I take up the belt. I never imagined that she would be ready for this. I can’t let go completely. She may not realize what she’s let herself in for. With one hand I slap the cheek of her ass. Hard enough to make a sound. Enough to feel her flesh ripple as my hand stays.

  She squeals. A squeal with a giggle underneath.

  I smack her again. Harder. No giggle now. She shouts, “Oh!” Her scent floods my head.

  My hand is hot. Like the skin on her ass. I take away my hand. The mark glows. I slip my fingers around. Along the flesh of the quivering tops of her thighs. To the lips of her pussy.

  She’s so hot and slick. I moan satisfaction. Raise my fingers to my face. Take a taste. Oh, she’s delicious.

  Over her shoulder she looks, pleading. I raise my fingers.

  “Please,” Her eyebrows arch. “I want to taste myself. On you.”

  I hold out my fingers. She lunges. Her mouth closes on my hand. I hold her by her hair. She moans as she sucks and licks my fingers.

  I growl and tell her, “I can’t wait any longer.” Her head shakes.

  “I have to make you mine.” She nods. Her eyebrows steeple as she backs away.

  I lift her. Throw her onto her back on the couch. She spreads like a butterfly.

  “Alexandr,” her face is full of fear as I step toward her. My huge cock sways.

  I ask her, “Volcano?”

  Her head shakes. She looks up into my eyes.” I pull her legs wide. She resists. I pull harder. She squeals. I lift her leg to beat her ass.

  She shouts, “Oh!” A hot gush of her scent pours onto my hand.

  I bang my cock on her mound. Moaning, she lunges forward, eager to grab it.

  I catch her face in my hand. Slap her cheek. Not so hard. She holds my hand. Pulls it against her face.

  I pull her by the hair to lie her down.

  Her hips rock and her eyes plead with me as I smack the hot weight of my shaft against her pubic bone. I lift her ass. Beat her mound with my cock. She writhes and thrashes. I grind the underside against her, tilting to rub against the length of her lips. It scrapes the base of her clit. She releases a long, deep moan.

  Her juices slather over me. I feel her heat and I look in her face as I slide the head of my cock to engage at her opening. She shakes. Breathes deep as I wait.

  She calls my name, “Alexandr,” and I stretch my body to cover her. Pull her close. Her lips tremble.

  Slowly, I slide the first inches into her. There’s resistance.

  Her eyebrows flinch and her mouth opens. She’s so tight around my cock. She snaps.

  I see the pain. It’s a good hurt. I stretch her. Her hips wriggle. I slap her ass. Her pussy walls flex to grip me even tighter.

  She claws my shoulders. Her head leans back. I slide in deeper. Her fingers dig into my shoulders and scrape down my back. She groans. Her head thrashes from side to side. I drive in. More. Her ankles clamber up my thighs as she tries to make herself wider.

  Her soft flesh is so tight around me. Even though I’m drenched in her juices.

  Her little face is wet. Buried in the crook of my neck. Her arms fly around my neck. All of her body shakes. From her ankles to her hips and the softness of her breasts. Her moans are long, like a song.

  The chorus, “Alexandr! Alexandr, what are you doing to me?”

  Taking pity, I lift her ass higher. Her arms and legs clench around me. Her hot, greedy little flower sucks on me. I know the heat that means she’s sore. She doesn’t pull back though.

  I kiss her and her mouth is wild for me, like the rest of her tender body.

  I stroke her forehead. “My perfect, beautiful princess.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t wait any longer, Alexandr,”

  “Don’t.”

  Slowly, I pull back. Her fingernails dig into my back. I’m amazed. She’s taken nearly two thirds of my cock. I’ll give her some hard loving before I introduce the rest.

  I grab her hair and bare my teeth as I plow in.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her

  FEEL LIKE I’M reamed in two on his massive cock. Ripped wide. His cock drills deeper. The raw sting and the deep ache is the most beautiful pain. I could die like this.

  My face is wet and twisted in delicious agony. My muscles clench and start to zing. It hurts so good, my juices spill like a brimming bath. Pulling my legs tighter around his waist, scissoring higher, brings him deeper and makes the burn hotter.

  My fingers stroke his face. His eyes penetrate into mine, like he’s inside me at both ends. He fills my body and my soul.

  I run my hands down the ridges of his back, reaching for the molten steel globes of his ass. I try to grip him but the power and the flow of his ass under my hands makes me helpless and crazy.

