Jade
I don’t have any more time to mess around. I’m getting this cooking bullshit done and settled today. It’s officially been a week since I started classes, and I can’t handle even a minute more of sharing a classroom with Lorna.
Thankfully, the rest of my first day went unimaginably smooth, and I’m still on a high from it. Remo picked me up from weapons, grabbed a quick snack with me at the student pantry, and took me to my fight training class. He stayed with me the whole time, even though it wasn’t his class. My instructor comes in a pair this time, with one man and one woman to teach the large class. Ana is in this one as well, along with most of the first-year girls. There are eight of us in total, but fifteen boys.
There was a choice between watching and participating on the first day, and Remo picked for me. Watching is a good way to learn what to expect in the future and that way, I didn’t need to change into gym clothes.
Nothing was too shocking or uncomfortable, so I definitely felt fine about it by the time we were ready to leave. I’ve done some basic self-defense back home with the boys, but I still think it’ll be a challenging class.
After that, Nico hung out with me in my room while everyone else was busy, and we walked to dinner together. Nico and I got there before the rest of our family, but we didn’t wait to eat. While he got some sushi rolls, I tried a chicken and bacon pizza. Nico isn’t as talkative as Matteo, but it was still nice to just spend time with him.
The last class on my schedule was a deception course. It’s essentially Lying 101, and I immediately had hopes that it’d be the easiest part of my class days. So far, that’s been proven correct.
Knives is better than cooking, but not as easy as I’d hoped. Fight training has been mostly conditioning, so it feels like a glorified gym class, but at least no one has punched me yet. Deception has been fun though, it’s a lot of roleplay and acting exercises that make the end of the day something to look forward to.
Cooking, though? It’s past time to level up and get the fuck out of Lorna’s sight.
I needed a few days to get comfortable here, learn how to get around campus on my own, and put my brave face on before truly tackling this challenge. Now that I’ve warmed up, I won’t lie and pretend I’m not nervous as fuck, but I can practically taste my victory. And in this case, victory tastes like Martha’s homemade carbonara.
Having ditched my brothers for this, I’m making sure to be extra careful looking out for them when I step out of the kitchen building and head for the ruins courtyard. I had to memorize the directions on how to get there before I felt confident enough about my ability to find my chosen food taster while he’s there.
The ruins courtyard is what’s left of an old building that collapsed here in the eighties. It’s littered with Greek-style columns, half destroyed archways, and decorated with stone tables and chairs to make it more of a usable area. Apparently, the collapse of the building has a bit of a mysterious lore because none of my brothers are one hundred percent certain what happened to it.
The pretty, moody ruins are not what I’m looking for when I slip into the courtyard though. I’m looking for him.
The courtyard is casually filled with students. It’s quiet, but nowhere near empty. Luckily, the man I’m here to see is sitting by himself, silently reading an old book. I take a deep breath, quickly scanning the tables for any sign of my brothers. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I make my first move toward him.
He hears me approach, pausing his reading to meet my gaze.
“Um, hi again.” I bite my lip, feeling my face heat up as I stop in front of him. Um, hi again, that’s the best I’ve got? “You’re Dmitri, aren’t you?”
The Adonis of a man looks at me from head to toe, blinking without response. It’s silly to ask his name when I heard people say it at the party and have talked about him with Ivan. I’m nervous, alright? His face makes me feel like I’m physically falling.
“Right, anyway, I made you this.” I hold out the dish with a fork sitting on top of it to him, utterly stunned when he reaches out and takes it. “My instructor said I’m supposed to give it to someone my family isn’t allied with to see if it’s really any good.”
Dmitri continues to look at me like he’s waiting to hear anything else I have to say. “So, um, will you try it? I heard most people throw first-year’s food away, but—”
Without a word, he somehow steals all of mine. The stoic but gorgeous man opens my dish, sticks his fork in it, and pulls a bite directly into his mouth. The carbonara slides between his lips, leaving them glistening as his tongue swipes away the sauce. He chews the bacon-ey pasta dish as my mouth falls open.
The courtyard comes to a halt, and so does the breath in my lungs. He’s eating my food! So many people are watching, and he’s eating my food! Holy crap, I might faint.
Should I pinch myself?
