If You Love Me

by Reese Gabriel

  The message was clear. If and when Catia returned, it would be by the whim of her betters, the ones who pulled her strings, and while she could certainly do things to ruin her chances, there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do to force matters.

  To make matters worse, the dark skinned man was not followed by any further visitors to her well worn bed. Not the next day and not the day after that either. By the third day, Julyana was into unprecedented territory. Not since her pregnancy had her body known such a respite.

  It was refreshing, but a little uncomfortable, too.

  She was forced to masturbate, to keep herself loose. Sex was like cigarettes to her, a combination of habit, pleasure and release, the seat of her being, the chronometer of her stresses and sufferings.

  The world took on different colors. She looked beyond herself, into realms and regions she never had before. Once at a café after work, with no daughter at home, no lovers waiting, no responsibilities, she caught herself daydreaming, floating with the passing ships on the river, imagining her life interchanged with those of a hundred, a thousand other people.

  Women with careers, or husbands, exciting prospects, and warm loving futures. Or maybe even to be a man—holding the rod of power over every female, heating her to the seduction point with his iron will, the power of his thrust, his wry smile, and his cruel denials.

  Every female longing to twirl her hair and melt and dance for him, the prince of the world. In a field of flowers, on horseback, wearing gleaming armor.

  “You’ve been given a promotion,” the manager suddenly told her, and she did not know if this was part of her ongoing dream or something real, but it was real, because he had a jacket for her, that of a desk clerk, and a badge with her name on it and a quote of pay that was double what she had now.

  Twice as high, and payable not in weak Voldovian currency, but in the dollars of the American consortium that now owned the hotel.

  Could things get much higher?

  Yes, they could. For that night, arriving home with a bottle of champagne to celebrate, the first she’d ever had in her life, she found her apartment door open.

  “Hello?” she called cautiously, fearing a burglar or some unexpected visit by Paulina. “Mistress?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Mother,” said Catia, coming around the corner into the living room. “I’m not one of your sleaze partners.”

  “Catia,” she cried. “It’s you.”

  “Who else?” She accepted her mother’s embrace.

  “I missed you,” she sobbed. “More than life itself.”

  Catia completely transformed and wearing the black leather skirt, boots and decorated black t-shirt of a Western youth, did not share the sentiment. “I can’t breathe, Mother.”

  “I’m sorry...” She regarded her daughter, tears streaming down her face. “Let me look at you...how you’ve grown up.”

  Catia rolled her eyes. Heavy black makeup, a pink streak in her raven’s wing hair, silver piercings in her ear lobes and nose. Had society changed so much, Julyana marveled, in less than a year?

  “If you’re done with the drama, Mother, I have somewhere to be.”

  “But I’ve only just seen you,” Julyana exclaimed. “We must catch up, I want to know everything, where you’ve been, what’s happened.”

  Catia folded her arms over her shapely bosom. Pushing one foot out, she said, “Don’t expect me to turn cartwheels or act all chummy. If you must know, I did not wish to come back. Apparently you pulled strings, so here I am. But don’t expect me to like it.”

  Julyana watched stunned as her daughter marched past her to the door.

  “Don’t wait up,” she declared. “And stay out of my way. That’s the new rule. I’ve turned eighteen and in a free country that means I’m free, too.”

  One more door closing, Julyana thought, one more person waltzing in and out of my life with ill disguised contempt. Only this time it’s my own daughter.

  Serves me right, she thought, for living the life of a tramp. My own child hates me, officially and irreversibly.

  Julyana regarded the champagne.

  A party for one.

  She didn’t bother with the glass. It was a drunk she wanted, cheap and quick. It was the first of her life.

  It would not be the last.

  Chapter Three

  Catia was a very confused young lady as she left the apartment of her mother, the very same rooms in which she’d spent nearly her whole life. She hadn’t asked for a revolution, anymore than she’d asked to be pretty enough to catch the eye of the former Minister of the Interior.

