This is when Mansk comes to me one night. I am alone in the kitchen, nesting by my hearth as I always do. I am curled up, naked, by the fire, dreaming of all things that might or might not have been. But mostly, I dream of Max. Has Aimelie succeeded in converting him? Does he still love me? Did he ever love me?
My doubts creep to the forefront. I think of Max’s kisses, his warmth, the way his penis spears my vagina – so snugly and completely. I close my eyes and savor those three little words he said to me: I love you. My beautiful blond god. It was so surreal he could ever love someone like me, and that’s why I’m having these nagging doubts.
Does he truly love me, or has our shared situation deluded him into thinking he needed my compassion?
A hand gently shaking my shoulder wakes me. I flutter open my eyes in surprise. Instead of Gerta, it is Mansk.
“Listen,” he says. His mouth is grim. “We have to talk.”
*
He squirrels me to a little broom closet and shuts the door behind us. We have only elbow space amongst the brooms, mops and pails, and the air smells of mustiness and detergent. It might have smelled of lye in the olden days, if I actually knew what lye smelled like.
Mansk grabs my tits and squeezes them. What? He’s taking advantage of me now? It’s OK, I tell myself, my heart thudding noisily. I am used to be taken advantage of anyway. Anything to get us out of here.
He closes his mouth on mine and I can taste cigarettes on his breath. I kiss him back voraciously, trying to show him I really mean it. Our lives are on the line, and it’s not as if he hasn’t taken me before.
When we come up for air, he says, “I have thought through what you said, and I will help you.”
Oh thank God! I throw my arms around his neck and shower kisses on his ruggedly scarred face in gratitude.
He grabs my hair and goes on, “I want asylum in America. For me and my remaining family. And ten million dollars, US currency.”
I don’t have ten million dollars, but I’m willing to bet Russell Devlin has. So I nod my head, trying to convince him that it’s as good as a done deal. I mean, I’m bringing back Russell’s son and his future son-in-law intact, right? What’s a mere ten million dollars to WASPs like the Devlins?
“You must do everything I say,” Mansk adds. “Our lives depend on it.”
I nod again. And gasp as two of his fingers grope for my clit. He scissors the sweet, tender flesh in his pincer grip and squeezes . . . hard. I almost come explosively.
“What do I have to do?” I whisper. I think I have an idea.
He continues to finger me. He caresses the grooves between my outer labia, and evens out the folds of my inner pussy lips. My back is against the closet wall and the sensations that assault me are vivid and electric. I moan softly to encourage him further. Oh yes, the lives of two men I love are at stake, so I may as well feign enjoyment.
And most of it is not feigned anyway. I really do like being fondled and caressed. And I do like Mansk, even though he seems to have an unhealthy May-December crush on me.
His breath is ragged against my neck. “I will claim you later. Now I have to go arrange a few things. I will come for you tonight.”
Tonight! So soon? But I am not ready. I am far from being physically and mentally prepared. And yet, if I wait a minute longer, something might happen to Max and Greg.
“Wh-what do I have to do?” I say shakily.
“Nothing. Just wait.”
“What about my friends? How will you get them? How will you get past Aimelie’s guards?”
“The less you know now, the better.”
He wrenches the handle of the closet door. The door opens and we tumble out. My hair is in disarray and my face is flushed. I have to trust him, I tell myself. I have to put my faith that he will do right by us.
It’s the only thing I can do.
“Later tonight,” he promises. “Wait for me.”
I can do nothing but nod again. I feel like a marionette whose strings are being jerked, especially at the neck area. But I have no choice.
6
I wait and wait and wait until the darkness of night covers the windows. But Mansk appears at two a.m., just as he promised.
He throws me some garments.
“Put these on,” he says.
“Where’s Gerta?”
“Not here.”
