Red Sunset --- Chapters 1 & 2: A Game Of Colorito / From Hell To Paradise

This is a VERY long story, novel-size! Plenty of sex in it, sometimes consensual, more often than not, rape.

Captain Sidorov’s Letter to Sonya Sidorov

Tobolsk, May 18th 1918

Dear Beloved Wife,

I arrived in Tobolsk yesterday and took my quarters in the Governor’s House. Only myself and the Kommissar lodge there as officers. The enlisted guards have their lodgings in the Kornilov House next door.

Western Siberia is quite something to behold. It is an endless sea with gigantic waves of dark hills of spruces, and their collective darkness and vastness are echoed in the host of sombre clouds that gather in the celestial sphere at such a twilight hour when those clouds come alight in a debauchery of fiery hues of golds, tawnies and roses with those finishing notes of bloody crimson, setting the western heavens ablaze in a powerful display of communist grace.

In short, my first sunset in Ural was positively breathtaking.

My thoughts are with you,

Komandir roty Ivan Sidorov of the Soviet People’s Army

Ivan Sidorov reread his short letter very carefully. The description of a sunset or a landscape was their code meaning he couldn’t wait to hold his dear Sumeyye in his arms again.

He called her Sonya in his letter, using a common Russian name as one of the great many precautions he took to protect his young Turkish wife from the Party’s eyes.

The higher-ups had told him his privacy was sacred, but he knew better. Nothing was sacred to the Soviet Bolsheviks, not even royalty.

He sighed. It wasn’t right that he, a newly promoted Captain, or Komandir roty in Soviet words, should have to worry about his letters getting opened and read and thus his beautiful wife being put at risk.

Indeed, it wasn’t unheard of that an officer or enlisted clerk thus learned about a military wife being young and beautiful, and then the scoundrel would wait until his next leave to pay a visit to the said wife and force himself upon her, and he’d sometimes bring a couple of friends along with him. What’s more, many of them believed that the wife secretly enjoyed this.

The wife would then say nothing because the shame was too great. Duelling was absolutely forbidden as per Soviet law, this without any leeway, as opposed to how things were under the Czar.

Sidorov was happy to be an officer. He held a rank he could never had hoped for in the old regime. He felt a mix of pride and guilt—his tall, elegant figure clad in a sobre khaki uniform, complete with a leather gun belt and even a long sabre, one he took from an Austrian officer two years before when still fighting under White Russia, for the Czar.

His outfit was proper, with his long leather boots freshly polished by Boris his orderly. His peak cap matched his uniform’s khaki, with a bright red star adorned with a crossed gold hammer and sickle. He felt very nervous, for he was about to meet the Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevitch for the very first time!

As a man born in 1872, back when the Czar was one of the world’s most powerful monarchs, he felt a natural sense of awe and dread bordering on the spiritual in sight of such a meeting. His heart was racing and compelled him to use his battle-acquired trench instincts to keep his flawless phlegm.

While shaving with his usual straight-blade razor, he caught sight of the two red squares on his wide-open collar. Red like the virgin blood of the two maidens he had raped over the last year. One was Italian. The second one was Russian. Both were from a rich and noble house. The world was now nothing like the one he used to know. Ivan was threading into the unknown with each step he took. He didn’t even know himself anymore. How could he have become such a monster who rapes maidens and takes enjoyment in it?

***

It was only thirty past seven. Ivan left his private quarters, in the Governor’s mansion, which had been “kindly taken possession of” by the Red Army.

It was now used as a gilded cage for the three remaining Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevitch, Alekseï Nikolaïevitch Romanov, who had been too ill to make the boat trip the month before, when the former Czar, now citizen Nicholas Romanov, was moved to Yekaterinburg along with his wife, the former Empress, and their third-eldest daughter, former Grand Duchess Maria, with three servants, the family’s doctor and all dogs except Tatiana’s Ortipo.

Now that Tsarevitch Alexis was better, albeit still too weak to do much walking, the 13-year-old hemophiliac boy was about to be moved, so he would make the boat-and-railroad trip to Yekaterinburg along with his elder sisters, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia.

Kommissar Rodionov was feverishly preparing this trip, and there was much to do since the former Grand Duchesses would be travelling with a somewhat numerous retinue—tutors, governesses, ladies-in-waiting, servants, etc.

Komandir roty Sidorov, the newly appointed Captain of their close guards, walked down a hallway, catching sight of pictures featuring the noble—now meaningless—ancestors of the mansion’s previous owners, whose fate he’d rather not think about. Nobility usually had an easy life except when they had the misfortune of finding themselves at the wrong time, wrong place of history. Sidorov caught sight of two portraits of radiantly beautiful maidens in silk dresses—Virgin daughters, he thought as he felt a jolt of arousal upon thinking of their likely fate at the hands of some unwashed, unshaven troops of the glorious Red Army.

“Soviets are nothing but glorified brigands,” he thought, suddenly nostalgic of those days when he led the humble, yet simple life of a platoon sergeant in one of the Czar’s best regiments, where he’d practice his elite pistol shooting daily, and write love letters to his Sumeyye, whose dark eyes seemed to encompass all a man’s dreams and whose light-olive skin and small hands naturally led his own touch to the ineffable beauty of her feet.

The small girl with long raven hair would cause him to produce biblical-scale loads which he would spew with unfathomable enjoyment inside her Muslim womb. She had disobeyed her father by marrying an orthodox Christian. Ivan was the only man she ever loved. And he felt guilty for cheating on her by wartime-raping girls.

The tall officer arrived at the winding stairs that led from the stately lobby to the first floor. It was a large, well-furnished mansion, albeit too small to house the Imperial Family’s entourage. Most of the servants were housed across the street.

Ivan felt a bit smug as his boot-steps resonated throughout the lobby, then the stairwell, then the first-floor hallway, as he walked directly to the boudoir where both sentries at the door sharply stood at attention and saluted their commanding officer.

Both wore a similar dark khaki uniform, without any red insignias on their collars as they were Privates, but they did wear one blood-red star plump at the centre of their soft-visored cap along with an equally red chevron on their left sleeve, meaning they had done more than two years of service… counting their time under the White flags.

Upon walking past them and inside the rococo-style boudoir, Ivan Sidorov was sharply saluted by his old friend Dimitri Popov, who was the Pomkomwswoda, the platoon Sergeant, whom Sidorov had personally recommended for this assignment. Popov was thus once more Sidorov’s assistant.

Dimitri had been with him all along during the Great War against Austria-Hungary and Germany since 1914. A tough, capable soldier, he had closely followed Sidorov on his way up the ranks.

“Good morning, Komroty. The Grand Duch, uh, citizens Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia Romanov are ready for the roll call. The Tsarev… Citizen Nikolai Romanov will be here shortly with Nogarov,” Dmitri said.

“Very good, Pomkomwswoda. And no titles! These… these maidens are now citizens of the Soviet Union! Don’t forget this, Dimitri.”

Dimitri nodded.

As he walked past him, Ivan gave a subtle grin to his longtime war companion. Four other guards were present in the room, with Piotr Karamazov wearing his lone red triangle on his collar as a squad leader or Corporal (Komot), the number-three man for the inner guard. Piotr looked tired as he just did the night’s watch.

He also had a rat face and looked pretty mean. Ivan noticed how all three maidens made sure to avoid all eye contact with him and stood as far from him as possible, with the tallest and eldest sisters—Olga and Tatiana actually forming a screen between the rat-faced squad leader and Anastasia, whose gaze Ivan presently met.

Anastasia looked at him directly. Ivan felt much fascinated curiosity in her. She was quite short, maybe five feet one, probably a bit less, and her face still had baby fat, yet her features were clearly maturing into those of a young woman, a statement nobly displayed by her straight nose and her spotless complexion.

She wore a simple travel dress and like her sisters’, her hair was short and bobbed, in the process of regrowing from last year’s illness when it had to be cut quite short. Her hair was of a warm chestnut that intensified the brightness of her fair skin along with her corn-flower blue eyes, where fascinating lights of natural merriment sparkled as she looked at the tall Captain and faintly smiled, her cheeks taking some blush, with increasing lights of blue merriment in her eyes. This must be why she was nicknamed Shvibzik, the “Merry little one”.

Anastasia did not look away from his gaze and this surprised him. Ivan felt she was on the verge of smiling openly. It seemed that she liked him instantly. He was three decades older and felt ill-at-ease in front of the girl, who had been a daughter in one of the world’s most powerful families until very recently. She had pale rosy lips that looked ready to speak with some jest. Her cornflower blue dress did show the shapes of modest breasts that rode high and proud, where Ivan forbade himself to throw eye gazes. He smiled and nodded at the youngster.

She presently looked down, her face now positively blushing.

“Anastasia! Behave yourself!” Tatiana scolded her, her eyes a beautiful turquoise blaze of anger directed at the new Captain of her guards.

Heavy steps were heard from the hallway, and from the frowning on Tatiana’s noble features, Ivan knew she knew whose steps it was.

A man wearing a cavalry uniform walked in the room, his dark moss-grey jacket absorbing the room’s natural morning light through the barred windows. As his steps deeply resonated against the dark-lacquered book shelves, his shiny boots of maroon seemed to toy with the natural light, knee-high under his dark trousers that looked so wide under his pistol holster that one would think he was about to flap those low wings in an attempt to rise to the high ceiling. The way he raised his well-shaven chin spoke volume about his smugness.

Under the red Soviet star and the black visor of the prime-quality peak cap he wore, his pale face looked almost ugly with a compact black moustache and a shameless expression of self-importance. He had stern shadows for eyes under a pair of gross-looking eyebrows. The scant signs of handsomeness on him, such as a noble nose, indicated he was still a young man.

