I don’t dare look at him. I know he’s coming nearer. I wait, still and out of sight. I hear his footsteps, strong and heavy on the marble floor. Coming closer. Stopping. My heart pounds. My sides feel like they’ve been ripped open.

  Lights flash red over the doors on one side. Then the other. After six flashes, the doors of the first train start to close. I wait one second, then leap through the doors of the other train. The doors slide shut behind me.

  I dash, shaking, into the corner of the last seat in the carriage. The train stays at the platform.

  The train stands still with the doors closed. I don’t want to look out through the window.

  At the last second, I can’t help myself. I see him. Still on the platform. His face is a storm of rage as his angry eyes seize mine. I’m drenched as the black doors slide shut before the train moves.

  My juices are hot and every part of me quivers. Between my thighs I ache. A hot, wet flow soaks my panties. I think that I must be attracting attention.

  The other passengers only look at me with the same disinterest I saw when I came this morning. All but one old woman, giving me a nasty look.

  I try to calm myself. Take slow, mindful breaths. Try to clear my head. I was never so afraid before. Or so hot inside. I keep thinking, what if I hadn’t gotten away? What if he caught me? Tightening trembles start in my thighs and crackle from my core, out and up to my sore, pebbled buds.

  What if he caught me? My thighs clench. I saw his strength. His power. His determination.

  Deep down I know he will catch me.

  He must.

  Chapter Three

  Him

  RUN BACK TO the lecture theater. I must know who she is.

  I plan to ask all the students who she was. Then I release a pained sigh. I remember she was sitting alone. The assembly was for a new intake. This is their first day. Nobody knows anyone.

  When I get back to the building, students are already streaming out of the doors. People are beginning to close up the university building. I stop a group of foreign students from Brazil. Their Russian is poor. I’m impatient as I ask about her in Portuguese. They all remember seeing her, but none of them knows who she is.

  I stop another group. These I have to speak to in Dutch. They all saw her, too, but they can’t tell me anything.

  The next group are French but their Russian is good. I talk to them in French anyway. I’m angry. I want to lash out, but it’s against my principles to hurt innocents, so I just ball my fists.

  Even that is enough to make them all run away.

  It doesn’t matter. I could interrogate every student who was in that hall and not a single one would know any more about her than I do already. Which is nothing. Except that she is mine and I must have her.

  The university is closing up and there are things I must do. I will find her. She will be mine. She is mine.

  Quickly I find the university administrator’s office. A beautiful secretary stands as I arrive. Her tongue touches her lip. She straightens to tighten her blue silk blouse over her big, perfect breasts. Her eyes gleam. She asks what she can do for me.

  “Take me to whoever is in charge of security here.”

  “Maybe I can give you what you need.”

  “I need camera footage from this afternoon, at the rear of the block with the main lecture hall and the streets around the fire exits at the back.”

  “That would be against the law,” she steps around the desk to come nearer, “Although that might not matter too much.” She stands close. “I would need to get the administrator’s keys to the surveillance closet.”

  “Never mind that. Take me to the administrator.”

  “My way would be more fun.”

  “Not when I turn you down it wouldn’t. You would be miserable. Now, just do what I tell you.”

  She pouts, but she knows she will do what I say, so she doesn’t make a fuss about it. She takes me to a large, plush office. I tell her to leave us as I walk in and shut the door behind me.

  A bald man, square in a big gray suit, scowls up from behind a huge desk with a laptop, books and executive toys. With his shiny pointed head, he looks like an anti-tank shell in a suit. A deep, red scar runs from his forehead down to his cheek, straight across his eyelid.

  He looks like a typical security man but bigger and more cultivated. Probably ex-special forces.

  I tell him what I want.

  “I can’t give you that.”

  I lift him by his lapels and pull him across the desk. His computer, pens, notebooks and executive toys all scatter. I shove his head down over the front edge of the desk and pull on his jaw, twisting his neck, hard.

  “You know that if I pull and turn another two centimeters, your spinal cord will snap. I don’t want to do that.”

  Very unusually, this man gives off no fear. He must have been in tough places. Chechnya, Crimea, Georgia maybe.

  I tell him, “You don’t want to die for a bit of protocol.”

  I hold his head twisted. After a decent pause to show me that he isn’t afraid and he can take a beating, he agrees, “No. I don’t. Will there be any comeback?”

  What he means is, will I do anything with the footage that will interest the police or the security services. He’s an intelligent man.