  The day she was torn away from her mother was the darkest of her life. She hated and despised her mother for letting it happen, for standing by powerless, watching as the men split them apart.

  Always it was the men, controlling, greedy old pigs. Communists, democrats, she saw no difference. The world was hurtling into hell, always burning at someone’s behest.

  Catia was no fool. She’d known what was happening to her mother, almost before she knew what sex was, she could imagine that something profound was happening to her mother each time one of her so-called visitors locked himself in her room.

  Catia shut away the feelings. She devised games in her mind; she drew pictures in a code no one else would understand. She was clever, very clever. Not even the secret policemen for whom she recited her essays realized the subtext, the silent pleas for deliverance.

  One day, she vowed, they would pay.

  And just like that, they did.

  Except she had no chance to enjoy. Tainted by her mother’s crimes, by Julyana’s complicity, she was to be hauled off to the capital.

  At first it was hard living apart from the only woman she’d ever known as a caregiver. As a so-called youth volunteer, she was forced to sleep in warehouses and train stations. All day, she worked with her hands, taking apart brick by brick the palaces and jails and headquarters of the communist party.

  She helped build new things as well. Laying blacktop for roads and cleaning up decades of old ruins, filled with rubble that dated back to the Second World War.

  The drudgery seemed endless, but then, in the middle of the second month, something amazing happened, in the form of money. Paper bills, not rubles, but dollars, brought by Western men in civilian clothing with short, military hair cuts.

  “There will be stores soon,” said the leader, who was dark skinned and incredibly strong looking. “And things to buy in them. You won’t have to wait in lines. Your duty, as free citizens is to spend all you can.”

  Catia took her small stipend with eager, trembling hands. It was too good to be true...capitalism and all its secret wonders, the forbidden things they had talked about, even back in Pristanya. CDs of the latest Western groups, new fashions. Sexy fashions.

  When the young workers were dismissed, the dark skinned man put his hand on Catia’s shoulder. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’ve just turned eighteen,” she said.

  He nodded his approval. “How would you like some help finding places to spend that money?”

  Catia agreed eagerly, though she had a feeling the man’s help would come at a price.

  The very first place he took her was a clothing store. Immediately he pointed her to a rack of leather skirts far more expensive than she could afford.

  “You let me worry about that,” he said.

  She liked the way he sounded. His accent was British, like her father. When she closed her eyes and listened, she could almost hear him talking, the man in the newspaper photo who’d impregnated her mother.

  Putting his cock inside her, making her submit.

  Catia modeled skirts for him all afternoon, and vests and boots and shirts, too. He chose several of each for her and paid with a credit card.

  “Is that from your government?” she asked.

  “It’s from a bank,” he grinned. “You have a lot to learn.”

  She shivered as his hand
cupped her ass. It wasn’t just economics he had in mind.

  Taking her hand, he dragged her into the alley next to the store. “This would be a good time,” he said. “To show me how grateful you are.”

  She swallowed hard, thinking of her mother. “Sir,” she whispered. “I don’t know how.”

  “It’s easy.” He pressed his hands down on her shoulders. “You start on your knees like this.”

  “It won’t fit,” she gasped as he unsheathed an enormous, chocolate colored cock.

  “Sure it will, Catia. It has to.”

  “It...it does?”

  “You’re a woman,” he explained patiently. “And I’m a man. It’s your job to please me, and it’s my right to do whatever I have to, to make you comply.”

  “I don’t want to make you upset,” she replied honestly. “I’ve always done what I’m supposed to.”

  “That’s a good girl, Catia. With that kind of attitude you’ll do fine. Just open wide, relax your jaw and take me deep. I’ll go slow at first. But if I sense you’re dawdling, Catia, I’m going to be displeased.”

  She thought again of her mother, the sounds that came from the bedroom, and the scars she sometimes saw that her mother thought she was hiding. “Will you punish me?”

