‘He’s still asleep.’
It was the second time Mikhail had checked on Pyotr, anxiety for the boy driving him out of his chair despite his exhaustion.
‘He was worried about you,’ Sofia said as she poured out two vodkas and handed one to him when he was settled again. ‘But he’s fine. He’s strong.’
‘Thank you for caring for him.’
‘I did very little except take him to Dagorsk to plead for you. We looked after each other.’
‘Come here, Sofia.’
He held out a hand to her and, when she slipped hers into it, drew her to him on to his lap. He rested his head against hers, holding her so close she could feel the beat of his heart, and slowly the rise and fall of their inhalations and exhalations fell into step until they were breathing as one.
‘Sofia,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘tell me what the hell is going on.’
She was silent.
He lifted a hand and tipped her chin up to look at him, his eyes lingering on her face. ‘You were waiting for me. How did you know I was coming?’
‘I didn’t, not for certain.’
‘Sofia, I was in prison being bounced from interrogation to beating and back to interrogation, over and over, no food, no water, no sleep. I count myself lucky that I hadn’t yet had the Cupboard inflicted on me but-’
‘What’s the Cupboard?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
She kissed the bruised eye. ‘Tell me.’
‘It’s something the other prisoners in my cell whispered about. It’s a space one metre by half a metre and the height of a man. The Cupboard, they call it. The bastards throw you in there with four or five or even six other poor devils crammed together, all unable to move, barely able to breathe. You could be in there hours or even days with no one able to turn or sit. Most suffocate to death in it.’
Sofia buried her face in his neck.
‘I’d have ended up in there if I hadn’t been freed, no doubt of that,’ he said. His voice was savage, but delicately he kissed a tear from her face. ‘Yet suddenly in the middle of the interrogation an OGPU officer marched into the room, waved around a signed release order and I was out on the street in the rain in the middle of the night before I could say Chto za chyort! ’ He knocked back the shot of vodka and shuddered.
He kissed her hair and gently rubbed his cheek over its silky strands. ‘And then I found you waiting for me.’
‘You’re safe,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all that matters.’
‘Sofia, I need to know.’
Tenderly she took his face in her hands. ‘Mikhail, my dearest Mikhail, I honestly don’t know what happened. Your release could have been caused by Rafik – the gypsy has amazing powers to move thoughts – or by… someone else. Let’s leave it until tomorrow, my love. You’ve been through enough.’ She brushed her fingers down the line of his smooth straight nose, still wonderfully unbroken, and along the curve of his broad brow.
Mikhail frowned, his dark gaze searching her face. Their eyes held fast on each other until suddenly something deep within him seemed to open, some emotion shaking his strong frame so violently that his limbs trembled under her. He groaned, and Sofia hungrily pressed her lips to his throat. When Mikhail rose from the chair with her in his arms and bore her from the room, she shut her ears to the accusing voice in her head, the one that said she was stealing.
The world had stopped spinning on its axis, Mikhail was sure of it. How else could he have been jerked from one indelible moment of hell to such abundance of perfection? Her naked skin was a pearl. Not like a pearl. It was a pearl. A creamy translucent paleness that somehow glowed from within. It made even the tips of his fingers ache with desire for her.
They lay on his bed, limbs entwined in semi-darkness, with only the faint gleam from the living room’s kerosene lamp creeping into the room, where it lay like a dog on the rag-rug. Mikhail didn’t want Sofia to see his own body. It was a mess, covered in bruises and cuts and black swellings. It disgusted him, so what would it do for her? He had always taken a certain pride in his body, in its strength and its invincibility. He’d always been able to depend on it, but now his rage at those who had caused such damage to it and humiliation to him in the name of justice writhed snake-like in his guts.
She seemed to sense it. Her hand slid tentatively to his stomach where it started to circle, gently at first, then firmer, harder, fingers splayed out. He could feel the heat build up under them, see a delicate vein pulsing at her temple as she leaned close. She was driving the hate out of his body.
His lips seized hers and his hand cradled her naked breast, small and firm and perfect in his palm. She moaned, a soft, sobbing sound. His fingers teased, stroked and explored each delicate rise and fall of her undernourished body, the angular edge of her hip bone and the fall of her silken stomach down to the dense mound of blonde curls. He inhaled the exquisite scent of her, breathing it deep into himself.
His lips caressed her eyes, her ears, the tempting hollow of her throat while his fingers searched out the moist secret places that brought forth whimpers of desire from her open mouth. His lips kissed that mouth. He adored the way she growled low in her throat when he rippled his fingers down the soft inside of her thigh and the way her whole body shuddered when he took her erect nipple in his mouth. She tasted of the forest, a clean wild creature. Not dirty like himself. However hard he’d scrubbed himself with the brush in the yard tonight, he still felt the dirt of the cells and the beatings lodged under the layers of his skin.
It was as if she could see the thoughts form in his head.
‘My beloved,’ she crooned, pressing him back on to the pillow.
She trailed her tongue up his cheek, then down the other. Its pliant warmth seemed to envelop him, soft and enticing, as it flicked across his forehead and along the line of his nose, a touch on his lips and a nudge on his teeth and down to his chin. He knew what she was doing and his heart melted. She was cleansing him.
Her breath was coming fast as she lowered her head to his chest. He gasped when her tongue flicked out once more as slowly, sensuously, in unbearable circles, she started to lick the beatings and the humiliations out of his body. He buried his hands in her hair, squeezing it tight in his fists. He let out a howl that tore everything out of him but his feelings for this woman.
‘I love you, Sofia.’
‘My Mikhail.’
Their words were hoarse with need. Her skin exuded a musk that swept through his blood, as her skin became his skin. Her blood became his blood. When he lay above the length of her shining pearl body he held himself back, lovingly brushed a tangle of hair from her face and looked close into her huge wild eyes.
‘Sofia, sweetest heart,’ he murmured, ‘Sofia, is this…?’
Her lips opened in spasm and her face turned away from his. ‘Is this my first time?’ she moaned.
‘If it is, I-’
‘No, Mikhail. Don’t worry, this isn’t my first time.’
The bitterness in her voice was harsh. Gently he turned her face back to him and kissed her lips, soothing, murmuring, whispering to her until they relaxed under his, entwined his tongue with hers and felt her naked hips rise against him.
‘We’ll make this the first time, my love,’ he breathed into her mouth. ‘For both of us.’
‘This is as it should be.’
Sofia whispered the words to the darkness. No brutal fumbling behind a shed in the rain, no careless ripping open of her flesh as though she were dead meat. This is as it should be. A glorious outburst of joy that transformed her body into something wonderful and vibrant, something she barely recognised. She brushed her lips on Mikhail’s wrist, tasting his skin once more.
‘This is as it should be,’ she whispered.