Chapter 18: Mutual Devouring
The scent of them was everywhere.
It hung in the sun-warmed air of the penthouse bedroom, a musky, sweet tang layered over the vanilla and lavender. Vanja lay on her back, the soft linen of the bed sticking to her damp skin. Masha was a warm, heavy weight across her hips, her forehead resting on Vanja’s sternum, her breath still coming in uneven hitches.
Silence pooled around them, deep and unsettled.
Vanja’s mind was a blank white static. Her body felt used, reshaped, a vessel recently overflowed. She could taste Masha on her lips—sharp, salty, unmistakable. Her own wetness was cooling on her inner thighs. The previous hour existed only as a series of physical impressions: the crushing pressure of Masha’s thighs around her head, the slick, frantic rhythm of her tongue, the guttural sounds Masha made as she came, the shocking, full sensation of Masha’s fingers—and then her fist—stretching her open.
It had been a claiming. A different kind.
Masha shifted, rolling off to lie beside her. She stared at the sheer golden canopy above the bed, her profile sharp in the fading light. The quiet stretched, taut as a wire.
“Fuck,” Masha finally said, the word a flat exhalation.
Vanja turned her head on the pillow. Masha’s eyes were fixed on the fabric, but they were seeing something else.
“I thought my father was sick,” Masha continued, her voice low and stripped bare. “Wanting you. Knowing you were with Max. Knowing you were… this.” A slight gesture, encompassing Vanja’s naked, pregnant body on the rumpled sheets. “I saw the way he looked at you. Like you were the last fucking revelation on earth. It made my skin crawl.”
She turned her head then, her blue eyes locking onto Vanja’s. The usual mocking glint was gone, replaced by a raw, unnerving honesty. “But now I guess I’m sick, too.”
Vanja’s breath caught in her throat. She said nothing.
“I have a girlfriend,” Masha said, almost to herself. “Klara. She’s a conservator at the Pinakothek. She’s very nice. She likes classical music and makes her own sourdough.” A brittle laugh escaped her. “She is… fuck.” Her gaze drank Vanja in, from her tangled hair to the curve of her belly to the soft thatch between her legs, glistening. “You’re so much more than that. You’re this.”
Her hand moved, not in passion now, but with a slow, possessive reverence. She traced the line of Vanja’s hip bone, the swell of her stomach, her fingers coming to rest, curled, over the gentle mound.
“I want to stay here,” Masha whispered, her voice thick. “I want to lock the world out. Lick you in secret. Be with you when they’re not looking. Just… be with you.”
The confession hung in the air, more intimate than anything their bodies had just done. Vanja felt a pull in her chest, a dangerous, answering chord. To be seen not as a vessel for the Abramovic legacy, nor as a prize between two brothers, but as this—a woman, desired for her own fractured self. It was a poisonously sweet antidote to her loneliness.
She reached out, her fingers threading into Masha’s damp blonde hair. “Masha…” she began, but the rest of the sentence disintegrated.
Masha moved. It was swift and decisive. She kissed Vanja, a deep, searching kiss that tasted of confession and salt. Then she slid down the bed, her body settling between Vanja’s splayed legs. The earlier frenzy was gone. This was deliberate, focused.
“Let me,” Masha murmured, her breath hot against Vanja’s oversensitive flesh. “Just let me have this.”
Her tongue was a soft, slow flat line up Vanja’s slit. Vanja jerked, a whimper caught in her throat. She was too sensitive, too spent. It was almost too much. Masha ignored her trembling, holding her thighs open with firm hands. She licked again, savoring, drinking her in. She nudged her nose against Vanja’s clit, circling it with a relentless, gentle pressure that built a new, impossible heat in Vanja’s core.
“You taste like me,” Masha moaned against her, the vibration tingling through Vanja’s exhausted nerves. “Like us. Fuck, it’s perfect.”
She pushed her tongue inside, a shallow, probing thrust, then pulled back to suck Vanja’s swollen clit into her mouth. Her fingers followed, two sliding in easily, still slick from before, crooking upward. Vanja gasped, her back arching. The pleasure was a deep, throbbing ache, different from the sharp peaks Masha had wrung from her before. This was a slow, submersive drowning.
“That’s it,” Masha encouraged, her words muffled by Vanja’s flesh. “Just let it happen. Give it to me.”
Vanja’s hands fisted in the sheets. She was floating, untethered, aware only of the wet, rhythmic sound of Masha’s mouth on her and the relentless, perfect pressure of her fingers. The world narrowed to this point of searing connection.
Masha added a third finger, stretching her, filling her. The stretch was a bright, burning line of pleasure-pain. “You take it so well,” Masha growled, fucking her with a steady, deep rhythm. “This perfect, greedy cunt. Makes me want to ruin you for anyone else.”
The dirty words, now spoken with a possessive tenderness, sent a fresh shock of arousal through Vanja. She was coming again, she realized dimly, a tidal wave gathering from the depths of her exhaustion. It wasn’t a scream this time. It was a deep, shuddering surrender, a silent cry that tore through her as her climax rolled over her in slow, pulsing waves, milking Masha’s fingers, her body fluttering helplessly.
Masha rode it out with her, her mouth soft now, lapping gently, until Vanja’s shudders subsided into tremors.
When Masha crawled back up her body, her face was wet. She didn’t wipe it away. She curled into Vanja’s side, her head on Vanja’s shoulder, one hand splayed possessively over her belly. The twilight had deepened into night. The Munich skyline was a bracelet of diamonds beyond the glass.
The silence returned, but it was different now. Heavier.
Vanja’s phone, forgotten on the nightstand, buzzed. Then buzzed again. A familiar, insistent rhythm.
Masha went very still.
Vanja didn’t move. She stared at the ceiling, feeling the babies stir faintly inside her, a soft, fluttering echo of the convulsions that had just wracked her body.
The phone stopped buzzing. A moment later, it lit up with a video call request. Roman’s name glowed in the dark.
The momentum of the day, of the secret, of the profound and confusing intimacy, slammed into the cold, hard wall of reality. Of them.
Masha let out a long, slow breath against Vanja’s skin. “You should answer that,” she whispered, but her arm tightened around Vanja’s waist, holding her in place.
Vanja continued to stare upwards, at the nothingness, at the everything, the weight of Masha’s confession and the weight of the ringing phone holding her in a perfect, paralyzing balance. The choice, when it came, would be its own kind of violence.