He watches me impatiently as I dress. I don a white ruffled blouse and blue peasant skirt – creased and worn with multiple washings. Mansk gestures to my head, and I wrap the dirty scarf he has given me around my scalp, carefully tucking in my rich mahogany hair. The shoes that he hands me are sturdy and old.
When I have finished, he says, “You look like a country girl.”
He dips his hand in the ashes of the crackling heath and smears soot on my face. His gestures are tender and his eyes hold mine. He is almost paternal, though his fatherliness is tinged with a border of lust. I am somewhat more nervous at this than the actual escape. It is as if the entire atmosphere is a tinderbox waiting to be lighted by a spark. A premonition of dire things to come.
“Where are Max and Greg?” I say to ease the tension.
“Safe.”
“Where is Aimelie?” I know her father is still on his execution tour around the countryside, which is comforting. But still –
“She’s asleep. I arranged for her food to be drugged. You ask too many questions. Now come.”
I follow him in haste. The corridors of the castle are strangely deserted at this time of night. We pass a solitary guard, but he is seated at a table with a mug of some steaming drink, looking out of the window. I daren’t say anything to Mansk and he too acts nonchalant, as if I am a peasant girl he has decided to squirrel for a liaison. Perhaps he has done this with many castle girls before, I will never know.
We exit through a side door. The vista of night is eerily calm, and the shadows of swaying trees throw ghostly relief against the stark, midnight blue background. Somewhere in the near distance, a dog howls. Voices speaking in low, guttural tongues waft through the wind, and against a lighted window, I see the outline of a man with a rifle sticking from his back.
My heart beats so hard that I am sure everyone in the castle must have heard it. What is the penalty for capture? Instant execution? I should be so lucky. It might be a protracted, long-drawn affair that involves racks and other medieval torture devices.
Sweat trickles down my back. My skin is flushed and heated despite the relative cool of the breeze.
Mansk does not offer explanation or comfort as he strides towards a copse of trees. I think part of my terror is in not knowing fully if he will betray me. How sure am I that he will really help us escape? This could be an elaborate ploy to entrap me after all. Sure, his sister was executed. But that doesn’t mean he has turned against Potchenko’s regime. The psychology of people who have been caged for too long and who have never known freedom is new territory for me, and I’m putting my entire life as well as that of my friends into such a person’s hands.
I almost stumble over an errant root. Max clasps my arm before I can fall down. To my credit, I have not made a sound, even when my throat feels like decrying my surmounting tension. He does not say anything either as he pulls me along by the hand. We delve into the trees until we come to a clearing.
What I see makes me take a step back.
A huge cart drawn by two horses awaits us there. On it is a large stack of hay – so high that it rises to the higher branches of the trees. The driver holds a modern day flashlight. He shines this onto my frightened, black-streaked face. I blink and hold my hands up to shield my eyes from the glare.
Mansk says something in a low voice to him, and he retorts. He does not take his eyes off me, and I catch that predatory glint in them again that I have encountered in so many of the guards and grooms here – the sly urge of a child who sneaks candy out of a jar when his mother is not looking.
Mansk ducks under the cart, the bottom of whi
ch is about only two feet above the ground. He beckons to me and, after a moment’s hesitation, I follow him. The driver shines the flashlight for both of us. I can see his smile in the half-darkness – a gap-toothed, stained apparition that would have made me run for the cliffs had I met him under different circumstances.
In fact, I’m not entirely sure I shouldn’t be running now.
Mansk fiddles with something under the cart, and I can see that it is some sort of latch. This springs a small trap door, which falls open with a slight squeak that makes me jump and almost hit my head against the bottom of the cart.
“Get in,” Mansk insists.
I look up and see a space like the interior of a plain wooden coffin. It is not empty. Max and Greg – fully clothed in similar peasant garb – are squeezed in; two big men who can barely find room to flex their elbows.
And I am to squeeze in with them.
“Gina,” Max cries softly in relief.