The four red squares on his collar told Ivan what he already knew—here walked Kommissar Rodionov along with four guards whom Ivan knew as the wartime companions he had hand-picked himself.

“Now, young citizens,” Rodionov said, almost barking. “I see that your lazy brother is late again! Well, I shall request you to please stand at attention for the roll call!”

Olga and Anastasia obeyed, then Tatiana reluctantly followed suit with much defiance in her eyes. Captain Sidorov looked at her with admiration—what a wonderful English lady she will be once safely in exile!

“Komroty Sidorov! Lose those Imperial eyes of yours! Citizen Tatiana is now a citizen of the Soviet Union! We’re all equal in Mother Russia. Never forget this!”

“Yes, Komrade Kommissar! (fucking asshole!)” was Sidorov’s reply as he stood at attention, his eyes now on Olga and the shorter Anastasia. Olga looked surprisingly aged for a twenty-three-year-old woman, but she still had a superb complexion, royally pale, and hips that seemed specially made for cupid’s play, and Ivan caught himself thinking about how great it would be to copulate with her like a breeding stallion with her on all fours and her ass taking the repeated shocks of his lust. Truth be told, he had gone a bit too long without seeing his wife.

Then, the room went silent. Every man present gazed at the three young ladies, two of whom blushed while Tatiana’s turquoise-blue eyes were boiling with rage!

Ivan felt Tatiana’s sense of humiliation as the vulgar squad of male gazes went right through her dark-green travel dress and made out her slender shapes, her hourglass figure, and even her corset couldn’t hide those superb shapes that promised a pair of breasts that would perfectly fit in a man’s hand. Her height impressed Ivan, for she stood just as tall as the average man if not even a bit taller. What a grand Empress she would make! What a tigress she would be in bed!

Tatiana had no choice but to stand tall and majestic, an effect magnified by the fairness of her skin under warm brown hair, now just long enough to be fixed high in a half-beehive that highlighted the natural grace of her features and made her look even taller. She was an intimidating centre of wonder for her guards and admirers. And yet, Sergeant Piotr Karamazov was shamelessly gazing at her like a rat-faced hawk.

Ivan noticed that Rodionov was sizing up young Anastasia from head to toe. She stood ill-at-ease in her slightly plump figure, wide at the hips and looking child-short next to Tatiana.

Anastasia’s features were still lacking in maturity, yet Ivan noticed the visible softness of her fair skin along with the shapes of her bosom that looked pleasing inside her travel dress that matched the blue of her eyes—Eyes with childish lights in front of an uncertain fate. Her chestnut hair was perfect against the blue of her dress. Ivan found himself contemplating the daylight in her hair. This merry little one, this Shvibzik seemed like a very decent girl. She wasn’t a beauty, far from it, especially when standing next to her elder sisters, and yet there was something profoundly fascinating in her. It was as if some intangible treasure of eternal youth lay in her—a treasure most men spend their whole life looking for without success. Captain Sidorov knew instantly he would never forget her. The way he saw the world was altered forever.

Some of his natural dislike for his new Kommissar was dispelled upon noticing that his superior shared his fascination for Anastasia.

“The man has good taste, I’ll give that to this young prick,” Sidorov thought under his peak cap and poker face.

The waiting lingered in silence, as a sun ray met some suspended dust near the window. Rodionov and most of the men—especially Piotr—took a vulgar form of evil enjoyment as the Grand Duchesses were forced to stand at attention in front of their proletarian guards.

Ivan knew Dimitri well enough to know that the former schoolmaster was positively disgusted by this smug and petty show of power. Rodionov seemed proud of his rank, and proud of showing he had such rank without being a gentleman. Dimitri would make a far better officer.

A tall and large man suddenly walked in the room, escorted by two Lithuanian guards who wore a different khaki uniform. The large man was dressed in the white and Navy-blue stripes of a sailor. His wide face and massive shoulders looked like the man could have a career as a circus strongman.

“Igorny… What do you want?” Rodionov asked with a snarl.

“The Tsarev… Citizen Alexis, Komrade Kommissar… Komrade Kommissar, Citizen Alexis is bed-stricken and too weak for this morning’s roll-call!”

This Igorny looked positively scared as he stood in front of the much-smaller, yet terrible Kommissar. Igorny held a piece of paper that looked tiny in his hand, a hand that could twist a horseshoe.

“The Doctor, Komrade Kommissar, the Doctor…”

He showed the piece of paper. The Kommissar took it, read it with a glance, and then he looked directly at Tatiana, then at Anastasia as he smiled at her in a grin that made him look like a gloating rat-faced scoundrel. He spoke…

“Well, I’m in a good mood to-day! So! We’ll let the little boy pee his bed sheets and proceed with the roll-call. Now, proceed!”

As Igorny subserviently took his leave and vanished, Olga took a step forward, visibly plain-looking and short in her maroon travel dress next to Tatiana. Her light-brown hair was bobbed, the vestige of what used to be long, lights-rich hair that dropped to the small of her back. Sidorov was much pleased by Olga's figure and felt instantly, with guilt in his heart, that this young woman would look strikingly beautiful naked.

“Citizen Olga Nikolaïevna Romanov, present!”

Olga took her step back, not before Sidorov had noticed the smallness of her shoed feet under the low hem of her dress.

Tatiana took her step forward with a flicker of reluctance that wasn’t lost on Ivan Sidorov.

“Citizen Tatiana Nikolaïevna Romanov, present!”

She nearly spat out those words, then took her step back almost while still speaking.

Now, clearly ill-at-ease under the Kommissar’s penetrating gaze, Anastasia took a modest step forward. Sidorov lost nothing of her as she spoke, enthralled by her figure.

“Citiz-… Citizen Anastasia Nikolaïevna Romanov, present!”

***

Captain Sidorov’s thoughts…

After the roll call, we left Dimitri along with two guards as the Grand Duchesses had their breakfast served. Bliny and pirojki (thin pancakes along with soft and fluffy dough filled with meat and cheese).

We had the same thing in the dining room downstairs; I sat near the Kommissar and the inner guards not on duty sat elsewhere at the long table. The Lithuanians of the outer guard, some twenty of them, had their quarters in the basement. They were led by a platoon Lieutenant, whom I of course outranked.

Kommissar Rodionov told me Anastasia had a good appetite. I said she ought to take a bit more exercise, perhaps going outside for a stroll every day, but he said this carried too much risk of outside help for an escape attempt, and besides, he said, he was going to see to it that she gets plenty of exercise during the boat trip. He grinned as he said this, and not in a very good way. He also took pride in stating her exact birth-date, smiling as he stated her age, as if Anastasia of Russia wasn't a well-known figure from Ukraine to far-east Siberia! Every little kid knew she was born on June 18th, 1901.

I didn’t like the way he said that and tried to change topics, commenting about the excellent food and the heart-warming coffee, but Rodionov just kept talking about his prisoners, especially Anastasia. There was something in his eyes that alarmed me, and I hated knowing that such an innocent girl was under the absolute power of such a petty tyrant. Unless… Unless I rebelled. Why not?

The men of the inner guard were my own companions; they would follow me. But what about my wife Sumeyye? If I was successful and joined the White Army, then the Party would take revenge on her! But Anastasia… She was royalty, and it was my moral duty to try and save her and her sisters. But what about Maria and the former Czar? I couldn’t bear the thought of Rodionov punishing this good man who was our sovereign by having Maria gang-raped in front of him. And in an instant, I realized in horror why it was me they had selected!

They had carefully examined my character and my situation. They knew I was happily married and would never sacrifice my wife, not even for the royal family. And yet I was beginning to fall in love with this merry little one, the Lord knows why.

I felt powerless to stop anything the Kommissar might have in mind.

He added something about Anastasia, again, but I wasn’t paying attention. I said I was sorry, but the journey had been a long one and I was hungry, and I indeed was and I presently asked a servant maid to please bring me a second serving of bliny and pirojkis, “with some more of this excellent chai and my compliments to the cook!”

“Here, Komroty! Have some vodka with me! Drink with the Devil! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

I laughed along with him and took the glass he offered me. But this was a clear warning. He was seeing I disliked him and by calling himself the Devil, he was telling me he had his eyes on me.

***

After breakfast, I went back upstairs and replaced Dimitri and stood watch along with two fresh guards. Tatiana met me with a cold-shower gaze that lasted a split-second, then she pretended I was never born.

Olga greeted me with a very slight nod, while Anastasia smiled and her eyes became suddenly alive.

“Would you like to play a game of colorito, Komroty? My sisters don’t like this game and I’m so bored! We can't even speak or read French. We must speak, write or read Russian at all times, even when we talk during our sleep, ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Anastasia’s voice was delightful. If she were a stage actress, many souls would come to the theatre just for the pleasure of hearing her little merry voice that made me think of that proverbial maid barefoot at the fountain, so aptly described by Goethe in his Leiden des jungen Werthers.

She sat at a round table that was covered with a white tablecloth, with crumbs indicating this was where she just had breakfast. She was drinking the last of her chai out of a porcelain cup, white with Prussian-blue adornments. Her hand was wonderful to look at; she certainly was no girl who hurried to grow up.

Her sisters were reading books. Tatiana’s dog sat on her lap, but it raised its head to look at me. I thought all family dogs had made the trip, but I was obviously wrong. It was a French spaniel, dark brown and perhaps 15 pounds of weight, a not-so-large dog who looked at me and seemed friendly.

Its mistress was trying to turn me into stone with her beautiful eyes of turquoise—such sea-water eyes like I never had seen. Filled with hatred and without a shred of apology for feeling the way she did. What an amazing Empress she would have been!

