LITMIR.BIZ

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is out of touch—’ she continued but Roman broke in.

      ‘I don’t need dieting advice from you, Anya.’

      He didn’t. She was tiny and far thinner than he remembered her to be, and that concerned him.

      Yet she was even more beautiful.

      ‘Anyway...’ Roman shrugged ‘...I’m sick of boxing. I’ve applied for a passport.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because there is nothing for me here.’

      ‘Are you going to look for Daniil?’

      ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not turning up on his doorstep...’

      ‘He might want you to.’

      ‘No.’ Roman was adamant. He would not be a burden on his brother.

      ‘So where will you go?’

      Wherever it was, Anya didn’t want him to leave. Even though she hadn’t seen him in two years, she liked knowing that he was around and hearing about him sometimes. She had dreamed of a moment like this, meeting him on the street, and now it had transpired.

      ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked.

      ‘Just my dance,’ Anya said. ‘I just found out that I have an audition in two weeks’ time for a place in the corps de ballet.’

      He just stared.

      ‘A part in their next performance,’ she explained. ‘Just a small part but I would be on the stage.’

      ‘You’ll get it,’ Roman said. He had always known that she would go far.

      ‘Would you come and see me perform if I did?’

      Roman looked up at the theatre she had just come out of and could not imagine himself inside there, and yet he wanted to see her perform.

      ‘Yes.’

      He didn’t know how, just that one day he would.

      His answer meant everything to Anya and she reached out to touch the bruise over his eye but he moved his head back in reflex.

      The only touches he knew were punches, jabs...

      There had been zero affection in his life.

      None.

      Ever.

      The girls who hung around the boxing gym adored Roman and did not care if he was not affectionate with them or that he didn’t want affection back.

      But then her fingers met his skin and she lightly stroked the swollen flesh and she watched his eyes close.

      Anya had always had a thing for him.

      ‘No boys,’ her mother said. ‘To dance, there must be sacrifice.’

      There had been so many sacrifices, but Roman was her guilty pleasure and she had touched herself many times while thinking of him.

      After the fight with his brother, Roman’s file had been marked Unsuitable for Adoption and he had been sent to the secure wing, though Anya knew he had not needed to be held there.

      At sixteen he had left the orphanage and for two years she had missed him very much.

      Now she could see his lips and that bruised, swollen mouth she wanted to taste. Her breathing was coming in a strange rhythm, as if she had just completed floor exercise, and yet she was standing still.

      His breathing was slower and deeper, though, almost as it was before a fight, pulling oxygen into every cell, in preparation, anticipation.

      Who kissed who?

      Neither knew.

      Their mouths simply met.

      And it was soft for a second, but he could take pain so he pressed her into deeper contact and his tongue slipped into her mouth.

      With one taste she was his. Both had waited for this moment for so long. Her arms went up and her hand met the back of his head, and then her shoulders met the wall.

      He kissed her harder and she felt him unbuttoning her jacket and then the warmth of his hands as he touched her breast through her jumper as he had wanted to for so long.

      Anya loved the intimate contact. The mingling of tongues continued and now her hand was busy. She reached down just so she could feel what had been pressing into her, and it was thick and hard.

      They were dirty deep kissing down an alley and all thought of telling her mother about her audition was gone but then his hand caught her wrist and pulled it away from where she wanted to linger.

      ‘Anya...’

      ‘I want you, Roman, I always have. Take me back to yours,’ she said. ‘Take me.’

      ‘You need to go home,’ he said, breathing more rapidly now. He was ashamed of where he lived. ‘Go back to your mother...’ He walked off and she watched him go, yet despite the cold snow her mouth and body were on fire from her first kiss and she would not leave things there.

      She ran.

      Down the alleyway she ran and leapt onto his back and clung to him like a monkey, and though Roman carried on walking he laughed.

      He laughed.

      But then he swung her around so her legs wrapped around his waist and they faced the other, and as he walked on she asked him a question that she had asked a couple of years ago on that night when she had taken his supper to him.

      ‘How did you get the chocolate?’

      He hadn’t answered then, they had just stared at each other and turned each other on in their first moment alone.

      Now he told her.

      ‘Sev. He won a medal and they gave it to him. He saved it for me.’

      ‘You should have had it.’

      ‘I always wanted to have something I could give you,’ Roman said, and now he had a question for her.

      ‘What did your mother say when she caught you? We had to go back to our rooms and I just saw her going to the cupboard and then the shouts.’

      ‘She said you were trouble.’ Anya smiled. ‘That you were a saboteur.’

      Roman stopped walking and he tried to peel her from him but she refused to be put down.

      ‘Anya...’ He did not know how best to voice it but that word had stung for it was his fear that he might sabotage not just Anya but his brother, were he to go looking for him. For years he had been told he was bad news, trouble, and that no family would ever want him to be a part of theirs.

      And when he could not properly explain, they kissed again, her sex against his flat stomach and his erection stretching to reach it, and they both knew where this would lead. It was February tomorrow, and that meant that, although it was only four o’clock, soon it would be starting to get dark. ‘You should go home.’

      ‘I want to be with you, though,’ she said. ‘I want you to be my first. It has to be you.’

      And Roman could not stand the thought of it being anyone other than him.

      ‘Take me to your home,’ Anya said.

      ‘It’s not a home.’

      It was a bedsit in a building that the government provided for troubled young men like him.

      ‘We make it a home,’ Anya said, and they kissed in the cold, yet she felt warm for her feet were not on the ground, her legs were wrapped around him and her body pressed to his as their mouths generated heat.

      He lowered her to the ground and they walked out onto the street. The snow was cold but she didn’t notice it with his arm around her, but outside a pharmacy he told her to wait outside.

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