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 “Don’t talk so much,” Catherine panted. She was beating against my elbow now, her desire surging. “Your knee is driving me mad,” she gasped.

 “My knee—?” Orlov’s puzzlement was drowned in another passionate kiss.

 Their bodies tossed and twisted again. Olga and I reacted accordingly. When the mass of flesh had settled, Olga was drawn up like a foetus with her knees tucked under her chin. Somehow she’d contrived to wriggle out of her garments. Her bare derrière was pressed against my forehead. Just on the other side of it her hand was grasping Orlov and guiding him to a substitute target. Her other hand was under his toga in back of him, slapping his nether cheeks in a way calculated to ally his confusion by encouraging his desire.

 Meanwhile I had worked my way out of my pants. The Empress’ nails raked my fundament and I angled my body to do her bidding. My face was buried now in Olga’s protruding roundness. Fortunately for me, Catherine was too far along the road to fulfilling her desire to question the unusual position her lover had presumably assumed. The honeyed lips of her womanhood drew me in eagerly and the first flutter I encountered quickly changed to a pulsating demand.

 Thus we all four had at it, I taking the cue for my timing from the movements of the burning nether cheeks pressed against my face, Olga tying herself into knots to keep from being displaced by Orlov’s maddened assault, Catherine thrashing about in a way that threatened to upset the delicate balance, Orlov sealing her cries of ecstasy with kisses as he unknowingly assaulted Olga. The horses’ hooves pounded out the rhythm of our passion. The runners of the troika screeched an ever higher pitch over the tight-packed snow like the wail of Eros rising to the stars.

 Catherine screamed and tore at my flesh, bouncing like an erotic sledgehammer. “Now! Now! Now!” she screamed. I bit deeply into Olga’s plump derriére, signaling the moment. She twisted like a corkscrew, urging Orlov to his release. Orlov uttered a triumphant cry simultaneously with my own release and for a moment I was almost suffocated as he slammed against Olga with all of his might.

 And then it was over. But not quite . . .

 Due to the awkwardness of my position, at the very moment of release I had developed an agonizing charley horse22 . The result was that now I was afraid to move for fear of crying out aloud with the pain. So I stayed frozen at the height of our ecstatic release and frantically pushed against Olga with my face so that she would prolong it.

 “How delightful!” Catherine cried out.

 “You are holding me prisoner,” Orlov responded, sounding a little disconcerted.

 “Stubborn boy!” Catherine’s voice was teasing. “You are merely staying to prove your strength!”

 “So long as you want it, it is your willing subject, Empress mine. But I confess I do grow weary.”

 At this point, fortunately, the muscle spasm passed. I withdrew.

 “Ahh,” Catherine wriggled her hips. “Delightful as it was, just now I appreciate the relief.”

 Olga had picked up her cue and disengaged from Orlov.

 “I thought I would never reclaim it,” he sighed.

 They both stretched and moved slightly away from each other, content to have comfort rather than contact in the aftermath of love. This gave Olga and me more breathing space. She managed to straighten her body halfway. I was able to breathe.

 “It was wonderful,” Catherine sighed, yawning luxuriously. “You have never been so masterful, Grigori, nor so accomplished.”

 “And you, my Tsarina, have never shown me such passion before. Never before have you been possessed with such fire!”

 Olga suppressed a giggle.

 “Perhaps it’s the troika,” Catherine mused. “It’s certainly never been this good in bed.”

 “Perhaps it is the outdoors, nature itself, which so inspired you,” Orlov suggested.

 I had to bite my own lip to keep from laughing. Olga winked at me and made a cautious motion as if she was pinning a medal on herself. Then she repeated the movement as if she were decorating me. I held up a hand to caution her to stop fooling around. Inadvertently the hand grazed Catherine’s leg.

 “Oh, no, Grigori!” she protested. “Not again! I’m much too tired.”

 “Huh? What? What’s that you say, Sophie, my Empress?” His voice sounded like he’d been on the brink of dozing.

 “I said let’s go to sleep,” Catherine told him.

 “Your wish is my command.” He spoke through a yawn.

 They fell silent and soon their regular breathing testified that they had indeed gone to sleep. Olga likewise had drifted off to dreamland. Fatigued by my exertions, I soon followed suit.

 The sleigh pulled to a halt and the sudden lack of motion awakened me. Olga also opened her eyes. We lay quietly as Catherine and Orlov disembarked. We stayed that way as the sleigh was pulled inside a large barn and the horses were unbridled and led away to their stables. Now it was very dark and very quiet. We let more time pass that way before we finally dared to creep out from under the fur robes.

 We adjusted our clothes in the darkness. Then Olga took my hand and led me. “Where are we going?” I whispered to her in French.

 “To the servants’ quarters,” she told me.

 We left the barn and slipped across a wide courtyard. Olga proceeded to a door leading to the cellar of the pal- ace. As soon as it had been closed behind us, a match was struck in the darkness and a man’s face appeared.

 “Comrade Olga?” he said.

 “Da,” Olga replied.

 He embraced her and kissed her on both cheeks. Then we followed him through the cellar darkness until we reached another door. The room beyond it was bright with light and half a dozen palace servants waited there. They greeted Olga effusively. She was passed from one to the other, male and female alike, to be hugged and kissed and gushed over in torrents of Russian.

 For the first time I noticed that she was carrying a small package. The first man who’d greeted her relieved her of it gingerly and set it down on the table. Silence fell as the others gathered there stood around the package and looked at it almost reverently. Olga nodded once, proudly, and a strange sigh escaped the lips of the group.

 One of them turned and pointed to me and jabbered something in Russian. Olga answered him. There was a lot more conversation with glances thrown my way. Finally Olga came to my side and spoke to me in French.

 “They want to know who you are and why you are here,” she told me. “I said you were fleeing an aristocrat who wanted to kill you. They are suspicious, but I’ve persuaded them to let you stay. I only hope I’m not making a mistake,” she added. “But the only alternative would be to kill you and I can’t quite bring myself to let them do that after all we’ve been through together.”

 “You’re right,” I replied. “After all, we have established a relationship. Alienation’s a big problem in the world,” I babbled with gratitude. “Being killed would definitely alienate me more than I already am. And it would alienate you from me too, if you see what I mean. Communication would be impossible. It’s really much healthier this way. I think you’ve made a wise decision.”

 Olga’s French wasn’t up to my mouthings. She shrugged them off and motioned to one of the men. He lit a candle and led me‘ back through the cellar to a bin. It was filled with straw. He indicated that I should climb into it and cover myself with the straw. I did.

 When I was alone, I started fumbling with the wrist radio in the darkness. My fall from the pirate’s plank to the Russian sofa had jarred it into silence. The question was whether or not it was irreparably broken.

 I took the back plate oil it and my fingers traced the tiny, delicate connections in the darkness. I fumbled for a long time before I located a badly bent transistor. I took it out, straightened it and replaced it. A sliver of dawn was poking through one of the cellar windows when I replaced the plate and tried twisting the dial.