Chapter 231 Want to know him

Chapter 231 Want to know him


After Saturday’s performance, I returned to Volkov’s home, exhausted and sore in every muscle. Yet the moment I saw him in the kitchen, alert and confident as always, every sense in my body perked up. There was something in the way he moved, a quiet tension in his shoulders,

He was cooking dinner.

"Are you hungry?" He heard me enter and spun from the stove to face me. The warmth in his eyes, the easy smile, drew me in, and I felt something stir deep in me.

Whatever he was cooking smelled incredible. Garlic and olive oil wafted through the air, making my stomach rumble. "Starving."

"Good." A dimple appeared on his cheek as he smirked, a glint of something untamed flashing in his gaze before he turned back to the pot.

"I'm making pasta Aglio e Olio." I froze. Russian food? This was new.
"Is that Russian food?," I asked before I could stop myself. Volkov barked out a laugh and looked up from the pot of boiling water to glance at me over his shoulder. "No, it's not."

"It's a rather simple dish, actually. It just sounds fancy." I listened to him as I sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island to watch him cook, noticing the way his movements were precise, deliberate, almost instinctual like he had control over every motion, every breath.

"Garlic, olive oil, parsley and Parmigiano reggiano tossed with angel hair pasta… It's Italian and so simple to cook," he spoke.

"Simple or not, it smells wonderful." With his back turned, I frowned as my thoughts went to my last conversation about pasta. Papa would be happy to know I was eating something that sounded so classically Italian. "I didn't know you could cook at all, so, consider me impressed."

Volkov pulled two glass bowls from his cabinet and started plating up pasta with a grin. "I am an impressive man, Elena. I have many talents." He took the seat next to me at the island.

"But this is just a simple meal to cook after a long day. Nothing difficult about it."

I took my first bite and a drawn-out moan pulled from my chest as the flavors of garlic and cheese danced over my tongue. "Oh my God, it's so good." I hadn't eaten something so decadent in a long time. Simple or not, the mix of carbs and cheese was pushing me to stuff my face.

"You don't eat very much pasta normally, do you?", Volkov chuckled.

"Too many carbs," I breathed out between bites. During show season, my life was chicken and veggies for most meals. This pasta Volkov made was sending me to heaven.

"Hmm." I felt his eyes on me, but ignored his gaze as I shoved my face with more pasta. "I didn't eat too much pasta like this growing up. My family is from Russia, so we ate a lot of traditional Russian foods my aunt made."

"I did notice the hint of an accent on you the first time we met," I admitted after a horrendous mouthful of noodles. "I saw in your interview you were born in Russia."

"Yes, everything you read is true", He responded.
It surprised me a bit that Volkov was telling me about himself. But the mood was so light and easy between us right now, and I wanted to hear his story.

"I did, but it's different hearing it from you." An open invitation for him to start talking. That's when I met his gaze and saw the way his brows pinched together as he watched me, the faint curve of his lips almost strange in their intensity.

"You want me to talk about myself?" I was sure he seemed surprised.

"Well, yeah, of course I do. Reading a brief interview about you doesn't tell me who you are." I pushed my empty bowl away so I wouldn't start licking it. "So, who is Andrey Volkov?"

He was rich. He was attractive. But there was more to him than that. If we were going to be together for three months, I wanted to know who it was I would be sharing myself with.

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back a bit, looking around the kitchen for a moment as if the question was kinda hard. Finally, he locked eyes with me again. "Let's start with what you want to know."

It seemed like a guarded answer. Normally, he was so open. My first thought was that he might be hiding something. It was fine if he was.

"Okay, um, why Cornell University?" It was the first thing that popped into my head. The school he said in the interview that he went too.

"It was the school my father wanted me to go to. His business program aligned with how he ran his business. It helped me jump right into working for him the moment my degree was in my hands."

"Did you want to go there?"

"It didn't matter to me where I went. But my father did a lot for me, so going to the school he paid for was easy." Volkov smirked, and the glint in his eyes made me shiver. "Plus, I got to stay on campus and there were a lot of women eager to impress a man with an accent."

He increased the Russian in his voice as he spoke, and I could understand why a woman might throw herself at him. There was something in the timbre of his tone, almost primal, that made my belly flutter.

"Oh, I see." I laughed nervously.

He noticed the pink in my cheeks but didn’t comment, just leaned against the counter with an easy grace. "You hide your accent well, I only pick up on it sometimes."

"I've been in the States since I was a kid. Learning English over here kind of rubbed it out for the most part. At this point, I've been in America longer than I was ever in Russia."

"Can you speak Russian?" I admired the way his thin, black long sleeve clung to the lines of his back as he cleaned up. His muscles were tantalizing to watch.

"I can. Since my parents were born and raised there as well, they spoke it a lot at home. So, I never lost it growing up stateside." Volkov left the bowls in the sink, then turned back to the island. He placed his arms on the edge of the counter, and I admired his forearms, since his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

"That's really cool. I took French, but I can't remember a lick of it." I chuckled.

Volkov smiled and nodded. "That's fair. I'm sure you were more focused on dancing anyway."

"I was, yeah." I shrugged one shoulder, not really wanting to talk about myself. "So, can you say something in Russian now?"

"Oh, you're putting me on the spot, Elena." He leaned further over the kitchen island, getting closer to my face. Something in his eyes went dark, sharp, and almost instinctive, and I felt a flutter between my thighs.

"YA sobirayus' trakhnut' tebya na etoy kukhne," he huskily whispered.

"What does it mean?" I bit my lower lip where his dark eyes were.