Mere Complexities

[Lucius]

Content Warnings: A map of Paris, preferably an old one, might come in handy.
-------------------------------------------------------------
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

— W. B. Yeats

The story is going to be continued over at AO3 when RA goes. It's going to be a long ride.

Why post it here at all? This story owes a lot to RA, and giving just a little back is the least I can do.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1 — The Green Rose

Nina Sabloukova was in a hurry. She was going faster and faster, rushing along the short Avenue St Philibert, a small smile playing on her painted lips—a mere hint of wild feelings overflowing her heart. Excitement, desire, anxiety, dread of separation, and other emotions she did not fully understand or know how to name surged through her.

The blue plaque with the avenue’s name in white letters stirred a momentary sense of unease on top of everything in her mind. Nina had not wanted to move here last autumn—the recent shipwreck of the Nantes excursion steamer St Philibert, with five hundred souls lost, had struck her as a bad omen.

Her family couldn’t really afford such an apartment in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris, not in the midst of the economic crisis. Nonetheless her father, Boris Pavlovich, needed to impress the ever-dwindling number of his clients. As for her mother, Cleopatra Konstantinovna, née Skorniakova, she took pride in dazzling her guests.

For the time being, however, the Sabloukoff family were keeping their heads above water, even with Nina suspecting that she was earning more now than her father did from his legal consultations and preparing Russian émigrés’ cases for Maître Dubois. Moreover, the landlord allowed a piano in the house so that Nina could practise her dancing to her heart’s content.

Nina waved to her quirky neighbour from down the avenue, an Irish dancer with a not-so-Irish name of Lucia, whose landlord had banned pianos, and darted through the gate of the old Passy post office in the Place Chopin, soon to be replaced by the brand new Rue Singer one. She flew up the three worn steps—a well-groomed white poodle, tied to the railing, yapped indignantly at the Russian girl.

Must have recognized a foreigner.

Fifty centimes. A telephone number at the Rue de la Paix.

‘Allo, Bettina? This is Nina. I’m so sorry—please tell Madame I can’t come in today… I know, Bettina, I know, it’s very bad. It’s just something I ate yesterday celebrating my angel’s day…’ Nina swallowed, her conscience pricking slightly, and listened for the response. Bettina Jones, the American assistant of Elsa Schiaparelli, was well acquainted with the habits of Russian manneqins, and she must have thought it was rather something Nina had drunk.

‘Yes, yes, my name day! Bettina, you’re my angel! I’ll be at the house early tomorrow, I swear!’ No fashion establishment could exist without allowing their girls an indiscretion or ten, even when it was an all-hands-on-deck situation with the summer collection to be presented to American buyers in a week.

Nina rang off and unrolled a piece of paper he had given her the last time they met. The necessary lie was followed by another fifty centimes, a Blomet exchange number this time.

‘Hello, Vadim. I’m on my way.’

***

The Métro train clattered onto the Passy Viaduct. Nina glanced absent-mindedly at the looming Eiffel Tower, her thoughts wandering back to the moment she had first met Vadim. The New Year’s Eve réveillon at the Robillards had several Russians as guests—Henri Robillard was born in St Petersburg, where his family used to live before the Russian Revolution, and welcomed a few Russian émigrés at each of his gatherings.

Nina had been invited to the sumptuous Avenue Foch apartment for the very first time. She had no illusions regarding the reason why. Monsieur Robillard must have heard the rumour that Nina had broken up with Auguste, and he had a certain predilection for young Russian mistresses. But the Frenchman made a big mistake—he had invited Vadim Korsakoff as well.

From the moment Nina laid her eyes on Vadim at the dinner she wanted him, the electric hum of her desire almost audible. Monsieur Robillard had no chance at all—she was thoroughly entranced by Vadim’s masculine presence, his poweful build, his spare conversation.

Sandrine Polougarsky, who knew everything about everyone, had talked readily. Vadim had been shuttling between Paris and the Far East, dealing in all manner of exotic Chinese goods—porcelaine vases, jade figurines, wood carvings, lacquerware, that sort of thing. Rumour had it that Vadim belonged to the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, an émigré secret society bent on replacing the Bolsheviks with the rule of Russian Orthodox clerics or some such thing, and supplied arms to Chinese generals. No one could be certain.

Nina was certain she was meant to be his. She wanted Vadim. She wanted him to undress her. She wanted to feel his kisses on every inch of my skin. To bring him into the young, unsettled life she imagined into being any day. Every day.

