Marina turned down the large overhead light and the softer glow enveloped her delicate, high cheekbones in deepened shadows, heightening the regal, aristocratic bearing of her face. She picked up her Scotch, took a deep pull of it as she stood before me, and then folded herself alongside me, sinking into a pile of cushions.
Somehow, the silk robe never came open, never shifted to show an inch of her body. Only the loose movement of her breasts revealed that she wore nothing beneath the silk.
“Who were those men?” she asked quietly. “They were Russian, I know. Why did they want Anton?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe he owes them money too.”
She smiled.
“Glen,” she said, “that is your story, but I do not believe it. Now I know something else is involved. I wish I knew more. Perhaps then I could help you. And Anton.”
“And Anton,” I said. “Let’s not forget Anton. You just tell me where you think I might find him and you’ll be helping us both.”
She said nothing but her dark, deep orbs studied me. She watched as my gaze traveled around the opulence, the soft sensuality of the room and then paused to linger on her.
“So this is where you had intellectual evenings with Anton?” I mused aloud. I caught the slow smile that played about her lips.
“A waste, to your way of thinking, right?” she smiled. “Why? Lovely surroundings are just as important in the enjoyment of intellectual pursuits.”
“Never said they weren’t,” I answered. “But I don’t separate the mind and the body. I’ve never been an ‘either/or’ man. I can enjoy your mind as well as your body and vice versa. I don’t believe in taking one or the other. I want ’em both.”
“You’re greedy.” she laughed and leaned back.
For the first time the robe came open to reveal the soft swell of her breast, a tantalizing mound for exploring.
I felt my hand move forward involuntarily.
Marina’s eyes were deep, almost black, glistening orbs.
“Maybe I am,” I agreed. “Don’t tell me he never was greedy.”
“Never,” she said. “I told you, we had a very unusual relationship. I often wondered how I could remain so cool and platonic with Anton. I know now that it was he who kept it that way. He made love to me in his own way, with his mind, with music and poetry, with the soft touch of his hand on mine. He never went further than that.”
I kept thinking of Karminian the big drinker, the patron of Fatasha, the devotee of strange and weird sexual pleasures in the
“You say, you know now that it was Anton who kept it on this level,” I questioned. “Why do you know that now?”
“Because just sitting here I can see it would be impossible with you,” she answered, her eyes twin black coals, glowing with a dark fire.
“You are damned right,” I said.
I leaned forward, took the silk robe at the collar and pulled her to me. I saw her lips part as my mouth moved onto hers, and then I was tasting the sweet honey of her tongue.
She let it play with mine, then withdraw and then come forth again, inviting, tantalizing. Her breath had increased, and now her arms were sliding around my neck.
I felt my hand move onto the soft, smooth skin of her shoulders, my thumb gently pressing in, kneading the skin just beneath her shoulder bones. She tore her lips away and her cheek was against mine.
“No... no,” she gasped. “I... I had forgotten how much I longed for this. But I cannot... no, please.”
I moved my hands down an inch closer to her breasts and heard her draw her breath in sharply. “Why not?” I asked. “Being faithful?”
“Maybe,” she whispered and looked up at me, her eyes asking for understanding.
But, a long time ago, I had learned that understanding is not always compassionate.
“Maybe that’s it,” she said. “Being faithful.”
“To what?” I asked brutally.
I saw the shocked pain flare in her eyes and I reached into the silk robe and seized both lovely, full, pear-shaped breasts.
Marina cried out in anguished ecstasy and threw her head back, eyes closed, still trailing the remnants of her cry into the silent room.
“To what?” I repeated again and rubbed my thumbs over the soft, hardly protruding nipples.
Marina cried out again in half-anguish, half-rapture. It was her last such cry. She reached up and seized my neck, pulling my face down to bury it in her breasts.
I took her breast in my mouth and gently caressed its softness, moving it back and forth under my tongue until Marina was clutching at my back, my shoulders, my neck in a frenzy of desire.
I gently pulled away from her breasts as she gasped in delicious rapture. I took my clothes off slowly, watching her as I did, knowing she gazed at me through half-slit eyes and then, suddenly, she leaped forward to clasp my naked body to her, pressing her face against my abdomen, kissing me with feverish anxiety.
Here was a creature of passion who, in some strange, inverted way, had been able to hold off the roaring volcano that was within her. I was happy to be around for the eruption.