  Clawing and crawling up his body, my thighs are as wide as I can pull them. My breath is fast. Tiny spasms rush and tingle through me. He rams deeper. Deeper and harder. He senses that I’m coming to a plateau.

  My toes curl. My fingers scratch into him, my ankles beat on his ass. He’s in deeper. I can hardly stand it.

  I shout his name. He rides in, harder, pulling his rhythm behind mine. He takes my face in his hands. His eyes gleam into mine. His teeth flash. The razor edge of an evil grin.

  A deep wave gathers and rolls though me. The walls of my pussy grip and quiver on his shaft. Sensation splashes through my limbs, my hands, the sore buds of my nipples. My thighs and my ass tremble.

  I sob his name.

  Suddenly his cock pulses. His hips slam his rail into me. He bangs all the way into my sore lips. He swells and pumps.

  I’m going over the edge. Thick, hot sticky bolts pound and splash inside me. Coating me. Filling me.

  His arms wrap tight around me. He pummels. I shake and rock and spill. My teeth sink into his shoulder. He holds me like I’m a kitten.

  I melt and shudder. Through the cascades of aftershocks and tremors, he soothes me. He whispers into my ear and his voice is enough to start me up again.

  “Cate, my love. My princess. You are mine. Now and forever. You are more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. You are perfect. Wonderful. I am so glad that I finally found you. I will protect you and keep you safe. You will always be rich, and pampered, and spoiled. I will always adore you.”

  We doze. I don’t know how long he stays holding me. I wake a few times and he is still here, wrapped around me, hot, hard and strong. Then once I awake and he is gone, but his coat is over me. I know that I am safe.

  He wakes me with fresh coffee.

  He says, “I wanted to wait. I wanted your first time to be gentle. Strong, powerful, yes, but easy. I also wanted to wait until your optimum point in your cycle.”

  Sipping the coffee, I ask, “How could you tell?”

  “Your scent. A look in the eye.”

  “You’ve made a study of this.”

  His eyes half close in a contented smile. I’ve noticed he only smiles with his eyes.

  He takes my hand. “You are going to bear my children. Our children. I need everything to be perfect.” He thought a moment, “I have been used to thinking of them as my children. Now that I’ve finally found you, I’m happy to think of them as ours. You really complete me.”

  I touch the top of his hand. “Alexandr, I hope my father is going to like you.”

  His eyes are sly. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. It matters very much, Alexandr. I want you to ask his permission.”

  He sweeps me into his arms and hugs me. “I knew it. You are so perfect.” He took my shoulders and held me at arms’ length to look in my face. “That is exactly how it should be.”

  “But,” I tell him, “Daddy is a man of hard and fast principles. Just like you are, Alexandr. I don’t know how he’s going to feel about the difference in our ages.”

  “Yes you do.” His words shock me. He’s serious now. “It’s going to be hard for him to accept it.” He strokes my hair.

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But you told me. It’s why you raised it.”

  “I could never keep anything from you, Alexandr.”

  “No, you could not. And you should never try. All that you have to do is to trust me. Completely. I’ll give you everything you need and everything that you want.”

  I start to ask him, “Those people, were they the police?”

  “Who knows? They probably were. Working for the defense minister. That fool takes one last roll of the dice. I despise politicians who sell their services, but a politician who still puts himself for sale after he’s accepted a price and been bought is too despicable for words. I would have killed him long ago if he weren’t so useful. I hate having to do business with these gangsters.”

  I hesitate to ask, but he has told me to trust him and I want to know, “Are you a gangster, Alexandr?”

  “To do business in Russia is to move in a world of gangsters. Crime, corruption, blackmail, extortion and violence, here it’s all like weather. It’s just how it is. You can’t change it, any more than you can change the weather. There are some things you have to do like they do.”

  He stands. Tall broad and delicious. He’s hot as hell. I can’t see Daddy taking to him. Not one little bit.

  “Please,” he says, “Excuse me just a few moments. There are a couple of calls I need to make. I will let the president know that he needs a new defense minister. It’s only common courtesy. The wheels must stay oiled.”

  “You’ll tell the president that he needs a new minister? Will he appoint a new defense minister when you tell him to?”

  “He will have no choice. He cannot run his government without a defense minister. His present minister won’t be any use to him when he’s dead.”

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  “Me? No. There are plenty of people who want to do that. I’ll just give one of them his chance.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Him

  HE’S STRETCHED ON the bed. “Beautiful,” I say without even thinking, “My beautiful princess.”

