A girl I recognize from yesterday’s class calls up to me. “Your phone’s ringing.”

  I shake my head, “I don’t have a phone.” Then I remember. Rolling my eyes, I fish the phone out of my purse.

  I realize before I even see the screen, it can only be him.

  “Join me for breakfast?”

  I have time, I’m hungry. I could do with cheering up. Why not?

  “Sure.” I hear the eager sparkle in my voice. “Where are you?”

  “Right outside.”

  I step out of the door, still with the phone to my ear. Huge and erect, Alexandr is across the street, dark and brooding. Seeing him is like having sunshine poured down my insides. He steps into the street and holds out his hand. Traffic stops. As I step off the curb, a motion blurs behind me. Something whizzes by. The phone is gone from my hand.

  Alexandr shouts to me, “Wait there,” and he runs after the gray figure. He’s so fast, the thief doesn’t get more than a dozen paces.

  With one hand he calmly reaches around to take the phone back. With the other, he grabs the man by the ear. With his hood off, the thief looks like a rugged sailor. He’s tall and bulky, with a blotchy red face. His eyes are wild as he swings a roundhouse punch at Alexandr. After dropping my phone casually into his pocket, Alexandr jabs low with a flat, upturned fist, under the man’s ribs, into his left kidney. The sailor collapses to his left side.

  A wide, jagged, evil-looking knife appears in the sailor’s right hand. Alexandr grabs his wrist with his left and turns, pulling the blade safely past him. In the same turn, he drives the side of his left fist into the bridge of the thief’s nose.

  Pulling the wrist with his right, Alexandr wraps his left arm around the thief’s elbow. With a hard yank, the man’s elbow makes a sickening, wet crack and a tearing sound. The knife clatters to the ground. Alexandr bends his knees to pick it up, then seizes the sailor’s throat. He slams his head against the wall of the Institute.

  Alexandr’s grip on the man’s throat tightens. The sailor’s eyes bulge. Alexandr snarls into his face. “Now. Apologize to my beautiful princess for the trouble and inconvenience.”

  The thief’s voice is choked and strained but his wide eyes roll in my direction. “I’m very sorry, beautiful lady.”

  Alexandr releases his throat, “Don’t worry, tovarich,“ he slaps the man’s red cheek. “You won’t do it again.” The sailor’s eyes bulge wide and his mouth stretches open as his head tips back. Alexandr slides the knife up to the hilt, under the sailor’s ribs. Then he twists the blade up.

  The sailor slides down the wall with his mouth open. Alexandr returns to me with the phone in his outstretched hand. I’m still in the middle of the street. Traffic is still stopped both ways.

  Alexandr polishes the phone carefully with a silk handkerchief before he returns it to me in a charming and graceful gesture.

  Chapter Eight

  Him

  HE WILL BE ready soon. It’s hard to believe but my senses don’t lie. I know the scents and I see the tiny but exciting change in her waist and hips. It may be only a couple of days. Her face glows as she looks at me. My pulse pounds.

  We’re in the middle of a busy street. The traffic has stopped around us. The whole world fades into a blur in the distance. In the distance, I know that all the truck drivers and taxis all want us to get out of the way. And we will. In a moment. First I need to look in her eyes. Savor the soft stretch of her neck. Drink in her beautiful intelligence and her easy sense of style. She’s unselfconscious. It’s like she doesn’t know how hot a fire she starts inside me.

  The peak of her cycle could be as soon as tomorrow.

  It will be hard for me to wait.

  I cannot let her out of my sight. Not now.

  Chapter Nine

  Her

  OW.” HE approaches. My heart thumps.

  He says, “Breakfast?” He stretched his hand out toward the river, “My yacht awaits. I have French champagne and orange juice on ice in silver buckets. Poached quails’ eggs, blinis and caviar. I hope you enjoy the view from the river.”

  A huge yacht, long and sleek, must be a hundred and fifty feet from stern to prow. It’s black from end to end. The windows are tinted black. He helps me aboard. Even the deck is black, although it’s matte-black with a non-slip surface. He leads me inside. The reception cabin is circular with a sunken floor and a bar along one side. We go on to an upper deck by the wheelhouse.

  A table on the deck is covered with white linen and set with champagne glasses, ice-buckets and a breakfast feast.

  “I’ve sent the crew below decks. They can relax in the bar or the cinema provided for them. If we need anything I can call them.”

  He pours champagne into chilled glasses. Then he serves me blinis from a salamander and caviar from a glass dish in ice. “A deck hand is ready to cast off. I will take the helm.”

