Her Rustanov Bully: the (possibly romantic?) tale of how I pucked around and found out
Her Rustanov Bully: Chapter 38

“Mutti! Mutti! Geh bitte nicht!” Yom shouted, his voice fractured with desperation, a raw plea in the dead of morning.

Was he speaking—shouting—in German? My chest lurched at the sound of his voice slicing through the early dawn quiet.

I didn’t understand his words, but I didn’t need to. His anguish was unmistakable. Heart pounding, I grabbed his shoulders, giving him a firm shake. “Yom, you’re having a bad dream. Come on, wake up.”

“Mutti! Mut—” His eyes snapped open, and he bolted upright, his breath ragged—the sound filling the small room, harsh and uneven, as though he’d just surfaced from drowning. His lean muscles tensed as though ready to fight, and the morning light spilling through the curtains highlighted the sheen of sweat across his chest.

“Was… Wo… ?” His gaze darted around, frantic, as if he still expected the nightmare to swallow him whole. Slowly, his eyes found me, and he exhaled, his body sagging slightly as he realized he was here, with me, in a Chicago hotel room.

“I am sorry for waking you.” His voice was rough as sandpaper, each word scraping out like it hurt to speak.

I shook my head. “I don’t care about that.” I moved closer, sitting up beside him. “Were you having some kind of nightmare?”

“It is nothing.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Go back to sleep.”

“Are you serious?” Concern twisted into something sharper and way more frustrating. “I’m not just going to roll back over and go to sleep after that. You sounded terrified, Yom.”

A flicker of emotion crossed his eyes—embarrassment, maybe even shame. He turned his head, jaw clenched. “It is⁠—”

“Something,” I cut in, refusing to let him shut me out. “Not nothing. Something. Obviously.”

He didn’t answer, and for a second, I almost let it go. The morning light turned everything gray and muted, but there was no hiding the tension in his shoulders, the way his whole body seemed to fold in on itself. He was trying so hard to appear unfazed, but I could tell something—some memory—was crushing down on him.

I reached out, gently placing my hand on his shoulder, feeling the taut muscles beneath my palm.

“You said no more misunderstandings.” I leaned in closer, squeezing his shoulder lightly, trying to meet his averted gaze. “That means no more shutting me out.”

Yom drew in a deep, shaky breath, his chest expanding, then deflating as he exhaled, his eyes still averted. His silence stretched between us, the weight of it pressing down on our fragile, new relationship.

Yom’s eyes closed briefly, his brows knitting together as if he were trying to decide whether to say anything at all. Then, just as I started to fear he’d retreat entirely, he spoke, his voice low, almost defeated. “It is old dream. Nightmare, as you say.”

He shook his head. “Christmas morning. My mother’s Christmas—not Russian Orthodox one. She woke me up early because my father said he will be making up work trip excuse so he can spend her favorite holiday with us. She is dressing me in special pajamas with a silly white bear in a red scarf holding a Coca-Cola bottle. She was… very happy.”

A small smile tried and failed to appear on Yom’s lips. “She told me I couldn’t open my presents until he got there. So, we are waiting and waiting. Until the sun is starting to lower in the sky, and my mother is no longer smiling.”

A shadow passed over his face. “She is then grabbing keys to the Maybach he bought for her and taking me to my father’s house in Rublevka—this is very nice neighborhood maybe twenty kilometers from our apartment in Tverskoy District. She is leaving me there on the house’s doorstep….”

His throat bobbed, but when he spoke again, his voice was flat, empty. “Then she is getting back in car, saying I am my father’s problem now since he is refusing for so long to leave his wife—Cheslav’s mother.”

My breath caught, and my chest tightened painfully, disbelief mixing with a surge of protective anger. “Oh my God, tell me she didn’t…”

“I cannot tell you this because she did leave me there for my father and his wife to raise.” Yom’s voice was a dead thing in the room. “But, of course, this is too much to ask of Cheslav’s mother. They are sending me to boarding school as soon as it can be arranged. I was eleven.”

“Lydia, baby, I wish more than anything I could stay with you.” The memory of my birth mom whispering that to me before they put her on a ventilator came flooding back. I was nine.

She would have done anything to keep living for me. It was hard to imagine another single mother abandoning her child, no matter the reason.