Four days into the new year of 1932, Vadim took her to the Théâtre de l’Ambigu to see Marius by Marcel Pagnol. It took all of her restraint to stop at kissing then.

Three days later, Nina yielded herself to Vadim at his furnished rooms in the Rue d’Obligado. Her expectations had been met—or exceeded, every muscle in her young body singing after a thorough shag. It must have been thrice sinful to enjoy that much her new illicit carnal connection on the Orthodox Christmas Day, after divine service at the Rue Daru church the night before, but Nina very much doubted the existence of god—and counted on his understanding anyhow.

The ensuing three weeks had been a blur. Nina longed to spend every spare moment in Vadim’s arms. For Nina, this was worth the risk of eternal damnation, fire and brimstone. Vadim was a thorough, dominating, demanding, experienced lover. Her whole being ached with desire for him.

Nina’s train sped through the grey city. The first-class car was almost deserted. Nina looked at the passenger seated across the aisle—a prim, well-dressed lycéenne with a violin case, very Jewish, obviously on her way to a music lesson, Thursday being a free day for French schoolchildren.

The girl returned a disapproving look, peering at Nina through the thick lenses of her round spectacles. In her brown Schiaparelli coat, a small beret perched at a jaunty angle on her head, Nina looked like a walking couture advertisement—which she was. Being in the world of fashion, she got her clothes for nothing. Had the lycéenne thought that she was one of those high-class prostitutes who often rode in first-class cars in search of clients, or had she rightly taken Nina for a mannequin?

As the train dived underground and pulled into the Pasteur station, Nina sprang up from her seat, giving the Jewish girl a warm, sincere smile—no matter how many generations of her ancestors had trodden the streets of Paris, she was an outsider, too. The lycéenne couldn’t help but smile back.

Nina wanted so much—passion, travel, adventures, all things that tended to be reserved for men. She loved love, she loved dance, she loved the whole wide world—not wisely, perhaps, but too well.

If the émigrés of her parents’ generation could close their eyes and see their motherland as she had been, Russia was almost an empty word for Nina, St Petersburg a mere shadow—her family left the revolutionary city for the Crimea in the summer of 1917, when Nina was four and a half years old. Constantinople, Prague, Berlin followed. Then Paris.

Emigration is always a misfortune, and Paris was a dangerous place for a girl. Rootless, restless, rebellious, Nina found in physical love a way to not be lonely, to belong.

It became her great joy and relief. Easily smitten by desire, Nina lived thoughtlessly and unabashedly. It was a whirlwind of reckless passions, her fluttering heart answering the call of the flesh.

Her amorous escapades had wrecked what had already been a strained family relationship once and for all. Boris Pavlovich, ever cold and indifferent towards Nina, distanced himself even further. She hadn’t expected otherwise—it was no secret to the girl that he wasn’t her birth father.

Her mother… Cleopatra Konstantinovna, consumed by a panic about growing old, had grown jealous of her. When Nina rashly threw the names of Cleo’s own lovers in her face during one of their many rows, boasting that she had not slept with any of them, even though she could have, her mother forced her to bare her back for the whipping and applied the leather strap until there was blood.

None of that mattered. Until Nina turned twenty-one, under French law she was under the authority of her legal father—a lingering echo of Ancient Rome with her patria potestas. She had to live wherever Boris Pavlovich told her to, and all her money was his.

There was a way out. If Nina was already whispered about and frowned upon in the narrow society of Russian Paris, she could still marry a fellow émigré and consign herself to a life of an ever shabbier gentility, the Molokhovetz cookery book the tombstone of her dreams.

Marry a Frenchman, perhaps? Undoubtedly, under the laws of the Republic, a married woman was treated nearly as a human being. But things could have turned out even worse. That said, the French preferred to tie the knot with their own kind, relegating foreign women to the role of mistresses.

But Nina didn’t want to settle down. She craved Vadim. Him alone. And adventure, too. She devoured sensational novels, desirous to outdo Lady Diana Wynham, the invincible and irresistible heroine of Maurice Dekobra. It did not matter how exactly. Wasn’t Paris full of secrets? She only needed to uncover the right one.

Change at Pasteur. Porte de Versailles line now.

***

Nina took the stairs of the Porte de Versailles station two at a time. Up, up, up—into the damp cold of the Rue Vaugirard. The smell of margarine and garlic from the cheap restaurants. She knew this neibourhood—last autumn, she had posed for Zinaida Serebriakova, the sweet, impoverished painter, at her studio at 4 Square Desnouettes. Yet the damp gloom under the railway bridge made her briefly anxious. The clanking of the Petite Ceinture train above and the old tram overtaking her merged into a single disturbing dissonance, and a sudden shiver ran down the girl’s spine.

