“Oh?”

“Tatia, I knew it even before you yourself knew it.” He grinned. “Before you finally found the word to describe to yourself what you were feeling, I knew it from the start. How else could you have been so shy and guileless?”

“Guileless?”

“Yes.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“Yes.” Alexander smiled. “Your inability to look at me in public, yet your total devotion to my face when we were together—like now,” he said, kissing her. “Your embarrassment at the smallest things—I couldn’t even keep my hand on you in the tram without you blushing… your fingers on me when I was telling you about America… your smile, your smile, Tania, when you ran to me from Kirov.” Alexander shook his head at the memory. “What a prison you have set up for me with your first love.”

She put her arms tighter around him and said teasingly, “Oh, so the first love part you believe, but the first kiss part you have a problem with? What kind of girl do you think I am?”

“The nicest girl,” he whispered.

“Are you ready for more?”

“Tania…” Alexander shook his head in smiling disbelief. “What’s gotten into you?”

She laughed, her hands caressing his stomach. “Shura… am I wanting too much?”

“No. But you are going to kill me.”

Tatiana craved something, but she just couldn’t find a way out of her timidity to ask him. Quietly, thoughtfully, she stroked his stomach and then cleared her throat. “Honey? Can I lie on top of you?”

“Of course.” Alexander smiled, opening his arms. “Come and lie on top of me.”

She lay down on him and softly, wetly kissed his lips. “Shura…” she whispered, “do you like that?”

“Mmm.”

Her lips were on his face, on his throat, on the top of his chest. She whispered, “You know what your skin feels like to me? The ice cream that I love. Creamy, smooth. Your whole body is the color of caramel, like my crème brûlée, but you’re not cold like ice cream, you’re warm.” She rubbed her lips back and forth against his chest.

“So—better than ice cream?”

“Yes.” She smiled, moving up to his lips. “I love you better than ice cream.” After kissing him deeply, she gently, gently sucked his tongue. “Do you like that?” she whispered.

He groaned his assent.

“Shura, darling…” she asked very shyly, “is there… anywhere else you might like me to do that?”

Pulling away, he gaped at her. Silent and tantalized, Tatiana watched his incredulous face.

“I think,” Alexander said slowly, “there is a place where I might like you to do that, yes.”

She smiled back, trying to hide her excitement. “You’ll just—you’ll just have to tell me what to do, all right?”

“All right.”

Tatiana kissed Alexander’s chest, listened to his heart, moved lower, lay her head on his rippled stomach. Moving lower still, she brushed her blonde hair against him and then rubbed her breasts against him, feeling him already swollen underneath her. She kissed the arrow line of his black hair leading down from his navel and then grazed her lips against him.

Kneeling between Alexander’s legs, Tatiana took hold of him with both hands. He was extraordinary. “And now…”

“Now put me in your mouth,” he said, watching her.

Her breath leaving her body, she whispered, “Whole?” and took what she could of him into her mouth.

“Move up and down on me.”

“Like this?”

There was a thickening pause. “Yes.”

“Or…”

“Yes, that’s good, too.”

Tatiana felt him hard against her fervent lips and rubbing fingers. When Alexander gripped her hair, she, stopping for a moment, looked into his face. “Oh, yes,” she whispered, hungrily putting him deeper inside her mouth and moaning.

“You’re doing so well, Tatia,” he whispered. “Keep going, and don’t stop.”

She stopped. He opened his eyes. Smiling, Tatiana said, “I want to hear you groan for me not to stop.”

Alexander sat up and kissed her wet mouth. “Please don’t stop.” Then he gently pushed her face down on him, falling back on the blanket.

Right before the end he pulled her head away and said, “Tania, I’m going to come.”

“So come,” Tatiana whispered. “Come in my mouth.”

Afterward, as she lay cradled in his chest, Alexander said, gazing at her in stark amazement, “I’ve decided that I like it.”

“Me, too,” she said softly.

For a long time she lay next to him, feeling his tender fingers feather her.

“Why did we spend two days fighting when we could have been doing this?”

Alexander ruffled her hair. “That wasn’t fighting, Tatiasha. That was foreplay.”

They kissed each other. “I’m sorry again,” Tatiana whispered.

“Me, too, again,” he whispered back.

Then Tatiana fell quiet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”

How does he know me so well? she thought. All I have to do is blink, and he knows I’m thinking, or fretting, or anxious. She took a breath. “Shura… have you loved many girls before?” she asked in a small voice.

“No, my angel face,” Alexander said passionately, caressing her. “I have not loved many girls before.”

Tears forming at the base of her throat, she asked, “Did you love Dasha?”

He was silent for a moment. “Tania, don’t do this.”

She was silent herself.

“I don’t know what answer you want me to give you,” Alexander said. “I’ll give you whatever answer you want.”

“Give me only the truth.”

“No, I did not love Dasha,” Alexander said. “I cared for her. We had some good times.”

“How good?”

“All right,” he said.

“The truth.”

“Just all right,” he repeated. He tweaked her nipple. “Haven’t you figured out yet,” Alexander said, “that Dasha was not my type?”

“What will you say about me to your next girl?”

He grinned. “I’ll say that you had perfect breasts.”

“Stop it.”

“That you had young, perky, incredible breasts with the biggest, most sensitive cherry nipples…” he said, climbing on top of her and holding up her legs high against his arms. “And lips for the gods, and eyes for kings. I will say,” Alexander whispered hotly, pushing himself inside her and groaning, “that you felt like nothing else on this earth.”

“What time is it, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he replied sleepily. “Toward evening.”

“I don’t want to go back to them.”

“Who’s going back?” said Alexander. “We’re not moving from here.” He paused. “Ever.”

“We’re not?”

“Try to leave.”

Before night set, they crept out of the tent, and Tatiana sat on a blanket with Alexander’s uniform tunic around her shoulders while he built a fire with the twigs and dry branches she had found earlier. The fire was a raging blaze in five minutes.

“You build a good fire, Shura,” Tatiana said quietly.

“Thank you.” He pulled out two cans of tushonka, some dry bread and water.

“Look what else I’ve got.” In a piece of aluminum foil he had a few squares of chocolate.

“Wow,” Tatiana mouthed, staring at him in wonder, not even looking at the chocolate.

Desolate Waves

TATIANA went back to their house, lay down on their bed, and did not get up.

During her semiconscious sleep Tatiana kept hearing the four old women in the room. They were talking quietly while fixing her blankets, adjusting the pillows under her head, stroking her hair.

Dusia said, “She needs to trust in the Lord. He will get her out of this.”

Naira said, “I told her it wasn’t a good idea to fall in love with a soldier. All they do is break your heart.”