Was he trying to scare me? Or was that part of the game? I didn’t know that men his age even wanted to have sex anymore, that they had cocks like that, that I might be as nervous as a virgin—or in my case, even more so. I knew a sensible girl would leave now, would have fled after dinner. But I was not a sensible girl. I was every bit the adventurer he had seen in me that first day. So I did what he asked, and stood before him in my white freckled skin. No wonder he’d heated the room so thoroughly. I let him admire me. I knew I was beautiful. What would he think of me now? Would he really want to bruise this?

“Pale. I was thinking they were dark, because of the hair, but they’re very pale, aren’t they?” he said as he worked on himself. “You’re not as small as you look. The fullness is mostly on the sides, under the arm.” I saw he had to keep talking, that it was the talking that excited him. And it was arousing in a peculiar, unwholesome way. “I knew a girl like that when I was a boy, back in Estonia, a servant on our estate. Very pale skin, but her nipples were larger than yours. And dark. She had done something, I don’t remember what. Stolen something, probably. They dragged her into the yard and stripped her to the waist and beat her. Three lashes. I’ll always remember the sight of those welts rising on that white skin. Her breasts, swaying. It was my first erotic encounter.” His voice was dark, the exciting memory lowering it to a whisper. “And your crimson hair. A shame you cut it. It should fall down your breasts—it would look like dried blood. Think you could take three lashes, Makarova?”

Did he have a whip hidden somewhere in the room? I forced myself to keep my eyes on his, not to glance about nervously. Was it just talk? If I screamed, people would hear me in the other apartments. Someone would break in. Or would they? I had heard women scream on Grivtsova Alley, had watched Genya pound on a door, threaten to kick it in. But he was a long way away.

“Come over here. Closer.”

I imagined the young baron watching the girl being beaten, jerking at himself. Though it could be a story he’d made up for my benefit. My heart beat raggedly in my chest. No one knew where I was. I was entirely on my own. Was he going to hurt me like that, beat me or cut me? Or was all this just something to scare me with? I couldn’t show him I was afraid. I felt the moment like a knife edge in my teeth. Steady…

I came over to his chair. He leaned into me and sniffed me like an animal, my belly, my plume of red hair. It was repulsive and exciting. I was appalled at how dirty I was—how much there was to smell. It had been so long since I’d taken a real lie-down bath. He ran his finger between my legs, and I trembled, repulsed and excited in equal measure. “Now open up for me.” He sprawled back on the chair, like a man in the theater. “I want to see you. Put your foot up here.” He patted the far arm of the chair.

I wanted him to see me. I was ashamed how aroused I was. Yet I didn’t have to confess this to anyone. If I made love with him, who would know? My love life was no one’s business—not Kolya’s, Genya’s, or anyone’s. I wanted to play this out, hoping he was just exciting himself with his talk of lashes and blood. Very possibly he was making it up—I wouldn’t put it past him. I lifted my foot up on the arm of the chair and spread myself so he could see me, the silky insides, the peaks and folds.

The way his eyes almost closed, like a man fighting sleep. Oh, he liked it all right. “It’s so pale. The color of your nipples. I wonder if it will change.” Still, he did not touch me, only himself. “Finger yourself for me. Yes. Just like I wasn’t here.”

I slowly drew my fingers along my folds, and his eyes narrowed. He wet his wide mouth with his tongue. It was disgusting and exciting. Trollop. Jade.

“You’re so lonely,” he began. “Your lover’s in Paris, or God knows where, out banging the help. A maid—no, a little actress he found, in some cheap revue in the Place Pigalle.” His low hypnotic voice painted the scene. “You’re in your room. Your mother and the old baba have gone to sleep. Your little boyfriend’s left you there all alone. You’re a passionate girl, and you haven’t had a man in a long time.”

God knew that was true. Though I would never have dreamed of touching myself in the room with Mother and Avdokia. Between the two of them, they could chill desire in the most confirmed libertine. Yet this was the Archangel’s fantasy, and I was prepared to go along, see where it took me.

“Your friends have all gone abroad, leaving you here, your beautiful youth fading away in that collectivized flat. Night after night, you sit with that dried-up grande dame. Who would blame you for touching yourself, trying for a little pleasure? At night you sometimes leave the shades open—yes you do. I’ve seen you.”

I could imagine it, the shades open… though no one could see—we were on the second floor. I’d have to hang myself out the window. Easier to imagine a ground-floor window…

“Just in case someone comes along, some lonely man out walking. And there is someone. You’ve seen him in the street. He waits for you when you come home at night. He’s waiting, he watches your windows. You feel him there, don’t you?”

“Is it you?” I murmured. “Are you watching me, Arkady?”

He sighed heavily. “Your mother and that old baba are snoring away, safely tucked up in their beds, and you stand at the window. You’re naked, so lovely, so yearning. You touch yourself, and he watches you, and you move together, you and this stranger.”

We moved together, there in the room, separate and yet together in this fantasy. I rubbed myself, tracing the slickness, letting his voice take me into the moment. It was an insistent, rumbling throaty whisper that I rode. I wanted him to keep talking, telling me the story of the man in the dark. My eyes were closed but I could hear him panting, slapping away at himself as I teased my body into orgasm. I buckled forward as the sweet waves of sensation moved through me.

Suddenly he was no longer sagging in the chair with a view of me. He was up on his feet, lifting me by the waist, and he shoved me, kneeling, onto the couch. I threw my arms up so I wouldn’t hit the wall with my head, but my forehead struck as he jammed himself into me from behind. I twisted to find a position where he couldn’t ram himself up painfully against my womb, but he kept moving me back so he could get it all in. “You’re so little—who would have thought?”