Nina followed the tram with her eyes as, its bell ringing harshly, it swung its rear end, swerving onto the Rue de la Croix Nivert. Then she walked a bit further, turning right onto the Rue Lacretelle.

Here, Russian voices drifted through the air. Less well-off émigrés lived all over the Fifteenth. With a wave and a smile, Nina flounced past the old concierge of 22 Rue Lacretelle and bounded up the steps to the fourth floor. Vadim had moved out of the Rue d’Obligado rooms by the fifteenth of January and was meeting up with Nina at the flats of other émigrés. She only knew that an Ivan Ivanovich lived here—was it the same one who approached Vadim once when they were eating really late at the Select? She did not know.

Vadim was waiting for her. With a wag of her shoulders, Nina let the coat fall, flung her beret aside and fell into his arms.

***

‘Take me with you, Vadim, I’m begging you, please, please, please…’

‘You can’t go with me,’ Vadim silenced his lover of three weeks with a long kiss.

Tomorrow, Vadim Korsakoff was to sail from Marseilles back to Shanghai. Having Nina to share his bed for the duration of the long sea journey was a tempting idea. He could sell the green-eyed, redheaded beauty to the brothel once he grew tired of her. Nina had come to him already deflowered—just a common little whore, like almost all womanfolk. In Vadim’s opinion, spreading her legs for a myriad of dirty Chinamen wouldn’t have been too difficult for her.

But it was better to leave her in Paris, waiting for him. She had her uses.

‘I’m not like the others!’ Nina must have sensed he had thought her ordinary in some way. ‘You know I would walk barefoot halfway around the world for you!’

‘Not like the others, hm?’ Vadim towered over her, a poweful man in his early thirties.

‘Have you read Konrad Wallenrod by Mickiewicz? Remember, “she sewed a rose, the flowers with green, the leaves with rosy silk”? I often feel as if I’m like that green rose, destiny’s odd handiwork,’ Nina earneastly looked into Vadim’s eyes. Vadim had not read Mickiewicz, but he was fond of Nina’s rosy silkiness.

Nina had always marvelled at the great speed and skill with which Vadim stripped her bare. She was accustomed to changing clothes dozens of times in the course of her working day at the House of Schiaparelli, but his dexterity was almost miraculous. She knew it must have come of long practice of undressing women.

When she was naked, Vadim grabbed her by the buttocks and kissed her on the lips hard, roughly, forcefully, at once thrusting his tongue into her mouth, yet still hearing her long, lustful moan.

The sound of a piano drifted from somewhere above.

‘Gretchaninoff the composer lives on the floor above,’ Vadim answered the silent question in her eyes.

‘Imagine this, I met him two weeks ago, at the Russian Press Ball at the Lutetia! If Alexander Tikhonovich could only see me now! Nude, barefoot and ready to…’ Nina’s voice trailed off. Vadim pulled Nina’s head back by the hair, his right hand still kneading her bottom, and began to cover her neck with kisses. A nip on her collarbone, and then he kissed his way down to her breasts. At the same time he stopped squeezing her buttocks and slid his hand between her trembling legs.

His strong fingers caressed her love-lips, then circled her seat of pleasure, sending shivers through her. Nina’s body arched, and she spread her legs wider. The desire to feel him inside her was unbearable, her nipples already aching with arousal rushing over her like a hot wave.

Vadim tore off his clothes, strong muscles rippling under the skin, his thick, long penis jutting out. In the cold of the room, their heated bodies pressed together, skin burning. He wedged his knee between her legs and reached for her cunt again, his fingers first ruffling her red hair, then sinking into her wet heat, stretching her love-starved inner flesh…

Nina melted under these caresses, making one long, drawn-out moan, breathing it into Vadim’s lips, as the massive head of his cock rubbed against her smooth stomach, sometimes catching on her navel.

At last Vadim let go of her pussy and pushed Nina towards the bed.

‘Condom…’ Nina breathed out.

‘No, not today. I want to feel all of you,’ Vadim rasped.

‘Yes…’ Nina’s monthlies had just ended—on their last date, she’d only went down on Vadim. She was ready to take the risk.

A second later, she was on her back. Doing her best to move in time to the piano music, feeling incredibly wanton, Nina stretched out on the bed, spreading her legs wide. Vadim chuckled and moved in quickly, holding himself on his knees and outstretched arms. He leant down, his lips capturing her aching, swollen right nipple. Nina gasped when the man sucked it into his mouth, lapping it with his tongue. Then he moved over to caress her other nipple in the same way.