Chased by that Gorgon-like gaze, I smiled at Anastasia as a sign I was accepting her invitation. She chuckled and opened the flat box of her board game as I sat in front of her. Like a girl with a nervous voice explaining something to her schoolmaster, she told me the rules of the game in a nutshell. Indeed, I had never played this.

The board was a grid of 10x10 octagons, so it was clear that the round pieces could go in all directions, probably one step at a time.

“Look, Komroty, it’s very simple. You have twenty numbered pieces, royal blue and red on your side, and mine are brown and yellow. The spaces of the central six rows are coloured according to the counters, either red, blue, yellow or brown, and you may step one space, jump across one other piece (also more than once during a turn) when landing eventually on a space of your own colour or doing a step plus a jump move in this order in a turn. You must always land on…”

“… on my own colour! Let’s play, young lady, and I’ll learn by watching you move!”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! All right, I start! And you may call me Nastya if you like!”

“Anastasia! Behave yourself!” Tatiana scolded her.

Shvibzik, or “the Merry little one” didn’t pay attention to her tall sister, who kept her Gorgon gaze raised from her novel and still trying to make a statue out of me. Shvibzik’s hands did a better job.

I was profoundly fascinated by this proximity and kept watching her little hands as she played. She kept smiling at me, to the clear displeasure of her elder sisters.

At one point, toward the two thirds of the game—which she was winning, I felt a touch on my boot under the tablecloth. Her foot! She must have felt it as well, but she did not recoil. She was nervously fiddling with her hair as she slaughtered me on the board, gracefully moving her pieces in steps and jumps that seemed to magically land on the numbered octagons on my own side of the board. Tatiana watched us like a female Argus.

“Having some trouble, Komroty? I’m beating you fair and square! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Shvibzik! Behave!”

If Tatiana knew that Anastasia was playing footsie with me under the table, she didn’t let it know and in fact, she couldn’t in the presence of the guards since this would be a slight for Anastasia, herself and Olga, Olga who remained silent with her nose in her novel, which was Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, an 1862 book where the writer described the life in a forced labour camp in Eastern Siberia.

I knew from the files that Olga and Tatiana were fluent in French and English and also German, but it was forbidden to speak or read in any other language other than Russian. There were gaping holes in the bookshelves where the politically incorrect books used to be lined.

“Do you give up, Komroty? I’m going to win in three moves from here and your pieces are like slow-poke horses! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Yes, Shvib… Citizen Anastasia. You’re strong, but I’m learning fast! We play another game, and this time I’m going to… You’ll see!”

Watching her little hands gave me great pleasure as she agilely took and reset all her twenty pieces. She was waiting and making all sorts of playful faces at me as I reset my own red and blue pieces on the side opposite her brown and yellow pieces.

“This time you begin, Komroty!”

Anastasia had the voice of an overexcited schoolgirl! I was very happy to be giving her what was clearly a rare moment of fun play as befit a girl of her age. Poor Shvibzik! Caught amid such a bloody political turmoil while all she wants is to enjoy her youthful years—these magic years that are soon gone and never come back; only remaining in one's mind as a mid-summer night’s dream, under a rosy sunset with clouds scudding away as time marches on.

As I began the new game, she started to out-play me again, while keeping her small foot on my thigh. This time, her hand seemed to linger on the game board, where she knew I would make my next move, and she seemed to wait and see whether I was going to accept this silent offer and allow my hand to brush on hers, which I did, very gently, and this utterly thrilled me. I’m ashamed to truthfully confess my thoughts, being thirty years older than this girl, but to be frank, my wife Sumeyye was even younger when we kissed in church.

By the first third of the game, Rodionov’s stern voice brutally broke the stream of my thoughts and reminded me where I was…

“Komroty! Come to my office right away! On the double!”

The Kommissar was right at the door. I realized only then that he must have been watching us for a while. The bastard was unhappy, perhaps jealous. What did I care? After all, this was but a short assignment after which I'd go on leave and finally get to see my wife again.

The guards looked as motionless as marble statues, but I saw the tiny itching on their familiar faces and knew for a fact that they were having a hard time keeping their composure and avoiding to burst out in laughter.

“Yes, Komrade Kommissar!”

I silently took my leave from the blushing, smiling girl, lingering on a bit in front of the charm and merriment that oozed out of her person.

“Komroty! At once I said!”

I followed my superior officer through the echoing halls, remaining silent and mentally preparing to remain even more silent and be the better person when the scoundrel would yell at me. I followed him into his office, a baroque-style room lined with books that must have been the former owner's private study, and then I noticed the pictures on a sideboard. One of them displayed all five Romanov heirs as they were some years ago. In reading order sat Olga, then stood Maria, perhaps fourteen at the time, with a ribbon in her hair, next to then-child Anastasia, who hugged the little Tsarevitch in her arm. Last sat Tatiana with her fascinatingly regal features.

The dirty scoundrel must have taken it from the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Petrograd... I secretly hated the new name. At what price did I become an officer? Officer in an army of glorified brigands.

***

Chapter 2: From Hell To Paradise

Ivan Sidorov's thoughts

Kommissar Rodionov turned out surprisingly friendly, after bellowing at me in front of my men. He had made his point. I was not to become too familiar with the grand duchesses, especially not with Anastasia, whom I had noticed he was eyeing with indecently hungry eyes. Shortly after Rodionov took off his peak cap and kindly gestured me into taking a seat in front of his massive pine desk, I faintly heard some dog barking.

"Ha! Ha!" that's Ortipo, Tatiana's dog. She always barks when Lieutenant Malinovski is doing some sabre fencing with Platoon Sergeant Kürschner. She hears the blades rattling through the open window and there she goes, barking with her tail waggling. They fence like this every day for an hour, every day except Sunday. I think they're both highly religious."

"Kürschner?"

"Yes, Sergeant Kürschner is of German blood. He's from the same village as Malinovski. They're childhood friends. I specially selected them and put them in command of the Lithuanian Platoon—Forty-five soldiers who are all staunch Bolsheviks. They're the outer guard, and they will be the main danger for our beautiful prisoners during the overnight boat trip to Tyumen along the Tura River, and so they will also be during the railroad trip to Yekaterinburg, but the danger will be greatest on the boat—and that's where you come in. Please, take a glass of cognac. It's French, dating all the way back to Napoleon. I, uh, found it in the mansion of some country prince."

Rodionov was obviously referring to the estate of some fallen aristocrat who was arrested along with his entire family—his wife and/or daughters most likely gang-raped before his very eyes by a bunch of ill-shaven brigands in uniform, perhaps by Rodionov himself. This golden liquor he poured in an aquatic green glass had sinister reflections at the room's natural daylight. Like a golden topaz, it stood for some horrible crime. My commanding officer must have seen the way I was looking at my glass, for he went into specific details as to the circumstances in which this fine old cognac came into his possession.

"It was a beautiful country estate not far from Kiev. We pillaged the place through and through, and of course, we raped the daughters. The Prince had two daughters about twenty years old or a bit shy of this figure. Two well-dressed damsels ready to be married off. Well, they both got their wedding with an entire platoon of Bolsheviks, and their father was there to see it! And after we went over them, we let in a pack of their own peasants, men of all ages, some of them sixty-something old buggers with missing teeth who had known their masters for years! You should have seen the sounds those apes made as they forced themselves upon and inside the damsels! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! That was some good measure of punishment for those White czarist pigs! They made fun of us long enough so it's a well-deserved punishment, don't you agree, Komrade Sidorov?"

"Yes, yes. If you've read the files about me, you must know that me and my men, we did some similar, uh, things, when we were... when we were patrolling nearer Saint-, nearer Petrograd I mean, Sir."

"Not Sir, I'm your Komrade! And it's Petrograd. Petrograd! We need to get rid of these old icons. We're in the twentieth century, for Christ's sake, and religion has no place in a modern communist State. This century will be the century of Marxism. Mankind will progress to a never-seen-before civilization under Soviet Russia and we will prevail over those decaying monarchies of the West. Mark my words, Komrade. The day will come when we will march all over Europe, and we will even conquer England, whose King himself will be made to watch when a group of our strongest soldiers will enjoy the silky skin of his nieces and daughters, right in front of His Majesty George the Fifth! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

The scoundrel drank his cognac as he spoke, his piggish eyes ablaze with such lights as if he were there in the royal palace of England and watching the scene where British princesses were being forcibly undressed by a pack of grinning soldiers from the Red Army. As for myself, I had my legitimate doubts about Russia's ability to conquer Europe in its entirety, for Catherine the Great wasn't even able to submit Sweden or to conquer Turkey. I kept my thoughts to myself and drank my cognac along with him.

"Wow!" I ejaculated upon tasting the best liquor that had ever passed my lips. "I have to say, Komrade, this cognac is the very finest! Did it belong to Napoleon himself?"

"Haah, my dear Komrade, now you're talking!" Rodionov said, emptying his glass and pouring himself another one. "The old Prince tried to use his cognac reserve as payment for his daughters' honour. At first I gave my word and accepted the deal, but what was I to do? As soon as they saw the princesses and their angel features, my men became like wild beasts. They would have mutinied if I had denied them the pleasure! Here, I have pictures of these girls. Poor girls! They were nearly used to death! But they perhaps have survived to this day, as whores for the Red Army."

The brigand went into a drawer and produced two pictures showing two young ladies of the best breeding, most probably just as well-read as they were well-dressed.