  I tell her, “There are things that I must do. I need to start immediately.” I think about the preparations that I’m going to need to make. “We must go to my dacha. I will tell your tutors. They will make adjustments in the course for you.”

  She looks uncertain, “Are you sure? It took a lot for me to get onto this course, and my Daddy has made big sacrifices.”

  “Yes,” I tell her, “I am certain. Your father’s efforts will not go to waste. I promise you. I have too much love for you and too much respect for the man who fathered you so well. For your peace of mind I will talk to the master of your course today. He recognizes your great gifts.”

  She looks surprised, “You know the master? You’ve talked to him about me?”

  “Of course. I called him after I spoke with your professor.”

  I have things that I must do but, wherever possible, I want her at my side, I don’t want her out of my sight. I will protect her. Personally. “Before we leave Saint Petersburg, I need to meet someone. It will be brief. To make it up to you, let me show you some of the finest dining in Russia.”

  In the late afternoon, my driver brings my black Bentley Continental GT. I give him the evening off. I drive Cate through some of the most beautiful parts of Saint Petersburg, over the Liteynyy Bridge and down the main thoroughfare of Liteynyy Prospekt to Nevsky Prospekt.

  I park by the cast-iron awning and pergola over the restaurant’s arched entrance. The restaurant is in the Old Russian aristocratic style. The inside is like a palace of the Czars. High ceilings, paintings on the walls, polished floors and a glow of gold everywhere.

  My meeting is with a bullet-headed investigator. He joins us in our booth at the bar. He looks like he was built out of rock. I introduce him to Cate and I tell her that his name is Sergei. I drop my voice. From the way that I tell her, she knows that whatever the man’s name was, it is anything but ‘Sergei.’ She nods. It is safer for her, the less she knows. I am thrilled that I can communicate to her so well with just a change of tone. That she is so in tune with me.

  Still, ‘Sergei’ bows and takes her hand very graciously.

  I speak with him for less than two minutes. All I need is enough time to tell him the details of what I want him to get. Details I would never say over a phone or an electronic communication. In the old Soviet days, no telegram, wire, letter, or postcard was sent in Russia without somebody in the security services reading it.

  Modern technology has not reduced the State’s hunger for every intimate detail of its citizens. All that has changed is that now you can be surveilled by corporations, gangs, individuals, too. Espionage used to be a way of life here. Now it’s like the national pastime.

  Our voices stay low. Even Cate can’t make out a word of what we say. If she wants to know, I will tell her. I will keep no secrets from her, except what could hurt her.

  When ‘Sergei’ leaves, he bows to her again. I see her get a thrill, seeing the power I have. I know she saw it before, when I first saw her in the lecture theater.

  Without my saying a word, the Russian defense minister knelt in front of me. In front of a theater full of people.

  Now, feeling the respect that ‘Sergei’ shows her, simply because she is with me, shows her again how much power her man has. The raw strength I can summon over others at will.

  I need her to know that I am a wall for her.

  We are seated at the best table. For our appetizers we are served the finest Iranian Beluga caviar with chilled, Stoli Elit Himalayan vodka.

  She tells me that she worries her father will disapprove of me. “You are too much older than me.”

  “Are you telling me that you don’t find me attractive?” I know that answer, but I want to hear her say it all the same.

  She tells me, “I find you so attractive it’s indecent. If I were a girl for having affairs, I would have an affair with you in a heartbeat. I can’t tell you how much I wish that I was that girl right now.”

  It almost makes me laugh. “If you were that girl, I wouldn’t want you. Don’t ever debase yourself. Not even for me.”

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. It’s who I am. I couldn’t change it if I wanted to.”

  “You’re mine. Not for an affair. Not for a fling or for a season. You’re mine completely and forever.”

  Her head shakes, “You are so sure? How can I believe you? You know literally nothing about me.”

  It’s easy. I tell her, “I know you are pure. Pure in every sense. Your heart is so clear that you will not bend your principles. You say that you want me and I know that it is so. But you will not give up and betray who you are. You wouldn’t surrender your purity or turn your back on your honor, however passionate your feelings burn. You only give yourself because you know that it is for true love.”

  Her head shakes again. “That’s silly and old fashioned.”

  My fist bangs on the table. Wine glasses and cutlery fly. Waiters run toward the table as I rise out of my chair.