Tatiana clasped him to her, turning her face away and murmuring through her happy tears, “Oh, my God, Alexander…”

“How long have we been here?”

“I don’t know. Minutes?”

“Where’s your ‘precise’ watch?”

“Didn’t bring it. Wanted time to stop moving forward,” said Alexander, blinking and closing his eyes.

“Tania? You’re not sleeping?”

“No. My eyes are closed. I’m very relaxed.”

“Tania, will you tell me the truth if I ask for it?”

“Of course.” She smiled. Her eyes were still closed.

“Have you ever touched a man before? Touched a man.”

Tatiana opened her eyes and laughed quietly. “Shura, what are you talking about? Besides my brother when we were younger, I’ve never even seen a man before.”

Tatiana was nestled in his arms, her fingers touching his chin, his neck, his Adam’s apple. She pressed her index finger to the vividly pulsing artery near his throat. She moved up a little and kissed the artery and then left her mouth on it, feeling it beat against her lips. Why is he so endearing? she thought. And why does he smell so good?

“What about those hordes of young beasts you told me about, chasing you in Luga? None of them?”

“None of them what?”

“Did you touch any of them?” asked Alexander.

She shook her head. “Shura, why are you so funny? No.”

“Maybe through clothes?”

“What?” She didn’t take her mouth away from his neck. “Of course not.” She paused. “What are you trying to get out of me?”

“What kind of things you got up to before me.”

Teasingly, Tatiana said, “Was there life before Alexander?”

“You tell me.”

“All right, what else do you want to know?”

“Who has seen your naked body? Other than your family. Other than when you were seven, doing your naked cartwheels.”

Is this what he wanted? The complete truth? She had been so afraid to tell him. Would he want to hear it? “Shura, the first time any man saw me even partly naked was you in Luga.”

“Is that true?” He moved away a little to see her eyes.

She nodded, returning to rubbing her mouth against his neck. “It’s true.”

“Has anyone touched you?”

“Touched me?”

“Felt your breasts, felt—” His fingers searched for her.

“Shura, please. Of course not.”

Through his artery she felt his heart quicken its beat into her mouth. Tatiana smiled. She would tell it all to him right now, if that’s what he wanted from her. “Do you remember the woods in Luga?”

“How can I forget?” he said huskily. “It was the sweetest kiss of my life.”

Her lips in his neck, Tatiana whispered, “Alexander… it was the first kiss of mine.”

He shook his head and then turned on his side, peering into her face in skeptical emotional disbelief, as if what she had been giving him were less than the total truth. Tatiana turned on her side to him. “What?” she asked, smiling. “You’re embarrassing me. What now?”

“Don’t tell me that—”

“All right, I won’t tell you.”

“Will you tell me, please?”

“I told you.”

His stupefied eyes unblinking, Alexander said shallowly, “When I kissed you in Luga…”

“Yes?”

“Tell me.”

“Shura…” She pressed her body flush against his. “What do you want? You want the truth from me or something else?”

“I don’t believe you.” He shook his head. “I just don’t believe you.”

“All right,” Tatiana said, lying on her back and putting her hands under her head.

Alexander bent over her. “I think you’re just telling me that because you think it’s what I want to hear,” he said, running his fingers over her breasts and stomach. His hands on her were unremitting. They never stopped moving.

“Is it what you want to hear?”

Alexander didn’t reply at first. “I don’t know. No. Yes, God help me,” he said with difficulty. “But I want the truth more.”

Tatiana patted him cheerfully on the back. “You have the truth.” And smiled. “In my whole life I have never been touched by anyone but you.”

But Alexander wasn’t smiling. His bronze eyes melting right in front of her, he asked haltingly, “How can that be?”

“I don’t know how it can be,” she said. “It just is.”

“What did you do, walk straight from your mother’s womb into my arms?”

Tatiana laughed. “Very nearly.” She gazed into his face. “Alexander, I love you,” she said. “Do you understand? I never wanted to kiss anyone before you. I wanted you to kiss me so much in Luga I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to tell you. I stayed up half the night trying to figure out a way to get you to kiss me. Finally in the woods, I wasn’t going to give up. If I can’t get my Alexander to kiss me in the woods, I thought, I have no hope of ever being kissed by anyone.” Her hands were on him.

His face was over hers. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered intensely. “You need to stop right now. What are you doing to me?”

“What are you doing to me?” Her fingertips pressed into his back.

When Alexander made love to her, his lips did not leave hers, and in his impassioned climax, which she barely heard through her shattering own, Tatiana was almost sure he groaned as if he were stopping himself from crying. He whispered into her mouth, “I just don’t know how I’m going to survive you, Tatiana.”

“Honey,” Alexander murmured, his body over her, as she lay underneath him. “Open your eyes. Are you all right?”

Tatiana didn’t speak. She was listening to the loving cadence of his voice.

“Tania…” he whispered, his shimmering fingers circling her face, her throat, the top of her chest. “You have newborn skin,” he said quietly. “Do you know that?”

“Well, no,” she murmured.

“You have newborn skin and the sweetest breath, and your hair is silk upon your head.” Kneeling over her, Alexander tenderly sucked her nipple. “You are divine through and through.”

Listening, comforted, she held his head in her hands. He stopped talking and lifted his face to her. There were tears in his eyes.

“Please forgive me, Tatiana,” said Alexander, “for hurting your perfect heart with my cold and indifferent face. My own heart was always overflowing with you, and it was never indifferent. You didn’t deserve any of what you’ve been given, of what you’ve had to bear. None of it. Not from your sister, not from Leningrad, and certainly not from me. You don’t even know what it took me not to look at you one last time before I closed the tarpaulin on that truck. I knew that if I did, it would all be over. I would not have been able to hide my face from you or from Dasha. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my promise to you for your sister. It wasn’t that I didn’t look at you. I couldn’t look at you. I gave you so much when we were alone. I hoped it would be enough to carry you forward.”

“It was, Shura,” said Tatiana, with tears in her own eyes. “I’m here. And it will be enough in the future.” She pressed his head to her chest. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you. But now my heart is light.”

Alexander kissed her between her breasts.

“You have fixed me.” And Tatiana smiled.

Murmuring and whispering, Tatiana lay happily under Alexander, having been once again loved and relieved, and relieved… “Oh, and I thought I loved you before.”

His lips pressed into her temple. “This does add a whole new dimension, doesn’t it?” His hands did not leave her body. Nothing of him left her body. He was holding her from underneath, still moving inside her.

Turning her face up to him, a smile coming to her lips, a smile of youth and ecstasy, Tatiana said, “Alexander, you are my first love. Did you know that?”

He squeezed her bottom, pressed himself into her, licked the salt off her face, and nodded. “That I know.”