"They're very pretty indeed! Thank you for showing them, Komrade. I... I think I would have partaken myself and even used my rank to be the first one inside one of them," I said, role-playing the scoundrel among scoundrels. Was I role-playing? Wasn't there a part of me that felt aroused by the notion of me and my men undressing these two adorable maidens and have our way with them?

I drank my cognac and took a cigar that my commander offered me. I thought of my beloved Sumeyye and felt ashamed for entertaining such thoughts, but down there under my trousers, I felt a nascent stiffness that I couldn't repress. My body was a brigand. War had changed me for the worst. But I was determined to protect my wife from all this madness. I had always regretted not having children with her—We lost three newborns through the years. Now I felt relieved that I didn't have any sons and daughters to protect as well.

"You should have heard how they screamed, how pitiful their outcries were when we began undressing them. They kept calling their father and mother while both parents were being restrained and forced to 'enjoy the show' as we unlaced their daughters' petticoats after violently tearing their dresses off their bosom! I myself took the youngest one, the fair-haired one, and sucked her bare breasts! They were small and tasted wonderful as I filled my mouth and tasted her nipple as she screamed the gain of unwelcome knowledge—She no doubt had this done to her for the very first time. I had an incredible stiffness down there and I love to think she was perhaps just sixteen. Then, the burly platoon sergeant tossed some trinkets off a table and a pack of men brought the elder daughter upon the cleared table, where they shredded what was left of her pristine-white petticoat and then made short work of her gown until she was Eve-nude, down to the dainty sight of her feet. My men had even troubled themselves with removing her shoes and her long silk socks, so yes, she was completely naked, a fine damsel. She would have had quite a career as a model for painters in Moscow or Petrograd!"

Rodionov looked crazy as he kept on recounting the sordid tale, with his ill-shaven fate twisted with a vile show of cheaply won joy. He went on...

"As for the younger, fairer one, I had my men similarly undressing her, until she was just as naked as her sister. The lines of her nubile legs and her bare feet were really worth the trouble! I knelt behind her and kissed the small vastness of her buttocks!—In front of her parents! I was stiffer than a Turkish cannon! Me, who was born a peasant in a pauper house, kissing the intimate skin of a noble maiden in front of her princely father! This while the Platoon Sergeant and a group of my men were urgently raping the elder princess! Oh, how she screamed as they deflowered her in the creaking table as her head bobbed on while they looked at the lost tumult of her breasts! The Prince her father was calling her name, 'Iryna! Iryna!' And then we took the younger one and bent her over a sideboard, where I put a finger inside her to make sure she was ready to be fucked. It was glorious to feel her untouched sanctum against my index finger as I put the gentle pressure and forced her to whimper amid her outcries where she kept desperately calling her father and mother! 'Nadejda! Nadejda!' the old Princess her mother cried out, her face in a blushed rage of tears as I felt the daughter's juices against my finger!

"And then I raped her! Without any restraint! Like a braying donkey! Ihhaaaa—ihaaa ihaaaaa—And she wailed and whimpered as I mounted her like a breeding stallion over a young mare. The sideboard was creaking, its dark-wood surface wet with her tears as her cheek remained forced to slide on it. Oh, it was delicious! I even grabbed her loose hair and used it like reins as I made her mine! Ha! Ha! Ha! How she cried and wailed! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! And it was over way too soon! And then, I drank some cognac while watching my men turn these damsels of distinction into Bolshevik whores. Two files formed according to who preferred the blonde one, or the brunette that had got broken in by the burly sergeant.

"The brunette was gang-raped on the table with her legs propped up most of the time, clenching her beautiful little fists where grinning soldiers held her wrists while telling her she was being deflowered by real men so she should feel thankful for this, while she kept wailing and calling her father and mother as one man after the other destroyed her honour with no hope of redemption. Her future would involve countless soldiers of the Red Army.

"The blonde was bucked where each man repeatedly flattened her butt while she was kept bent over that sideboard as she kept shrieking the loss of her virtue. They kept commenting on how beautiful she was. We complimented the honourable Prince for the fine stock of daughters he had, this while he couldn't take his eyes off his flesh and blood as we ravished the daughters on and on, pouring liquor on their breasts and buttocks, subjecting them to all sorts of humiliations! It was well deserved and ungodly satisfying! At one point, I tried out the brunette. I had her kneeling down at my feet and men held her there while I masturbated until I shot quite a big load on that musical face of hers—A spotless face that had been used to sip tea in elegant salons while commenting literature. I gave her a different sort of literature to ponder about! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Some of my men followed suit and it was darn funny to see those fat shots of hot semen glistening in pools on her brunette's breasts where her nipples stood positively brown, with perfect circles for areolas that screamed she was of noble birth. Her young sister had pale nipples with areolas that faded like a delicate dream of paleness into her white-gold skin; I know this since I sucked those tits, and I can tell you her skin is just as soft on every inch of her, especially where she used to sit at the pianoforte that stood in this very drawing room where we had our daytime orgy.

"And then, we forced the father to choose which one of his daughters he liked best. It was funny to watch the half-concealed jealousy in the brunette's eyes—dark brown eyes that were otherwise made lifeless after a strong dozen rapes—as she saw her father when he chose to have his younger daughter, the blonde one, as opposed to his wife who had given her genes to the dark-haired one. The Prince sounded like a rutting boar when he raped the maiden he kept calling his 'beloved Nadejda' and he bucked her on the floor, holding the crease of her hips as we all contemplated the orbs of her buttocks as they kept striking against her father's sweating efforts. His deer-like grunts filled the stately room. Until he screamed his shame and bliss and it felt as if the mansion trembled!

"After watching this, some of my men had got horny again so they gave the golden-haired princess some more sessions of butt-buffeting and loads of semen—One after the other, some seven or eight corporals and privates knelt behind this little Nadejda and gave themselves the pleasure of bumping her against them until they filled her up! The flesh-on-flesh collisions filled the drawing room as the mother watched it all where she had been restrained all along. The mother Princess was silent with rage and shame. She was still somewhat pretty with silver hair arranged in a bun with sharp streaks of what used to be fabulously dark hair. I had my men strip her naked and we forced her to dance for us in the nude while one of my men played the piano and we sang songs such as the Volga Boatmen song. And it wasn't all! No...

"Once we were quite satisfied in our basic instincts, we had a whole bunch of their peasants inside the room. Dirty paupers with hobo's clothes. A filthy bunch of men, young and old, some of them stinking of manure, who were all transfixed upon seeing the Princess and her daughters in the nude! We nodded at them and they understood! You should have seen how those peasants grabbed the daughters! They were absolute beasts! Each one of them a hungry pig who took his turn and raped either daughter while sounding like a sick donkey! The whole place was filled with their grunting! Their grunts hugged and violated the naked aristocrats. It was quite a thing to see! The blonde daughter was kept floating amid a group of those filthy peasants, each of whom took his turn, standing between her legs and forcing her thighs to brush his rough jacket or frock coat as he violated her with brutal glee while she kept begging them to please stop, calling those men by their names and making her whole head-bobbing ordeal something very personal.

"Two thirds of those country hobos raped the younger daughter. The other third kept the dark-haired one on all fours where they crudely bucked her from behind as she emitted peculiarly high-pitch moans as they all took their pleasure inside her, each man telling her he had been dreaming of this for so long! This is the revenge of the people. God bless Soviet Russia, uh, long live Soviet Russia!"

I didn't comment on his preposterous religious zeal, but I have to confess that I was warming up to this scoundrel who had a talent for telling a tale as if I was there to see it all. I had a most definite hard-on and asked whether I could have one of the young serving maids in my private quarters for the night.

"Yes, of course! That's the way, Sidorov! Here, have some more cognac. I select the maids myself from the villages around here, or just from Tobolsk itself. Whenever one falls pregnant, we send her home with fifty rubles and she finds herself a husband. If you like them really young, we do have true youngsters among the freshest ones. I have understood that your pretty young wife has very dark hair, and we have such girls here; one of them has definite blood from the far East in her, with shades of bright bronze in her skin. If you want this beauty from the east, then ask for Jan, that's her name, pronounced Yan. She has legs to die for!"

His comments about my wife caused me great alarm. How did he know so much about her? He could only have gathered such information by sending someone to observe my house in Saint Petersburg. My wife was still very pretty indeed; she seemed to have been drinking a potion of youth for the last ten years. The scoundrel! The rat! Under his veneer of friendliness, he had made his threat clear—"Do as you're told or else..."

"Now, to the point—As I said, the Lithuanian platoon will be the main danger during this boat trip and I entrust you with keeping those drunkards away from the grand duchesses. During the last trip, nothing serious happened to Maria—by the way she was born on June 26th 1899 so she's turning nineteen next month, and a beautiful face with blue eyes to die for. Nothing really happened to her, for her father the former Czar was present and, well, these Lithuanians are still superstitious and they wouldn't dare harm a grand duchess, I mean a former grand duchess with her father present, and they're even more scared of her mother. But this trip is a different animal. The girls will be travelling alone without their parents. I greatly fear that the Lithuanians could become mutinous and take over the ship! And that's where you come in, Sidorov."

He looked into me with cold fire in his eyes. The message was clear. I had to do exactly what I was told, although I was gathering something quite sinister in his intentions—The scoundrel meant to keep the Lithuanians far from the grand duchesses, but not really to protect them. The brigand meant to keep them for himself and a select group of guards. And I knew that nearly all my men would be easily recruited for this. I had seen them in action myself.

"Sidorov, I want you to practice clay shooting with your Nagant pistol in front of them, starting today. You were at the Olympic games in this sport of shooting, weren't you? I've read that you met Buffalo Bill in person when he was in Paris that year. That you're a bit of a gunslinger, like them buckaroos in the American far west. Let them Lithuanians see you do some shooting. I want them to fear you! Because you will be the wall between them and the grand duchesses."

