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Siberian Persuasion – Part Two
Cupping her chin, I raised her lips to mine as I whispered against them. "Then trust me on this. I'll be fine…we'll be fine."
Sighing into the kiss as I felt her melt against me, Rose closed her eyes as she grumbled. "Great. That's really comforting, Dimitri. Damn Yeva and all her interfering. If it wasn't for her, this wouldn't have happened."
Rubbing my hands up and down her back in silent comfort as she complained about my grandmother, I held my tongue. Even without Yeva's proclamation, I probably would have offered to help if now one else had, but I thought it was probably a wiser – and healthier – decision to keep that to myself.
"She's actually very fond of you, you know?"
"Hmmm." Was her only reply, but I didn't sound as though she believed me.
"And," I pressed, knowing this was a perfect opportunity to distract her further from her angst as well as bringing up a subject that I had already broached since we had arrived…one she was adamantly opposed to. "She would be more accepting of your protests if you were an official member of the family."
Pulling away from my warm embrace so quickly that the cool spring air made me shiver, Rose glared at me as she crossed her arms over her chest and leant back against the fence as she put as distance between us as I would allow.
"Oh, no. Don't start that again. It's bad enough that I've had your mother and your sisters asking about when we're getting married since the moment we arrived, not to mention that half the community have been looking for a hidden engagement ring since all night. It's not happening. You had my answer last night."
"Would you feel differently if I got you a ring?" I asked in all seriousness as I hid my smile at her dogmatic obstinacy.
"No! Ring or no ring, I am not getting married at eighteen, Dimitri." Continuing to scowl at me, her eyes suddenly widened as the thought of something. "Or nineteen either." She added quickly.
Unable to contain my grin this time, I took a step forward and caged her in between my body and the fence. Running my hands along the top slate as I searched for any splinters, I fit my hands to her hips and lifted her up to sit on the top rung.
Grabbing my shoulders to steady herself, Rose eyed me warily as I slowly pushed apart her thighs, moving to stand between them as she closed them around my hips to keep her balance and I cupped her hips to keep her in closer contact. "What are you up to, Comrade?"
"Just lifting you up so we can see eye to eye on certain issues, Roza. It doesn't have to be right now," I coaxed gently as my fingers crept beneath the bottom edging of her sweater to sweep my fingertips lightly over the skin at the small of her back. "It can be a long engagement and we can get married when you're ready."
"What if I'm never ready?" She challenged stubbornly. Her voice was slightly breathless as she arched towards my touch.
Bending towards her, I gently sank my teeth into the fleshy lobe of her left ear, tugging with enough force to make her gasp softly. Licking the shallow indentation marks left by my teeth, I whispered with all seriousness into her ear. "Then I'm afraid that I'm going to have to trade you in."
Laughing into that same ear as I heard her growl of displeasure, Rose uncurled her right arm from around my neck, balled up her fist and punched me in the chest. The force was hard and the impact bruising, but I could tell that she hadn't put the full might of her raw strength behind it...she had a lethal right hook; one that I had experienced before.
Keeping my hold on her hips, I leant away to view her outraged expression. "Is that all you have, Rose? I thought I taught you better than that?"
Shaking her head at me as her lips curled upwards and her eyes spat sparks at me, I held up my hands in surrender as she dug her fingertips into my shoulders. "All right, all right…you win. I'll drop the idea of marriage if it means keeping the peace, but this isn't the last you're going to hear about it. We will eventually get married, moye serdtse."
Narrowing her eyes, Rose pursed her lips haughtily. "You seem very confident about that, Comrade. I think you're overestimating your brand of Russian charm."
"I don't. You're stubborn; no one knows that better than I do. All I have to do is keep wearing you down and you'll eventually give in to what I want." Sliding my hands along the length of her slender thighs, I cupped the swell of her buttocks as I pulled her tightly into the cradle of my hips. "I told you before that I could be persuasive."
It was the argument I had used last night…with very satisfying results.
Watching as her pupils dilated and her breathing increased rapidly at the memory, Rose pulled me closer, tilting her head to whisper in my ear. "Yes, you did…but if you keep bugging me about this, Comrade, it's me who's going to be trading you in."
Nipping at my ear to get her point across, I shuddered in Rose's arms before cupping her head. Angling it upwards, I kissed her greedily, suddenly wishing that the house wasn't full of people…but it was and one of them chose that exact moment to interrupt.
Listening with only half an ear as the rest of my brain was otherwise engaged, the loud banging of the kitchen door against the opposite wall as it was flung open with enough force to abuse it's ancient hinges made me pause.
Viktoria's voice – slower and thicker than normal thanks to the copious amounts of vodka that had been delivered to the house throughout the day – called out to us. "Hey, you two! Come inside…we found another bottle of Vodka! Dimka, enough. You can kiss her later. Now, we drink!"
