She nodded a few times as if to indicate that she was all right and all was well again. Then she dropped to the floor and, on her hands and knees, found the knife and the potato as we stood, numb and watching. Wordlessly, she resumed peeling her potatoes. Her thin white face was tight with the effort of controlling her emotions.
My mother spent the whole day preparing elaborate dishes for our dinner that night. My sisters had set the table as if it was Christmas or Easter and we took our places silently. My sister’s chair had been taken away and pushed up against the wall. I saw my mother glance at the chair and cover her mouth with her hand.
My father grabbed some schnapps glasses from the shelf and, filling them with vodka, took a glass to Mama She gazed sadly at the glass and dashed the contents down her throat. My father’s eyes found hers and she swallowed hard to get the liquid down. I could hear the sound of her swallowing as clearly as I could hear my heartbeat.
Without Anastasia we began our feast. Except for my father, who ate heartily, everybody else hardly touched their food. We kept our eyes on our plates. Years of being with my father had taught us that both his ‘up’ and ‘down’ moods were equally dangerous and explosive times, when anything could happen.
‘By Saint Nichols, eat,’ my father roared.
We all ate. Even Mama.
My father laughed and called for more vodka. The second course was beet and beef bone soup. My father drank his soup in high spirits.
The main course was roast cock with root vegetables, and the potatoes that Mama had peeled that afternoon. I looked at my father. He seemed oblivious to our frightened faces, our furtive glances at him, and the horror on my mother’s sunken face.
His ears red, and grinning as if he had won something wonderful, he sang, ‘Ne uyesjai golubchick moi’ (Don’t go away, my little pigeon). He seemed an idiot then, but of course, that was only an illusion. My father was a bear killer. A thief of animal souls.
My father helped himself to fruit with shouts of extravagant joy. ‘Slava Bogu!’ (Glory be to God). The drunker and the louder he got, the more silent the table became.
Without warning he slammed his fist on the table. ‘Why the fuck is everybody behaving as if this is a funeral?’ he demanded. ‘For sixteen years I fed that girl. Isn’t it about time she contributed something towards the well-being of this family? We can’t have any permanent drains on our family coffers.’ My father squinted at us all. ‘Is there anybody sitting at this table who disagrees with me?’
Nobody spoke.
His hand crashed down on the table again—plates jumped, a glass overturned. One of my sisters whimpered with fear. His blazing eyes swung around aggressively and landed on me. I realized then that everyone else had kept their heads lowered except me. I held his eyes. For a second something flashed in them but I was too young to understand what that might be.
Then he leaned forward, his entire attention on me. At that moment there was no one else in the room except him and me. I stared into his eyes and realized that nothing lurked there. His eyes were dead and soulless.
‘Am I wrong, Lena?’ he asked softly, with such menace that the atmosphere in the room changed. My father had found his target.
But for some strange reason I was not afraid. He was wrong to sell my sister. He should not even have sold the bear cubs after he shot their mother. I opened my mouth to tell him that, but under the table Nikolai took my hand and clenched it so hard, I cried out instead.
‘Yes, yes, you are right,’ my mother intervened suddenly. Her voice was high and shaky.
My father turned away from me and looked at her. She looked small and hunched, an unworthy opponent to the bear killer, but the horrible tension was broken. A grin crossed his face suddenly and he wagged a finger jovially at her. ‘You do know that your daughter is an unbroken horse, don’t you?’
‘She is only young. She will learn,’ my mother responded quickly. Her voice was firmer than I had ever heard it.
‘She’d better. Unbroken horses are worthless to their owners.’
My mother did a rare thing. She maintained eye contact with him while his mood was uncertain. Maybe because she had been weak and let Anastasia be sold, that night she found it necessary to stand her ground and protect me from my father’s wrath.
*****
We were all tucked up in bed that night when I awakened to the sound of someone at the front door. I hopped over my sisters’ sleeping bodies and looked out of the window, and saw a sight I will never forget as long as I live. In the light of the moon my mother was naked and running away from the house. Her long dark hair was loose and streaming behind her. I could only stare at her ghostly white body in amazement. Then my father ran after her and caught her. Sobbing loudly she curled into a ball in his arms.
Gently, with great tenderness, he picked her up and carried her back into the house. I never understood the scene I had witnessed. Even now the memory makes me feel guilty as if I had seen something I shouldn’t have. Something private that my mother would not have wanted me to see. I was always aware that she never wanted us to know that she loved my father to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Even after everything he did. And even though she knew he planned to sell us all one by one.
After that strange feast, all talk of Anastasia was forbidden. The only person I could ever mention her name to was Nikolai and even then we spoke in whispers.
‘Where do you think she is now?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Maybe she is working for someone.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Accounting,’ my brother said slowly. ‘Rich people always need accountants.’
‘But Anastasia is terrible at maths,’ I countered.
My brother frowned. ‘Maybe she is an English teacher like Mama was in Moscow before she met Papa.’