“Did she ever come back?” I asked, hoping.

“Nyet,” he answered with zero emotion. “Not even to the game in Berlin. Not even to birthday party her niece threw for me at club where we met the first time.”

“Wait.” My stomach twisted with the realization that Yom knew when my birthday was, but I had totally missed his. “That night we met… was your birthday?”

“Do not do this, zayka,” he answered wearily.

“Do what?”

“Feel pity for me. I am not puppy in need of saving. Everything I am telling you is in past.”

“Is it, though?” I couldn’t help but ask. “How often do you still have this nightma⁠—”

I stopped when Yom suddenly shifted, disappearing under the blankets. Before I knew it, I was on my back with his head nestled between my legs.

“Yom, don’t…” I tried to protest when his mouth found my pussy. “Let’s talk about this.”

Warm sensations swirled inside of me, along with his tongue… and I nearly lost my train of thought, but then managed to gasp out the safe word we’d agreed to earlier. “Suitcase, okay? Suitcase! Yom, I don’t want you to distract me with more one-sided pleasure. I want you to talk to me.”

To his credit, Yom immediately stopped. But he wasn’t happy about it. He reappeared above the sheets with a surly, “I do not wish to talk further on this subject.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I can respect your boundary.” I sat back up and eagerly pushed my locs out of my face. “But tell me what I can do for you. How can I give you what you need right now? Just let me…”

I tentatively reached under the blanket and found his flaccid length in my hand. “Let me attend to you, okay?”

For a moment, Yom’s chin dropped to his chest, and his staff swelled to life. But then he shook his head.

“Not that!” He pushed my hand away like I’d burned him. “Stop. I am not wanting this kind of touch from you.”

I snatched back my hand, more out of hurt than respect for his boundaries. The sting of rejection twisted in my chest. “You don’t want me to touch you like you’ve been touching me. Like, all night?”

Yet another mortifying thought occurred to me. “Am I doing it wrong? I mean, a hand job feels pretty self-explanatory. But I’m open to learning if that’s what it takes to⁠—”

Yom’s granite expression instantly softened into regret. “Zayka, you are doing nothing wrong but being too kind to someone who is not deserving it,” he answered, his eyes sincere, voice heavy.

“It is me.” He took my hands in his. “You are asking what I am needing from you, and I am not—I should not be answering because I am already, as your lesbian friend, Trish, is saying, ‘walking red flag.’”

I mean, she hadn’t lied about that.

I hesitated, unsure if I should press on. But I found myself pulling one hand free to stroke his now stubbled face. “Baby, just tell me.”

“Zayka, I…” He covered my hand with his, kissed my palm, and then paused, as if searching for the right words. He looked away, his jaw clenching. For a moment, I thought he might not answer at all, that he’d pull back again. But then he took a breath and turned to me, his expression filled with both awkwardness and hope.

“I would like rough conversation with you.” He dragged a ragged gray gaze up to mine. “To give me control.”

“Rough conversation?” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

“I would talk to you. While physically… What is the English word…?” He searched, raising his gaze to the ceiling until his face lit up with the answer. “Dominating. I would like to be physically dominating you while I tell you how we will be making relationship from here.”

I knew English was Yom’s third language, but somehow I completely understood what he was trying to say—what he was asking to do, or really, let him do. To me.

But could I? Could I let myself… let him…?

My heart clunked. Then vibrated.

“And if I say ‘suitcase’?’”

“I stop when you say this word,” he rushed to assure me—before wincing. “But maybe what I say before you say it—what I do cannot be unheard?”

I swallowed, and something tightened in my stomach.

Fear or curiosity. I couldn’t tell.

“Okay, do it,” I answered, either way. “Have this rough conversation with me.”

His expression nearly collapsed with gratitude, and for a moment, my heart lit up because I’d actually managed to ease his pain and make him happy.

But then he said, “If I am upsetting you too terribly, you cannot run, zayka. You must stay and give me more chances to make it up to you after you say ‘suitcase.’ This is my most important condition. Do you agree?”

The maybe fear, maybe curiosity, lumped in my throat, but I swallowed it down to say, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Yom repeated, regarding me with solemn gray eyes.

He let out a breath.

Then he rose without warning and flipped me over onto my stomach.

“Our rough conversation will begin now,” he declared above me.