  “Severely, Catia.” His eyes made her tremble. She knew he was not joking. He would indeed punish her and he would enjoy it to boot.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered. “May I please begin?”

  He tussled her hair. “You’re a little wildcat, aren’t you?”

  “I just want to suck,” she said, possessed by a spirit she could not explain. “I want to satisfy you...like no other woman ever has.”

  “Cocky little bitch,” he grinned.

  The man wasted no time. He pushed himself between her lips, forcing her to grow up in an instant. “Take it,” he growled. “Eat my dick. Take it down.”

  She nearly gagged. There was so much; it was so hard not to panic. She was determined not to be a baby. She’d be grown up, eighteen, stronger than her mother. More passionate, too. She’d play the men’s games and she’d beat them.

  The man grunted out in satisfaction as he spurted. Thankfully, Catia had known what to expect from talking to her friends. She herself had never even let a boy kiss her, lest she feel dirty and used like her mother.

  But it was survival now and Catia was a survivor. Like Julyana, only better.

  Catia was amazed as she walked downtown to see the changes. Had it only been a year since she’d left?

  Men standing on street corners, whistling at her. Holding bottles of alcohol in paper bags. Graffiti on the walls, representing political parties and attacking the new provisional president and his parliament. It was worse than the capital, she thought. Likely this was due to the higher unemployment here...and the smaller police presence.

  She despised the new police force. Gangsters with uniforms, their badges a license to extort from the new businesses springing up everywhere.

  “Beads, little sister, jewelry?” called out an old man, addressing her from a ramshackle cart on the sidewalk.

  “Hey, Petra, what’s under the leather?” called a gruff young voice, attended by others, low growling wolf cubs.

  The word roiled Catia and sent her into action. “I’m not your Petra, little boy.”

  She was looking him square in the eye, his jagged face hidden in the shadows of night. When had it gotten so dark?

  He puffed a cigarette, Western, and leaned back against the dirty brick wall. “You could be,” he grasped his crotch. “If you’re real nice.”

  “She better be nice,” said another, no older than her. “Or we’ll cut her good.”

  Catia’s eyes narrowed. She’d seen their type in the capital. Riff raff, self-appointed street gangs who preyed on the weak and the elderly. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it, visyo.”

  He growled, apparently he didn’t like being called an infant anymore than she liked being called Petra, which meant girlfriend, in the most diminutive, sexual form possible.

  “Sure I would, slut. I’d whip it into shape; tighten it back up a little.”

  The boys snickered.

  Catia had a knife. The dark skinned man, Reggio had given it to her. He liked to watch her play with it; it turned him on. Sometimes he would tell her to come at him and try to cut him. It was his game. Someday, he said, he wanted to die at the hands of a beautiful woman.

  “That’s the way to go,” he said. “The only thing I want to be fulfilled.”

  Reggio had always had a death wish. From his boxing days in London, fighting with a heart condition against doctor’s orders, down to his signing on with a private security company charged with certain shadowy responsibilities in the post-Soviet world.

  “Keep fucking with me,” said Catia. “And you’ll carry your balls home in your pocket.”

  The boys guffawed, egging on their leader.

  “She showed you.”

  “Guess you’re not so tough, Mojo.”

  The one called Mojo tamped out his cigarette. “When I’m done with you, Petra, you’ll beg to suck our cocks and call us master.”

  The boy wasn’t much taller than her, but he was wiry and all muscle. And he didn’t fight fair. He cold cocked her before she could do a thing with the knife.

  Catia went down, on the stones at his feet. People were walking by, no one cared. Mojo picked up her knife. “Get up,” he said.

  Catia obeyed. He waved the knife in front of her face. “Not so tough now, Petra.”

  She said nothing.

  “Lift it,” he gestured towards her shirt. “Let’s see what we’re getting.”