But I wasn’t that little. Genya and I made love and it wasn’t like this. Arkady knew exactly what he was doing. He either wanted to hurt me or didn’t care. I screamed.

“My big dick—is it too much for you?” he whispered in my ear, bent over me. He twisted my nipple, hard. “Yes, I’m hurting you?”

I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t cry out again, he seemed to enjoy that he was hurting me. I would not add to his pleasure in it. I held my arms before my head so I wouldn’t knock myself out hitting the wall. “Get off… let me go.”

He slapped my ass, hard, like a horse. “Tell me how it hurts. Tell me, or I’ll keep it up all night. Tell me how you like my steel.”

I braced my forehead against my arms. “Why are you doing this?” I choked out.

“So your boyfriend Kolya’ll feel it when he fucks you,” he said, close by my ear, petting my hair. “He’ll know you’ve been fucked by a real man. How do you like fucking a real man?” He grabbed my hair and plowed all the way into me and a scream rose from my guts into the room and my head hit the wall again. Would he never stop? He twisted my nipple like he was trying to pull it off. “Tell me.”

But I could not say it. I could only cry as he scoured me raw as a sandpapered plank. When would he come? What would make him finally stop? It wasn’t the sound of my sobs—that was clear. Would he just keep going forever? I was dry as a piece of toast, and he kept going. I was cramping with pain. What a fool. This was what he really wanted. All that sexy talk was just one more thing he could take away from me.

“Does your Kolya have you like this? Do you feel him in your lungs, in your throat when he fucks you?”

Was that it, to erase Kolya from my body? Who was the fool here? Only pleasure erased pleasure, Arkady. I must be bleeding now. He was never going to come.

Finally he pulled out and sagged onto the couch next to me, both of us puffing and panting, his pants around his ankles, his cock stark white like a radish. He needed a mare, a camel. He was puffing, stroking himself. I hoped he’d have a heart attack. “Put your finger up my ass, Makarova.”

I’d never heard of such a thing.

“Do it,” he said. He kicked his pants off and knelt there, pumping.

Trying not to look, I fingered the puckered orifice.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Stick that thing in before I pop.”

I pressed, just to the first knuckle. And he groaned, and I could feel him contracting around my digit, such an odd feeling. It must be the way a man felt inside me, the slick walls of muscle gripping him. Well, it was far better than what had preceded it. Finally he made a sound like he was having that infarction he richly deserved when he grabbed my head like a cabbage and forced it down onto him, spearing me in the mouth, up into my throat. I gagged as his hot, sour semen streamed into me. I couldn’t breathe, even through my nose, and I struggled to pull away—pushed against his thighs, scratched at his chest, tried to find his face, bite down but my jaws were locked open. He held me and held me as he released into my throat, then finally he let me go.

I flung myself away from him, coughing and gasping, sagged to the floor, spitting, tasting him, smelling him. I scrabbled back against the wall, as far from him as I could.

He picked up my slip from the floor, wiped himself and threw it to me. “You’ll get used to me. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

I wiped my finger on the Louis chair. My throat was as raw as my vagina now. I inched the slip over my head, covering the pale sore nipples that he found so exotic, the wet patches on my crumpled chemise. The sordid remains of adventure. “At least let me have my bracelet back.”

Arkady stretched and yawned on the daybed and pulled his pants back on, though he left his cock out to air. He’d had a fine time. He looked ten years younger. “No, I have something else in mind for it.” He took the enameled bangle from his pocket, twirled it on a long forefinger. “I’m going to bring your young Nikolai home for you. Your little mischief maker. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A little gift for your trouble?”

“Was that what this whole evening’s been about? Kolya?” The romantic dinner, the brutal sex, everything? It had never been about me at all. I had been so sure there’d been an undercurrent of desire. But I was only a tool.

Arkady made that horrible moue. “Oh, Makarova. It doesn’t diminish our love, does it?” He buttoned that monster back into his pants like an eel returning to its hole. “It just makes it more interesting.”

“He won’t come,” I said defiantly. I reached out warily for my dress, dragged it toward where I sat, oozing onto the floorboards. Blood? Yes. Bastard. He was counting on Kolya’s love for me, his loyalty. I have your woman. Come back if you want her. Before I flog her, cut her in tiny pieces, and feed her to the geese. And what would he do to Kolya if he returned? How perfectly I had played into Arkady’s hands. “He’ll never come back,” I spat. “He doesn’t love me like that.”

“You should hope he does,” Arkady said.

I dressed as quickly as I could, half doubled over from the cramping, imagining Kolya dashing into the trap. I prayed he would not. I could only imagine what Arkady might do to him. Yet a small part of myself, a selfish, vain part, could not help wishing he would come for me, would be willing to risk even death for me.

The tall, spectral man put on his coat and hat, and I put on my own, snatching it and moving away from him, still unwilling to get within arm’s reach. The speed with which he had turned on me was indelibly imprinted on my body. Arkady von Princip was dangerous at all times, not only when he appeared to be. He started through the door, glancing over his shoulder. “Sorry. Didn’t I mention? You’re not going anywhere.”

He closed the door and locked it behind him.

49 Captivity

I DREAMED THAT A crowd chased me through the streets of Petrograd. I turned and twisted to avoid their grasping, clutching hands, but there were too many. They got me down onto the ground in the filth of a market square and were peeling me with their knives as you’d peel summer fruit, starting with my face as I screamed and twisted and tried to get away. Finally, they got my skin off in one piece and someone ran away with it. And they left me there blinded and bloody, a hunk of living meat. How could I go around Petrograd without a skin? People were so hungry these days.