can’t even develop theories to satisfy my curiosity like I do with other people, I just need to know every single part of her life while she keeps my balls empty and chin wet.

Viktor is content in being a snitch and sits beside his dad so I can’t steal the new plate Dani has made up for him as we go through the details of the fight tonight. He stares at me as he places his forearm on the table as an extra barrier and I hold my middle finger up as Val turns to look at his snitch of a son.

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