Belok's Bride Read online

  The waiter took very good care of her allowing her to sample a variety of native dishes, including a kind of braised veal and some sort of lamb soup called testroyek. There was also white wine, a tart little number similar to a Rhine wine. Merritt enjoyed two full glasses, which was, for her, half a year’s consumption at least. Given the jet lag, she had very little sense of it being nighttime. The grandfather clock in the lobby told her it was after ten by the time she was done with her meal. She decided to stay up a while, if only to defy the nasty Colonel Ladislak with his injunction to get plenty of rest for morning.

  Merritt was a grown woman, a PhD, and no one was going to tell her what to do with her time or her body. If she wanted to go to the hotel bar, then that’s precisely what she would do.

  She had on a dress now, sleeveless, semi-formal black with matching heels. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and she was wearing the pearls her mother had left her. The black bra and panties were quite naughty for the conservative academic. She’d purchased them for the trip, having determined to take some chances and turn over a new leaf in a new country. The underwear made her feel wicked. The wine burned in her belly beneath the thin covering of the dress. Supposedly the world belonged to young, slim blondes like her, and as she walked through the glass door into the dimly lit establishment, Merritt decided to test the theory, giving a slight sway to her buttocks and hips.

  “Scotch and water,” she told the bartender.

  It was her father’s drink. The potion he took with his cigarettes in nightly doses to get him through until morning. Like a prescription. That and the women. Young and pliant, beautiful and willing to play the man’s games for a price.

  “You speak English?”

  Merritt woke from her reverie. There were two of them, Zuravians, in their early twenties, quite handsome. One was blonde with curly hair, the other dark haired like the boyfriend of the little Italian girl.

  “Yes. I’m an American. Traveling alone.”

  Merritt recognized the mistake immediately. She should have lied, told them she had a huge boyfriend or a jealous, three hundred pound bodybuilding husband nearby.

  “We will fix that. From now on, you are with us,” the second Zuravian said, setting his drink next to hers on the worn wooden surface of the bar, his close proximity making a mockery of her personal space.

  The dark haired one followed suit from the other side, making a sandwich of her slender body.

  “Nice pearls,” he offered huskily, reaching out to touch Merritt’s neck.

  She jolted at the contact, but before she could break it, she felt a rush of sense memory, enervating and arousing. She was back in the throne room, the terrible gag in her mouth, strapped round her head, watching as Belok slid his cock deeply, satisfyingly into the captured girl’s throat.

  “They aren’t real,” Merritt whispered, trance-like, angling her face towards the man, her chest thrust out subtly. This was the point she knew she should be rebuffing them before they began taking familiarities, and yet for some reason she was inviting them on.

  “Nice arse, too,” added the blonde man, clamping the cheeks hard enough to make her think of yet another dominated girl, the little Italian who’d been taught today to obey her boyfriend.

  Merritt began to breathe faster, her nipples peaking under the bra and dress.

  “You’re making me hard as a fucking rock,” the black haired man was turning her sideways, letting her feel his erection against her pelvis. It was dark in the bar, and there were few people about. She prayed no one would see what was happening.

  “Hey,” said the blonde sharply, having pushed his own inflated crotch into her freshly exposed backside. “We’re giving you compliments. Don’t you know to say thank you?”

  “T—thank you,” she mouthed even as the man began dry humping her, his mouth insolent on her neck, wet and suckling

  “We’re going to take you somewhere, so you can show us a good time,” the dark haired man told her, his thumb flicking over her engorged nipples through the dress.

  “Please don’t, I’m a virgin,” she said weakly, her objections carrying little conviction.

  The blonde snorted. “All American girls are sluts. You spread for men all the time."

  "Maybe we won’t even take you to a room,” the dark haired one pushed harder against her chest. “Maybe we’ll fuck you in the alley behind the hotel.”

  The blonde man was sliding his hands up the back of her legs under her dress. Merritt feared they might fuck her right here at the bar.

  “Please, we can go to my room. It’s more…comfortable up there,” she yielded.

  The dark haired one pulled up the hem of her dress clear to the waistband of her panties. When she tried to fix it with her hands, he forced them down to her side. “We call the shots now. From here on in, you do what we tell you. Got it?”

  Merritt thought of the Italian girl. Her sudden loss of liberty and the accompanying look of passion in her eyes, the ready response of her body as the boyfriend had taken charge of her, subjecting her to his discipline.

  “Yes,” she nodded, her underwear exposed front and rear both.

  “Put your hands on my waist,” said the dark haired young man.

  She did so, giving him full access to her body. Anyone looking now, she realized with shame, would think she really was the worst kind of slut. But what about the bartender? Why had he disappeared when the two came in and why was no one trying to help her? Merritt felt a rush of panic as it occurred to her that these men might be part of the powerful mafia that had sprung up like mushrooms all over this country following the fall of the old, Soviet style police state.

