He takes his hand away from me and the spell is broken. I clear my throat, and lurch past him into the sunshine. My clit is throbbing. Oh God, why couldn’t he be unattractive?
Alex comes to walk by my side, and I hope he puts my flushed cheeks down to the fresh air and nerves. That would be a lot better than him knowing it’s because I’m such a little slut. A barn filled with sweet smelling hay. Alex and I naked. Me riding him.
God Cindy, stop it. Now!
I push the image away, although doing it is harder than I expect it to be, and I turn to Alex determined to stop being so silly, as he starts to talk.
“Can you see the treehouse?” he asks, pointing up into a large tree in the distance.
I squint against the sun, spot it, and nod.
“That was mine growing up. I was a terrible tyrant. No one was allowed in there. Petra was only allowed once because she had broken her arm and she begged Babushka so I allowed her that one time.”
“Goodness what did you keep in there? Porn?” I ask with a laugh.
“Of course not,” he says scornfully. “I stored the shrunken heads of my enemies.”
I laugh again. I like this version of Alex. The sun beats down on our faces, making me feel carefree and relaxed. “Didn’t Anastasia want to go up?”
“She was too young to climb up so high. By the time she was old enough to even be allowed up there, I’d outgrown it.”
“How come? Did you discover girls or something?”
He throws me a sideways glance. “I found the bratva.”
My eyes widen. In my mind’s eye, I see a young Alex not yet tattooed, but already lean and tough. “So you really were in the Russian Mafia?”
“I was.”
“Why would you do something like that after all this?” I sweep my hand in an arc that encompassed the stunning landscape and the palace like house.”
He shrugs. “I craved something more. Something real. I felt as if I had been eating the frosting on a cake all my life. I wanted blood and guts. I was looking for meaning.”
“Did you find it?”
His eyes are on a distant point on the horizon. “Yes.”
I shade my eyes with my hand and stare at his hard profile. “But you gave it up?”
He swings his head to look at me. “Yes.”
“Why?” I ask curiously.
“I wanted frosting again,” he says, just as we reach the end of the house and turn around it. There is a long path leading to a large courtyard lined on three sides by stables.
“Wow,” I say. “There must be room for fifty horses here.”
“Fifty-seven to be precise, but not a bad guess,” Alex says quietly. “When she was a lot younger, my aunt used to fill the stables with her horses. There were so many beautiful horses from all over the world. Now she only has a few here. There’s Nikita who you’ll be riding, Milan who I’ll be riding, and a couple of others. I think she has six all told, unless she’s acquired any new additions since my last visit.”
A fair-headed lad appears out of one of the stables with a brush in his hand. He waves at Alex and shouts what I assume is a greeting. Alex replies in Russian, then turns to me. “I need a quick word with him, but he doesn’t speak English so please bear with him.”
“Sure, that’s fine,” I say, meaning it. It’s not like he’s Petra and Anastasia, using another language so he can berate me without me knowing about it. Alex talks for a bit longer, then the stable boy nods and disappears into one of the buildings.
“Boris knows these horses better than anyone, except maybe Babushka, and he agrees that Nikita will be perfect for you. She’s gentle and calm.”
I nod. Now I’m here, I can feel my nerves giving way to pure excitement. I actually can’t wait to get on a horse again. I want to remember what it felt like to be so high up. I want what I never got when I was a child. To actually ride and feel the wind in my hair as I flew over open ground.
While we wait for Boris to get the horses ready, Alex leads me up to one of the stables.
“Come meet Polnoch,” he says.
Inside, is a midnight black horse that stands at least twice my height. The horse is so majestic and so incredibly sleek and beautiful that I gasp when I see him.
“He’s my aunt’s prize stallion.”
“I can see why,” I say.
I step forward and Polnoch comes to meet me. I reach up and stroke his neck and he nuzzles his head against my shoulder with a little snort. I laugh with delight.
“You’re a beautiful, beautiful boy,” I tell him.