Vadim kept alternating between her nipples, licking and sucking and nipping them. Her body on fire, Nina squirmed, grinding herself upon him from below, feeling his hot, throbbing prick rub along her love-slit that was getting even wetter with each pass...

‘Take me, Vadim! Oh, take me now!’

Vadim let go of her nipples, now painfully tight and gleaming with his saliva. The sight of his powerful body poised above hers, his rampant prick thrusting out proudly, was almost too much to bear. Nina’s eyes roved over him, drinking in his every movement.

‘Mine…’ Vadim grunted, getting the angle he wanted. The swollen, bulging, mushroom-like knob split her nether lips, the clear liquid leaking from the tip mixing with her abundant juices, and slid into the tight opening of her love-sheath with a delicious sting.

Nina’s breath hitched, just like their first time. She wanted their eyes to meet, but Vadim kept staring down at where their bodies were joined obscenely, watching himself go in.

It didn’t matter. Vadim pushed further in, and Nina swivelled her hips up to meet his in descent, her hot, wet, hungry pussy grinding up to swallow the huge intruder, clamping down on solid male flesh, the heat and waves of pleasure spreading from her stretched inner flesh throughout her body, shooting up her spine like lightning, her fleeting disappointment dissolving in sinful delight. Her head fell back, and a long, loud moan rolled out of her throat as the man drove his magnificent cock inside her, slowly filling her fully until his heavy balls were nestled against her bottom.

She took him like she was made for it. Vadim held himself still, letting her feel his masculine strength to the uthmost, until the impatient Nina began to move her hips, thrusting and grinding against him, her strong inner muscles of a dancer rippling on his iron-hard shaft, so thick, so heavy...

His muscles corded in tension, Vadim pulled back—her slick inner walls clinging to him tightly— withdrawing almost his entire length. Nina whimpered from the sensation of aching emptiness. Vadim thrust back deep into her, his fat knob bumping into the tip of her womb. Nina gasped, arching in wild response.

Vadim set a measured rhythm, fucking her with long, hard strokes, pulling out until nothing but the head of his prick remained inside her, then plunging back into her cunt to the hilt, watching her high, round breasts bounce with every thrust of his hips. Nina matched his thrusts, wantonly grinding her pelvis into his, caressing the strong muscles of his outstretched arms.

Vadim lowered himself onto his elbows, his muscular chest pressing into her flushed, achingly swollen breasts, his coarse chest hairs tormenting her incredibly sensitive, steel-hard nipples, and picked up the pace, his hips snapping faster.

The moans of lovers rivalled the loud slapping of naked flesh against naked flesh. Locking her fingers at the nape of his thick neck, Nina wrapped her long legs about his powerful torso and crossed her ankles behind him, boldly spurring him on with her heels.

His muscles tensing and bulging beneath his skin, Vadim was pounding into her, her cunt squishing silkily. Lost in a daze of mounting lust, Nina was moaning with abandon, crying out at particularly devastating in-strokes. She wriggled beneath him, pumping her hips up, striving to find the right angle for maximum pleasure.

Nina was frantic as she neared the crest of passion, her head thrashing from side to side, her thighs quivering, her skin glistening with beads of sweat. Vadim’s thrusts grew erratic with the fierceness of his impending climax, each hard stroke an explosion of pleasure now, washing over her entire body in a fiery wave of delight.

Vadim growled, driving all the way inside, his muscles tensed, and his prick erupted with hot semen, flooding her womb. The sensation of being filled was too much for Nina— she stiffened for an instant, her arms and legs flung around him, her toes curling. She came violently, her whole body quaking uncontrollably, wild cries of ecstasy bursting from her open mouth.

‘Sweet girl of mine… My beauty! Mine!’ Vadim was kissing her lips, her face, caressing her heated skin, the hard slab of his chest squashing her breasts.

‘Vadim… I’m yours... All yours!’ Nina whispered hotly, her inner muscles tightening and loosening on his slowly deflating cock. She flung her legs wide apart and was rhythmically moving her hips, squeezing out every last drop of his semen.

‘You’re going to be my downfall,’ Vadim nibbled at her ear.

‘The piano isn’t playing. I must’ve been too loud…’ Nina giggled. ‘Last Saturday I brought down an emperor, don’t you know?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Vadim rolled off her heated body, rising on the elbow, his cock still half-hard.