  He steps to take the big wheel. The massive yacht dips in the water as he starts the engines. I sit in the sunshine, with cold champagne and luxurious food. Alexandr announces, “Welcome to the unique lifetime princess tour of the beautiful river Neva and Saint Petersburg.”

  “Princess?”

  “Because the tour is for my princess.”

  From a drawer, he takes out an elegantly wrapped package. Handing it to me he says, “I hope that you won’t mind.”

  I suspect this is going to be some absurdly expensive jewelry. I’m disappointed. I already know that Alexandr is wealthy and powerful. I hope he won’t try to win me with lavish gifts.

  If he thinks I’ll be impressed by gold or precious stones, then he’s not who I think he is. Even worse, it would mean that he isn’t seeing what I thought he was seeing in me. Perhaps it was a silly, childish illusion, to think that a man like him would really be looking at the person inside.

  I realize that I’m just a girl to him, one in a long line.

  “Open it.” He tells me.

  “I’m not sure that I want to, Alexandr. I don’t want you to be giving me valuable presents.”

  “There is nothing on this yacht more valuable, Cate. But I’m only returning it, it’s yours already.”

  Intrigued, I undo the bow in the ribbon, slide off the luxurious paper. Inside is a white box. When I open the box I almost drop it.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “I would have given it to you sooner, but the framer couldn’t finish it until this morning.”

  My watercolor. Mom is sleeping in an elegant gilt frame. A tear spills from my eye. I look at the picture for a long time. Then I jump and hug him. My face makes his shirt wet.

  “I rescued it from your art room yesterday. When I spoke to your professor on the phone, he said that in all of his years, he never saw a talent like yours. Your interpretation and your sense of the composition are superb.” He shook his head, “As if I needed him to tell me that. The beautiful subject you captured so tenderly is your mother, no?”

  “Do you see the resemblance?” I don’t think that we look alike, except in our eyes. In the painting, Mom’s eyes are closed.

  “Not especially. What I see is the love in the lines and the brushstrokes. That’s what tells me.”

  Another tear drops onto my cheek. I misjudged him so much. He reads me. In my marks on a piece of paper, he sees my love for my mother.

  My little watercolor takes me back to the morning when I watched over her. Now it’s safely behind glass. My man, my hero, found it. Just by looking, he understood.

  He saw me through my brush marks. That sounds like love.

  He steers the yacht expertly through the beautiful waterways. Saint Petersburg has been called the Venice of the North. At water level, the classical palaces and gold-domed cathedrals are breathtaking. It’s easy to see how the name stuck. I knew he was a man of wealth and power, but I had no idea that he was so rich.

  This is more than a dream. Things like this do not happen to me. Even though I am still afraid of him, one look from his eyes is enough to turn me to jelly.

  I’m not completely innocent, though. I know that the effect he is having on me could make me give up the innocence I have left. My body wants to give it to him. I feel the part of me that wishes he would overpower me.

  We’ve slipped out of the canals. We’re in the expanse of a bay. He turns to face me, square. His bulging shoulders and the mounds of his chest fascinate me. My eye runs down the front of his shirt, down to the torpedo in his pants.

  We’re very much alone out here. Nobody could see us without binoculars.

  “I could fall in love on a tour like this,” I tell him.

  He moves closer. I have to stand. Otherwise I’m looking at his cock. I can’t look at that. Not without grabbing it.

  “I want you to fall in love.” His voice is so low, it slips inside me. “I’m in love with you already. But I can wait.” He raises his glass. His eye shines and I gasp. “The first time, I want it to be perfect. I need you to be ready.”

  “To the princess of my heart,” he says, and he looks in my eyes as he drinks. Then he looks all the way down my body. The waterfall in my panties overflows again. His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare.

  I bite my lip. He’s close now. I feel his heat. I know that he feels mine. His huge hand rests on my waist. He lifts my hand. Turns it to place the flutter of a kiss on the inside my wrist. He looks up.

  With a hint of a snarl he tells me, “When you are ready, I will take you.”

  When he smells my hair and sighs, I feel like a courtesan. I feel like a whore. And I like it. I want to be that. For him. I want to be everything for him.

  His finger strokes the line of my jaw. He pulls me close as he tips my face up. He searches me with his eyes. “I will fill you and pound seeds deep inside you.” His lips touch against the side of my throat. “I will give you the most spectacular night of your life,” his hot breath in my ear, “every single night.”

  My body presses hard against his. He puts his lips on mine. My pebbled buds scratch through his fine white shirt, against the ridges of his stomach. My breasts heave, crushed against him. The tang of his breath ignites me. My fingers grab his hair.

