Page 145 of White Wolf
Ivan and Feliks joined the other two on the sofa, and the women – both young, both pretty, one of them the pale-haired, seemingly timid girl that Pyotr had been instantly drawn to – giggled shyly and climbed into their laps. Sasha couldn’t see much beyond their heads from his vantage point sitting on the floor behind the sofa, but he could feel the excitement in the air, smell sweat and the first musky hints of sex.
Pyotr came over and sat beside Sasha with a resolute sigh. He rearranged his pants as discreetly as possible. “Don’t worry, you can have a turn after.” He smiled at Sasha, but his eyes strayed to the blond girl currently sitting astride Ivan’s lap.
Sasha was getting hard – he didn’t think a saint could have prevented it at this point, especially as Feliks’s girl let out a breathy sound and her head began to rise and fall over the back of the sofa, her fingernails sunk into Feliks’s shoulders. But he shook his head. “No.”
Pyotr nudged him. “You haven’t ever, have you? Don’t worry. We won’t make fun of you.”
He shook his head again, harder this time. “No, it’s not…” His cheeks warmed, because, okay, hewasa little embarrassed. But that wasn’t the issue. “I need to be on guard.”
“On guard for what?”
“Hopefully nothing.”
~*~
“It’s almost lovely here,” Katya said, shading her eyes with a hand and staring off across the water.
They’d found a little patch of grass to sit on near the water, just beyond the reach of the city’s shadow as afternoon raced toward dusk. A breeze trailed the river, lifting her hair, drying the sweat at her temples.
“Hmm,” Nikita murmured in response, distracted. He had one leg drawn up, arm resting on his knee. He looked toward the river and afforded her a chance to study his profile.
His hair needed trimming, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were vivid as bruises. A smudge of dirt marred the sharp line of his jaw. It was easy to forget, in the grind of daily life, that he was beautiful.
Somuchthat was beautiful went overlooked. A sunny day. A sluggish river. The twitter of birdsong. The war took the small things from them, and left behind only thorns and nightmares.
“You wouldn’t have stayed,” she said, realizing, without surprise, that it was true.
“What?”
“Even if I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have stayed behind with the others, would you? Had your turn?”
He snorted. “I’m tired of things that aren’t real.” He looked at her then, face guarded. “No, I wouldn’t have stayed.”
“I didn’t think so.”
His gaze moved across her face; she could feel it tracing her features, his expression slowly softening. “I figured out the answer to your question. The one about after the war.”
She took a deep breath and held it.
“I want to run away from all this. The Eastern Front. Go to Siberia, or America. Somewhere. Together.”
When she exhaled, she smiled, and he smiled back.
~*~
“Greedy fucker. He’s only got one dick! What does he need four girls for, huh? I oughta–”
“Ivan, shut up,” Kolya snapped. “Look at him. Sasha, what’s wrong?”
“Blood,” he said, and it was. The first rich, copper notes of it, creeping out from under the bedroom door.
About fifteen minutes before, when the slender blond girl had just pushed Pyotr down into a chair and slid to her knees between his legs – Pyotr almost cross-eyed with want, pink-faced and panting for it – and the other girl was trying to coax Sasha to his feet, the bedroom door had opened and Rasputin had stepped into the main room, barefoot and naked save for his shirt, the long tails doing a halfhearted job of covering him.
Ivan, sprawled back against the couch and smoking a cigarette, voice slurred, had said, “What? Need someone to show you how it’s done?”
Feliks had laughed.
Rasputin had smiled and said, “I thought the ladies might like to join us.”