‘I didn’t mean to…’ Nina said languidly, feeling his seed trickle out of her between her thighs. ‘His Majesty Bao Dai of Annam should’ve looked where he was going anyway. And had just built up a little speed, skating backwards… Just another day at the Molitor ice rink!’

‘You silly!’ Vadim slapped her hip.

‘He even apologized,’ Nina said with a laugh. After all, it was Paris, where a mannequin from the House of Schiaparelli could outrank a royalty or an imperiality, especially of a tropical kind.

Overthrowing emperors was in Nina’s blood—almost two hundred years ago, one of her mother’s ancestors was the coachman who drove the sled of another adventurous and flighty girl, Elizabeth the daughter of Peter the Great, on her way to launch her coup against the infant Tsar Ivan VI. He was ennobled for his troubles when his passenger ascended the Russian throne. Not to be outdone in the moments when the matter of state meant splattered brain matter, yet another of Cleopatra’s forebears was in the room when Emperor Paul I met first a dozen Guards officers and, soon thereafter, his Maker.

Vadim lit a cigarette and offered another to her as the composer began playing again. Nina snuggled up to Vadim, pulling the bedsheet up to her chin. The lovers smoked, listening to the music, enjoying the afterglow.

‘Well,’ Vadim stubbed out the gasper and pulled the bedsheet down. Smiling, she finished her cigarette bare-breasted, her dusky pink areolae pebbling in the cold air of the room, revelling in the knowledge that she was so desired.

‘Now suck me!’ Vadim was already manoeuvring her head into his lap. Nina knew it was going to happen.

Vadim ran his hands through her hair and forcefully pulled her head down. Tongue flat, Nina wantonly licked his hardening cock from root to tip while he stroked her back. Tasting him. Tasting herself on him.

Looking Vadim in the eyes, she opened her mouth, letting the huge knob slip past her lips, her tongue sweeping all over it in a slow, teasing circle, bathing it in her saliva. His hips jerking minutely, Vadim stared intently at her mouth on his cock, enjoying the sight. She compressed her lips tighter, and he groaned.

Bobbing her pretty head up and down, Nina licked and sucked, taking his mighty cock just a little deeper with each pass. Vadim lay back, thoroughly enjoying the fellatio. Steadily, Nina pulled him in ever deeper until his hand came down hard on her nape, lowering her mouth down his penis another half-inch, enough for the thick glans to nudge the back of her throat.

Vadim began bucking his hips. Her eyes tearing up, her lips stretched wide, her cheeks hollowing, her jaw aching, Nina pushed down hard, forcing his thickness down her throat, gagging wetly at each of his shallow thrusts, her nose buried in his coarse pubic hair.

Vadim eased his hold on her, and Nina raised her head with a gasp, the prick sliding out of her throat. Before she had a chance to come to her senses, he pushed her down again.

The pianist kept playing. Breathing steadily through her nose, Nina bobbed her head on the thick, long shaft, swallowing, fighting her gag reflex as the knob slid in and out of her throat, Vadim’s wiry curls tickling her nose on the downstrokes. Her throat getting used to his prick being that far, she was going faster and faster.

At last his fingers tightened in her hair, holding her still as he thrust upwards, plunging even deeper into her throat than before, and held her there, his cock pulsing violently as his hips jerked in short, frantic spasms.

The first warm, thick jets slid down her gullet, but then Vadim let her up a little so that the gasping Nina tasted him fully, the salty slime coating the inside of her mouth. Then he brought her head all the way down again, pouring the rest of his seed straight down her oesophagus.

‘Oh God…’ Nina moaned, letting go of Vadim’s shaft, spunk bubbling out of the corners of her mouth, and sat up. She let out a long, shaky breath. She had fellated other men, she had sucked Vadim’s cock before, but it had never been so intense. So rough. The girl was shaken to the core.

‘You’re all mine, remember? All of you,’ Vadim patted her on the trembling shoulder. ‘I need you to do something for me, Nina.’

‘What?’ Nina blinked the tears out of her large eyes.

‘I need to hide a small case until I come back. I’ll give it to you,’ Vadim looked intently into her eyes as he carefully wiped her mouth with the edge of the bedsheet.

‘Is it, erm, dangerous?’ Nina remembered Sandrine’s stories.

‘No, silly, not at all! No one will know about this apart from Ivan Ivanovich. You’ll give the case back to me when I return. I’m the only one who has the key. Or to whoever gives you the password, hmmm… “Green Rose”, right?’

‘Right,’ Nina nodded. ‘What’s inside the case?’