  She thought of running but the boys had closed round her. Her humiliation was intense. She was so much better than them and smarter. She had entertained high officials in her mother’s apartment as a child, what had they done?

  Catia pulled up her shirt, revealing the black bra.

  “What’s that? A training brasserie?” he mocked.

  “They’re plenty big,” she spat. “Big enough for men who’d eat you for breakfast.”

  Mojo punched her in the stomach, just hard enough to double her over.

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m...sorry,” she croaked.

  “Straighten up,” ordered Mojo, very much in charge now.

  He cut the center strap of her bra with the knife. Her breasts were good, she knew it. But Mojo wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  “No tit slut.” He spit on her chest.

  “Go to hell,” she snarled, no longer caring if he hit her anymore.

  Mojo laughed this time. “Keep talking. You’re our little bitch slut, no matter what. You’ll fuck and suck and bark for us. Isn’t that right?”

  “Where we gonna take her?” asked one of the others.

  “Let’s do her in the alley,” suggested another.

  “What’s this then?” said the taller of a pair of policemen, who had just arrived on the scene.

  Mojo and his boys showed no signs of fear. “It’s my girlfriend. She mouthed off a little, you know how it goes. You’re married, right?”

  The cop remained expressionless. “There’s a fine,” he reached into his blue tunic. “For public disorder.”

  The other cop just stood there, tapping a short baton against the yellow stripe running down the leg of his pants.

  Yellow, thought Catia. Like a coward. A worthless skunk.

  “Hey, maybe we can take care of things.” Mojo smiled, shoving Catia in his direction. “My girlfriend doesn’t like when people are mad at us.”

  The second cop poked his baton into Catia’s belly. “You really his girlfriend?”

  “Sure,” she smiled. “We’re getting married in the summer. Want to come?”

  The second cop scowled. “Double the fine,” he said to the first.

  “Hey, not so fast. Maybe a contribution? To the orphans’ fund?” He snapped his fingers, signal
ing for one of the others to pay off the cop.

  He pulled out a wad of bills, slipping them into the cop’s tunic.

  A disgrace to the uniform. Reggio would snap the man’s neck.

  “See,” Mojo grinned. “Now we’re friends again.”

  “Your kind has no friends,” the second cop said. “Move along, the lot of you.”

  “Certainly. Come darling.” Mojo took Catia by the hair. “You’ll pay for this,” he snarled. “Every last cent...on your back...I’m putting you on the streets, got it?”

  “You’re welcome,” said Catia. “For not informing on you.”

  The gang swarmed around her as they walked. Hands were on her leather clad ass, fingers combed her hair. She was going to be sick.

  Who knew where they were taking her. She could only hope it would be somewhere dark so she wouldn’t have to look them in the eye.

  Abruptly they stopped again.

  “Ulexi,” said Mojo, tension in his limbs. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Catia tried to focus through watered eyes. The figure in front of them wore a leather jacket, like her, and dungarees. He had black work boots. His head was cleanly shaven. Not many men looked good this way, but he did. She took his age to be perhaps twenty five. He had the body shape of a worker, large hands, and strong muscles.

  “Still a shitty liar, eh, Mojo? You’ve been avoiding me like the plague. Ever since you left me to the pigs.”

  “Hey, that was an accident. We tried to come back for you. What could we do? The police were everywhere.”

  “Save it,” snapped Ulexi. “I don’t have time. Lucky for you I need you for a job otherwise you’d be dead by now.”

  “Ulexi, I’m your man,” he enthused. “We’re all with you. Aren’t we, boys?”

  “Absolutely,” they cheered. “Here’s to Ulexi. Eternal leader of the Pack.”

  The Pack as she would soon learn was known as Crasuya Min, literally the Wolves of Death. In the days of resistance against the Third Reich, death wolves were dogs; their bodies taped with explosives, trained to run at the Fuhrer’s tanks, kamikaze style. The plan failed as the dog’s tended to run right back to their owners, in search of food.