"Sounds like a nice plan, Komrade, but it takes more than one man to stop forty-five soldiers, especially if they get quite determined."

"Very good point, Captain. This is why I selected two men from a particular county not very far from Moscow to command the Lithuanians, and one Countess Hendrikoff will be on our boat for this trip. You see, Lieutenant Malinovski and Sergeant Kürschner have grown up over there. They've known the young Countess since they were boys; they've seen her grow into the fine young woman she is now. Citizen Hendrikoff is already six and twenty years of age, but if you saw her and I didn't tell you this, you'd think she can't be more than nineteen! She's quite a gem. Lieutenant Malinovski and Sergeant Kürschner both feel a strong desire for her. I promised them they can have her that night during the boat trip; they even asked for her to be wearing her full dress and I told them this can be arranged. The Countess will be left with nothing to wear for the night except the clothes she'll have on herself. The Lieutenant and the Sergeant will but have to go and fetch her in her cabin. They want to have her under the torch lights out on the deck, where they'll make her dance for them and their men. Truth be told, I'm very tempted to be there and partake."

I nodded, then said, "But what about those Lithuanians? Won't they resent and rebel against their foreign leaders? I suspect that their Corporals are Lithuanian just like them. What if they revolt and go for the grand duchesses anyway?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! For one thing, Sidorov, you haven't met the Countess yet—Let me tell you, she's breath-taking. I had to refrain myself from having her fetched out of that house across the street and brought to my private quarters. I want Malinovski to find her fresh and terrified like a girl who's getting gang-raped for the first time. The Countess will be a lot more enjoyable when they'll find her innocent. The fright in her eyes and her whimpers will seduce the Lithuanians and they'll likely forget the grand duchesses, and I will also allow them to go into the Romanov's retinue and pick any girl they want, including the doctor's young wife."

"I see you have an answer for everything, Komrade Kommissar," I said while emptying my cognac glass.

"Quite so, quite so," he replied while offering some more of the divine liquor. "This delay due to the Tsarev..., due to the former Tsarevitch being sick has given me time to think things over. The Lithuanians must keep their weapons and dignity, otherwise they'll get angry and feel justified in going into a mutiny. I'll give them a big supply of vodka, so hopefully half of them will get so drunk they'll fall right asleep and won't cause trouble. We will sacrifice the Countess and most likely the doctor's wife, along with some unfortunate serving maids to those pigs, but we must see the grand duchesses safely to Yekaterinburg."

"... keep the grand duchesses for ourselves," I corrected in my thoughts as I nodded in ascent, while experiencing a serious erection from thinking about how Olga and Tatiana would scream and beg the guards to spare their honour when they'll be grabbed and summarily stripped naked. Tatiana's haughty expression of cold hatred would morph into a terrified one. As for Anastasia, I couldn't bring myself to entertain such lewd thoughts about her small person.

After taking my leave from Rodionov, I went directly across the street. I was curious to know what this Countess Hendrikoff looked like. I also wanted to get some knowledge of the retinue that was to travel with the grand duchesses.

I was met with hostile looks when they saw my uniform. One former general was there wearing his old-style uniform, complete with massive golden epaulets with thick threads—The sight was a very intimidating one for a man like myself, born to the family of a shoemaker, and a third-born son who spent his life as an enlisted soldier from the age of sixteen. In those days when the Czar was like God almighty, a man such as General Illya Tatischev was sky-high above, living in spheres along with countesses and princesses—Such spheres that were way out of reach to the likes of me. There was clear disdain in the eyes of this physically weak old man in his dapper, now token uniform as he saw the pair of red squares on my Captain's collar; he looked at me with the same contempt as a noble-born officer staring at one promoted from the ranks. In this large drawing room sat many ladies-in-waiting to the grand duchesses and maids, some of whom were quite young—All of them destined to be sacrificed to the Lithuanians during the trip on the river. More importantly, there were a handful of Lithuanian guards and here was my opportunity to make a strong impression on them, knowing they would tell the others.

"General," I said, "you're looking at a man who not only fought the Great War against Austria and Germany, but also fought against the Japanese fifteen years ago. I am Captain Ivan Sidorov and I'm at your service."

While I spoke, I turned a bit to my right so he could have a better look at the medals I won, for bravery during a battle back in 1904, when I was promoted to full Sergeant, all the way to my medals won during the Great War. I had six medals that told the General I had been a soldier in many campaigns before being commissioned by the Soviet State—If such thing could be said of a simple field promotion where I was made a company commander after having served as a platoon leader. The Red Army had no ranks per se, only titles of position, from squad leader all the way to the commander-in-chief of a group of armies. And yet I had heard that some Generals at the Kremlin had begun to call themselves, well, Generals of Soviet Russia.

"I have medals too, young man. More than you do in fact."

"Yes, where did you get them? Found them under dresses during balls in Saint Petersburg?"

"I'll have you flogged for your insolence!"

I smiled. "Would you care to follow me outside so we can settle this argument between gentlemen?" I said, loud enough for all to hear while my hand was hoovering near my Nagant revolver, whose holster was worn just at the right height for my hand to naturally fall on the gun's grip, where I could clear leather in the blink of an eye. "I'm sure the Lithuanian guards will loan you a revolver so we can settle this, unless you prefer a sabre?"

I laughed as I saw the fallen general step back and look at the floor in embarrassment. This was a man who had not shot with a revolver or practiced sword fighting in a great many years.

"Were you in Siberia against Japan, Sir?" I asked, exchanging grins with the Corporal leading several Lithuanians in the room.

"N-no. I... I was near the Czar."

"That's what I thought. A general who drank cognac in a palace or a château while better men were getting butchered in the trenches. A fighting general, ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Then I turned to the Lithuanian Corporal and smiled. And in a loud voice I added, "Let's give a respectful salute to our fighting general!"

The Lithuanian guards, grinning, all gave a mocking salute to General and Count Illya Tatischev along with myself. I stared at him until the nobleman in his relic-of-the-past uniform looked down, quite mortified under his wide moustache and his silver beard. This was very useful to get the Lithuanians to like me, for I needed their goodwill. I inquired about Countess Hendrikoff and was reluctantly shown into her quarters.

***

The Countess was a remarkable young person. Very remarkable indeed. I felt nervous and ill-at-ease in front of the beauty, very much like a young man. I introduced myself and she rose from her seat amid the small boudoir that was now her makeshift bedroom. She was everything a noblewoman could be and more—A man's dream. She was very attractive with perfectly white and smooth cheeks that told me how white and smooth her ass must be. She had a rather wide face with eyes that were small, yet radiantly dark and filled with sensual light, a nose with strong nostrils, and delicate lips saying in a loud silence that her senses were a lot more accustomed to roses from Italy than to the smells of the gutter.

"Captain Ivan Sidorov, Milady, and I'm most humbly at Milady's service!" I improvised, using my rank in the old style.

"Ha ha ha! Captain, oh, your presence will be most distracting! You're nothing like those atrocious Lithuanians, and you speak good Russian from Saint Petersburg!" the young Countess said as she presented her gloved hand and I clumsily kissed it while she removed her wide hat styled with feathers—A wide hat with flowers, very Edwardian, that summarized the aristocrat that clung to a recent past that was just out of reach as the days of Catherine the Great when Counts and Princes ruled undisputed, unquestioned over all the motherland.

Her dress was flawless, dark burgundy and simple. Her brown hair were styled into a high beehive bun with loose strands that made a contrasting statement as to how pale and noble her skin was. Her eyes were sparkling with fascination as she looked at me. And she smiled. She liked me. She even shifted herself subtly in such a way as to offer me the three-quarter profile on her bosom, a clear sign she found me attractive. She wore a simple day-dress where her slim waist showed a wide play of hips that would be a pleasure to hold during the game of love. She felt my gaze on her noble person and blushed as she looked down. I was much troubled, for she was quite moving a person. Such a pity it will be to sacrifice such a polished lady to an illiterate pack of lewd Lithuanians.

"Captain, pray drink some tea with me? I am Countess Olga Hendrikoff, you can call me Olga... or Milady. I like hearing myself being called Milady by such a tall and strong man as you. Please, be seated! Oh, I'm so bored! So frightened by those awful guards! I'm not allowed to take a stroll in the streets, lest I try to escape, but with you Captain escorting me, I take it I'll be allowed to do so now. Oh, wouldn't you invite me for a walk in Tobolsk, Captain?"

"Yes, Milady. I'm at your service, your most humble servant, Milady!"

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Will you be my knight, then?"

"Your knight?!"

"Yes, like the old tales of the Round Table! I have books of this. The knight servant who makes his Milady happy, who protects her from brigands and all sorts of other harms. So will you be my knight servant?"

I knelt from my chair and bowed, looking at the floor, unbothered by the presence of an old maid who was looking at the masquerade with clear displeasure. The Countess immediately sent her away. "Leave us now, Claire. I'll send for you when we'll be finished with our tea, and pray, have my shawl and my umbrella ready by the door. The gentleman here and myself are going for a walk in the park later on. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! She's looking at you as if you were a ghost! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ooh..."

As I set my hand upon her knee, there was a great shift in her composure and some blush went into her cheeks. I let my hand linger on her knee where I had just broken the touch barrier. I felt much less guilt in seducing a grown woman rather than so young a person as Grand Duchess Anastasia. The Countess was also a lot more attractive. I could tell from my touch that there was a world of wonders under her dress. She set her gloved hand on mine.