His thick throat bobs with a swallow, and I’m amazed that it isn’t being spit at my feet as some sort of message to stay the hell away from him. Logically, I didn’t think Dmitri would be mean to me, but illogically, I’m always expecting the worst to happen in the back of my mind. I’m so happy for that little doubtful voice to be proven wrong again. Once his mouth is empty, I scramble for what to say.
“Did you—”
“It’s good,” he rumbles, interrupting. If the words weren’t enough to shock me, he takes another bite.
I bite back a squeak, my throat vibrating with a sound I refuse to let escape.
I hear whispers sounding all around us, but all I see is him. Without thinking, my arms shoot out, wrapping around his wide shoulders.
“Thank you!” I say into his neck, skin smelling freshly showered. Why do I have the sudden urge to lick him?
Dmitri tenses in my embrace but doesn’t throw me off of him. Awkwardly, I back away slowly, releasing him with a nervous smile.
“Thank you,” I repeat more softly, steadying myself. “I’m Jade, by the way. I didn’t mean to attack you just now.”
“I know who you are, Jade,” he tells me, making my face burn.
“Right, I told you before.” At the party where you wrote on his bare chest with lipstick and nearly kissed him.
“I knew before that,” he states bluntly. The man looks down at the remainder of his pasta dish. “I’m keeping the rest of this.”
“Of course!” I blurt, gesturing my thumb at the small backpack near my feet where the rest of it is packaged up. “I have more too, um, if you want it?”
There’s literally no way to make one portion of pasta at a time. Martha would tsk at me for even trying, so I made a lot. I planned to give some to Matteo, but Dmitri can have literally every last noddle if he asks.
“Eat with me.” It’s not a question or an offer, more of a command. Somehow a polite one.
“Oh?” I look around. “You’re not afraid to be seen with me?”
He chuckles under his breath so quietly I might be hallucinating it. “I am not afraid of anything, Jade. Eat with me.”
Compelled, I join him on the bench seat, pulling a smaller Tupperware from my bag and situating it on my lap. “If I see one of my brothers, I’ll just duck and hide,” I offer, smiling at him.
He shakes his head. “They’ll find out either way. May as well keep your uniform clean.”
I frown, not wanting them to ruin this for me so soon. “You think?”
“Definitely.” He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. The sooner they know, the sooner they accept it.”
Huh? “It being us speaking to each other?”
“It being us,” he replies, twirling more pasta around his fork.
Actual tingles burst along my arms. “Us?” I ask hopefully. “Are we friends now or something? If I’d known being friends only took some homemade carbonara, I would have made it for you already.”
“You could call us friends,” he says with a lift of his shoulders. “You’d be wrong, though.”
My eyes widen. “Oh? What… what would you call us?”
He watches me like he’s looking for signs that I might flee. I don’t know that my legs would work even if I tried. And I definitely don’t want to try. I need to know what he’s thinking behind those beautiful eyes.
“Inevitable.”
At my shocked expression, a little grin crawls its way to his lips.
“Too much?” he asks.
Not enough, actually.
“No, no, I like the sound of that,” I admit, and my ears feel as hot as my face.
Boldly, he inquires, “Are you scared or flattered?”
Both, I think.
“I’m not scared,” I fib. “Why would you think that?”
“I can see your heartbeat in your neck,” Dmitri informs me, his grin becoming fuller.
Instinctually my hand lifts, moving to cover the base of my neck. “That’s embarrassing,” I mutter, feeling the warm rush of blood under my skin.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he says, reaching for my hand and slowly pulling it from my neck. “I like seeing it, it’s pretty.”
Before he lets my hand go, he guides it into my lap and drags his thumb along the top of my knuckles. His skin is rougher than mine, clear signs of hard work marking them up; calluses on his palm, and some small old scars.
But his veins are what I can’t stop looking at. Maybe I can understand how he’d think my heartbeat is pretty since I’m pretty sure I want to trace my tongue over every valley and bump that makes up his hands.
“It took you a week to seek me out,” he comments, interrupting my thoughts. “I was wondering if you would or if I would need to come for you myself.”
I smile at that. “You would have come?”
“Yes.” He nods in confirmation. “I gave you time, didn’t want to frighten you.”
I wouldn’t be scared if he came to find me. Well, not in a fear sort of way, though I would definitely be nervous like I am now. He could probably snap my neck with little to no effort, but I couldn’t find him scary. Dmitri is beautiful, and feeling his eyes on me is one of the best things I’ve ever felt.
