Hey, Big Bad Boris. Come over to #8 as soon as you’re home. Hope you’re hungry for something special!! ~ C.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Coming!” Carie chimed as she skipped excitedly over to her front door after hearing the familiar clubbing upon her door. She flipped back her long black hair, clasped her hands together, leaned aside and chirped, “Who is it?”

“Is ‘Big Bad Boris’,” Vasily replied from the other side, slowly slurring his thick, baritone Euro-drawl, “I have big, bad appetite.”

Carie frowned and pouted her lips askew. She wasn’t expecting such a playful salutation from her usually stoically gruff neighbour from across the hall, even if his voice still sounded like the snore of a sedated grizzly. How unusual. Oh well, she’d take it.

With a deep breath, she opened the door and waved him in with a zealous flourish. “Welcome to Carie’s Bistro! Please come in and have a -- mmph!”

Her grand introduction was interrupted by Vasily’s moist lips engulfing her own with a forceful smooch. His mouth led his charge forward, rushing her so fast she was nearly knocked backward to her apartment floor before his large frying pan-sized hands caught her around her waist and back.

“Va-mmph! Wai.. wai.. Uhng!” Carie struggled to speak, caught off guard and off balance. With her mouth full of his tongue, the rest of her protests were garbled. She wriggled in his arms but it was no use. He easily picked her up and carried her directly to the living room where he unceremoniously dumped her onto the sofa.

Before she even had a chance to settle as she flopped around on the cushions like a fish, an avalanche of hyper-sexed masculinity fell upon her, smushing her much more dainty frame deeper into the sofa seat.

“Huh-nff!” Carie huffed, the wind driven out of her as his chest pushed down. His mouth plowed into hers again. Her speech was mangled as she attempted to untangle the knotting of their tongues and lips. “Vasil-ich! Wait a mm-mmph! Hold o-ungh!”

Her sofa was pretty solid but the soft leather squeaked and farted against their fervent grappling. Whereas Carie pushed on his shoulders and tugged at his shirt in a vain attempt to restrain him, Vasily was making much better headway in his efforts to get her out of her clothes. Within seconds, he had somehow unbuttoned her oversized denim blouse, hiked up her bra over her breasts, and unsnapped the button of her shorts despite Carie scrabbling around beneath him. Good grief, the man was built like an ox but his hands were as dextrous and nimble as a rascally, randy chimpanzee.

“Va-...uhn! Vasily!” Carie gasped the moment he moved away from her mouth to paste his lips and slather his slick tongue along her perky breasts and nipples. Another sharp gasp escaped her as his rough hand slipped under her shorts and panties, his stiff digits sliding along the lips of her clean pussy.

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes to focus for a second, pushing from her mind the tingling sensations Vasily was eliciting from her with his mouth and frisky hands. “Vah- uh... Vasily,” she eked, then after clearing her throat, repeated more sternly, “Vasily!”

Vasily suddenly stopped and looked up with an expression that visually begged, “What?”

It immediately struck Carie just how sexy the big lug looked frozen there with his rough hand shoved down the crotch of her shorts, his tongue still sticking out and pressed up against her stiff nipple, and his sky blue eyes gazing at her with all the innocence of a youthful bear caught with its hand in the honey jar. For a moment she forgot what she was going to say. Shaking off her stupor, she calmly as possible said, “Vasily… I invited you over to eat.”

His tongue slowly retracted into his mouth. “Eat?”

Carie grinned and nodded slowly. Thank god, she was finally getting through to him. “Yeah. Eat.”

Vasily paused, pursed his lips and returned her nod. Message received. “Okay.”

“Great, so can we jus-- whup!” Carie yelped as she was unexpectedly flipped heels over head on her sofa. Vasily had taken hold of her shorts and panties and yanked them off with her ankles in the air, tossing her over like a salad.

Disoriented once again, it took her a moment to realize which way was up. Strong, determined hands turned her over and ragdolled her into position. By the time her eyes stopped rolling around in their sockets, she was on her back, head up against the sofa’s armrest and knees pushed toward her armpits. As she opened her mouth to protest, all that came out was a resounding moan as Vasily’s lips maneuvered upon her goodies alternating freely between her exposed snatch and the tight pucker of her anus.

She felt his tongue whirl upon her like a milk frother and with similar effect. His hot breaths did magical things to the coats of saliva he slathered on her tender, clean petals and butthole. The moment he went to work darting the tip of his tongue upon the hood of her clit, she threw her arms over her head and gripped the armrest behind her, her fingernails scratching into the soft leather. Her crotch convulsed with jittery thrusts towards Vasily’s face, twinging and shuddering against his rigorous oral indulgences.

“Ohh... fuck!” Carie spat, her body shuddering. That was probably the last thing she should have done. Her breathless gasps and utterance of “fuck” fed Vasily’s fervent horniness, and he responded by sinking one rigid finger into her pussy and slashing his tongue against her ass hole.

She sucked in a wheezing breath then swore again. “Fuck!”

His tongue went into overdrive doing vigorous laps from her anus to her clit, flecks of saliva reaching her lower belly.

“Uhh… Fuck!”

It was a frantic cycle of lust.

With eyes squeezed shut, her hand managed to find his head, and she gripped his short, brunette strands of hair between her fingers. She tugged hard, and at the same time she used every ounce of resistance left in her to grunt through gritted teeth, “Vasily!”

Vasily finished a long stroke of his tongue along her delicate quim. Once again he looked up from between her bare thighs with a crooked frown, his nose poking over her crotch.

Carie felt the flush in her face and upon her neck. She gasped and licked her dry lips. Her temple pulsed as she shook her head slowly looking down at him. Fighting the swell of blood and delicious twitch along and within her damp pussy lips, she paused, blank-faced. Why exactly did she make him stop, again?

Vasily spoke up first, still slowly stroking a stiff finger in and out of her. “You said eat.”

That she did, didn’t she? A stupid grin stretched onto Carie’s mouth as she blinked. Once the possibility presented itself, Vasily’s mind was set on a one-way track to Fucksville.

Ironic, her thinking that...

With another blink and a clarity, only wanton horniness could stoke, Carie nodded curtly and simply gasped, “Good boy. Clean your plate… ”

She pulled him down, stuffing his face into her crotch. As he nuzzled his tongue into her slit, she reached back over the armrest again and, with a devilish giggle, hung on for the ride.