"Let us drink our tea before it's cold. It's milked and sugared the English way, that is, the right way. Claire has been with me during all my maiden's journeys in France, Italy and England. Do you speak some English, Captain? Oh, it is a most remarkable language! One of my favorite books is a vampyre story called Carmina by a writer by the name of Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish writer. The Irish seem to have a rare talent for crafting gothic stories where vampyres prey on the innocent. But there's something I find very silly in the way the country men behave when they finally destroy a beautiful creature like Carmina."

"What would be so silly? Please, tell me. You'll understand I never read this story, tell me, Milady!"

"Oh, I love it when you call me Milady!" the Countess replied, keeping her hand on mine, now skin on skin after she swiftly removed her day-gloves. There was weight in her breathing as she went on, "Well, those men find Carmina defenseless in her daytime sleep. And they hammer a stake through her heart and kill her, instead of..."

"Instead of what, Milady?"

"Instead of taking her clothes off and exploring her sleeping body, of course! Carmina is described as being very slim and pretty, with hair raven black, nothing like my common brown hair, and with skin even whiter than my own, so it would be a very silly group of men who wouldn't take advantage of the situation and, and use Carmina for their, for the gratification of their natural lust, and then by all means destroy her!"

"Perhaps that is precisely why they killed her right away. I am a man, and Milady, I can assure you that I could never find it in myself to destroy a beautiful woman when I just... when I just..."

"Pray continue, Ivan..."

"When I just enjoyed her in the flesh. I just couldn't!"

"Oh, I see... Then this must be why in his famous novel, Bram Stoker—another Irishman—had the old Professor van Helsing talk about those young men, through the centuries, whenever they found one of Dracula's female companions in her beautiful daytime sleep and they proved incapable of planting that stake in her heart. Yes, this must be why! Of course the author never directly described such, such satyr-like frolics, lest he offend that silly middle-class morality, but yes, I can imagine how this long-dead young man must have marveled over the vampiress who kept looking young from drinking the blood of infants."

"Yes, this is perhaps what I would do myself, and it would be my undoing."

"Do what exactly, Ivan?" she asked, smiling as she sipped her English tea out of a china cup with rimmed with gold.

"Kiss her," I replied, looking at the fine play of her lips, then at her eyes where she seemed to have a great many lights for me.

"Just this? A kiss and that's all? Captain! Don't be shy! Wouldn't you undress her and allow her un-dead skin to breathe a little? Remember that the vampiress is asleep and defenseless. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"There are many many things I would do with her, the whole day through, until the red sunset announcing my demise."

"What things? Your Milady wants to know!" she went on, sipping more tea and clearly amused.

"Things that are better left unsaid."

The more I looked at her, the prettier she became.

"Drink your tea, Ivan. It would be a pity to let it go cold. And you wouldn't be the first man to meet his end through the charms of a woman."

"What's it like to be a young and beautiful Countess, Milady?" I replied, drinking a very fine tea with milk and sugar, a bit different from the usual chai done in a samovar.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Let's just say I get a lot more attention from men I don't want, like those awful Lithuanian guards who won't stop whistling and catcalling me, yes, a lot more from this deplorable cohort than from men I do want."

While speaking, she watched me with something intense in her eyes as I drank my tea. I was still pleasantly warm from the cognac I had drunk while listening to Rodionov's horrible tale.

"Shall we go for a walk now, Ivan? The day's still young and there's a splendid forest trail that will take us to a cathedral of tall pines."

"By all means, Milady."

She gave me a smile that said everything she wanted me to know about how she felt for me. What a fine young lady she was! What a pity to sacrifice her to the Lithuanians! I began to doubt whether I would be able to allow such a horrible fate to befall her. But why not enjoy this day as it was now? I was walking in paradise alongside the young Countess. I even smiled at General Tatischev when we were downstairs and crossed the wide drawing room, at present bathed in sunlight from the large windows to the south. The retinue lived in a gilded cage of leather cushion chairs, warm mahogany tables, chai, playing cards, chessboards and old dusty paintings. My eye suddenly caught sight of a particular painting. It was a slave market like you'd see anywhere from the Near East to Morocco.

At the centre of the painting stood a naked girl with a paleness of skin and dark hair that indicated she could be French, Italian or perhaps Russian. Her pubic area was shaved and she was having her teeth checked out by a head-covered Arab who also felt her bobbed hair. Other Moors stood around her and all these leering men towered above her. I noticed the grace in her hips, her legs, and the pristine smallness of her feet.

"You like this painting too?" my companion said in her refined Russian, speaking like a Parnassian novel. "I often look at it when I come down here. It's the Slave Market by Jean-Léon Gérôme. It was done in 1866. This is of course a copy of the original. The girl is most likely a slave captured in the Balkans by the Ottomans."

"What do you like in it, Milady?"

"I'll tell you later," she replied, smiling as she took my arm and ignored the looks of disapprobation from the ladies-in-waiting in the retinue.

Once we were outside, the Lithuanians guarding the courtyard did not whistle at my lovely companion when they saw us leave the house together. A thin young officer who looked more like a lad than a man walked toward us along with a tall, well-built Sergeant.

The lad was a Lieutenant, as told by the single red square on the collar of his dark khaki uniform. Both men had long sabres that they clearly had just used and they also had revolvers in holsters they wore too high for a proper quick draw. The Lieutenant saluted me, stiffly, and with displeasure and jealousy in his eyes as he saw us walking arm-in-arm. He was just a boy, until I got a bit closer and rendered his salute along with the Sergeant's. The Sergeant stood just as tall as myself, an inch above six feet and he was broad-shouldered, in the zenith of his fair-haired mid-twenties. The lad looked at me with strength in his eyes, and I realized I would be foolish to take him for a boy.

"You must be Lieutenant Malinovski, and you must be Sergeant Kürschner. I am Captain Ivan Sidorov, and I take it you already know the Countess... Uh, citizen..."

"Yes we know her very well indeed," the young Lieutenant cut in, quite impertinently as I outranked him. His eyes openly undressed the Countess, who repressed her great displeasure and clearly couldn't wait for them to be gone. "Citizen Olga Hendrikoff would have gone to school along with us at the village, but she was born to an aristocrat with rank and money back in the old days, so to her we were nothing."

The Countess was indeed acting as if they weren't there, looking more than annoyed. I was at risk of her changing her mind and retreating to her quarters at once, so I took advantage of my rank and rebuffed the Lieutenant, telling him to mind his manners, this in front of the Sergeant, which was quite humiliating for him and not a great way to start off my professional relationship with the young man, but his men would be sure to tell him about how I mortified the old General in the drawing room. I was living for the present day and valued above all the opportunity to find myself alone with the Countess.

She was a fast walker, fiddling with her umbrella as she soon led me away from the town and into a winding trail that soon buried us inside a thick forest of Siberian pines and cedars. After nearly an hour of walking, we found ourselves in a remote churchyard near a small group of houses that looked abandoned. It looked like a ghost hamlet, perhaps decimated by a plague of cholera and void ever since. The tombstones had shrubbery on them with names and dates that had been worn by the elements. No death date was more recent than the 1860s. The grimness and natural beauty of the place naturally led our conversation toward tales of vampires. There was no sign of anyone nearby.

"I was once in Transylvania and visited the castle said to have belonged to Count Dracula. It was... romantic! Far from big cities, the perfect place to live for someone wise enough to have settled life's problems."

"Problems?"

"Yes, all that is tedious and you'll find it in spades in a city like Paris or Saint Petersburg. But no more problems to be had for the fellow who doesn't feel the need to live in a big town. A simple happy life, with good books to read."

"Oh, yes, I see. It would be wonderful for the two of us to be free and chose to stay and live here in Tobolsk. We would often come here."

"Ivan," she said as she took my hand and led me into the woods again. "Ivan, what would you do with me if I was a vampiress and you found me in my coffin sound asleep? Like this..."

As she spoke, much to my surprise, she laid herself down on the forest floor, her figure looking suddenly ageless among the emerald-green ferns, with deep blue ripe cones fallen from pines. I noticed we were now at a place secluded from the churchyard, amid tall antique pines that made a green cathedral way up there above us, where sun rays gave bolts of gold to this cathedral of daytime shadows where the winds gently caressed their high branches. It was a bit of a cool day, but almost warm.

"Let's play this game, Ivan! Let's pretend that I'm a vampiress in her un-dead sleep! You find me. What will you do? Kill me with a wooden stake?"

"I wouldn't dare, Milady. Close your eyes. Milady's in her sleep, so she must close her eyes."

As I spoke, I knelt near her and stooped down over her, very much like an un-dead creature about to suck the blood from her neck. She had closed her eyes, wearing a faint smile as she pretended to be a sleeping un-dead while her noble features were bathed in the half sunlight under the high pines. I kissed her lips, gently. I did it again, and again and she came alive. She kissed me back with passion and despair! She wrapped her arms around me like a lost soul clinging to her eternal salute! I laid myself down and pressed her against me, feeling the tautness of her waist in my hands as she pressed herself against me, kissing me with what felt like a vast treasure of pent-up passion and despair. This was a woman who had gone a long spell of time without the touch of a man.

"Now I'm going to undress my lovely vampiress. Starting with her shoes."

"Mhhh, I'll say nothing I'm supposed to be dead and silent..."

I lifted the hem of her dress where I could see her lower legs through a nearly black pair of silk socks that must go all the way up to her garters at her hips. Her ankle-high walking shoes were there, encasing a pair of small feet I was dying to make bare. My feverish fingers undid the first knot, then grew more and more impatient as I loosened this first little boot. At last I softly pulled the leather shoe away and saw the noble, delicate shapes of her foot through her dark blue sock. I carressed it, massaged it and she began to purr.