“I would have approached you sooner, but I didn’t know if you could understand me fully. I was too awkward to ask Ivan about that.” I blush and admit, “I considered trying to learn Russian before finding you, but it turns out it’s not something you can pick up quickly. At least not fast enough for me.”
His lips twitch, and my heart rate quickens. “Eager to see me? Good.”
I laugh, and he watches it like the action means something to him.
“I thicken my accent and break up my English around large groups. The more people who think I can’t understand them, the more likely I am to catch things they would otherwise say quieter.”
“Clever,” I compliment. “I guess you would have known what I was saying if I asked you to kiss me at the party then, huh?”
I hold my breath but don’t have to hold it long. His lips shift up into a devilish smirk, and he tucks a fallen bit of hair behind my ear.
“I would have understood, but I would not have kissed you.”
I deflate with a frown. “No?”
“No,” he agrees. “I would have told you that when I first kiss you, it will not be in a dingy party.”
“Oh?” I ask, holding back a giddy, girly screech.
“Mhmm,” he hums.
Somehow I’m able to shake off the desire to ask him to kiss me right now.
“I wanted to thank you for having Ivan switch into a class with me. I don’t have classes with any of my brothers, so it’s nice to have a friend.”
His chest inflates with a breath, drawing my eyes. God, he’s huge.
“He offered,” he tells me, giving his brother some credit for the kind act.
“But he did it for you?” I check.
“If he’s there, I know you’re safe,” he answers.
Deciding to put my unopened food back into my bag, I slowly inch closer to him while we sit.
“Dmitri?” I ask.
“Yes?”
“We’re not in a dingy party now…” I almost chastise myself for being so obvious, but who cares about subtly, I want this man to kiss my pants off. Maybe even literally.
His stunning brown eyes flick to our surroundings, and he sets his nearly finished container down on the table in front of us. “Come with me,” he says, grabbing my hand and my bag, beginning to carry it for me as he guides us away from the table.
Leaving his dish behind, he pulls me along an unfamiliar path, not straying too far from the open tables and benches. With a careful hand, he pulls back a tree branch, exposing a hidden enclave. A wall taller than the two of us still stands here. Lush vines decorate the bottom of the structure, having slowly climbed up as time goes on. As Dmitri lets the branch fall back into place, it creates something like a room.
The little hidden area isn’t entirely secluded, we can still hear the sounds of people existing in the courtyard around us, but they wouldn’t be able to spot us without coming around the fallen building wall or the tree branch.
Silently, Dmitri walks me backward until my back connects with the old building. He lets my bag fall to the ground, neither of us bothering to spare it another glance. The cold stone wall is stable enough that I can lean against it without worrying. The soft brush of greenery sways around my knees, but I don’t mind the touch.
“You want a kiss?” he asks, head tilted to one side.
“From you,” I clarify.
“Just from me?”
My head bobs, and breathily, I answer, “Just from you.”
“And what’s my name?” he asks, hands finding the stone wall on either side of my head as he leans down, watching my lips.
The way he’s looming over me is addictive.
“Dmitri.”
He closes the distance between us in an instant, lips rushing forward to press into mine. I slump harder against the wall behind me, knees going weak upon first contact. What starts as crushing pressure lightens up so that he can part his lips and move them, leading me to try and follow along. My fumbled attempts don’t seem to bother him, so I keep trying to match his pace with my eyes sealed shut.
He tastes like the food I made him, and I don’t even care. Unfamiliar pleasure rolls right from my lips down into my gut, growing a hunger for more.
I don’t know what to do with my hands, but I know what I want to do. Greedily, I reach for his tie with both hands, using an unyielding grip to hold him right where he is.
Time seems to come to a stop, and it’s like no one else exists. It’s just us, and I can’t get enough of how kissing him makes me feel.
Eventually, he slowly pulls back, and our eyes flicker open to lock on one another.
“Is this your first kiss, Jade?” he asks without a hint of judgment.
I release a breath. “Am I that transparent?”
He shakes his head. “I like being able to read you.”
“And that you’re the first one to kiss me?” I ask. “Do you like that too?”
Dmitri smiles. “I like that I’ll be the last.”
Our lips meet again, unsure of who leans in first.
Either way, I melt.