I nodded. That made sense. ‘Yes, Mama did always say that Anastasia’s English was the best. Do you think she is wearing fine clothes and living in a really grand house in Moscow?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you think she remembers us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you think she’ll come back and see us?’
My brother’s response was immediate and held a finality that I never forgot. ‘No.’
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You Don’t Know Me
GEORGIA LE CARRE
One
Noah Abramovich
“Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats,
and women must not expect miracles.”
- Little Women, 1869
Tasha Evanoff! Blonde, blue eyes, plump mouth, and skin so white, it’s almost blue, until summer comes, then, it turns wheat-gold.
What the fuck is she doing at the door of my office?
For a fraction of a second I actually think I must be dreaming. How can I not be? In that frozen instant I hear babushka’s throaty old voice again.
‘Listen carefully to me, Noah. The moment a newborn baby emerges into the harsh light of this world, it loses its magic. It adjusts and plays the game of life, but the powerful desire for the return of its magic never goes away. The urge sits beyond the reach of memory and waits, because sometimes if a man is very, very lucky, his magic will cross paths with him again.’
Tasha Evanoff is my magic.
Not a living soul knows this, but I have secretly lusted after her for years. I forced my eyes not to follow her around her father’s magnificent living rooms, or stare at her beautiful bikini-clad body lying on the sun lounger by the pool because I knew our worlds were never meant to collide.
Today she has wandered unbidden into mine.
Closing the door, she leans sedu
ctively against it, her sexual energy radiating across the room. She is dressed exactly the way I expect the daughter of an obscenely rich and corrupt man to dress. A flawlessly cut, knee-length white dress teamed with a soft-pink cardigan, and low heeled, round-toed, immaculately white pumps. Her only adornments are a subtle string of dusky white pearls grazing her throat, and velvet black clips holding her shining curtain of shoulder-length hair back from her face.
The intention behind her choice of attire is obviously not erotic. Virginal even, but the sexual tension coming from her fizzes between us like a bottle of shaken champagne. It puts my nerves on high alert.
I stand.
‘Hello, Noah,’ she drawls. Her father is a Russian bastard, but her mother comes from British blue-blood stock and her accent is pure upper class.
‘Why are you here, Tasha?’ I ask. My body is taut and hormones are buzzing all over the place, but my voice comes out flat and devoid of all expression.
‘Surely, you’re going to allow me to sit first,’ she says with a hint of irritation.
‘Of course.’ I wave towards the chairs opposite my desk.
She walks towards the chair on the left, slips into it, and puts her knees firmly together. Her eyes are beautiful blue stars, the pupils, dark pits of nothing.
Would you like a drink?’ I offer politely.
‘Thank you, no,’ she refuses, then she thinks better of it. ‘Actually, yes, I will have one.’
‘What can I get you?’
Her gaze flickers over me. ‘Um … cognac if you have it.’ And after a slight pause, ‘Make it a double.’
I walk to the bar and feel her eyes burning into my back as I automatically pull a glass from the cabinet. My mind is churning. I grab the cognac bottle and uncap it. One thing is for sure: She didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood.
I tilt the bottle and pour out a generous measure.
I try to think why she is here and I cannot imagine any reason she could possibly have for coming to my office at this time of the night. I wipe the frown from my forehead and turn around. Casually, I walk up to her and hold out the drink.
She lets her fingers brush mine as she takes it. Of course, they are as befits the pampered daughter of a dangerous man, silky soft.
‘Aren’t you having one?’ she asks, one eyebrow arched.
‘No.’ My voice sounds thick and strange.
‘Oh,’ she exclaims, gazing up at me.
It’s like looking down at an angel or an apparition. It has a hypnotizing almost paralyzing effect on me, probably because I’ve never been this close to her before. I struggle with the crazy urge to grab her and devour her sulky mouth.
Fuck! I need to put something between us. I walk around my desk and sit down. Silently, I watch her drain the glass. The way her white throat moves as she swallows, the movement so erotic my cock stirs. She clasps the empty glass loosely in her lap and looks at it. The silence stretches between us.
Odd. Tight. Strained.
But I hold my tongue. Let her break it.
Finally, she looks up. ‘I’m … getting … married in six months,’ she says quietly.
I already knew that little fact, Tasha. You’re marrying the good-for-nothing son of a psychopathic billionaire. It’s a marriage brokered in hell by her fat fuck father, a thoroughly ugly and detestable man. If he knew she was here it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. Blood on the floor would be the least of it.
I say nothing and she fixes me with those unnerving eyes of hers.
‘Well, anyway, I thought that before I settle down I’d like to try life a little.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I can’t fucking believe she’s going where I think she’s going.
‘Yeah. I want you to have sex with me tonight,’ she says very quickly into the tense air.
Two
Noah Abramovich
My entire body reacts to her words. My heart hammers in my chest and blood races so fast into my cock it hurts, but years of training keeps my face poker straight. Until today she has never even so much as looked in my direction and now she wants me to fuck her. Something’s not right. I steeple my hands on the table.