A few frantic minutes later, after much writhing, moaning and swearing in ecstatic delight, Carie exploded with a sumptuous orgasm, knocking Vasily’s head back with a violent thrust of her hips. A lesser man with a thinner neck would have suffered whiplash from the force. Vasily’s lips never retreated though, and he took her wet onslaught full on with greedy sucks and licks, pumping the index finger of one hand into her pulsing slit and digging the fingers of his other hand into her blushing, plush bottom and securing her quaking body.

“Oh, fuck. Uhh, god. Oh, shit,” Carie gasped and sighed as the rush subsided, pushing her hand over her forehead and sweeping back her long, dark hair. Damn Vasily was good.

As she slowly recovered her breath, she watched him rise like the sun from between her legs, unbuttoning his plaid shirt. He loomed over her with his granite-hard chest and stomach revealing themselves. His brow spiked tellingly.

“Now for my ‘something special’,” he declared as he reached down to unzip the fly of his jeans.

“‘Something special’?” Carie said. Her thoughts finally emerged from the haze of ecstasy. “Oh, yeah! That’s right!”

As Vasily knelt up on the sofa, she took advantage of the opportunity to scramble away. With the deftness of a ninja, she rolled over, tumbled to the floor, and rolled again to her feet picking up her shorts and panties along the way.

Vasily regressed to being the lumbering bear to her quick-footed hare. He barely turned his head by the time she was hopping around on one foot pulling on her undergarments. He had “what the actual fuck?” written all over every angle of his sharp, red face.

“I cooked dinner for you!” she declared, beaming a proud smile as she buttoned her blouse. She stumbled a bit, her legs obviously wobbly from the orgasmic workout.

“What?” Vasily droned, his brows plummeting so far between his eyes they nearly touched the bridge of his nose.

“Dinner! Eat! You!” she said adding hand signals for good measure.

“What?” he repeated as if his head and possibly other body parts had hit a brick wall.

Carie ignored his annoyance. She walked towards the kitchen, pulling out a chair as she passed by her dining table. “Sit,” she said still wearing a gleeful smile that wasn’t registering with Vasily one bit.

He ran the fingers of both hands through his hair and gave his head an aggravated scratch. He then looked around dumbfounded muttering a litany of Eastern European expletives toward the ceiling and wall. After a few minutes of glaring at Carie’s back as she worked in the kitchen, he dragged himself off the sofa, gingerly adjusted the bulge under the crotch of his jeans, and stomped slowly to the table. Only for the fact that he was indeed famished for food and the possibility of sex afterward prevented him from marching right out the door. With his shirt still parted, he slumped heavily into the chair sighing.

His pointy nose tilted upwards as he sniffed. “What is smell?” he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Carie shuffled over with a plate and a handful of random utensils she grabbed from the drawer. She set the plate on the table in front of Vasily with a gleeful “Ta-dah!”

He eyed her - she really had no clue as to why he was upset - then turned the same rueful look towards the plate. A mass of brown lumps and red ooze settled uncomfortably into the white china.

“I made it myself,” Carie proclaimed.

Vasily swayed his chin aside. “That would be obvious,” he croaked.

After a minute, Carie asked impatiently, “Why aren’t you eating?”

Vasily usually devoured his food the way a tornado sucked up cows. Offering him a spoon, she said, “Give it a try. Dig in.”

“You have shovel?”

“You want to eat with a shovel?”

“I want to bury with shovel.”

Carie rolled her eyes and sighed, “Vasily… “

“What is this?” he asked.

“Goulash, of course,” she replied as if he was being deliberately obtuse.

“Why goulash?”

“I wanted to make you a genuine Russian dish.”

Bypassing that she either forgot or ignored the fact that he wasn’t actually Russian… again... Vasily grumbled, “Is not Russian dish.”

“Of course it is,” she scoffed.

“Is not Russian dish,” he repeated.

“Yes, it is.”

“Is not Rus- ”

“Yes, it is!” she snapped. “Goulash! It’s fricking Russian Goulash! People talk about ‘Russian Goulash’ all the time like in movies and stuff!”

“Gou-?” Vasily frowned and eyed her deliberately for a moment. “You mean, Russian… gulag?”

Carie narrowed her eyes as well. “Yeah. Russian… gulag?” she said hesitantly, doubt suddenly creeping into her head.

He breathed wearily, “Gulag is prison.”

Her left eye twitched to a tight slit. “‘Prison’?”

Vasily nodded. “Is place for prisoners and criminals… ”

“Right. Got it,” she said, pursing her lips aside and nodding once.

“Armed guards, bad food, hard labour,” Vasily continued.

“I know!”

“You do not drop soap in shower.”

“I know what a prison is!” Carie snapped. “So gou-lash isn’t Russian?”

He shook his head. “No. Is Hungarian.”

“Oh,” Carie remarked, deflated.

“Is okay,” Vasily said with a shrug, “because this is not goulash.”

“Yes, it is,” Carie said.

“Is not goulash.”

“Yes, it is,” she sighed, covering her eyes with her hand in disdain. Was her day in an endless loop?

“Is not goulash,” he replied again, his impeccably consistent inflection making him sound like a skipping record.

“Yes, it… “ Carie bit her lower lip, stopping herself. She raised her eyes to the heavens, inhaled audibly, mentally counted to three, then snapped, “So what the hell is it?”

Vasily crossed his arms and shrugged again. “It is plate of smieccie.”

“‘Smieccie’.” She crossed her arms as well and waited for a moment while tapping her foot. “You’re going to tell me what that is?”

“Is something you don’t even feed dog,” he said, frankly.

Her mouth flopped open. Peering at him, she asked, “Uh… beg your pardon?”

“Because dog does not eat,” Vasily explained with all the authority of a scholar, “human should not eat as well.”

“‘Smieccie’,” Carie said. “You’re calling my food garbage?”

“You speak Belarussian?” Vasily replied. His thick brows peaked with mock surprise. It was his idea of laughing at his own joke.

“Fuck you,” Carie said sneering, “You haven’t even tried it yet, so how would you know?”

Vasily leaned back in his chair and shook his head with disdain. “I can see. It is most unpleasant.”

