Once Upon a Time in December

by M J Marstens

  Why must God tease me this way?

  “He’ll be back,” I attempt to soothe, but Nastya scowls at my words.

  “Fix it,” she suddenly commands, reminding me that underneath our facades, she is every inch the grand duchess.

  “F-f-fix it?” I stammer in confusion.

  “Like this,” she all but purrs, taking my hand and guiding it down to her special place.

  My face—and body—heat up fifty degrees it feels like. I’m so aroused but, also, so nervous and embarrassed. I don’t know how to touch her. Nastya must sense my unease because she tugs at my black shirt until I tumble into the bed next to her. Then, she rolls on top of me and starts kissing me senseless.

  Like every other time we kiss, I forget who I am. It’s a dangerous game to play under normal circumstances—it’s downright senseless when she’s naked. Over and over we kiss all while she languidly rubs her full breasts against my chest and her. . .pussy against my kher.

  Lord help me, my inner dialogue is using inappropriate words and is urging me to do things a monk should not entertain, but Nastya doesn’t seem to care about my inner turmoil. Vadim left her needy and aching for me to fix and, for her, that’s the solution.

  Suddenly, she stops and I can’t tell if I’m relieved or disappointed. I open my eyes to find her staring intently at my face.

  “Dima. . . we don’t have to do anything that you’re not comfortable with. Just know that I love you no matter what.”

  Her words constrict around my heart and shatter my resolve.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to, malenkaya,” I confess.

  “Then, what is it?”

  I gaze into her beautiful blue orbs and I know that this woman will always love and accept me—just as she does with the others and just as we do with her. Leaving Russia and her past behind was hard for our princess, but this woman before me is the woman she was meant to be.

  Not married off to some man in the name of royalty to continue the noble bloodline.

  Not standing one step behind her husband and being a public image with little regard to the woman inside her head and heart.

  The truth is, coming to America has allowed Nastya the freedom her old life never could have accorded.

  “I’m. . . afraid,” I admit. “I’m not like the others. I am just a simple monk who doesn’t know what to do or what to say—”

  Nastya cups my face gently.

  “Dima, you are not the others—that’s what I love about you—you’re you. I don’t want you to be them. Be my Dima and I’ll be your malenkaya and, together, it will be the most perfect thing ever.”

  Tears surge into my eyes at her statement and I sit up and scoop her into my arms to carry her to my room. She squeals at the swift movement and giggles uncontrollably at my efforts. I swat at her silky backside for her impudence.

  “It’s not funny. Our first time won’t be in Vadimir’s bed,” I chide, trying to be stern and failing in the face of her laughter.

  I unceremoniously toss her on my bed—to her delight—and she paws at my pants and shirt until I am just as naked as she is. Then, she pulls me on top of her, spreading her legs wide for me to settle in-between. Nestled there, it feels like heaven. Nastya kisses me leisurely before working her way down my neck, to my chest. . .

  And lower.

  “Anastasia!” I gasp. “Wh. . . what are you doing?”

  My breaths are just shallow little pants and I can barely focus, the pleasure that her actions are causing making me dizzy.

  My stomach clenches tightly when I feel the tip of her tongue stroke the head of my shaft—I almost fall off the bed. I’ve never felt anything so electrifying—until she takes me fully in her mouth. She works up and down my kher like it’s her pussy and I know that I will not last.

  “Stop, malenkaya—it’s too much. I. . . I will spill,” I say in an ashamed whisper.

  Nastya pauses and gives me a sly smile.

  “That’s the point, silly.”

  My mouth pops open in shock at the thought of her tasting me. I roughly pull her to me, reminding myself to be gentle, and kiss her with all the emotion that I’m feeling. She reciprocates one-hundred fold and I’m drunk on lust.

  “I’m ready, Dima,” she prods tenderly, knowing that I will argue with myself before ever making a move.

  “Nastya, are you sur—”

  My words get cut off when she arches a frustrated brow at me and simply guides my length into her waiting warmth. I lied—this is my heaven. I knew before why it’s called the ‘ultimate temptation’, but understanding is not the same as feeling—and I feel everything.

  We move together in a synchronicity that’s older than time and I stop worrying and just revel in the beautiful gift Nastya is giving me. I never want it to end, but I already can feel myself becoming unraveled. Only years of self-restraint and discipline keep me in control now.

  “Let go, my love,” Nastya commands. “We will fly together.”

  I look into her baby blues and do as she ordered. She screams in satisfaction, her soft body arching into mine. We never break eye-contact as we both finish together. When it’s finished, I collapse on top of her in a heap of trembling flesh.

  “That. . . that was amazing,” I murmur dazedly into her ear. “Thank you, malenkaya. I love you.”

  I feel her smile against my sweaty throat.

  “It only gets better,” she whispers in a scratchy voice that makes my body throb.

  I chuckle at her announcement.

  “Any better and I would die,” I counter.

  “Then, you better prepare yourself for Heaven,” she teases.

  I pull back and kiss her lips with all the love that I feel for her.

  “I’m already there,” I vow.

