"Build a snowman?" Kiril looked at her raising an eyebrow with a bit of a suppresses smile on his lips.
"Yes. Hmm, I didn't have a very happy childhood and I never got to do that."
"It not that. It's that, it's well... September."
"It is a bucket list, I didn't think of the specifics. And I don't have to do all of them or any of them for the matter."
"But don't you want to? Isn't doing them the point?"
"Well yes, but I also have to be realistic."
Kiril looked as if he was continuously suppressing a smile.
"What?" asked Mila and felt like smiling too without knowing exactly why.
"I am a legendary creature filled with magic; I am by no means realistic."
Mila let the smile loose. She kissed him, it had been intentional, but they didn't sleep together. Yet he was there and it made her feel safe.
"Can you make it snow right now?"
"Yes but it's too much of an effort to keep the snow from melting on this temperature so I was thinking about something else."
"What?"
"I will tell you later, because we need some equipment. I texted Angel."
"Will your huge pack not mind that you are hiding away for months not caring about them? Angel doesn't like to be in charge." It was a quite legitimate question.
Kiril shrugged.
"A wolf doesn't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep. He has to master that attitude to be a respected Alpha."
"A lion," said Mila.
"What?"
"A lion. A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinion of sheep. Tywin Lannister."
"Who's that?"
"Point twenty seven."
Kiril frowned and opened the list again.
"Finish watching Game of Thrones. Whatever that might be."
"You don't know?! It's the greatest series of all time. As a matter of fact, I think you would love it. Promise me, we will watch it later."
"Sure..." Kiril shrugged a tiny bit confused.
"Kiril, when was the last time you watched a movie?"
"Probably in the nineties..." And Mila laughed, wholeheartedly. His answer was genuine and most likely true, but also endearing and odd at the same time. Odd for human metrics, not for a warmongering Lycan King.
Angel arrived at some point during noon. He looked slightly different and acted even a bit different. The right side of his hair had now an undercut and the rest had stray braids in it. It looked good on him, different but good. It gave him a more badass, 'don't fuck with me' air.
"Your hair looks good," said Mila.
"Thanks. It was an existential crisis. Kiril salved it. And I think we are best friends now but don't tell him. Where is he, by the way? He asked to bring all this stuff."
"Dunno, running around in his wolf form. He probably smelled you already."
"Aha..." Angel's tone was a tiny bit dry. "Let me get him. I leave this here. Be right back." He dropped a huge backpack on the ground and went out the door.
Minutes after Kiril came back.
"Where is Angel?"
"He left."
"Were you mean to him again?"
"No."
"Are you lying? You know, weirdly, Angel got to be really fond of you. I am not sure why but he is. Maybe you give him some weird big brother vibes or so. But anyway. Be nice to him. For me. Okay?"
Kiril raises his eyebrows.
"I am always nice."
"Come on, you know you are not." Mila could barely suppress a smile.
"Though love." Kiril gave her one of his very confident asshole smiles and unlike in the past she melted away. Now they had a different meaning. All his expression felt different now. All the things he said, hit different.
"What did he bring there? It looks heavy."
"Recusite." Kiril kneeled down to open the backpack. He unpacked a neon pink skying outfit and frowned at it at the same time. "That is... so ugly."
"That is... so cute," said Mila at the same time. "But what about it."
"If you amazingly like it, then get dressed."
"Why?"
"We are going to hack things off your list."
"Kiril, you know I cannot just wander around the world. I don't want to kill people."
"Precisely."
"Precisely what?"
"If there are no people around, you cannot kill them."
Several hours later, Mila was coiling her arm tightly around Kiril's neck while they were approaching the coast of Norway.
Flying was... something. Not entirely unpleasant though. Maybe also because she knew that Kiril would rather die than drop her.
It was getting darker by the second but the sky was also slowly enveloped by unusual colors. Before she could acknowledge what was happening, Mila's gaze was stolen away by the most magnificent sky she had seen in all her life. Swirlls of green, purple, and golden were staining the airspace in walls of light.
"This is so beautiful," she muttered. And it was even more mesmerizing to whiteness all that from the air. "I... I never thought it would be so amazing. I never actively thought about the northern lights at all. I..."
"Just wanted to build a snowman. Well, here we are. It's full of snow and later you can also cross out point thirteen."
"Learning a skill? What skill?"
"Ice skating."
"What?" Mila burst out enthused.
It was endearing how meticulously Kiril finished the snowman shape without using any magic. He was a joy to behold, he was like that with all the mundane tasks he performed with his unusual yet natural grace.
"Can you skate?"
"I am Russian. Of course, I can skate."
And it was not only that he could skate he did it with such infuriating grace that Mila stared at him in awe and in anger. Her skating skills were non-existent and her talent close to zero.
Mila kneeled on the snow and let her hands feel the cold. Then she looked at Kiril, how unbothered he was wearing only a thin blazer. Yet it made sense; this was his element and his realm.
But amazingly when their hands touched over the ice, they were warm.
"Were you born around here?"