Carie glanced at the lumpy, glowing red mound of charred gristle and hacked up veg. If she were to be truly honest with herself, she had to admit that it didn’t look that great. “It doesn’t look that bad,” she said, trying - and failing - to sound convincing.

“Is like cow brains put through wood-chipper.”

“Now you’re just being gross.” Okay, if she were a smidgen honest with herself, she would say it looked god awful. Not that she would admit that to Vasily. No, the lumbering ox wasn’t going to get that satisfaction.

“Presentation is most important,” Vasily declared, punctuating his words with the ‘okay’ finger sign.

Carie threw him a knitted brow. “Oh, I’m sorry ‘Gordon Ram-dick’. I forgot you only dine in fucking Mc-five star hoity-toity restaurants.”

“Big Mac is having better presentation,” Vasily said, the slim slit along his mouth ribbiting ‘Big Mac’ as ‘Beeg Mick’.

“Yeah, well… uh... you know what else looks like a mess?” Carie said, hands on her hips, nodding her head quickly as she bought some time. “Lasagna!” she declared with a sudden poke of her finger. “But it tastes fine.”

“This is not lasagna, either.”

“Will you just try it?” she pleaded, slapping his beefy shoulder. “I worked so hard on this for you.” She crossed her fingers behind her back as she added to her fib pile.

Vasily let out a long, noisy sigh and leaned forward in his chair. After peering carefully at the plate, he looked back up toward Carie and said, “I eat. You eat.”

Carie paused. Her face said “Do I have to?” but her mouth opened and spoke confidently, “Sure. Why not? Let’s dig in!”

The two of them kept their eyes on one another as they each took up a spoonful of the concoction on the plate. Slowly they lifted their spoons to their open mouths. For the briefest second they froze, then they shoveled it in simultaneously.

All went silent and motionless in the apartment for a long count of three as they held the ‘food’ in their mouths. Still staring at each other, Carie’s cheeks suddenly puffed out. She turned and bolted for the kitchen sink. Meanwhile, Vasily’s long tongue flopped out and dropped a wad unceremoniously back onto the plate.

“Blech!” Carie exclaimed while grasping at the faucet.

Vasily continued to smack and stick out his tongue in an attempt to distill the taste. At the same time, he pulled out his cellphone and took an over-the-shoulder selfie with Carie heaving over the sink behind him.

Carie chugged a glass of water like a sinking ship. “God,” she wheezed, “why is it so terrible?”

Vasily leaned in close and eyed the crimson morass upon the plate. He sniffed it. “This is not paprika,” he said.

“I didn’t have paprika,” Carie croaked. She flushed her mouth out with more water. “I used chili powder and sumac.”

“Chili powder and... sumac?” he asked, frowning. What the hell was ‘sumac’? Why the hell would she have sumac and not paprika?

“They’re both red! Paprika is red! I used red spices!”

“Red is colour, not flavour.”

Carie was too busy scraping her tongue with a paper towel to reply.

Vasily poked at a lump on the dish with his fork. “Meat is both burnt and raw,” he surmised, speaking as if he were inspecting a murder scene.

“I don’t understand it,” Carie said, finally returning from the kitchen, “I followed the recipe perfectly.”

Another lie.

“You used chili powder and... sumac?... instead of paprika,” Vasily reminded her.

“But… I followed the rest of the recipe perfectly.”

Lie upon lie.

“Was recipe in Hungarian?” he asked. “It’s like you used Google Translate to interpret it.”

“Oh, ha, ha.”

Vasily dropped the fork onto the plate and leaned back. He shook his head. “You are too impatient to be cook.”

“Excuse me?”

“You do not even bother getting proper ingredients,” he noted, then asked, “How long did you cook?”

“Fifteen… “

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Fiiiifff-ty?” Carie jumped back in. “Fifty minutes! I think… “ She looked up and away, frowning, thinking. It was probably actually closer to fifteen minutes… probably less.

“Cooking requires time and patience, like wolf hunting prey,” Vasily lectured framing an invisible block with his hands. “You have patience of starving squirrel hunting nut.”

“I have no patience?” Carie said. “Who came bursting through my door, dick in hand, without so much as a howdy-do? Knock, knock. Here’s my cock! Please warm it for me in your hootchie.”

“You put invitation on my door.”

“To eat dinner, not me!” she snapped. “I barely said ‘hi’ and you already had your slobbery gob on my lady parts.”

Vasily sighed. She was talking way too fast and spewing way too much gibberish. He pulled the small, yellow post-it note from his pocket and held it up to her face. “Says to come over for ‘something special’.”

“As flattered as I am to know that you think this...” she pointed to her crotch, “... is ‘something special’, that wasn’t it!” She waved at the plate. “This. This was the ‘something special’ that I meant.”

Vasily eyed the dish. “Tak. Is something special, definitely,” he remarked with dull sarcasm. “Is hot mess.”

“Fucking you is a hot mess,” Carie sniped.

Vasily shrugged. He wasn’t going to argue. “Hot mess sex is better than hot mess food.”

Carie pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut again. “Vasily,” she sighed wearily, “get out.” She felt so done. The goodwill from the sofa prologue had completely evaporated.

“No dessert?” he asked, still being sarcastic. It was rather surprising that he was taking the sour humour route rather than going ballistic on her for the blue balls manoeuvre she pulled on the sofa earlier.

She smirked. “No, and you’re not getting any more of my ‘something special’ either!”

She tugged and shoved him from the chair and continued to prod the lumbering man with her fingers and fist as she escorted him to her front door.

If Vasily had just stood still, the petite Carie would have had all the success of a summer breeze attempting to move a boulder from its spot. It was obvious he didn’t want to bother if she just completely popped off on him right now, and he seemed certain neither the hunger he felt in his belly or in his pants were going to be satiated tonight. A grumble surged up from his stomach and out of his mouth as a terse muttering in his native Belarusian, something to do with wanting to eat a small calf while jerking off to porn.

After Carie slammed the door shut, she huffed a puff of air, blowing aside the hair that had fallen across her face. “I have no patience?” she scoffed.

She marched back to the table and picked up the plate. Regarding it with sullen disdain for a moment, she then looked over to her stove upon which four litres of the gruel languished in a pot. She finally sighed, “Smieccie.”