‘You neeedn’t worry about that, silly!’

‘Enough with “silly” this and “silly” that, Vadim! Tell me now what’s inside, or I’m not going to do it!’ Nina put her foot down.

‘Some important papers,’ Vadim drawled. He was certain Nina needed a good lesson. The little slut had his spunk in her cunt and in her stomach, yet she was still putting on airs! He knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, by force if necessary. He was used to making women submit to his desires.

Meanwhile Nina was listening to the sound of piano. She was not particularly interested in Gretchaninoff’s music, but the thought that she was one of the first to hear his new piece take shape captivated her.

Turning Nina, absorbed in the music, over onto her stomach, Vadim grabbed a pillow and wedged it under her pelvis, forcing her legs to curl under her hips so that her pert derrière was perched high in the air.

‘What are you doing?’ Nina knew that her lover had tremendous stamina and she liked when Vadim took her from behind, but she was almost afraid to go on.

His finger boldly circled her most tight orifice—the girl shuddered. His strong fingers squeezed the cheeks of her bum hard, digging deep into her taut flesh.

His prick twitched at the idea of having her like this—making her—her letting him—and he was already leaking. It was as if he hadn’t already fucked her twice.

‘Don’t even think about it!’ Nina had never sinned in that way.

‘Shhh… Lie still,’ Vadim palmed the back of her head and pressed her face into the pillow, holding Nina down. He stuck two fingers of the other hand into her dripping cunt, drenching them in their gooey mixed fluids, then twisting the slimy middle finger into her bottom hole.

‘Vadim, no! You’re too big! No!’

‘Trust me, my girl… just settle down and lie still… Everything will be fine...’

The index finger followed. Nina wriggled on the bed. Her ring muscle convulsed, trying to expel the intruding digits. She heard Vadim chuckle, and he spread his fingers a little wider, loosening her forbidden orifice.

‘Don’t do it, Vadim, I beg you! God, please no!’

He let go of her, only to thrust his fingers into her cunt again, then lubricated her cringing nether-ring some more.

‘You don’t have to do it! Ay!’ This time, Vadim roughly stuck his thick thumb all the way inside her back passage, then slowly drew it out, probing her sphincter.

Did the girl think she could just say ‘No!’ and he’d listen to her?

Suddenly his cock slid into her wet, squelchy pussy with ease. Nina welcomed his thick length filling her again with a breathy cry, pushing back to meet him, driving him even deeper inside. Surely Vadim had changed his mind? He must’ve known he was too big to…

As he once again savoured the snug fit of her cunt, Vadim wondered how many pricks had been inside that pink hole before him. At the very least, he’d be the first to fuck her in the arse. After a few thrusts, he pulled out and spread her buttocks apart.

‘No! Vadim, no! Please! I don’t want it—I can’t—Ay!’ Nina cried out at the sting of his hand slapping her bottom, kicking her heels up, only to get the same hard crack on the other cheek. Vadim kept spanking her harshly, making tears come to her eyes, until her bottom glowed red.

‘Lie still, girlie! You’ll like it once it gets going, believe me!’ Vadim rasped, pushing against her vulnerable anus. The stubborn girl squeezed it tight.

‘Aaah!’ Relentless pressure became burning pain tearing through her pelvis. Nina shook under the man who was slowly breaching her, forcing her bottom hole open. She gritted her teeth against searing pain, willing herself to keep quiet. He was splitting her in two, tearing her apart!

The stabbing sensation in her bum spiked suddenly. Nina screamed at the top of her lungs, her body going rigid.

The piano playing faltered, then stopped.

The pain lessened. Her brain registered the sensation of her tight band of muscle snapping a little behind the wide flare of his massive knob. Clawing the bedding, Nina rocked forward, desperately trying to pull herself clear of his throbbing prick, but the man dragged her back by the hips and pushed deeper.

‘Cad! Savage! Bastard!’ Tears streaming down her flushed face, her clamping sphincter on fire, Nina screeched, writhing in distress beneath the man who was sodomizing her slowly, heavily, half-inch by aching half-inch.

Vadim growled and gave her a merciless thrust, punching the remaining length of his prick in. A fresh wave of hurt tore another wild yell out of her.

‘Aaahhh… Oh God...’ she moaned plaintively. His loins were pressed snugly against her buttocks. Nina was impaled right up to the hilt, the man’s wiry pubic hair prickling her stretched anus.

‘That’s it, girl!’

