Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
My reward came in the form of flared nostrils and eyes like death. I turned my back on him and started to extend my arms to don the big black coat, doing my best not to whimper or wince at the agony that accompanied every movement.
I stopped reaching backwards, and instead looked over my shoulder at the butler. “Poor Pyotr,” I said. “You didn’t even get to finish whipping me.”
I turned away, and began to put on the coat. I took it as a sign of my little triumph when Pyotr put his mouth against my ear and said in his thick accent, “I hope Belkonov destroys your cunt and your ass for you, whore. Would that satisfy you?”
The maid had opened the door. Pyotr thrust me through it, toward the limo waiting in the thickly falling snow. I stumbled and nearly fell, but I caught myself on the railing of the steps, my attention focused on the car. The chauffeur climbed out of the driver’s seat and stepped to the passenger door. He looked at me, at the top of the steps, expectantly.
What the fuck could I possibly do? Run? Try to find the Pretorian Guard agent who had activated me and get him to arrange an extraction for me? No chance—the man almost certainly wouldn’t even be at Devushkin’s palace, halfway across town.
I clutched my coat tightly around me and descended the steps. The chauffeur opened the door of the limo.
I would go to Belkonov’s house. I would try to see Ivan, somehow, get a message to him that I had vital information, something like that. The Guard would realize that I didn’t represent an asset anymore, and get me out. I would survive, somehow. My thoughts churned in my head, not a single one fitting together with another to make a plan.
I walked toward the car.
Astonishingly, Ivan’s voice came from inside the passenger compartment, speaking in Russian to the chauffeur, his tone annoyed.
“What’s taking the whore so long? Get her into the limo.”
My heart thrilled with joy and dread at the same time. I froze, in the snow, trying to peer into the car, as if I still had any doubt that my master sat inside, waiting for me.
The chauffeur, Anatoly, took a step forward. Something in his eyes had always made me think he, of all Ivan’s servants, might actually like me. His expression now had at least a hint of apology in it, but he grabbed my elbow nonetheless and marched me the remaining distance to the limo.
I could feel the warmth inside the car spilling out into the night air. I saw Ivan’s face, set into a look of annoyance. I took a clumsy step and I cried out as the agony from the knout’s terrible lashes flashed through my whole lower body, and I tried to pull away.
Anatoly’s iron grip drew me forward, stumbling, and pushed me through, into the car’s spacious rear compartment. I found myself sprawled across Ivan’s lap, and the passenger door closed with a decisive thunk behind me. For a long moment, nothing happened but the rocking of the limo as Anatoly returned to the driver’s seat, the closing of his door, and then a whirring that it took me a moment to recognize: Ivan had closed the partition between Anatoly in the front and us in the back.
The limo started to pull away from the curb. I tried to push up from Ivan’s lap, thinking a mile a minute about what I could say in this unexpected moment of privacy that might change my fate.
Ivan, to my astonishment, held me down. I had assumed he wouldn’t even want me to touch him—especially if he were, as I had guessed, conflicted about his feelings for me. Instead I felt his left arm holding me across his thighs and his right hand coming up under my throat.
I gave a little cry, thinking for an instant that he meant to choke me—that the whole thing had gone much farther wrong than I had even suspected. I had, I thought, one second before Ivan’s strong grip would make it impossible to speak.
“Master,” I gasped, trying desperately to find the words and not even realizing that I had started speaking in Russian, “Belkonov… he wanted…”
Ivan froze for a moment, and then he put his mouth to my ear and said, in a hushed voice that suggested he thought the limo might be bugged, “You speak Russian?”
I too froze, thinking furiously.
“A little,” I said in his language—but I did my best to make it sound hesitant and heavily accented, as if I were searching for the words. I prayed that Ivan’s surprise at hearing any Russian at all come from my lips would keep him from realizing just how good my pronunciation of the few words I had spoken had been. I tried to reinforce the impression: I added, ‘Gospodin,’ which meant lord, but I pronounced the o’s like American long o’s, as if I had no skill in the language whatsoever.