--0--

“I don’t have patience?” Carie remarked. The residuals of Vasily’s assessment from two days ago still lingered as she attempted another cooking session in her kitchen.

Her friend, Mona, kept a close eye on the glimmering shard of steel Carie was waving in front of her as she sat on a stool across the kitchen island counter. “Yeah, well… “

“Did you know I actually shaved his face with a straight razor a couple of years ago?” Carie huffed, interrupting Mona and whacking away at some vegetables with the knife. “He just barged in, handed me this blade so sharp you could give a mouse a vasectomy and told me to cut the fur off of his scruffy face!”

Mona held her tongue. She couldn’t quite envision Carie with a razor seeing how merciless she was being towards the innocent onion and carrots on her chopping board. Bits of them flew aside and rolled around like heads from a guillotine.

“And I did it!” Carie continued, “I shaved his stubbly beard and neck like a surgeon. Do you think someone who is supposedly impatient could do that? I was freaking out that I’d accidentally cut him. It was torture.”

She omitted the fact that shaving Vasily in her apartment had turned out to be such a turn on that the two of them ended up in a frenzied fuck on her floor and sofa like a lonely shepherd and his favourite sheep after thirty days on the mountain.

“I should have just slit his throat,” she said through a thin grin that only assured Mona even less that she was kidding.

“Well, contemplations of murder aside,” Mona said, “why are you cooking for the guy? You never cook.”

“I cook… sometimes,” Carie said, shrugging.

Mona sighed and got up from the stool. She walked over to the kitchen cabinets and opened one of the lower doors where Carie kept her recycling. A wall of takeout bags, boxes, and containers nearly tumbled onto the floor.

Carie looked away guiltily.

“And nuking,” Mona said, pointing to the microwave, “doesn’t count, either.”

Carie rolled her eyes. “Oh, well, sorry. Not all of us went to culinary school,” she sniffed. As she scraped all the hacked up bits into a bowl she added, “So you know how to cook. That’s why you’re here. Show me.”

“I’m a pastry chef,” Mona said pointedly. “Remember? I’m the Cream Puff Queen. I run a bakery, not a grill house.”

Mona slid back onto her stool and rested her elbows on the counter, sighing. How could she tell her friend that, in all likelihood, she was a lost cause in the kitchen without becoming a casualty of her wanton knife flailing?

Carie finally dropped the knife on the counter and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. She stared down at the massacre in the bowl, despondent. “Maybe I’m just too quick-tempered to be a cook.”

“Mmm...” Mona sucked in her lips for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. “I wouldn’t say temper is the problem. Remember that friend of mine I told you about? Teaghan? The chef who opened up her own restaurant in California?”

Carie narrowed her eyes. “She also opened another one in Montreal, right?”

Mona nodded and adjusted her glasses. “Yup. Teaghan has a temper. Boy, does she have a temper! Swears and yells and has her staff in perpetual cringe mode every time before she starts to cook.”

“Were they Russian?” Carie asked, smirking.

Mona ignored her comment, peering through her glasses toward the ceiling and thinking for a moment. “According to her, she says she always has the most satisfying sex afterward,” she said with a curl on her lips and a telling spike of her brow. “The angrier she gets in the kitchen, the more explosive the orgasm.”

Carie rolled her eyes. “Lucky her. I just get cramps.”

“It’s like her version of culinary foreplay,” Mona added. She stirred her coffee wistfully and offered a coy grin, and said, “By the way, is that what’s going on here? You’re being all Julia Child in the kitchen so you can get some special ‘interrogation time’ with the Russian Mafia across the hall?”

Carie smirked. “For your information, I don’t need to cook for him to…” She caught herself as she noticed Mona narrow her eyes suddenly. She quickly shifted back onto topic, “So what’s your point about Teaghan?”

Mona continued, “My point is she is an amazing chef because once she’s cooking, she gets it all under control.”

Carie sighed and turned around to the stove where a pot had been boiling some form of meat for the last ten minutes.

“Teaghan’s temper comes from her pride. She won’t allow herself to make a bad dish so she has all the patience in the world to make the best food possible,” Mona went on, “She’s an arrogant bitch when it comes to her food, but that’s probably why it’s so freaking awesome.”

“And where does my temper come from?” Carie said, her back still turned to her.

Mona paused, then reached across the counter and discreetly took away the knife.

“You think I don’t have any patience?” Carie asked, dumping the bowl of vegetables with little regard into the pot. “That’s why I get angry.”

Her friend grimaced, gritting her teeth together. Mona leaned back and held up her hands. She remarked, “Hey, you said it, not me.”

Carie gave the pot a hostile stir of her spatula. Mona took advantage of her moment of silence to change the topic. “So what are you making?” she asked, trying to peek around Carie’s back.

“Plops.”

“‘Plops’?” Mona asked, confused. She looked at the print out of the recipe on the counter. “It’s ‘plov’.”

“Yes, plov. Whatever,” Carie grumbled. “Plov. Golubsty. Borscht. Why do all Russian dishes sound like someone trying to vomit a mouthful of marbles?”

“Ah, so you’re trying to make a familiar homeland meal for your neighbour,” Mona said, grinning. “I was wondering why you weren’t making Chinese food.”

Carie turned around as she wiped her hands with a dish towel and scoffed, “Uh, isn’t that a tad stereotypical? I’m Chinese so I should know how to make wontons and chicken balls?”

Mona rolled her eyes, dismayed that her friend’s idea of Chinese cuisine would be wontons and chicken balls. “Well, okay,” she said, “but I was wondering why you weren’t cooking something more, y’know, sexy?”

“Sexy food? Really?”

“Like maybe a savoury Spanish paella or Italian sausage risotto? Or bring on the heat and the sweet with a Thai curry?”

“Those are sexy?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Mona said with a smile as she wiggled into her seat, “there are foods that just insist on post-meal sexual congress. I’m always thinking of how sexy food can be.”

Carie sniggered, “Probably why your bakery does so well.”

“I did a whole essay on food and sex in university,” Mona added. “So yeah, apply what you know.”

Carie could just imagine the compact but buxom Mona serving up a paper like that in a little maid’s outfit to her professor, dabbing the trickle of drool from the side of his mouth with a napkin. “And what about Russian Plov? What does that get you thinking about?”