The man began fucking her bottom with long, hard strokes. Utterly helpless, her cheek against the pillow, the bedsheet bunched in her fists, Nina could do nothing but absorb his powerful lunges, groaning piteously.

Vadim shoved one hand under her stomach, his index finger first circling her pleasure-nubbin, then plucking it firmly, incessantly…

‘Ooohhh!’ Wicked heat flooded her pelvis once again, strange pleasure mixing with savage hurt. Nina’s face was burning with desire and shame as the first of many panting moans escaped her lips. Her senses overwhelmed, her mind spinning, she found herself wantonly backing into his hard thrusts, as if pleading for the man to keep stretching her throbbing, tingling anus on the unbearably thick root of his prick—over and over and over...

‘Told you you’d like it, didn’t I? Oh, you like it, my girl… I told you so…’ His hand slid from under her to roughly knead her buttock, and Nina groaned in disappointment.

‘Yourself!’ Vadim grunted. He didn’t have to tell her twice. Her hand snaked between her legs, and in a second Nina was fingering her over-sensitive bundle of nerves, sparking fresh flames of lust.

Now he was ploughing her bottom faster, his heavy balls smacking into her cunt. Bathed in love-sweat, engulfed by a feverish passion, grinding her buttocks shamelessly, harlot-like, against his thrusting hips, Nina was frenziedly raking the tiny kernel of hard flesh between her legs, moaning loudly, lewdly. Suddenly her body froze, her muscles locked, and she went over the edge with a series of howling screams, pinching her clitoris, jerking hard in ecstasy, her empty cunt fluttering, gushing freely.

The man kept fucking her arse, giving it to her rough and deep, drawing her climax out. Her ring muscle contracted rhythmically, gripping Vadim’s stiff cock that seemed to swell even more. Swirling at the pinnacle of pained pleasure, Nina took his last wild stab. Buried in her balls-deep, Vadim roared triumphantly, grabbing her breasts. His cock jerked powerfully inside her, and the first spray of his spunk seared the walls of her snug channel, marking his claim on the whole of her body.

Lost in a daze, her mouth open wide as she gasped and moaned, Nina trembled like a leaf in the wind under the sweaty weight of the man who was squeezing her breasts hard while he came in her. Her inner woman, also stark naked and all aquiver, was ruthlessly stretched on the thick pillar of hard male flesh to receive the knout of hot, viscid slime that was lashing with hard, long, stinging squirts her brazen, unruly, sensuous femininity.

All the muscles of her anus spasmed and flexed, milking the spraying prick to the last drop until at last the throbs stopped. His raw masculine power over the girl asserted, Vadim roughly pulled out of her body, still shuddering in the aftershocks, with a loud pop, rendering her humiliation complete. Nina cried out thinly from the fresh sting of pain in her bottom, her mind and senses reeling from what he had done to her.

‘It hurts,’ Nina sobbed out. ‘You… you could’ve been… less rough.’

‘If a man’s made up his mind, he’ll go through with it. It takes a very good reason for him to change his mind. Just do as you’re told and know your place. Take this as a lesson for the future. Understood?’ Vadim said smugly. Nina grunted in reply. ‘Let’s go wash ourselves now, eh?’

She tried to sat up, but winced and collapsed onto the bed again, her bottom hurting fiercely.

‘Don’t worry, girl, it’s always like that the first time,’ Vadim, still naked, his cock glistening wetly, lit another cigarette, enjoying the sight of the young beauty he’d just fucked in every hole.

Nina was on the verge of inquiring whether Vadim had felt the same when he was buggered for the first time, but she kept quiet.

She had trusted him. Right now, she felt like a cheap slut who’d been ill used and ridden hard must feel.

Nina felt her ring muscle pinch shut at last and sighed, relieved. Such, she supposed, were the joys of a fallen woman.

***

Nina sat in the taxi, her lips compressed in a thin line, watching the Rue de la Convention houses flash by in the winter’s gloom, a small dark blue leather suitcase on the seat beside her.

The vodka was burning in her stomach. Vadim had made her drink it after the bath, before he had her swear that she would not sleep with another man, before he fucked her standing up against the wall in the hallway, wrenching yet another orgasm out of her.

Running into the Gretchaninoffs on the landing had been awkward—Nina and Vadim bumped into them as she was leaving. The composer, fixing her coldly with his only good eye, and his wife cut them dead. Vadim handed her the case, kissed her good-bye on the lips and bundled her into the taxi.

There would be more tongues wagging now. Whatever. Her head swam. She touched the leather.