I undid the other shoe, my fingers trembling as I was about to uncover the bare feet of a Countess for the first time in my life. She kept purring as the breeze kept gently caressing the high branches that formed our love cathedral. I wished this day would become perpetual as the scent from her feet made my morals capsize and I couldn't stop! I pushed her dark burgundy dress up high to her thighs, was struck by the snow white of her petticoat and did likewise to the undergarment, and there were the lines of her legs, offerred to my eyes along with the garters holding those socks I was dying to get off her.

My fingers had gone clumsy out of sheer anticipation. She broke her role and laughed as she felt the clumsiness of my fingers upon that sensitive part of her noble white skin. Finally, the first sock was free and I peeled it off her pale leg. She had most certainly done a good deal of walking in the past, for there was some muscle there. I kissed her knee as I further bared her leg, and covered her calf and her ankle with kisses galore as I finally bared the delicate pink of her heel and enjoyed the unfathomable satisfaction of uncovering the sole of her foot, of kissing this most delicate spot of skin on top of it as I stopped for a second so I could enjoy the anticipation as she kept purring under my kissing affection. Only then did I remove the dark silk and saw it complete to the toes—The left foot of Countess Olga Hendrikoff! I baptized it with tears of joy as I began kissing it as if it were a holy relic! It was the same small feet that had stopped growing by the time she was but fifteen. The feet are the body part that ages the slowest.

"I... I've never been with a man who takes his time like this. My husband of four years just ravishes me whenever he felt like it, and only thinks of his own pleasure. And, oh I love this! And he hasn't touched me for a full year. I don't even know where the coward is. He fled, whether in England or in Italy. He'll probably be in an estate he owns near Firenze. I don't care anymore, oooh!"

"You must be silent, Milady. You're a day-sleeping vampiress, remember!"

"Just keep calling me... Milady, oooh!"

I went up her other leg and managed to undo her second sock, which I rolled down the pale brightness of her leg with trembling fingers. She was gorgeous and I was beginning to feel the animal urge to just place her on all fours and buck her from behind like a savage. Taking my time would allow me to pent up all this primal urge and then unleash it later with even more force and passion. I didn't want my impatience to run away with me like I allowed it to during my wedding night with Sumeyye, where I ended up fucking the beautiful little Turkish girl from behind, holding the surprising vastness of her hips and admiring the subtle olive in her Mediterranean skin as I bucked against her buttocks and kept urgently flattening them as Sumeyye filled our bedroom with plaintive-sounding moaning, all the way to a shared climax, for this was when I had learned that my Muslim wife likes it rough. To my credit, I had waited for our wedding night to deflower her.

Taken by the memories of my first love night with my wife, I removed this second dark sock and now had the Countess barefoot in my hands! I lost track of time when I pressed those feet against my face as she just kept purring under the high Siberian pines. After a while, I surprised her by propping her legs up, and with her ankles resting on my shoulders, I stood on my knees and unbuttoned the trousers of my Soviet uniform. I produced my erection and felt her gaze on it, her delicate mouth forming an O. There was fascination and arousal in her eyes as I positioned myself, gently pressing her propped-up legs as I approached her entrance, where I could see her intimate patch of dark hair, that had the shape of a reverse pine-tree as I tucked her bunched-up dress and petticoat all the way against her waist, and then I further advanced and was confident that I'd find her ready to be taken.

I further pressed her high legs against my shoulder and charged on, uttering a wild groan of victory as I forced my entry and she began to moan. I felt her arousal through her entire body as I pinned her legs under my arms and began to fuck her, picturing myself as a brigand leader who took his carnal prize after defeating a feeble escort and now raping the young wife in front of a cuckold husband while my men stood by and waited their turn and masturbated to the noble sight of her legs and feet—Her feet were certainly pointing up at the forest cathedral of pine branches as I gave her some hardy strokes. Deep! Satisfyingly deep! Her moans filled my ears.

When I felt I had precummed, I stopped and pulled out, smiling at her and knowing she was now troubled and trying to guess what came next. She kept the role-playing and remained "dead" even closing her eyes again as I stooped down and lifted her left shoulder off the fern-rich ground. I rolled her around to her side and kissed her shoulder, passionately, as I lowered the top of her dress and found its laces in her back. Again, laces to undo! And underneath it waited her petticoat's corset with another string of laces to undo.

"Now, Milady, I'm going to strip you naked and kiss every inch of your un-dead corpse!"

"Yes! Call me Milady!"

She was now playing with herself under her tucked-up dress, where I could contemplate the magic lines of her legs. Her skin felt preternatural in its purity. She was a Countess. At this point, the notion of her getting forcibly stripped to her Eve shapes by the gross Lithuanians felt weirdly erotic, but I felt a pang as I remembered that our love affair was to be short-lived. I managed to undo those laces at the sounds of her moaning. Open and lowered was her dress-top. Open and loose was the back of her corset. I now slid her dress under her, lifted her buttocks where I passed the burgundy dark fabric and it became an unfathomable pleasure to do likewise with her petticoat, then with her bed gown, and then!

I pulled it all—dress, petticoat and gown—with raging force I pulled everything up her propped-up legs, where the Countess found herself naked with her legs up, and her feet! Freed from all garments! No undergarments! No protection! No escort! No more social rules. She was naked against my fully uniformed presence. She kept playing dead, but I could tell she was impatient to be fucked. I thought she must have a gorgeously white ass, so I rolled her around and nudged her into the position I loved to have a woman in.

Once she was on all fours, I gave her my erection! It felt as if I was raping the Countess and I loved it. My mouth was open wide as I began to pound her like there was no tomorrow. Everything stopped around me. It's only me pounding her and letting my lust rule over me. Take the girl. Rape the girl. "The daughter will be raped!" The words come back to haunt me as I hammer the Countess and flatten her buttocks against my uniformed frame. Those are the very words I said to a noble father before I raped his dark-haired daughter in front of him, a Nadia he kept calling the name of with despair the whole time me and my men, except Dimitry, took our pleasure inside the poor girl. Her white butt! Shaped like a heart! I'm raping old Russia! The Whites have lost! Soft curves and my hard luck. They now must watch their daughter being raped by the brigands in uniform!

Pleasure surges high and brutal inside me, my erection fed by the heated choke-hold of her pussy as she moans and whimpers in sounds only a noble maiden can make when she's getting raped. Rape! Rape! Rape! Her white butt! I feel alive! Her skin is vast! Her butt is my world! So ungodly alive with waves of skin. Holding the white crease of her hips, a place only Counts and Princes should be admitted to touch. Not for the likes of me. I'm... "Aaah aaah aaaah aaaahh aaaahhh, ooohhh this is good!" I'm freely losing frothing slobber through my open mouth and I scream...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHhh uughh!"

I remained panting beside the Countess, unsure as to whether it was real or just one of these dreams where I relive the rape of a noble maiden by the name of Nadia. A rape I committed last January where the naked, freezing girl was made to dance for us while she ended up begging us to cover her, to give her a blanket or something, for this was a freezing day where wooden beams and tree trunks complaint from the cold. Our breathing was like a platoon of panting gunshots as we each took our turns in giving her our heat. And her father, clad in his ruffled rich clothes, was kept watching. Nadia. Struck by fate for being born at the wrong time in Russia. She was only fifteen.

"I'm a monster," I said.

I was aware of the Countess when she kissed me. She was now on top of me, her naked legs at my sides as she stooped down and kept kissing me as if I were the only man in the world. My hands naturally found her buttocks. They felt warm and wide under my touch. I loved the way her buns yielded, both soft and firm with that equation all men fail to solve. One cannot solve fate. She kept kissing me, perhaps in an attempt to make time stop, to turn this day into a full-blown century. She kissed me like a woman in love. And I was going to betray her in just two days' time.

"Time to undress my brave servant knight!" she said through her smile as she undid her bun and let her long hair loose, like a small cathedral around me as she undid the brass buttons of my uniform. I liked the notion of those fingers of a Countess undoing the uniform of a Bolshevik officer. But was I a White at heart? Didn't I long for those simpler days when I was happy to serve the Czar and pray to a holy icon?

She was agile and dexterous in the way she stripped me out of my uniform. I'll never forget her fist kisses on my bare chest. She purred in a peculiar way as she kissed my navel and went further down. Soon enough, she was licking my spent virility, not bothered by her own juices and my semen, which she licked off as she kept returning to the same spot, giving long tongue strokes and reminding me I had forgotten to kiss and lick the butt of Countess Olga Hendrikoff.

Bye and bye, her tongue worked its magic and I felt a new surge of excitement as she wouldn't stop kissing and licking me where women gaze with fascination or horror depending on whether they feel aroused or not. The notion of rape never left me during sex, and it had always been that way. I had always had strong rape fantasies and would imagine all sorts of scenarios—A castle taken, brigands stopping travelers, pirates taking a ship, etc. It always involved the gang-rape of one or more belles. Young or very young, always nubile. Those were the thoughts that made and kept me aroused.

Once the miracle was performed and my arousal stood high and proud, it was an absolute joy to behold her as she took me inside her mouth and polished it, looking straight into me, as she did what must be an extremely indecent act for a lady of such high rank. I caressed the warm brown of her hair as she went on, the contrasting purity of her face looking preposterous against what she had sliding inside her mouth.

"Oh, Milady! Ooh... It's good..."