Mona stood up and walked over to the stove. Standing beside Carie, she narrowed her eyes as she looked into the pot and thought. “Hmm, do you recall that horror movie ‘Hostel’ from a few years back… ?“

Carie groaned in exasperation. “Okay, will you just shut up and help me already?” she pleaded.

Mona picked up the recipe sheet. “You forgot to add the rice.”

Carie grabbed a jar of dry rice sitting on the counter beside the stove and immediately dumped it in.

“Oh, wait!” Mona said.

“What?”

“You have to… “ Mona stopped and flipped the sheet aside. She crossed her arms, shook her head and sighed, “Nevermind. Too late.”

The two of them continued to stand over the stove, staring into the pot. After a dozen swift stirs of a spatula, Carie grumbled, “So is it done yet?”

Mona checked her watch although she was pretty certain that it would take more than two minutes for dry rice to cook, especially since Carie didn’t bother to add liquid stock. She looked back into the pot. It would probably take much, much longer for Carie’s cooking to become remotely edible. “Ye-ahhh,” she said, “it’s so done.”

Frowning at the charred morass bubbling before her, Carie asked, “Do you think he’ll like it? Is this ‘sexy food’?”

While massaging her friend’s shoulder and double-checking that the knife was still beyond her grasp, Mona said, “Maybe if you rub it all over your naked body and let him lick it off.”

Carie stewed silently.

“Well, you were right about one thing… “ Mona said, nodding at the pot.

The two of them looked at each other.

“... it turns out you were making ‘Plops’ after all.”

--0--

Okay, Boris. Let’s try this again. Come over for dinner as soon as you’re home. ~ C.

As soon as she heard the plodding thumps of Vasily’s heavy boots coming from down the hallway outside, Carie readied herself by the door of her apartment. The steps grew louder and louder until she heard him scuffling outside her door. She grabbed hold of her doorknob, ready to open her door once more with a grand flourish.

She listened to his door open and shut. Then… nothing. The lines of her trim, dark brows angled to a curious frown. Lifting herself to her toes, she peeked through her peephole. Her yellow post-it note with the dinner invitation was still stuck to Vasily’s door.

“What the hell?” she griped.

She waited for another minute, then, tightening the sash of her robe, she opened the door and marched across the hallway. After snatching the post it, she rapped her knuckles on his door. “Hey!” she called. “I know you’re home. Open up!”

She waited impatiently for a few more seconds. Just as she was about to knock again, the door opened. Vasily stood there in a white tank top, boxer shorts, and wool socks. As she watched dumbfounded, he raised a huge turkey leg to his mouth and took a large bite out of it. Staring back down at her with his detached blue eyes, he chewed slowly and deliberately.

Carie gave her head a little shake and then nodded her chin toward the drumstick. “What the hell is this?” she demanded.

“Dinner,” Vasily muttered. He chomped another chunk out of the leg.

“What, you think you’re Conan the Barbarian? That’s not dinner,” she said and held up the post-it note. “This is dinner!”

Vasily gazed blankly at the little piece of paper. “Not enough protein.”

“Ha, fucking, ha,” she replied, smirking. Pointing back to her apartment, she said, “I made dinner for you. I swear, it’s great!”

“Would rather eat little paper.”

“Oh, for… “ Realizing she would need to be proactive about this situation, Carie snatched the turkey leg from his grip. To his actual surprise, she threw it into his apartment and grabbed him by his wrist.

“You dropped it on my floor,” he said with blunt bewilderment. Perhaps because he was stunned by her brazen actions, Vasily followed her, pulled along like a large child across the hall.

“Yeah? If you don’t get your ass into my apartment this minute, that’s not the only thing I’m gonna drop.”

Carie yanked him ahead before slamming her door shut. As she walked to her kitchen and pointed to a chair by her dining table. “Sit,” she commanded. “You better be hungry, too.”

“Had long day at work,” he grumbled, obviously grumpy about something beyond having his turkey leg being taken from him. Carie knew it his way of saying that, yes, he was ready to devour sustenance.

“It’s Saturday,” she said from the kitchen. “You had to work?”

“Service calls for clients,” he replied, accenting the word ‘clients’ to sound like ‘fucking assholes’.

“Poor baby,” she chirped. “So you must be voracious!”

As he stood there, the heavy frown he wore slowly eased somewhat to a cautiously piqued expression. He sniffed the air. “What,” he said as he sniffed again, “is that?”

“That,” Carie declared, pausing as she spooned something from a pot on her stove into a large bowl. She looked back over her shoulder smiling and continued, “is dinner.”

To her muted delight, the look on Vasily’s sharp face wasn’t one of sour disgust. His nose tilted upwards and he stepped forward as if lured by some tempting aroma.

“Smells good, doesn’t it?” Carie said, grinning. “Not like ‘smieccie’, at all, huh?”

Vasily nodded once, still frowning with suspicion. He sat down at the table.

“Wait till you taste it.” Carie walked over with the bowl and placed it before him, the steam from the mound of food swirling up.

He peered carefully at the attractively colourful and aromatic mound of meat and rice and garlic. “Is that… plov?”

“It ain’t no ‘Beeg Mick’,” she declared, standing aside proudly.

His eyes shunted up towards her. “Plov requires hours to prepare.”

“Oh, don’t I know it! The chopping, the shredding, the stirring. Knowing when to add the precise amount of each fresh ingredient. So much work,” she said, offering a trite laugh and a wave of her hand.

Vasily pursed his lower lip forward and nodded.

“It takes a lot of patience to cook this dish properly,” Carie sighed.

His eyes shifted upon her again, not raising his head, like a hungry wolf hovering over a rabbit carcass. “Yes,” he admitted grudgingly, as she fluttered her eyelashes at him, “it does.”

“Oh, and it’s actually Russian!” she said with a swoop of her finger.

Vasily rolled his eyes as he sat back and sighed.

Carie raised a spoon in front of his face. “Eat,” she said.

Pausing for a long second, he finally took the spoon from her and scooped up some plov. He held up the golden-hued rice and tender bits of lamb to his nose and sniffed.

“Oh, eat it already, you big babushka,” she insisted.