I have not seen him for the longest time. One look at his beautiful face is enough to send those familiar stirrings coursing through my heart – the ones that mean all things to me: love, duty, belonging, home. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and he is like an oasis to the parched after a long desert trek. All my old feelings of love come rushing back again.
I spy Greg’s face. He too sees my devotion to Max, and he has gone deathly still.
Oh no. I am confused once again. I love Max, but I love Greg as well. This past week has cemented our relationship. We fucked every day, tied to each other in positions that would have made breeders envious. We talked as we fucked, steering away from the real topic at hand that neither of us wants to talk about: Max is still your boyfriend. What are you going to do about us?
Can’t I have the two of them? Can’t we all live in some impossibly happy, impossibly surreal ménage a trois? Can’t we all fuck like rabbits and share one another in some rich, idyllic fantasy where mad dictator’s daughters and Alice don’t exist?
Greg offers me his hand to help me climb inside. Of course. Now is not the time to think about three-ways and relationships when we are not even sure we will survive. But I guess our impending mortality makes us examine life a little closer.
Once I am safely ensconced inside the crawl space, it is truly a tight squeeze. I am sandwiched between my two beautiful boys. Max wraps his arms around me, as does Greg. Our hearts beat in unison.
“No talking in there. If we stop, do not move a muscle,” Mansk warns us.
I suppose there are not going to be any toilet stops.
Mansk shuts the latch. The boys tighten their grips around me as the darkness closes in on us. We are now three souls in our shared coffin. As the cart begins to move, our entwined bodies jerk with the momentum, and we begin our perilous journey into the unknown.
*
I don’t quite know how long we have been in there, but it seems like forever. I am dangerously thirsty. My bladder is increasingly full. My right calf is bursting with pins and needles, and there is a buzzing sound in my ears. The clop-clop-clop of hooves is comforting. They denote progress to wherever we are going, and I frankly don’t know where that is. But the closer we are to getting out of here is fine by me.
Mansk didn’t mention we would be getting to the border by cart. How long will it take? Three days? Well, when he finally opens this crawlspace and finds our dead, dehydrated bodies, maybe he will be sorry he hadn’t left us any food or drink.
But yes, yes, yes, I know. I’m getting ahead of myself once again. I have to put my faith in him. If he was going to betray us, he wouldn’t go through this elaborate cart-and-horse shenanigan, right? And the cart would have been stopped a long time ago.
Maybe I spoke too soon. Because the sudden absence of movement and the cessation of the clop-clop-clop suggests that we have stopped.
Uh oh.
I hear voices. Loud authoritative voices. The driver speaks, and strain as I may, I do not hear Mansk’s deep, gruff voice. Is he even with us? Suddenly, I am afraid. Mansk’s presence (or suggested presence) is paramount to my comfort. Now we are in the hands of this lecherous driver, who may or may not choose to betray us.
The boys sense it too, as evidenced by their tense musculature. Max grips me fiercely, willing his strength to flow into me. I am pressed to his body, facing him, while Greg clasps me from behind in some odd semblance of three-way copulation.
The voices continue to argue. To be terse. Someone raps on the side of the cart. My body is rigid, and I will myself not to breathe. I clench my fists, feeling the beads of sweat pool on my side – the side that is quashed to the bottom of this hidden space. There’s a scream building inside my head that is begging to be let out before it would volcanically explode.
The male voices continue to argue. All kinds of images course through my mind in painful cacophony. If I get out of here, I swear I’m not going to be a sex slave again, no matter how much someone is willing to pay me. There are better ways of bartering my soul. I am going to be kind to everyone and be a good partner to whoever is willing to have me. I can’t even think about my possibilities with Max and Greg, even though they are bodies-to-body with me. I daren’t allow myself to hope.
I just hope the Guillotine blade will be quick. And really, now that I come to think about it – it is a merciful execution. Hanging, electrocution, lethal injection, firing squad. They are all merciful.