My wife Sumeyye seldom pleasured me with her mouth, as she hated the taste; she would only do this out of marital duty and knowing it greatly pleased me. I loved her too much to insist on it. I did however enjoy giving her cunnilingus and she would usually go off in high-pitched moans that told me she loved this. As she went into her twenties, Sumeyye grew less shy and would speak words about her most secret fantasy during sex, always the same fantasy—She's a young Babylonian princess, just five feet tall like her real self, and a revolt breaks out among the vast number of African slaves. The Ethiopians get out of control and soon, there's a whole army of them that overwhelm the city's garrison and begin to take their revenge. As they take control of Babylon, the Ethiopians turn against their masters and massacre them! Sumeyye finds herself amid a mob of them, at their mercy in her father's palace. They rip her dress off and comment on her naked charms, on how pale her olive skin looks in their hands. And while moaning from my tongue inside her slit, my nose poking that wonderful plate of black hair between her legs, Sumeyye would sing high that song where the mob of Ethiopians would all take her from behind, screaming their lust, their revenge and their satisfaction while breeding her!

In short, sex with my wife was really really good whenever I was with her; and I was a bad husband to be cheating on her. As I thought of Sumeyye, I became aware that my lovely companion had just stopped pleasuring me as a gust of wind made the pine branches sing above us along with the rest of the Siberian forest we were in.

"Aaaaaaaaahyyaarrhhhh..." I roared as the Countess impaled herself on me! Like a Russian cowgirl, Countess Olga Hendrikoff rode me and I felt the glorious expansion deep inside her as she arched her back and smiled at me while giving me the full play of her breasts, her nipples high and proud and matching the rosy of her lips on these surreal orbs, which I readily cupped. They were just the right size and it was a poetry for my senses as I felt the imprint of her nipples in my hands.

She kept her eyes half-closed, her head just nodding at every one time she crashed herself down upon me before rising again, then down again, moaning hard every time, her pretty features lost far in the enjoyment of the act. Her long hair making glorious waves of half-sunlit brown. I caressed her, resting my hands on her thighs, sometimes following the lines of her legs nearly all the way to her ankles and feet as we kept making love. I was growing strong feelings for her as we were one.

"Aaaah! Aaah aaaa... Call me Milady! Say you love to be inside Milady—Please, say it—"

"I love Milady. I love undressing her and giving her what she wants—Uuhh uhh uuuhh... Good to be inside Milady. Like a revolted African slave!"

"Aaaaah aaaah aaaaaaaaahh, you're a savage, Ivan! A savage! A savage... AAAAAAAAAA AAAAA AAAA AAAAA OH MY GOD! MY GOD MY G'D A SVG... AAAAAAAAAAA AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaahhh..."

She shivered through and through as she rediscovered what it felt like to be a woman. I cupped and pressed her tits, so caught up in the act that I forgot where I was as she stooped down and kissed me, invading my mouth with a whore's tongue as she kept on shivering against my strong erection, while I cupped the fullness of her butt and soon yelled my delight right in her kisses, sounding like a dying man as I erupted in hot bolts of semen inside her.

We remained together, lying down under the high pines, watching the afternoon clouds that scudded past us way up there. It was a serene blue sky of western Siberia with fair heavens. A day I wanted to last for centuries, although I missed my beloved Sumeyye and felt ashamed for cheating on her. And yet I felt a bit like an Arab who now had two wives. She was still naked, using her dress and petticoat as blankets. I felt a bit cold, but enjoyed being naked next to her. Her eyes didn't lie about her feelings.

"Are you in love with me, Ivan?"

"I... I wish this day would never end."

"Tell me about your wife, Ivan. I noticed your wedding ring right away when you were in my boudoir."

"You're curious, Milady?"

"Very. I grew up in a castle and basically lived in a fairy tale until the Revolution. I know your life was a very different one and I want to learn, to know more."

"All right, first thing you must know, I was a soldier all my life. I enlisted at sixteen by lying about my age and I already stood six feet tall at the time. I've always been the tall and unremarkable man."

"You aren't boring me at all! You must be cold; let me kiss that torso of yours and pray continue—"

"I was twenty-eight years of age and I was stationed in the imperial province of Georgia, in a little town on the Black Sea coast near our border with Turkey. I had been a Corporal for three years, in charge of ten men, and training intensely to compete at the Olympic Games in Paris in the sport of pistol shooting."

"Pistol shooting?" she asked while worshiping my torso with her dainty hands.

"Pistol. You shoot sixty bullets from 50 metres, at a target that is 50 centimetres across with ten rings that are worth from one to ten points, ten being the bullseye. Highest score wins. I was the only shooter representing Russia."

"I had no idea. My father took me there to Paris; wow, that's eighteen years ago, I was only eight! Did you finish on the podium?"

"No, I finished fourth, but it doesn't matter. When I returned in my seaside garrison, a pretty girl came at me—A Turkish girl with beautiful pale olive skin and long black hair, and less than five feet tall. I was struck by how gracefully she moved. She gave me flowers. She smiled at me, said nothing and ran away! But she stopped at a distance and looked at me. From then on, she was always there whenever I was out in the streets. My men began teasing me about my young admirer. This was Sumeyye.

"I befriended her. Oftentimes, we'd take walks and she'd talk most of the time, and I'd listen to her voice, trying to grasp her words while I learned Turkish. We'd often sit and watch the sunset as the sky went red and silently loud with a vast symphony of fiery oranges and golds and delicate roses over the darkening sea. We were getting closer and closer. I refrained from taking our relationship into intimacy. She was still too young, but she was, hum, a bit ahead of the other girls as she went through her metamorphosis into a young woman."

"Oh, you mean, you were falling in love with her; how romantic!"

"Yes, I felt more and more a natural urge to kiss her. I could tell she did too. Her parents were worried. She has two elder brothers who began threatening me. They told me to leave her alone. She was Muslim, and not for a Christian man. Sumeyye had other plans. She kept sneaking out of her parents' house and I would always find her near the barracks I shared with my men. She would often come during the evening, and I grew worried for her as she ventured without by herself, in a part of the town that could be dangerous for her.

"Our love grew. Her brothers kept trying to scare me off, but I knew and they knew they would never dare attack a soldier of the Russian Empire, for they would probably hang for this. Her parents had a lucrative business of selling exotic stuff to Russians, mostly carpets, in their bazaar so they would not move back to Turkey. Her father eventually warmed up to me as I now spoke fluent Turkish—with a thick, funny accent that had Sumeyye laughing her head out before she'd kindly correct me. However, her mother and her brothers were staunch Muslims that wouldn't hear about having a Christian man in the family. But our love proved the strongest.

"One night, as we sat by ourselves and watched a beautiful red sunset over the Black Sea, with the air filled with the salty breeze, we kissed for the first time. By that time, she had nearly grown up into a young woman and turned fourteen, the marriageable age in the province of Georgia, but I still needed her father's legal consent to marry her. I was soon to be sent to another garrison back in the heart of Russia, in Moscow. Time was running out and I found myself terrified by the idea of never seeing her again; I was hopelessly in love! She often cried in my arms when thinking of this bleak prospect, as it was plain she couldn't contemplate her life without me.

"Her father reluctantly gave his permission, much to my relief. He had important clients who were Orthodox, some of whom were officers in the local garrison and I was a local hero as an Olympian; this must have come into play; this or he truly loved his daughter and saw how much in love she was, and after two years, our mutual feelings had grown into something more than infatuation. So we got married shortly before I left Georgia and I took my young wife along with me in Moscow. This was certainly the most magic, fairy-tale Christmas we ever had. During the Orthodox ceremony before a charitable pope who overlooked the small detail of her being a Muslim, only her father was present and crying, for he saw how happy Sumeyye was and he knew that no man and no religion would keep us apart. I am the only man Sumeyye ever loved."

"I... I feel bad, borrowing her husband, she's such a good girl!"

"Don't be sad, Milady. To-day will remain our day forever. This is a day that would never have happened were it not for the Great War."

"—And this damned Revolution that turned the entire country upside down! The people is ignorant. They don't understand they will be lost at sea with no compass after doing away with nobility and holy icons. Don't they understand they need us to dream? What is life without dreams? A calf's life and death. Ivan, you must make them understand! They need to dream again! They're taking the wrong path and this will only end with horrific tyranny."

"Yes, maybe you're right, Countess, but there's nothing I can do. If I rebel, the Soviet authorities would arrest and imprison my dear wife. I don't want anything bad to happen to Sumeyye."

"Sumeyye, what a lovely name! I'm jealous!"

The Countess said this with a benevolent smile, then added, "Why don't you become a Muslim and escape to Turkey with both of us, so you would live with two wives over there. I've always dreamed to be in a harem. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"I don't think Sumeyye would like this. She turned her back on her family and her country's Ottoman traditions because she loves me and can only be with me. I feel bad whenever I cheat on her; that's the naked truth."

"Just as naked as I am right now. Ivan, the shadows from the tall pines are getting longer. We need to get back to town, but will you please make your Milady happy before I get dressed again?"

As bad this made me feel for Sumeyye, I fulfilled my role as Milady's knight servant and found myself kissing the south of her hips and learning how her intimate hair felt under my tongue as she once more filled the air with her woman's joy. It was the kind of joy that was instant like a powerful detonation. After I gave her the fleeting satisfaction of a tongue-given climax, I placed her on her knees and elbows and treated myself to a warm session of buttocks kissing, learning the heart-shaped contours of her vast buttocks with my hands as I gave in to lust and pressed my face into her graceful firmness of flesh; the weirdly soft firmness of a female bottom. And then I took hold of her hips and gave her my best ramming strokes until I died out of sheer bliss.

There was a grandiose sunset giving a ballet of fiery clouds when we got back to Tobolsk. No day is eternal.

TO BE CONTINUED (This novel will have 10+ chapters when completed --- It is Russian in its length too!)