Vasily shoved the spoon in his mouth. Then he chewed… and chewed… and chewed, his eyes slowly shifting left and right. He swallowed with one big gulp then dug the spoon into the bowl for more.

Carie crossed her arms and smiled contentedly. She spiked her brow and asked, “Is good?”

Holding food in his mouth, Vasily gritted his teeth and said grudgingly, “Is good.”

As she watched on, he continued to churn the spoon from the bowl to his mouth at a steady pace. “I need bigger spoon,” he declared, holding up the dainty teaspoon she had provided him as his only dining utensil.

“Oh, no, no,” she teased playfully, “Don’t you know how to savour your food? Have you no... hmm... patience? Or are you gonna eat like a pig at a trough?”

Vasily scrunched his nose towards her. “I have patience. I can savour,” he said, slowing his eating noticeably. “I am not like some squirrel.”

Carie tilted her head and smirked.

“Spoon is fine,” he said, shrugging with indifference, taking up smaller mouthfuls of plov. “See?”

“Good boy.” Carie nodded as she walked past behind him. “It’s all yours, then. Enjoy.”

“You are not eating?” he asked with the huge bowl of food sitting in front of him.

“All that rice and lamb is a bit heavy for me,” she replied with a giggle, brushing her hands down her robed figure as she gave her hips a little swirl.

Lifting the spoon to his mouth, Vasily pointed his chin at her. “You cooked wearing that?”

“No,” Carie said with a wink and a gaping grin. She undid the sash of her robe. “I cooked wearing this.”

The full-length robe dropped to the ground piling around her feet. Her pink ankle socks turned out to be the only things she wore on her silky, peach legs, and she wasn’t wearing much above them either.

Carie primped the skimpy skirt of the very sheer, blue negligee practically floating upon her skin as she leaned her bare legs this way and that. The curves of her petite, yet perfectly shaped body were in silhouette just beneath the veneer of delicate silk and lace.

“You remember this little number?” she asked.

It would have appeared that Vasily, mouth agape, had been immediately and instantly placed into cryogenic freeze. A dollop of hot plov tumbled off his suspended spoon and plopped onto the suddenly active crotch of his boxers. He didn’t flinch. Goddamn, right, he remembered that 'little number'. He had bought it for her. It turned out to be one of his best investments in the past year.

“You cooked…” he asked, “... wearing that?” He was back on repeat.

“Let’s just say that it helped inspire me,” she replied with a whimsical shrug. She walked over to her couch, offering him a nice view as the high hem of the negligee swished just past her smooth, round bottom. She picked up a book from her coffee table and a small saucer of chocolates. “And now I don’t even have to change to just lounge around and relax.”

As she fell back into the sofa, Vasily still remained motionless at the table. She felt his eyes practically groping her body from afar as she kicked up her legs and allowed one of the straps of her negligee to fall seductively off her shoulder. She held up the book and played with her long strands of hair as she regarded him. Smiling, she offered, “You can join me if you want.”

Vasily immediately stood up, tipping over his chair.

“But first,” Carie said, holding up a finger, “you have to be a good Boris and finish your food.”

He looked down at the pile of plov then at his spoon. It was obvious the amount of food wasn’t the issue --Vasily was the proverbial bear who could eat the wolf, that ate the rabbit, that ate the carrot-- it was the size of the teaspoon, so puny in his big hand. It would be like emptying out a canoe full of water with a kiddie paper cup.

“Or are you in a rush?” she asked, grinning at him.

After a moment, his eyes narrowed and his lips drew to a tight, defiant line. “Not rush,” he said, shrugging. He righted the chair and slowly sat back down and started eating again. He pointed at the bowl with his tiny spoon. “I know to savour food.”

Carie chuckled to herself. He looked to be in control, but the pace of his eating had stepped up a bit. She raised the book, a tawdry tale of erotica, to cover up the grin on her face.

Several minutes of silence passed between them in her apartment aside from the sound of Vasily’s eating. He continued to eye her while Carie was actually becoming increasingly engrossed in her book. She chewed slowly on a piece of dark, rich chocolate, swirling it in her mouth mindlessly with her tongue as a heated scene of lust unfolded in the pages of the novel. She brushed her fingertips along the glowing skin exposed between the diving collar of the negligee, stroking the top of her bosom. Her tongue came out and traced the line of her upper lip and remained there as a satisfying sigh creaked from her throat.

Vasily cleared his throat as if to cough.

Looking towards him, she smiled and asked, “Did you choke on your food?”

With his mouth full like a giant chipmunk, he shook his head and swallowed hard.

Carie arched her brow. She flipped over onto her belly and raised her legs, bending her knees and locking her ankles in the air. Warm apartment air licked upon her exposed, smooth bottom.

Vasily’s spoon clattered to the table. Before she had a chance to turn her head, he was scrambling to pick it back up.

After giving the back of her negligee a useless tug, she resumed reading. Now the sounds of Vasily’s quickening consumption of plov was joined by the subtle creaks of leather as Carie shifted and squirmed slowly on the sofa, immersed in the illicit literary depictions of sucking and fucking. She felt her temperature rise as her heart quickened. She shifted her thighs, her warm bare skin sticking to the leather. The whispery silk garment also felt great on her tingling skin. She purred with satisfaction.

For a few minutes more, the two of them continued their disparate activities in resolved silence. Carie began to chew her lower lip, an unconscious hunger not for food swelling within her, as she delved deeper into the seedy sex oozing from the book. She felt a pinch at her crotch and she writhed it against the leather cushion in an attempt to satiate the sensation. Her whole body rose and fell as deep, quivering breaths filled her belly.

Carie glanced over at Vasily. He was still going at a steady clip but probably had a ways to go to finish his food. She frowned with a touch of sympathy towards the big bear; she had really loaded up that bowl.

Vasily, stared back at her, focused and determined, repeatedly filling his mouth with plov, grinding up the food with slow, efficient shifts of his solid jaw. A low, primal grumble seethed within him as he laid his handsome, icy eyes unabashedly upon Carie.

Damn if it wasn't turning her on.

She cleared her throat. “Do you need a glass of water? I could use a glass of water,” she said as she suddenly got up. “I'll get us both a glass of water.”

Vasily blinked, looking puzzled as watched her quickstep to the kitchen and return with two big glasses of water. Still, he readily accepted the glass.