  I ask him, “What difference will it make?”

  “If there could be comeback, I need you to knock me unconscious.”

  “This is personal. There will be no repercussions.”

  “You’re the man who terrorized the defense minister, aren’t you.”

  “Yes.” Word got around.

  “Whatever argument you have with him, I congratulate you. I’ll shake you by the hand if I get the chance. The man is an oaf and a crook. And worse. But, whatever your business with him was, I assume this is connected.”

  “No, this is purely a private matter.”

  “Okay. I’ll take you to the surveillance cabinet. Copy whatever you like.”

  The camera footage is blurry and pixelated. I scowl. The administrator shrugs. “It’s what we have.” He waves his hand in disgust at the computer equipment. “This stuff is from the last century.”

  I know what I have to do. I have the administrator print out copies of the pictures. It gives her to me in images from several angles. Even these blurry prints are precious to me already.

  There are things I must accomplish today. Tomorrow morning, I will take the prints to the university art faculty. Some talented students will make a better picture for me. I will tell them how it needs to be.

  I am angry and frustrated at losing her. I love her determination to escape, though. I can run. I train by running marathons.

  She must have hammered her body hard to escape from me. I adore her spirit and her grit. I can’t wait to make babies with her. They will be strong, brilliant, and beautiful. And rich. And there will be lots of them.

  I can’t wait to find out her name and meet her.

  In the morning I go to the art faculty in the Saint Petersburg State University Institute of Culture. It’s a majestic old white building on the Palace Embankment, overlooking the lovely Neva River.

  I park in a government space and leave an official pass on the dash to put off any misguided police or traffic cops. The wood-paneled entrance doors are flanked by classical statues. I stop as soon as I reach the door. I can’t believe my luck. A trace of her scent is here. She was here. It can’t have been more than a few seconds ago.

  Scents don’t linger for long. Even one as lovely and captivating as hers. Blood pumps in my veins. My cock thickens. I’m aroused. She is near.

  I rush inside the building. It’s cold outside and warm indoors, so there’s too much human scent for me to pick up a trail. By rights, she should still be in sight. In a corridor, on a staircase, or in the courtyard. I run to the courtyard first.

  I don’t understand how she can have gotten so far away. Am I so attuned to her scent that I can pick up such a tiny trace? No, it’s obvious. I’m not thinking straight. It was by the doorway. At the entrance. The scent was strong because she was there a long time. Greeting people. Talking.

  Who was she talking to?

  I am resigned to searching all of the rooms. Every studio, the library, everywhere if I have to.

  I try the admissions office first. A bouncy, curvy blonde looks at the prints that I show her. She looks coolly up at me. “Do you think she’s prettier than me?”

  I tell her, “You look too intelligent to be asking stupid questions. Especially not when the answers would make you miserable.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll give you a blowjob anyway if you like. Maybe more. You might change your mind. Do you like anal?”

  I narrow my eyes and lower my voice. “Just tell me if you recognize her.”

  “She was in here yesterday morning. But I can’t tell you more than that. She was probably in the office to enroll, but I didn’t deal with her, so I don’t know.”

  “Which of your colleagues enrolled her?”

  “It will have been Alexei. He’s off today.” She leaned forward across the desk to give me a view of her ample cleavage. The scent of her arousal calls to the animal core of me. It only makes me angry. She’s not what I want.

  She says, “He wouldn’t be likely to remember her either, though. We admitted nearly two hundred student yesterday and it only takes a few seconds.”

  “Do you keep photographs of the students?”

  “No.”

  “Then you really can’t help me.”

  “I don’t know. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Which?”

  She bit on the tip of her finger, “About anal.”

  I dislike rudeness and it’s not usual for me to be rude. I thank her, turn and leave. I’m angry and the woman wasted my time.

  Chapter Four

  Her

  Y FIRST DRAWING class takes a mid-morning break and I’m excited. The students here are motivated and very talented. We were told to bring in a piece of work to show, for the master to offer criticism. It helps the school to see our potential.

  All of the other students brought fine works. Beautiful portraits and landscapes in vivid oil colors. I brought a watercolor I painted of my mother, sleeping. I don’t know if it’s the best example of my work but it means so much to me that I take it everywhere. I think it says more about me as an artist and a person than anything else I’ve made.

  When I showed, the master stopped in silence. He looked at it a long time. Then he said we would talk about it after the break. I’m excited and I’m afraid at the same time. If he tells me that it’s bad, I don’t know what I would do.