"Maybe."
"What do you mean maybe? Right, when is your birthday? I bet you are a Scorpio or so?"
"I... don't really know."
Mila opened her mouth to say something but stopped.
"You never celebrated a birthday, right? How do you know how old you are then?"
"Deduction. Approximation. Does it matter? Over a hundred. Could be your grandfather."
"Don't go there." Mila laughed a bit but in the same motion, she grabbed his face, which was in her reach after he kneeled down to tuck in the snowman's buttons, and pressed her forehead to his. "I will bake you a cake. And light hundred plus candles on it. It will be for you and for me. I also never celebrated a birthday."
They were certainly not the same person or twin souls but it was something about Kiril that made her feel at ease around him, more than around other men. Maybe it was the fact that he had seen her at her ugly, blood and puke stained, grumpy and hateful but never pitied her nor gave her anything but the truth. It was odd but it somehow worked for her. It meant that when he said something good, it was pure, rare and precious but never misleading and for someone like her that had issues trusting people it seemed to be thing that made her feel safe.
"This is amazing," she whispered, leaning back on the snow to look at the sky.
"Mila you are cold. We need to go back."
"No. Just a bit longer," she pouts.
"You are freezing.Your lips are blue. We go now."
"Please. I haven't felt so alive in a long while."
"Neither of us wants you to get sick. Don't be bratty, ok?" He leaned over her and kissed her forehead.
"Please," she whispered, looking up at him with almost wet eyes.
"You have no idea what you are doing to me right now."
"What?"
"Something rather fascinating. I never thought of myself like someone easy to manipulate. But it feels like it's the easiest thing in the world to bend me to your will."
"So, we are staying a bit longer?"
"Let me see."
Kiril leaped in the air with blazing eyes, then landed again on the ice a few meters away.
He put his clawed hand on the frozen surface. The earth quacked slightly and a ring of fire bloomed around him but was then swallowed by the water coming from below. He jumped away just in time before the ice molt into an almost perfect circle.
"What...?" Mila stared at the scene in awe.
With his usual blazé attitude, Kiril rolled up one sleeve, dipped his hand into the water and smile triumphantly.
"Worked. I never used all powers at once like this."
"I am not sure..."
"You wanted to stay but you are cold."
"So now we go skinny dipping?"
Kiril's eyes shined briefly before he blinked the magic away.
"Say what you wanted to say and you are suppressing."
Mila walked closer and leaned against his chest, looking up to him and whispering "Say it. Say what you are thinking."
"I wanna do bad things with you."
"Take your clothes off."
Mila walked a few steps back and unzipped her pink ski costume. And peeled of her clothes until she was left only in underwear.
"I said, take your clothes off. I am cold and I don't wanted to go there alone because I can't swim."
Kiril's fangs elongated and tore the still buttoned shirt over his head in one shift move.
Mila stepped on the snow close to him and unzipped his pants.
Then everything happened real fast, how he lifted her up and they both sunk into the dark pit of hot water.
The warm steam made the air around warmer and watching the auroras above her head and Kiril holding her close, sliding his pointy claws anlog her spine made her gasp.
His eyes were for some time drowned in magic and clouded in desire.
"Touch me," whispered Mila.
"How?"
"How you always though of doing. How you know I want to be touched."
"I don't know how you like to be touched because you aren't sure either."
"Do your worst. Make me shiver and scream."
"Why now?"
"Because I want to. Because everything is so beautiful and I am happy. So lavishly happy as if I am on drugs; so happy from stupid small thinks like ice skating or the way your blend into this desolated background as if you were carved from it."
When Kiril kissed her this time , his fangs were out and they were grazing her tongue and sensitive skin on her neck and she understood she was craving that feeling from before knowing how it felt.
It was a sweet spot between pleasure and pain she didn't know it fitted her desires so damn well before that very moment.
"Do you like it?" asked Mila. "Do you find enjoyment in this? In touching and kissing me."
It was a sudden wave of self consciousness. She was almost six months pregnant and it started to show.
Kiril looked up from her chest. Her legs were wrapped around his torso and he had just unclasped her bra.
"I feel weird," she whispered.
"Why? We can of course stop."
"Because I am pregnant and human and you are... Well you."
"You are a goddess and I love you. The only deity I will ever consider praying to again or worshiping in any way. And even before that I found you magnetic. I am never out of control but I am when you are around. As I was the first night we met. Nothing has changed since then."
"Is this making lover or fucking?" Mila reached down into the water to take her underwear off.
"Can it not be both?"
"I don't know. Show me."
Kiril eased inside her smoothly but continued with truths that felt aimed and calculated. The right spot, the right timing, the right amount of pressure and his hands, tongue and teeth on the right places on her body at the right time.
And that time Mila screamed indeed out of sheer pleasure, leaning her head back and closing her eyes only to open them again to stars on vivid aurora skies.
_______________________________________
Happy Valentine's Day.
Yes I am still writing this book. There is just... Life 😂
More sex scenes to follow. Because... I can.