Carie took a couple of sips from her glass then watched Vasily as he tilted his head back, downing the water all at once. Her head tilted aside as she admired the way his pronounced Adam’s Apple undulated up and down with each gulp down his stubbly throat. When he was done, he exhaled a satisfied breath and looked up at her.

Faced with his appetizing gaze, Carie shut her eyes and gave herself a little shake. When she opened them, she giggled. “Um, you’ve got some plov on the side of your mouth,” she noted, then reached over and scraped the slight smear of rice and sauce off with her thumb.

She regarded her thumb for a moment, grinned at Vasily, then dabbed it with a flick of her tongue. She followed that up by sticking the whole digit into her mouth, sucking it with a noticeable hum, then pulling it out past her puckered pink lips all wet and shiny.

His left bushy brow spiked.

“Mmm, not bad,” she said, licking her lips. She arched her brow and nodded further down. “You, uh, spilled some more down there.”

Vasily lowered his eyes to his crotch where a spoonful of the food had fallen earlier. He had been too distracted to notice this whole time. Lucky him. Before he could look back up at Carie for help, she was already bending down, reaching out her fingers towards the offending plov.

As she scooped up some of the food from his boxer shorts, she felt a vibrant twinge beneath the fabric. “My, my,” she purred, “Somehow it’s still warm.”

Vasily’s heavy jaw ranged over to the side as he watched her drag her tongue from her palm to her fingertips slowly and repeatedly like a cat.

“Mm-mmm, so good,” she cooed.

“There is… “ Vasily gulped as he breathed through his mouth, “... there is more.” He nodded toward his crotch.

Carie winced. “Ooh, I heard plov can leave stains. We don’t want that, do we?”

“No.” Vasily shook his head looking like a lobotomy patient. “These are, uh, favourite boxers.”

She stifled a chuckle. “Well, then,” she said as she knelt down, “let’s clean it up.”

One by one, she picked off each grain of rice and piece of shredded carrot from his boxers, ensuring she nipped the twitching flesh and muscle underneath. She brought her hand to her mouth and licked her fingers clean each time with long strokes of her tongue and sucks of her lips. When every morsel was gone, she regarded Vasily. He was clutching his tiny spoon in his large hand, the stainless steel possibly melting in his tight grip.

Carie moved in closer, leaning her soft breast against his thick thigh. She brought her mouth down towards his lap. Her lips spread apart and cupped along part of Vasily’s lengthy cock nudging beneath his boxers. As slid her mouth along the shaft, her tongue mopped up the sauce soaked into the fabric. It was quite a tasty experience.

Vasily’s breathing deepened as his stomach flexed. His fingers pushed through Carie’s lengths of hair and stroked the back of her neck. He had completely forgotten about finishing his meal. Soon his hardened cock was shoving against his boxers, tenting up the fabric.

Carie raised her head and gasped. Once more she licked her lips with impish delight and spied Vasily’s thick, purplish dome poking up past the waistband of his underwear. It looked delectable. Just as she was about to sample it with her mouth, however, her phone rang.

And to Vasily’s utter shock and confusion, she actually got up to answer it.

Ignoring his garbled attempts at protest, Carie quickly grabbed her cell phone from the coffee table.

“Hello? Oh, hey!” she answered. As she chatted, Vasily continued to glare at her, with a slack jaw and blistering eyes.

“That sounds great. I’m in!” She checked the clock. “Be there in like an hour? Cool! Bye!”

Carie skipped quickly towards her bedroom.

Vasily looked puzzled. “Where are you going?”

“To get changed,” Carie said.

“You are not going to wear negligee anymore?” he asked as if a puppy were being stolen away from him.

“Of course not. I’m going out.”

“Out?”

“It’s Saturday night, duh,” she said.

“What means, ‘Saturday night, duh’?!” he parroted, directing attention to his swollen erection with his hands. “What about this, duh?”

Carie shook her head. “Look, sorry, Vasily. You haven’t finished your dinner and I’ve got to get to the subway in thirty minutes.”

“Finish my din- ?”

The rest of his incredulous reply was muffled as she shut her bedroom door. She raised her eyes, shrugged sheepishly and called through the door, “Patience! Savour! Enjoy!”

Okay, that was probably pushing her luck but she couldn’t help but chuckle.

Three minutes later, Carie stood naked in her room, holding up two dresses, trying to make a decision. Suddenly, there was a clubbing on the other side of her door. She held one of the dresses against her body and tentatively reached for the knob.

“Um, yeah?” she said as she opened the door. She glanced up. “Holy shit.”

Vasily stood tall, his face, white tank shirt, and shorts smeared with plov. “I am done,” he declared, looking slightly glassy-eyed.

“You finished all of that?” Carie said, both shocked and impressed. “In three minutes? With that tiny spoon?”

“All of that. Three minutes,” he replied nodding back to the table where an empty bowl lay. He held up his spoon. Amazingly, he still looked hungry… very hungry.

Carie tilted her chin. “Wh-what about patience?”

“Fuck patience,” Vasily said, taking a step forward.

“What about savouring?” she asked as she took a step back into her bedroom.

“Fuck savouring, too.”

“What about… um… “ Carie lost her train of thought as Vasily bent down and pulled his boxers to his ankles. His hard, heavy shaft swayed freely as he continued his approach. Suddenly, she felt kind of hungry herself. She stammered, “I, uh, I’ve got to go in like ten minutes.”

“Time enough for hot mess,” Vasily said, dispatching his tank top.

“But it takes time to get dressed and… “ she trailed off as she watched that rare, attractive, and downright goofy smile mould itself on Vasily’s plov smeared mouth. She sighed, tossed aside the dress and said, “Fuck it. Get over here.”

With no time for formalities and the fortuitous advantage of them both being naked already, Carie jumped at Vasily and the two were on an express train to Fucksville yet again.

"Vasily," Carie said in between a flurry of kisses.

"What?" he replied, glaring back at her warily even as he peppered her with his own salvo of kisses. If she was even thinking of stopping again...

"You can drop the spoon."

Vasily noted that he was still clutching the trusty dining utensil. He concurred with a grunt.

As soon as the spoon clattered to the floor, they whirled around the floor and tumbled onto her bed. As if a ticking alarm clock was buried in each of their skulls they just went at it at a frantic rate of lust and hunger. They mashed their mouths together and Carie savoured the flavour of the plov on Vasily’s lips and tongue.

