Tarmo

Most women, for me, are beautiful cities: worth savouring, never worth staying.

Elena was never a pin on my map. She’s the one place I keep circling, whatever the longitude: Pärnu, Zurich, the nights where, against every adult instinct, I bargained with powers older than strategy. Called on Odin like some northern fool in the dark.

I tell myself it was only Zurich’s cold and her breath against my chest. Superstition. The same irrational reflex that kept my ancestors talking to shadows for a thousand years.

I’ve seen her with other lovers—her talent for undoing anyone’s discipline, even mine. I should have cut my losses, filed her under “uncontrollable variable.” Instead, every time I see her, something elemental rises. Tallinn. Zurich. Gdańsk. Dakhla. The same storm. No logic, no business, just something in the blood I don’t have words for.

Tonight, as I move inside her, my mind stills and the prayer surfaces—not as words, just the shape of asking: ODIN

Let me keep her.

I don’t say it aloud. Don’t even know what I’m asking or who I think might answer. But the room feels different—closer, heavier—and for a moment I’m certain something’s listening.

Then her hand tightens on my shoulder and the world is just physics again. Skin, breath, the city outside indifferent as always.

Outside, everything obeys power and advantage. Here, I keep returning to a ritual I thought I’d outgrown, knowing it means nothing, changes nothing.

Knowing I’ll do it again anyway.

Morning Notes, Bruises, and Surprises

Sunlight slices the room into uneven shapes.

Tarmo’s side of the bed is empty, but he’s left a charge behind: the lingering scent of Allure, the air still dense with heat and aftermath.

On the nightstand, beneath my phone, a single piece of paper waits—folded with that precision only Tarmo achieves.

I expect code, or coordinates. Instead:

waves roar, mist sprays foam,
a song of rage and laughter,
hand in hand we walk,
with still hearts by unstill sea,
in restless gales, restful joy.

His handwriting—a poetic ambush. The same man who treats words like bullion, never spent unless demanded. I’m dissecting possible meanings (apology? omen? memory leak?) when my phone buzzes hard enough to nearly send the poem flying.

Hasna:
Sorry, Elena, I had to have Karim let Tarmo in. He said it was about Sandi. Urgent.

Urgent, yes. For whom, exactly?

I thumb back a reply, even‑tempered: Left for now.

The hot water erases most of last night, but nothing dislodges the new ache scored into my body and under my skin. I dress slow: jeans, linen shirt, a loose scarf at my throat. Flash‑cuts surface in the glass: Tarmo’s hands, Burçu’s wary glance, and under it all, Sandi, shadowy and unresolved, possibly already lost to Iran.

Outside, Karim waits by the elevator. Tall, tense: shoulders straight, eyes bright and deep, one of them now edged in a bruised purple swirl. He’s got that impossible energy again, the impression he’s holding motion in check, that even standing still his bones are ready to run.

Gods below!: did Mikael lay him out just to clear Tarmo’s way into my bed?

I step close, lips brushing his cheek, catching the scent of warm spice and something alive, a sunlit charge beneath.

“Next time, ask me,” I murmur. “No need for bruises on my account.”

His grin quirks, wide as the morning. “Loyal always, Elena.”

Yet his presence is more than loyalty: it’s the sense he could bear anything, run with me or for me as far as I dare ask.

Impulsively, I hug him, the kind of embrace you give a wild filly that chooses to stand beside you. His arms close strong, his laugh lasers through me, and there’s that heartbeat of motion under the skin, the promise of speed and protection bred in bone.

For a moment, the world feels light, mythic, already galloping toward something wild.

We let go. Karim’s gaze lingers—affectionate, untamed, wry.

He matches my stride to the lobby, his gait easy, almost rolling. He asks, “So, boss, what’s on the menu, a saz or a setar, or would you prefer a Sarsılmaz with your breakfast?”

I blink. “When did you get so literary?”

He grins, eyes alive.

“In my downtime? I can’t be masturbating all day… so I read.”

He flashes a grin—sun, mischief, and storm all at once.

I laugh, clear and loud.

Of all the mysteries waiting outside, this is one I’ll never tire of: how a man with the soul of a stampede can move so quietly by my side. And how, when the city calls, I get to walk into it with this kind of loyalty at my heels.

I.Ph.