She’d never rely on men again. She could do anything on her own. She was the Green Rose! So what if Vadim was about to sail for Shanghai? She’d put any Lady Diana Wynham to shame. If Maurice Dekobra had his Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, then she, Nina, would be the Madonna of the Ocean Liners!

When the taxi crossed the Pont Mirabeau, she already knew she would open the case.

***

Having taken Nina to the Avenue St Philibert, the taxi driver parked his Renault in the Place Chopin, strode into the Passy post office—not without a Bichon Frisé barking at him—and made a telephone call.

‘This is Yakov. I’ve just taken his young whore home. He has given her a blue leather case. Whatever you’re looking for, it might be inside,’ the taxi driver said in Russian. He listened to the reply, then gave the address of Nina to whoever was on the line.

End of chapter 1
-------------------------------------------------------------

Your feedback is always welcome!

[Vela Nanashi]

Suggestion for later, if a map of Paris as it was at the time is useful, linking to such would help readers I will not be using one for this reading though

One curious thing where I am not entirely sure of our perspective, we get some internal thoughts from Nina, but we do not get to use her ears in the phone call, so that indicates we are watching her just a tiny not really that important observation. Skipping work to do something Nina?

Masculine merchant with secret society links, exciting male to pursue though funny for her to not be religious when it sounds like her man is I guess she can pretend to make him happy though, as much as that may or may not matter to him. Sounds at least he knows how to make her happy. Or did I misunderstand the secret society wanting to elevate the Orthodox church over the current political system? I suppose only a rumour

Chaotic energy and desires to be free, makes sense, sad that her parents don't have a way to make her happy and still harness her energy and spirit, but that is common, in all cultures I think. Yet I guess they were trying with the piano and dancing help.

Ouch his view of her is completely not what she thinks of him it feels like, if she knew she would run probably.

poweful -> powerful

Vadim knows how to make her feel amazing, taking his time and truly making her need his cock before allowing her to have him.

Intense hot sex

Now have to keep a case hidden and safe for him hmm.

Realistic non kind first anal sex, also intense and hot. He could have made that better for her though, but clearly did not want to.

I guess she understands him better now after that, but she might have seen hints earlier that he takes what he wants, the dominant part, just that he also took what she wanted him to take then.

Ah trouble coming people knowing about the relationship and she now has something they want.

Good story keep writing

[Claire]

So, I'll be honest, my feelings about the first chapter are a bit mixed. And one aspect Im currently skeptical of is hard for me to judge without knowing later chapters. But let me start with two things I think work very well, and then continue with two aspects I'm critical of.

1) I think Paris feels very vibrant. You take great effort to make the city feel alive and authentic and it shows.

2) The plot hook with the blue leather suitcase works. It's a simple mystery to keep the reader engaged, but it just works. I want to know what's inside and the fact that it immediately draws the attention of a third party is enough to communicate that it is more important than your run-of-the-mill contraband.

The two things that I have trouble with:

1) Basically, the same issue I had with Dance of the Sun Goddess applies here too, albeit to a lesser degree. The story requires too often for me to draw critical information from historical/cultural references that I don't understand. For me, and I guess for the average reader, that can create a lot of friction that breaks the immersion over and over again because I can not just absorb the prose but need to spend a lot of mental capacity on what information the prose wants to convey. But it's definitely better than in Sun Goddess.

2) This second point is something that I feel unsure about because I don't know if it's intentional or not. But assuming that Nina is the (main-)protagonist, I currently have an issue with that, to me, the story portrays her primarily as... well, a dumb bimbo. I think the considerable amount of exposition wants me to see her as young, intelligent, adventurous, and feeling shackled by society's expectations for women at the time. But the behavior I'm actually shown makes her mostly look dumb. If that is intentional, if the reader is not supposed to sympathize much with her in chapter 1, then that's not an issue. That would be a daring creative choice, but if this is intentional for the character arc you envision for her, it can work.

I would probably like her more if I saw her in a different situation first where she didn't come across as a complete idiot. And if the story then showed me why Vadim is attractive to her and that he can be a very smooth manipulator, I'd find her idiotic behavior less jarring. But as the chapter currently reads, I get told that she's head over heels for him in exposition without ever seeing him do anything that would make him so attractive to her. I'm just told that he is without ever seeing anything that makes me go: "Ah okay, now I get why she gets tricked by that guy". And that's why Nina feels currently mostly like a dumb bimbo swooning over an obviously bad but handsome rich man. Again, if intentional, that's fine. But as of now, that means I'm interested in the story mostly because of the plot mystery, not because I care much about the protagonist.