Muttering an unflattering opinion of my sister's timing in Russian, I sighed before ending the kiss just as Rose pulled away to stare at me with horrified eyes. Shuddering as though her skin was crawling, she groaned. "Oh, God…I can't drink any more of it, Dimitri. Honestly, I can't. I think I still have the hangover from the last time I drank it."
Laughing at my little rebel and her intolerance for what Russian's considered a staple of social interactions, I kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose before lifting her from the fence. Keeping my arm wrapped solidly around her waist, I walked her back towards the house.
"You don't have to." I promised. "It's late; we'll make our excuses and head to bed. We have to be up early tomorrow anyway to start planning, so they won't make us feel guilty for skipping out."
Sighing heavily, Rose rested her head against my chest as we walked, but said nothing else. She still wasn't thrilled with this idea, despite my reassurances. I suddenly wished I could leave her behind, but I knew that the repercussions of that would be far worse than anything I would find in the cave.
"I know you're concerned, but I also know that you would protect those who could not protect themselves with your dying breath because it's your nature." Kissing the top of her head, I squeezed her tightly. "Everything will be fine, Roza."
"Whatever you say, Comrade."
Walking past the lone tree in the yard; a primordial Siberian pine towering high above the house, I let go of Rose briefly and detoured slightly off to the left, bending to pick up a discarded pinecone from the ground. She wouldn't be able to focus properly for the hunt if I didn't give her a reassurance she actually believed in…the pinecone and the tree it came from would provide a handy metaphor.
Turning back to her as she looked at my quizzically, I held out the cone. Reaching my side, Rose took it from me and turned it over in her hand as I reached out to play with a strand of her hair; wrapping the silky filament around my finger and tugging gently.
"A pinecone?"
Nodding at her puzzled tone, I turned slightly to look at the tree over my shoulder. "When I was little, I used to climb up into the tree as high as I could go to see the land around me. For a boy of six, it represented freedom because I could see that there was more than just the house I lived in, the mother that loved me, the sister's that tormented me or the grandmother that punished me. It was limitless…like this tree."
Reaching out, I slapped my palm against the thick, sturdy trunk. "It's already over a hundred years old and could potentially live to be over eight-hundred-years; it's boundless…ageless, but its fate is ultimately out of its hands; ours isn't, Roza. We have the power; we just have to have faith in it."
Casting me a disparaging look, Rose unwound her hair from around my finger and arched a brow at my obvious play. "Zen master wisdom, Comrade or is this your subtle way of telling me that everything will be okay because you don't think I believed you the first few times you've told me?"
Hooking my arm around her waist as I again steered her towards the house, I bent to murmur in her ear. "A little bit of both, moye serdtse."
Opening the door for her, I shut it behind us as Rose wandered through ahead of me towards the family room, picking absently at trays of food lining every flat surface of the warm room. Most she avoided like the plague, but I had already learnt that it was the sweeter dishes that she favoured. None of what was here would go to waste; some of it we would keep, but the majority of it would be redistributed to the community by my mother and sister's tomorrow.
Walking into the family room, I found Rose standing just past the threshold. Coming up behind her, I curled my right arm around her waist as I looked over my family.
Gathered around a coffee table littered with glass and the bottle Viktoria had been crowing over earlier, Olena, Karolina and Sonya sat together on the three-seated sofa and beamed at us. Yeva was on her rocking chair in the corner; her wrinkled features appearing strangely smooth as she looked over Rose and I in a very different way.
Arching a brow, I looked around for my nephew and nieces, but they were nowhere to be found…neither were Mark and Oksana.
"They said to tell you both goodnight; they didn't want to disturb you, Dimka. Mark said he would back in the morning so that you could start strategizing." Olena offered as she noticed my searching gaze. "The children have been put to bed."
"Do you think Henry will be back tomorrow?"
Looking down at Rose as she asked the question of my mother, all three of us grimaced almost simultaneously.
Reclining against the faded floral upholstery of the sofa, Olena sighed. "I think he might, Rose. He's quite…persistent, as you found out for yourself today. I doubt he would go with you to the caves, but he will more than likely want to make sure that Dimka carries out the promise he made today."
Eyeing me with maternal concern, Olena didn't make as much noise as Rose did when she was unhappy about something, but I could clearly see the concern for me in her dark brown eyes. I nodded at her once, knowing she would know it meant that I would be careful.
Viktoria, having poured – or perhaps spilt was a more accurate description – the vodka into the shot glasses, grabbed two and wobbled her way over to us. Feeling Rose literally balk as my sister thrust one glass out to her and the other to me, I grinned broadly over her head, glad that she couldn't see it.
"Toast!" Viktoria announced as she reached back to the table for her own glass…and in the process, almost fell over it. Olena reached out to steady her as Sonya and Karolina stood with our mother, each of them catching an arm of their youngest sister. Yeva remained seated but alert as her dark eyes darted over each one of us in turn.
"To Dimka." They chorused together as the glasses were raised around the room towards me. "Welcome home; we missed you…we love you."
Keeping her glass aloft, Olena cleared her throat before smiling fondly at the pair of us. "I think I speak on behalf of the entire family when I say that we are not only celebrating your return to us, Dimka but we are also celebrating Rose's return."