For a few seconds, they each fingered and stroked one another. That was it for foreplay, and she immediately guided his throbbing cock into her twitching pussy.

“Ahh, fuck!” she exclaimed, her face grimacing at the robust thrust of Vasily’s hips. Within a heartbeat, those same strong hips were revved up, going a mile a minute, filling her with rapid strokes of his long, hard cock. She met him in the middle, pumping her pelvis forward and clashing against his crotch with resounding slaps of damp, bare flesh.

Their coital encounters had always been frenetic, but this moment seemed as if someone had fallen asleep on the fast-forward button. They sped through their desperate encounter with greedy, sloppy motions. They wrestled and tangled on the bed with inflamed vigour, rattling its frame so hard that the headboard chipped the paint off her wall. Eventually, they tumbled onto the floor, Carie landing on top of Vasily’s chest and belly. After pausing and praying for a second that he wouldn’t throw up his dinner, she was back to riding him hard, grinding her torso as if being tossed around on a bronco.

Seconds later, she was on all fours, her back bowing sharply as Vasily yanked at a clutch of her ebony hair with one hand, the other wrapped under her chin lifting tilting it upward. As she gasped her raspy breaths to the ceiling, her ass rippled and blushed pink against the rapid-fire slaps of his crotch.

In quick succession they scrambled to new positions, practically smashing their bodies together like a couple of crash test dummies in heat, driving out the most pleasure and illicit sensations they could in the shortest amount of time. Vasily picked her up and carried her around while their tongues lashed wildly as quick, aching groans sputtered past their lips. They crashed against the wall, shaking a picture frame off its hook, then spun away knocking over a lamp. As they continued to thrust and grind careening around the room, they pulled at their hair and streaked and marked their overheated flesh with scratches and bites. Amidst much grunting and moaning and swearing, more furniture was shoved out of place and an assortment of books and baubles tumbled to the floor.

To the innocent neighbours in the apartments around them, it must have sounded like a gulag riot in progress.

As Carie took his broad, stiff thrusts with wanton zeal and surprising resilience, she groaned through a wide-open grin on her lips. She would have to tell Mona that Russian Plov should be added to her list of ‘sexy food’.

Their sex feast rushed towards the climax, pedal to the floor. They decided to end it with Vasily hoisting Carie in his arms, standing in the middle of her mess of a bedroom, and probing her with hard upward thrusts of his engorged cock. His fingers dug into her butt and plucked at her puckered hole. Carie, her feet and leg slipping and sliding against his sides and butt, lurched and lunged, alternatively embracing him in a tight clutch or letting go and leaning back, barely holding on to the back of his neck with the tips of her fingers.

Their foreheads touched and she met his burning stare with her own fiery gaze. Both of their parched mouths hung open as they exchanged heated breaths and desperate, vulgar words of encouragement.

“Oh! Ahh! Fuck, baby,” she groaned, fueled by an aching swell in her gut. “You’re so fucking good.”

Vasily sneered at her. “C’mon! Ah, shit! Huh! Huh! Fuck, yeah.”

Suddenly, Carie slammed her mouth over his in a full-press kiss and groaned. With one final stiff thrust of his pulsating cock delving deep into her, she shuddered and released a surge of excruciatingly satisfying wetness.

“Mmm! Mmm!” she continued to moan aloud, the air being driven from her lungs as his strong arms squeezed her against his body like a vice. The throb of his cock deep inside of her shook Carie to her core. She writhed and wriggled in his arms, churning his shaft within her.

Vasily’s ripped body suddenly seized. His long muscles tensed then trembled for a moment, then he loosed a primal, guttural groan. He bucked his hips repeatedly, each time spewing streams of thick, sticky cum into her moist pussy.

Carie clenched, drawing more spurts of delirious release from Vasily’s embedded cock.

They slowly sunk to the floor, still joined at the lips and the hips. Vasily stumbled and fell onto his back. As he lay there spent, Carie curled her body, relishing the feel of his shaft as it withdrew from her. Smiling, she kissed her way down his body, dragging her soft breasts past his broad chest and hammered abs. As she knelt between his spread legs, she delicately gathered up his lengthy cock in her hands.

Vasily lifted his head from the floor to look down towards her. He said, “Do you not need to go?”

“My friend is patient. She can wait,” she said with her impish grin. “Besides, I haven’t had my dinner, yet… and I like to savour my meal.”

She gave his tip a little flick of her tongue, then added, “But if you want me to go… “

“No. No. Stay,” he insisted. “Take time. Be patient.”

Her mouth plunged over his shaft, cleansing it of their mingling cum with long, sensuous sucks.

Vasily’s head landed back onto the cluttered floor with a thud.

Viva la Hot Mess.

--0--

Vasily returned the picture frame to the wall hook and took a moment to adjust it. Then he looked around Carie’s bedroom to ensure everything was back in its place. He’d have to fix the plaster behind the bed’s headframe later.

He went to check the kitchen and dining table next. Carie had insisted that, as payment for the ‘amazing’ dinner she had spent hours to prepare for him, he clean up her apartment so that she had time to go meet her friend without being too late. While he grudgingly agreed to do so, he nonetheless took his time to ensure he did it right, cleaning every speck of plov off the table, pot, dishes and utensils. It was a matter of principle that he did things properly.

Looking for a place to put away the dishcloth, he opened a kitchen cabinet and out tumbled an array of takeout containers onto the nice, clean floor.

He rolled his eyes and sighed before taking out a garbage bag to gather everything up. One particularly large container with remnants of golden rice and orange carrots still inside caught his eye. He frowned as he read the print on the attached receipt: “Mama Natasha’s Russian Kitchen; Item 1: Plov - family size”.

Carie would come home later that night to find her bed covered in takeout containers.

--0--

A little Easter Egg reveal for those who may have read some of my earlier stories (and a little self-promotion for those who haven’t). The characters of Mona and Teaghan are from one of my earliest and personal favourite stories, For Your Dining Pleasure, found here on Lush, and I thought it would be fun to revisit them with a ‘cameo’. I kind of miss them. So if you’re interested in their story, please have a look.

Thank you for reading, always. -L8