I am so caught up in my own doomsday reverie that I scarcely register that the cart is once again moving – unscathed – and the clomping of the horses’ hooves have resumed. Of course, for all I know, the cart could have been compounded by the municipal police in this land and taken to the . . . oh, I don’t know . . . scrap metal heap or wherever it is they incinerate carts.
When we finally stop, the trapdoor opens once again. I would have fallen out if Greg had not caught me by the waist.
We emerge into the sunshine, blinking back the sudden brightness. Our limbs are stiff as stiff can be. We are in the countryside. The air is fresh and crisp and sparkling with morning, and the fields are abundant with freshly mown hay, which has been rolled up in bales. Cows graze nearby, their tails swishing.
Mansk gazes at me, smiling. He stands beside a woman in a white apron.
“Gina, Max, Greg, this is my wife, Suri.”
Wife!
He didn’t tell me he had a wife when he was boning me. And more, apparently, because two young boys below the age of ten come running up.
Suri beams from ear to ear. She is a weather-beaten peasant woman with nut-brown skin, the kind who probably spends most of her days toiling under the sun. She looks older than Mansk, which surprises me. She speaks to Mansk in Urskan, and he says something back. She nods.
Then she holds out her arms to me.
“Welcome,” she says warmly. “You am hungry.”
I have received so little kindness in this world that I simply crumple and fall into her arms.
7
Suri feeds and clothes all of us, and for posterity, I do not tell her how her husband has fucked me. I do not tell her about his crush on me. From the averted gazes and shifty guilt of his expression every time he crosses my path, he does not tell her either.
The house is chaotic, and from what I gather, it does not belong to Mansk. The people in Ursk own nothing. Everything belongs to the state, and they are given money credits for the work they have put in and an assigned property to stay in. Mansk’s work – as a senior personal guard to Potchenko and his household – takes him to the city for protracted periods of time. But his wife and children are not allowed to join him because they have been assigned to toil the fields.
In short, I understand why Mansk feels the need to have feminine company in the city, away from his wife. I guess I am no different from a prostitute, only he doesn’t have to pay for me. In dollars and cents.
The house is filled with various family members – all related to Mansk in some way or other, either by blood or marriage.
Figures. Mansk introduces us to his brother, an angry-looking man who seems eternally pissed at the world.
“He has not recovered from our sister’s death,” Mansk explains.
“Have you?” I ask him gently.
He looks torn. “I tried to, but I . . . couldn’t.”
I rest my hand lightly upon his. “I know.”
At the same time, I have my own demons with Max and Greg to exorcise. We are not given the luxury of alone time in this bustling household, where it is imminent that something of great import is about to happen. But Max senses something.
He says, trying to make his tone affable, “Did you see a lot of Greg when I was with Aimelie?”
I shrug, my heart pounding. “No more than the usual.”
He glances at me askew. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I don’t want to face any showdowns now. If there even is a showdown, I should be so lucky. Although Max says he loves me and we are practically girlfriend and boyfriend, something about our entire relationship – with the mix of Russell and Alice and Greg and sexual slavery – is so off-kilter and unsettling that I can never really be sure. Like if his love includes sharing me with his entire family (which he did) or selling me to some billionaire’s BDSM sex club (which he might after we get married, you never know).
So you see, Max keeps me guessing. Any relationship that any girl has with Max is going to be a rollercoaster – forever on the balls of your feet.
But Greg. Solid, dependable Greg. Predictable Greg, who will love me more than I love him.
Ahhh, I know I didn’t want showdowns, but he’s going to give me one too.
When Max isn’t looking, Greg pulls me aside.
“Did you tell him about us?” he says urgently.
“I’m not even sure there’s an ‘us’.” Now that I’m surrounded by people, including Max, I’m suddenly unsure again.
I wince at the look of hurt in his eyes.
Punished by the Dictator's Daughter (The Initiation 3, Book 3) Page 3