‘You might need to explain yourself a little bit more.’
She gives a one-shoulder shrug, a careless, elegant, infuriating movement. ‘What’s to explain? I want us to … fuck.’ The Princess had to struggle to get that last word out.
‘Why?’
‘Because … because I want to be … taken by someone like you.’
Like me. Now, I get it. The spoilt, bored rich girl is going to become the spoilt bored wife of a spineless fool, but before she submits to that endless boredom she wants to experience something dirty with someone from the wrong end of town.
The Princess wants to be a slut for one night. And the person she has chosen is me. I lean back in my chair and let my eyes roll all over her. Well, well, well. All that untouchable beauty just laid out for me to soil and dishonor.
‘What makes you think I want one night with you?’
Her smooth brow crinkles. ‘Don’t all men want a no strings, dirty night with a perfect stranger?’
I stare at her. This is what happens when you shelter your daughter to death.
She mistakes my silence for reluctance. As if any man in his right man would refuse her. Swallowing hard she straightens her spine as steely determination sparkles in her eyes. She has, after all, come from her father’s loins.
‘There will be no consequences to you. No one will ever know. After tonight we will probably never meet again, and even if we do it will be as if this night never happened.’
‘Where does your father think you are now?’
She licks those lips that I want to bite. ‘In my bed. Asleep.’
As if my lustful thought has transferred to her, her white teeth sink into her bottom lip. I inhale sharply. Pure lust is a powerful, bewitching thing. I have always detested weak people whose only excuse for doing things they shouldn’t is:
It was the moment. I simply couldn’t help myself.
In that instant I get what they are talking about. Every cell in my body is screaming at me not to take the poisoned chalice, but as if she has cast a spell on me, I stand up, walk around the desk like a zombie, and hold out my hand.
She wants dirty sex.
I know all about that.
Sure I’ll give her a night so dirty her toes will curl. I’ll make it so unforgettable that in years to come while her husband’s half-flaccid dick labors inside her, she will close her eyes and remember my cock thrusting inside her.
A glimmer of a smile appears on her lips. She puts her hand in mine, I tug at it, and she allows herself to tumble against my body. Her body is softly curving and immediately molds itself into the hardness of mine. Her perfume rises up and fills my nostrils. I breathe it in. It’s been a long time, in fact, I can’t remember the last time a woman could disarm me in this way. But she only wants dirty sex with you. She is yours only tonight.
‘Are you wet?’ I ask, my voice harsh.
She shakes her head, her eyes huge.
My eyebrows rise. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes.’ Defiant.
Without warning I grab her round ass and stick my other hand under her chaste dress. She struggles, but I tighten my hold, making her efforts puny and useless. Her eyes flash as my hand slips beneath her panties and touches her bare pussy. I plunge two fingers into her cunt. She gasps and goes rigid.
‘Then …’ I extract my fingers from inside her. ‘What the fuck is this?’ I ask softly as I wipe my fingers on her downy cheek.
Her amazing eyes flicker.
I bend my head and lick her cheek where I smeared her slick juices. She tastes like musky honey. Unforgettable. I already know I’ll miss her taste when she leaves in the early morning hours. Deeply inhaling the scent of her I force my tongue into her mouth. At first she doesn’t do anything, and then she starts to suck it. Fuck, this woman drives me crazy. I withdraw
my tongue and look at her. My cock is straining against the zipper of my jeans.
‘You’re never going to have another night like this so no more coy games and no more lies tonight, understood?’
She nods silently.
‘Are you wet?’
‘Yes.’
‘How wet?’
‘Dripping,’ she says hoarsely.
I smile faintly. ‘Will you do anything I ask tonight?’
‘Yes. Anything.’
Three
Tasha Evanoff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6G10QgJm1o
Wet
He steps away from me suddenly and I feel as if someone just replaced my kneecaps with Rowntree jelly sweets. He walks to his desk, leans his slim hips against the edge and crosses his arms over his chest.
Under the overhead light his black hair glints, but his eyes are shadowy and hooded, impossible to tell the expression in them, but I feel their sultry gaze unhurriedly travel over my body. Raw, feral animal magnetism rolls out of him in waves that hit me and bring a rush of heat to my belly. I become as vulnerable and exposed as if I am naked.
‘Take your panties off.’ His voice is pleasant, but throbs with heat.
My breath speeds. Surely he doesn’t mean for us to do it here. Maybe he imagines he can degrade me as if I was some sort of prostitute he has hired for the night just because I offered my body. I won’t have it. My spine straightens.
‘Are we going to … um … do it here?’
‘No.’
‘Then why?’
He remains motionless. ‘Because I want you to.’
No one has ever spoken to me with such fearless disrespect, uncaring if they might hurt my father’s feelings. A thrill of excitement goes through me. The air crackles with sexual tension as I slowly, deliberately, slip my hands under the hem of my dress and drag my underwear down my legs. I let them fall to the ground and step out of them.
Beauty and the Dark Page 21