  And I meant every word—this woman is my everything and I’ll love her until my dying day. Even in death, my love will never end.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Nikolandra

  1991

  Ten years ago, my mother passed at the ripe old age of eighty-one. Considering everything that she had been through, and all the heartbreak that she suffered, I’m in awe of how long she lived. Even in the end, she was spirited. She never fought her lot in life but, rather, accepted her fate and learned to become flexible.

  I miss my mother dearly but, today, I wish that she were alive. Today, the 25th of December, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia once more reclaimed her true roots. I know this would have brought her endless joy—especially considering the date. Her mother country is once more as it was in her youth—although much more equalitarian now, hopefully.

  My phone rings and I answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Mama,” Alexei says, “have you seen the news?”

  “I’m watching right now. We are seeing history in the making, my son.”

  There is a pause in the line as he falls silent.

  “I. . . I wish that babushka could have seen this.”

  I smile sadly. They say that great minds think alike but, in this case, I think it’s great hearts feel the same.

  “She would have loved it,” I comment lightly, trying not to let my emotions boil over.

  I miss my mother and my father so much. Once my mother died, all my familial ties ended, except for my son and his family. I do not regret my mother’s legacy—it’s not mine to regret—but I do wish that I had cousins, aunts, uncles, even grandparents to grow up with.

  At least my son has his father’s family.

  “How is my little solntse doing?” I ask Alexei, turning the conversation to a less emotional topic.

  “She is mouthy,” comes his sour reply and I laugh.

  My great-granddaughter is a feisty handful, but the cutest little charmer ever. At four, she has everyone twisted around her finger. Tasha reminds me so much of my mother and her stories of herself when she was little. How I wish that she met her great-great-granddaughter but, most days, I’m convinced that my mother’s spirit
reincarnated in my beloved Tasha.

  “Am I still coming to watch her this weekend?”

  “Please,” my son all but begs and I chuckle once more.

  “I will see you on Saturday, then. Good-bye, my solntse.”

  I call him the same thing that my mother called me.

  “Bye, mom. Love you.”

  “Ya lyublyu tebya, too,” I reply.

  I hang up feeling blessed to have him, my daughter-in-law, grandson, and great-granddaughter in my life.

  A few weeks go by since the collapse of the USSR when I receive a strange letter. It is from a priest—in Russia. His words are strange, but it’s the note inside the letter that has me feeling faint.

  It’s from my mother—the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

  It reads:

  My dearest solntse,

  If you are reading this, then, I am dead and only a fond memory. But, more importantly, if you are reading this, then the time has come for action. There is a reason that I asked to be buried and not cremated--Nikolandra, my love, I want you to take my remains back to Russia.

  The priest who gave you this letter is an old friend of your father’s—Dima, of course. Your father trusted him with the truth and kept in contact with him, even after we fled our homeland. When he passed all those years ago, Dima gave me this last one gift—the chance to be reunited with my family.

  But, only when the time was right.

  If you are reading this, then, Russia is free once more. No longer will you be barred from your history and no longer will I be separated from my true heritage. What I am going to ask you goes beyond the love of a mother and daughter.

  It is gruesome, but I beg you to put me to rest properly.

  Please, my solntse, dig up my remains and send them to Father Storozhev1 in Ganina Yama. From there, he knows what to do with them. It is the one thing that I ask of you, my daughter, aside from keeping our (your fathers’ and mine) legacy alive.

  I love you, my daughter.

  Oh, how I love you.

  I will see you once more when your time on Earth has passed and I cannot wait to reunite and hug you to me again.

  From Heaven with love,

  Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, the Grand Duchess

  a.k.a Your Dearest Mother

  I stare at the letter, rereading it over and over. Then, I call my son. When he arrives, I show him the letter and he blinks in wonder.

  “What do you make of it?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t say anything for a beat and, then, looks up with a goofy grin.

  “I guess we’re digging up grandma,” he announces and I choke on a surprised laugh.

  Of all the things I expected to do in my life—digging up my mother’s remains and taking them back to Russia never entered my mind. But, for her, I will make this right.

  It’s been some months since I received the letter and did as my mother requested—and just in time. Since the collapse of the USSR, the remains of the Romanovs have been exhumed and analyzed. All around the world, it’s been announced:

  Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova did not escape. She perished with her family on that fateful day.

  I smile over my coffee reading the news. Like so many other things in history, only a select few will know the truth. Like how I know my Aunt Shusha killed Yakov Yurovsky for my mother and her family. The Russian Orthodox church is urging the new government to look into the Romanov deaths and rule them as murders, but only time will tell what happens.

  For now, I’m at peace because my mother finally is at rest, as well as my fathers, whose ashes I added to my mother’s remains to be put with her when the priest placed her in the mines. I’m not sure what the priest did to ensure that forensic evidence would show my mother dying how the rest of her family perished, but it’s not something I worry about.

  The world wanted the truth about the Romanovs—and, now, they have it.

  They died together.