  The hardness of his massive thigh makes me whimper.

  He holds my face. Rakes his fingers though my hair. His thumbs trace my cheekbones, my jaw. Then he brushes my lips.

  His mouth is close to mine. Our lips touch and I’m electrified. I moan and wrap my arms around his neck as he kisses me. My legs clutch around his thigh.

  His heat presses against my stomach. The pulse of his cock is a drumbeat that I want to dance on.

  He slides his hand down. He looks in my eye and his lip tightens. He takes hold of my breast. I melt into him as he squeezes. He opens his mouth. Bends his head to plant kisses down my neck.

  I jam my fingers in his hair and tug as he kisses and squeezes my breast. His other hand takes hold of my ass. My thighs clench and open. I rub against him, stretching and pressing up along his length.

  He pulls me close and breathes into my ear telling me in a low, deep voice, “They say the perfume at the base of a woman’s throat and the scent between her breasts are the most wonderful aromas.”

  He takes hold of my face again. His eyes blaze as he takes breath in through his nostrils. “Your scents are fantastic.”

  He reaches down. “I think that you have one charm, one taste that is better than the finest parfums in the world.”

  One hand takes my ass, the other slips down my front. My thighs fall wide as I stretch to take another kiss. All I want is for this kiss to be like the last one. And for him not to take his hand away. I snatch hot, desperate kisses as he strokes the tops of my thighs.

  I need to wait. I have to get to know him, to know I can trust him. But I so wish that he would just fuck me senseless first. He’s taking this seriously, but I want to be slutty. My most outrageous nighttime fantasies have been sweet, soft-core and vanilla, compared to the urges that ignite my body.

  His hands are on my thighs. I want to ride him like a bucking bronco. I never knew anything like this.

  When his hand slides to the back of my thigh and his thumb nudges at the crack in my ass, I murmur, “What are you doing to me?”

  I’m ready to drop my pants. I could turn and fall on all fours with my ass in the air.

  Chapter Ten

  Him

  ER BODY WINDS around me, her breasts either side of my arm. Her arms stretch around my shoulders. I taste her lips.

  Her hips rock and rub, hard against my thigh. Her heat intoxicates me. She slides her hands down the hard flat of my stomach, lingering over the ridges in my abs. I have to stop her. If her soft little fingers get anywhere nearer to the raging heat of my cock, I will lose control.

  My heart is beating so hard now. The taste of iron is in my mouth. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

  I kiss her neck and nibble her ear. She moans prettily, but I know that she won’t be distracted that easily.

  Her stomach rolls as I slip my hand to the front of her jeans. Then down inside. Her breath flutters, urging me on as my fingers find the tops of her lacy panties.

  They’re hot. Farther down, they’re wet.

  My fingers graze over her mound and pull, gently, firmly at the top of her hood. She moans and tells me,

  “I want your cock , Alexandr. I want to suck on it, I want it inside me. I want to feel you.”

  She clings tight to me as I sweep my hand down to press her wet lips through the thin fabric.

  Tracing and discovering the thickness of her hood, the thick, wet spread of her petals, and finding the ways she likes to feel her clit teased and tickled, trilled and spun, her wet panties sag heavier and heavier. She clamps around me. Her soft, warm breasts graze against my stomach.

  She jumps when my fingers find her perfect rhythm. Her thighs and her ass clench. Her hands grip tighter on me and she pants, harder and harder.

  “Alexandr.” She pleads, “How can you do this to me?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Her

  E’RE IN THE middle of Neva Bay at the edge of the Gulf of Finland. He takes me inside the wheelhouse.

  His body burns against my back and my ass, his strong arms wrap around me. Shivers run down my spine as he bends to pour kisses on my neck. He nibbles my ear as he murmurs, “You are so perfect, so beautiful. I can’t wait to possess you and fill you. We are going to make the most wonderful children.”

  He unties the red scarf in my hair. My hair tumbles loose. “Beautiful.” He strokes my neck. He tugs on the knot in the front of my shirt. My shirt falls open, and his gasp becomes a soft moan, “Oh, yes. My princess.” His hands slide over my shoulders.

  “Beautiful,” he murmurs. I can’t help squeezing my shoulders together as my soft breasts shake.

  He lifts me onto a soft white leather couch.

  As he undresses me, I watch over his shoulder. Boats bob on the bay and traffic rolls along on the land. If they only knew what was happening here.

  His eyes are on fire. I tremble and shake. He slips my bra straps off my shoulders. Kisses along my shoulder and up my neck. Below my ear.