Page 9 of Guarded By the Krampus

The man’s face registered shock, and I saw three others step forward, clearly his men, and my fingers twitched, ready for a fight, but Satin had seen nothing, and he chose not to comment on it.

“So who is this brutish beast you’ve brought inside my home?” he asked, staring me down.

Satin laughed like a wind chime. “Please ignore him Roskov. I just needed someone strong enough to carry me if I brokean ankle in the snow outside. But don’t mind him—he doesn’t understand a thing.”

“Hmmph,” the man complained. “I would be better at ignoring him, if you had a drink in your hand.”

“Then by all means,” Satin said, taking an alluring step closer to the man. “You should get me one.”

After that, I was basically tortured for the rest of the evening. People kept coming up to Satin, far too familiar, and far too close, and I could see it grating on her slowly as the night went on, people not announcing their presence in a timely fashion, instead surprising her over and over again. She hid it well, but I could see it in the way her knuckles went white around the flute of champagne she held—and I noticed she’d been milking just one drink, for most of the time.

Luckily for everyone else, being overly worried for her—and making sure that none of the people surrounding us were threats—meant I missed most of the insults directed at me. I heard more than one joke about the ‘club’ I must’ve been swinging between my legs, and how my balls were probably as big as a newborn calf’s head.

I mean, they weren’t wrong, but the comments were still rude.

But finally, things were winding down, and most of the remaining guests’ opinions on the night were tainted with enough alcohol to pickle a fish.

I had yet to see a Faberge egg on display, however—but then the man named Roskov started clinking a caviar spoon on the edge of his glass.

“Is it time?” a woman asked, giving him an indulgent smile and batting her eyes.

Thank God Satin had merely stayed polite with other party-goers tonight—if I’d seen her looking like that at another man I would’ve crawled out of my own skin if I had to, to murder him.

“It is!” he cheerfully announced, hoisting his glass up high, and continuing to clink it, as everyone followed him down one of his house’s many grand halls, before he waved his hands for everyone to stand back. Satin’s hand was on my arm again—where it belonged—but I angled myself in front of her, ready to take on all comers. “Beware the dogs!” Roskov shouted, and then laughed with his whole chest. “No—beware the lasers,” he went on, then turned, to do something with an electrical panel beside a door behind him and…

The entire back half of the hallway opened like a curtain, sliding either way, accordioning up, one aggressive clack of most-likely bullet and bomb-proof metal at a time.

Other party goers gasped, and I had to admit that I was impressed—and what it hid in the room beyond….

It was like a throne room’s worth of treasure.

In fact—I thought there reallywasa throne, somewhere beneath a collection of historical tapestries, under a chandelier seemingly made of diamonds. There were paintings on each wall that I was sure cost several fortunes, suits of armor no doubt worn by nefarious men, and an entire table with a place setting on it fit for a king.

“Well?” Satin asked, as the rest of the crowd moved past us, eager to inspect Roskov’s maximalist collection. “Is it as amazing as they say?”

I looked down, at her beautiful doll-like face, with her elegantly blindfolded eyes.

“I’ve seen prettier things.”

She bit her lips, and then quickly tugged me forward.

“Some of the Tsar’s finest China,” Roskov said, noticing me checking out the dinnerware—before remembering I shouldn’tbe able to understand him. “Lovely Satin, please tell your brute why what he’s looking at is special.”

“It’s the dinnerware that survived Tsar Alexander II’s assassination attempt,” she told me, in English.

“And that none of the blood the servants had to scrub off of it was his,” Roskov went on in Russian, and then clicked his tongue to shout at a countryman. “Hey Andrei! I see you! Stop groping the case! I’ll open it in a minute!”

He huffed back through the room, and Satin nudged me after, so we followed him. She stayed close enough to me that she could mimic my movements, almost before I made them, but it was hard to maneuver—there wasn’t much space between the priceless objects of art.

I felt like a goat in a china shop.

But being beside Satin was worth it. Her hand on my arm was still thrilling—although the more I thought on her, the more my chain tugged. I cleared my throat to center myself quickly—I couldn’t put her life in danger because I was proverbially, and satyr-esquely, horny.

“All right, you heathens. Time for the main attraction,” Roskov said, standing in front of a solid black case, and waving everyone else present back. He used three different biometrics on it—spit, palm, and eye—before pulling out a final archaic key from a pocket inside his waistcoat, and with that, the case rocked back, allowing the priceless egg inside to be fully seen.

It looked like something someone had stolen from heaven. I was so stunned by its beauty it took me a moment to recognize that it was a scene from a perfect garden, at night—the top half of it was sapphire-blue enamel dotted with tiny diamond stars, and below that were delicate roses growing up, their petals carved from rubies so rich they looked wet, supported by thin veins of emerald green, mimicking vines wrapping tenderly around the egg’s curves.

And at the top, a small golden crown rested, encasing a perfectly round pearl—a perfect moon for a perfect evening.

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