"Mine?" Rose uttered in surprise as I felt her stiffen at my side. "Why?"
"Because if not for you, this happy reunion might never have taken place. When you arrived to tell us about what had happened to Dimka, we all thought that we had lost him, but in a strange way, we also felt as though we had some small part of him still…in you, Rose."
Walking forward over the old, faded carpet, Olena reached out to cup my chin first and then Rose's. "When you spoke of him that day, we could all see how much you loved him and so we opened our home and our hearts to you and you have chosen to also return to us and for that, we have been blessed twice."
Swallowing unevenly against the maternal affection I knew she was unused to, Rose blinked rapidly before she nodded but said nothing more as my mother reached out to hug her tightly. She might not have recognised it, but she had been unconditionally accepted as a member of my family since they had realised that she was the one I had chosen.
Returning her to me, Olena smiled as I hugged Rose as tightly to me as Olena had just done. Turning towards me, her gentle smile transformed quickly into a scowl as my chin was again gripped, but with far more force this time.
"And you," she scolded lightly. "Need to come home more. No more of this work till you drop nonsense. You have a life, Dimka. One that was returned to you for a reason and that reason was not so that you live it the same way you lived the last one!"
"Yes, Mama." I conceded meekly, secretly marvelling that this woman could still make me feel like a five-year-old.
Raising our glasses again, we toasted to our collective health, "zazdarovje!" before tossing back the shot. Rose groaned quietly and shuddered before grimacing. Chuckling at her look of distaste, I kissed the top of her head as I heard Yeva's dry comment from the corner.
"If a shot of Russian vodka makes you flinch like that, little girl, how are you going to defeat the Blood King?"
Groaning at the taunting remark, I glowered at my grandmother as Olena shook her head in exasperation and reprimanded her in Russian for ruining the moment. Unapologetic, Yeva returned the rebuke before she set her empty glass down and resumed her knitting, continuing to mutter about those who were fated and those who were lazy and undisciplined.
Unfortunately Rose had managed to pick up enough Russian along the way to understand the gist of the conversation. Hackles rising before I could distract her, I heard her teeth grind together as whatever placid manner she might have had from Olena's affection disappeared.
"If you think I can't handle it," Rose challenged softly but with enough venom in her voice to get her point across. "Then why did you allow us to volunteer?
"I didn't…it was Dimka, not you, that was destined."
Fuming, Rose tried to pull away from me to directly confront Yeva but I kept her tightly restrained at my side as she spat. "You know damn well old woman that I'm not going to let him go off by himself."
"So then why all the noise?" Yeva grunted as she swopped needles and began a cross-stich. "You American's talk before you think and think too much before you act. Are you so sure that you're the right one for my grandson?"
"All right. That's enough," I interrupted quickly as the look of violence on Roses face spurred me into action. "It's late; we're going to bed." Dragging her bodily behind me before the explosion obliterated everything within a five-mile radius, I wished my family a hasty goodnight and all but towed Rose up the stairs.
My old bedroom; the one that was now used by Viktoria, had been cleared for us to use and was found at the farthest corner of the house to the right. It was also at the opposite end to the one used for the children, which right now, was a very good thing as I felt Rose literally vibrating with rage.
Walking swiftly through along the hallway lined with frame pictures of the generations of Belikov's that had come before us, I opened our bedroom door and pulled her into it.
Shaking loose of my hold as soon as I had closed the door, Rose stalked the length of the small room with angry, agitated strides. Leaving the main light off, I moved to the double bed and switched on the bedside lamp as gentle yellow light provided enough light to easily see.
Sitting on the edge of the bed as Rose continued to pace, I waited for the backlash.
It wasn't long in coming…
"Someone needs to put her in her place, Dimitri." Rose growled as she turned on me. "It's one thing having her doubt my abilities and insult me because I'm American, but this bullshit about being unworthy of you is really starting to piss me off. Lissa and I are the only reason you're here right now! She wasn't the one that went looking for you!"
"I know it is, Roza," I appeased as she turned on her heel and continued to stomp across the room. "But this is exactly the kind of reaction she's looking for…and you're playing right into her hands. She's an antagonist; it's her nature, but not in a way that's meant to be malicious."
Shucking my boots, I set them beside me as Rose turned to glower at me. "She believes in others far more than they believe in themselves and to her if that potential isn't being used, it's a waste. It's why she pushes you so hard in particular…she knows that you're capable of great things."
"Oh, please!" Rose rubbished. "That old witch isn't looking to encourage me; she's looking to piss me off!" Running her fingers agitatedly through her hair, Rose paused for a second before she looked at me with a calculating gleam in her eyes…one that worried me far more than her rage.
"You know what?" she said, coming to stand in front of me. "You're absolutely right. We should get married…tomorrow! It shouldn't be difficult to find a priest who's willing or even a justice of the peace or whatever passes as that over here…that'll shut her up once and for all."