  I’m still thrilled in a whole lot of other ways by the lingering thoughts of that man. Thrilled and terrified at the same time.

  He kept me awake most of last night. I hardly got any sleep. All night I was unbearably hot. I thrashed and twisted under the sheets. Even with the windows open I felt stifled. I was hot and sore and soaking wet. So wet that I was dizzy from the scents of my heat. From between my legs to the center of my core I ached with a burn that I couldn’t escape.

  Then when I drifted into exhausted slumber, I dreamed of him. He chased me. Running, I slipped and stumbled in hot, dark tunnels. I ran and ran but my legs grew heavy. Unbearable tingles shook my thighs and vibrations buzzed through my clit and my pussy. In the dream I spun around, turning to see how far behind he was. He was on me.

  I fell backward, splayed in front of him. He ripped my clothes. He put his mouth on me. All over me. His tongue probed my mouth. He licked me, greedily. Sucked on my breasts. Pulled with his lips on my clit, slipped his impossibly long, hard, writhing tongue into me. All the way up my pussy. He skewered me with it. He flicked it up and into my ass.

  Then he pulled out his cock. It was immense. He forced my thighs wide and pulled my ass onto him. His massive cock split me painfully wide as he penetrated me. He stretched me and burned me as he filled me up and pummeled me until I was weeping and wet.

  I couldn’t stop him. He just laughed.

  Every time I stretched and clawed in exquisite agony he drilled me harder, deeper, stretched me wider.

  I dreamed of being his. Having him fill me. Use me till I burst and gushed. He split me wide and he wore me out.

  I woke breathless in a tangled and soaking bed. I shook from head to foot. The ordeal had been terrifying. I wished I could have it all over, again and again.

  My shower is twice as long as usual. I’m sad to lose all the scents that keep the dream alive. I don’t want my uncle to catch them, though. Already I’m uncomfortable around him. He’s my daddy’s brother, and you would know it right away. I hadn’t met him before. He left for Russia before I was born and never came back to the States.

  He and Daddy are mirror images. Daddy is firm. He never gives way. When he makes up his mind, forget about getting him to ever change it. What he says is law. He’s kind and fair but always firm. His heart is good. He likes a beer with his buddies, but he’s never bad tempered or cruel. His sense of what’s right is strong, and he believes in rules.

  When I arrived in Saint Petersburg last night, I learned that Daddy’s brother has all of the firmness but less of the fair and caring side. He drinks vodka like a real Russian. He doesn’t handle it like a Russian, though. He’s loud and he’s coarse. I didn’t like some of the things he said, so I’ve avoided him as much as I can.

  I get through with my shower and come out to the little kitchen. My uncle is at the breakfast table with his own coffee that he makes with butter and coconut oil. It’s too powerful for me. He steams a strong shot of coffee in a pitcher for me, with cream and vanilla. Whatever else I might think about him, my uncle’s coffee is fabulous. I’m sure that he has a good heart like Daddy. I’m just not used to his ways.

  Still, I get out of the apartment as fast as I can. I am anxious to get to the university and start into my art course.

  Riding in on the metro, I think about that man again. He so nearly caught me on the platform. I squirm in my seat, thinking what might have happened. Would he take ‘no’ for an answer? It’s definitely the answer I would give him. I haven’t given in to any man and I certainly wouldn’t give in to a total stranger, no matter how stirring and thrilling they were.

  Without thinking, I pull out a sketchbook. While I absently draw his cheekbones, the ink on his neck and the low glint in his eye, I cant stop myself from having a little fantasy. As I draw, a little movie flickers in the back of my mind. It stars the subject of my drawing.

  He is a frighteningly powerful man. I remember the effect he had on a Russian government minister. From his suit, his grooming and the massive rings, he looks extremely wealthy. Allowing myself just a few moments to imagine what life might be like with a man like that, I sigh. A man of commanding power and great wealth. A man who can make things happen. Buy and sell anything he wants on a whim. Anything that I wanted, too. Wealth like that could put my daddy back on his feet. Give my mom the medical attention she needs.

  He could buy me a new dress. Maybe a car. A nice car, even. Heck, he could probably buy me a Bentley or a Ferrari.

  I remember the look in those eyes. I imagine him pursuing me. Like he did down the stairs. Down the streets of Saint Petersburg. He so nearly caught me. If he caught me he could do anything to me. I wouldn’t be able to stop a man as big and strong as him. Would he stop if I told him to?