  * * *

  1 Actual priest who said the final mass for the royal family before the Romanovs were killed.

  Epilogue

  Nikolandra

  1997

  Tasha bursts out of the cinema doors, giddy from the movie and all the sugar that she consumed. I’m an old woman now, but I still marvel at the differences between her childhood and mine and simple things like motion pictures. It reminds me of my mother, who enjoyed the advancement of technology, too.

  Ah, my mother—she would have found this movie interesting, to say the least.

  Tasha is talking a mile-a-minute, hotly exclaiming what an evil man Rasputin was, but how much she loved the silly, talking bat, Bartok. Her words make me smile, albeit sadly. Anastasia was a lovely movie but, bluntly put, wrong. The only thing it got right, coincidentally, is my mother’s happy ending.

  “My solntse, Rasputin wasn’t a bad man,” I correct, bent on not letting the movie skew her knowledge of history.

  My mother always said hindsight is a curse, and I have a feeling that this movie, in hindsight, is going to give future generations the wrong history lesson. But, the bat and the feisty image of my mother they present certainly aid in making up for the historical inaccuracies.

  Tasha wrinkles her nose delicately. She doesn’t know it, but she’s a real princess, by blood and by her mannerisms. My mother would have adored her to pieces.

  “Babushka, didn’t you watch the movie? Rasputin was baaaaaaaad. He had minions from Down There!” she stage-whispers, pointing to the ground and making me laugh.

  “No, solntse, not the real Rasputin. He was a great friend to Anastasia, and especially to her mother, the Tsarina Alexandra.”

  “Then, what really happened?”

  I pause as she climbs into the front seat of my car and fastens her seatbelt. I walk around to the driver’s side, looking off into the distance. Alexei and my granddaughter always told me that they would leave it up to me to tell Tasha the truth about our family. Now, she is ten.

  My granddaughter is very mature, but she is not yet old enough to know everything. Yet, it will not hurt to tell her a little. The historic truth, at the very least, I decide as I get into the car and start it.

  “Well, babushka?”

  I chuckle.

  “So impatient! Perhaps I will tell you; perhaps I will not.”

  “Babushka!”

  I smile at my Tasha, who looks so much my mother at that age, it’s uncanny. The only reason she goes unnoticed is because the world doesn’t know the truth and has forgotten the past.

  But, I have not.

  “It all started, long ago,” I begin as my mother once did. “Once upon a time in December. . .”

  The end

  Afterword

  I tried to portray the actual execution of the Romanovs with accuracy in my story. The Ipatiev House was, indeed, boarded up, but the windows were not—they were white-washed. The family was called to a basement storage room near midnight on July 17th, 1918 by Dr. Botkin. They were told it was ‘for their safety’ from gunfire and revolting in the city. Everyone complied. The women had jewels sewn into their dresses and little hand pillows that they carried.

  Once inside the storage room, the doors were locked and everyone was lined up. There were three main executioners— Yakov Yurovsky, Grigory P. Nikulin, and Peter Ermakov—but there were about nine men in the room. Peter Ermakov was drunk. The tsar died immediately to three bullet wounds to the chest and the tsarina, also, died immediately to a bullet wound to the head. But the rest of the room’s occupants met a worse fate.

  Amid all the smoke and noise (and the sloppiness of some of the men firing), chaos ensued and the Romanov children and their entourage were shot haphazardly, but not mortally wounded. When their executioners realized this, they bayoneted (stabbed) everyone still alive repeatedly. Their bodies were later disposed of down a mining shaft outside of Yekaterinburg.

  The Lenin that I portray in my story is also a fallacy and, from his personal notes and letters, he took great joy
in knowing that the tsar and his family had been permanently removed from the face of the Earth, although there has been no actual proof of him giving the direct order to have the family executed.

  The Romanov legacy is something that still causes turmoil in Russia, today. The case has been reopened many times to address the Romanov deaths and the Russian Orthodox Church has made them ‘passion bearers’ (not quite martyrs) of their faith. While many people in Russia feel that the Romanovs were heinously murdered, other (many staunch communists) disagree and feel that Nicholas got what he deserved1, as did his family.

  * * *

  1 Tsar Nicholas II is seen as a weak ruler whose many mistakes led to the collapse of the country. His biggest fault was that he was born emperor in a time of revolutionary upheaval that no longer had any need for a monarchy. Most consider his death, and especially the deaths of his wife and children, as regicide, or the specific killing of royalty.

  Thank You

  This story has been a labor of love for me because of the countless hours of research, but it was an absolute joy to write. Even though it’s just as fictional as the movie Anastasia, I think the book does more justice of bringing to light what really happened during the collapse of the tsardom and the Russian Civil War.

  To that end, I would like to personally thank Lena Pieters, my Russian tutor, and Mia Harlan for their extensive help into Russian culture, language, and history. I’m so appreciative to you both for patiently answering my questions and feeding my love of this amazing country.

  As always, thank you to my betas readers and my ARC readers who took the time to, not only read, but offer critiques, corrections, advice, and more. I appreciate your continued support and that you always have the time to read and review my work. Thank you, thank you.

  And lastly, thank you to you, my reader, for picking up this book. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. It is my hope that it sparked within you an interest in the true Russian history that happened in the early to mid-nineteen hundreds.