  “Why don’t you have a husband or boyfriend?” the blonde wanted to know, running his hand over her silk panties, massaging her tingling buttocks. “You should belong to a man.”

  She pressed herself helplessly against him. “I’m afraid of men.”

  The dark haired one put his finger to Merritt’s lips for her to suck. “Well, now you have us. Do we scare you?”

  She opened for him, taking the digit between her teeth, caressing him. They are going to have me, she thought. These men are going to take my virginity, and I am going to let them have it.

  “Beg us to fuck you. Beg us to take you up to your room and screw the daylights out of you,” the blonde thrust his tongue in her ear.

  Merritt knew she must fight back or run away, straight to the ladies room or somewhere else they could never follow. But whether it was the fatigue or the odd effect of her first day in Zuravia, she found herself unable to do anything but surrender.

  “Yes,” she moaned from the back of her throat, the words surging from some long repressed place in her heart. “I do beg you…take me, please…up to my room…make a woman of me…”

  The blonde pushed aside the elastic of Merritt’s panties, snaking a finger between her buttock cheeks. “Tell us what a good little lay you’ll be. Tell us how you’ll perform like a little fuck toy.”

  She drew a ragged breath, her body rigid and at attention on his finger in her ass. “I —I’ll try. I’ll try to be…pleasing.”

  “A good lay and a hot little fuck toy,” he corrected, thrusting the finger up another inch.

  Merritt shivered, impaled on his finger. Her soul skewered, like the victims of Belok, lined in rows, their bodies pierced upon sharpened stakes, left in sun and rain to die.

  It was said that one of Belok’s favorite pastimes was to rape the wives of his enemies right under the noses of their suffering husbands. A woman would do anything, Merritt imagined, to spare her loved one pain. Did they climax for the Dark Prince? Did they suck like whores, further shaming their fallen houses?

  “I’ll…be…a good lay…your little fuck toy,” she breathed.

  I’m a professor, she wanted to scream, a scholar, and a virgin to boot. The protest dissolved in her throat; it was like she was still gagged with the horrid tube and could say nothing. Nor could she hear anything o
f what the men were saying now to her. The only thing in her head was the hellish laughter of Belok, his lips unmoving, the sound emanating directly from his mind in response to her current ordeal.

  This was not possible, of course. The prince was a mortal man, long dead, dissolved in the ashes of history. She’d only dreamed the encounter in his throne room, an amalgam of her father’s old superstitions, the bizarre practices and ideas of his spiritualist friends. And what she heard now, this was simply her own mind playing tricks.

  Prince Belok was long dead.

  “Hey,” the bartender grumbled. “Take the little whore outside. We’re a clean establishment here.”

  Merritt flushed all over. So that was it. The bartender thought her a hooker. The kind of girl who took money to be treated like this.

  The dark haired man smoothed her hair; his own finger snaked up inside the front of her panties into her wet sex. “Sorry, uncle,” he winked, using the Zuravian term of politeness for an elder. “We’ve gotten a bit carried away.”

  Both holes filled, she could do naught but lean against her tormentors, these young strangers who had announced themselves as the ones who would take from her what was most precious. What in Belok’s day was considered the sacredness of maidenhood.

  “Would you like to be fucked in a nice bed?” asked the dark haired one, running the tip of his glistening finger over her lips. “You think you deserve more than to spread your legs in a filthy alley on the ground like a ten zurav whore?”

  Merritt blanched at the amount he’d quoted. It was under five dollars.

  “I—I would like a bed,” she gasped, turning her head from the indignity of what he was trying to do to her.

  The dark haired man seized her face in his other hand, forcing it straight. “My finger has your whore juice all over it. You will clean it for me now, or you will lay for us in the filthy alley.”

  “Yes,” she gasped, opening her mouth to receive the taste of herself, striving desperately to make up for the emptiness she now felt in her sex.

  The blonde man withdrew his finger from her ass, leaving her doubly empty and alone. “I say we screw her on the motorway, “ he switched to Zuravian. “Just rip her clothes off and fuck the shit out of her. Let her walk back here naked, so the whole city will know she is an American whore.”

  “Don’t talk that way, Timor. Have you forgotten the Mother of our city? Would you disgrace her that way?”

  The two men eyed each other. Merritt was aware that for many Zuravians, their capital was still a sacred place. A place named for and bearing the spirit of their one-time princess, Vistya, the wife of Belok. His only love.

  The blonde spit on the floor of the nearly empty bar. “You think I am a disgrace? What about the pimps who crawl the streets now like spiders peddling the flesh of our women? What about the American exploiters with their drugs and poisons? And the lackeys who sit in the halls of government, defiling the memory of our true socialist rulers? Wake up, Vonya and see the black dawn if you can stand it!”

  Vonya pulled down Merritt’s dress for her. She hadn’t realized until this point just how drunk the pair was.

  “Hush, Timor, we are looking for a piece of ass, not a one way ticket to prison.”

  Timor spat. “Bah! Democracy! Nothing but a joke! I want my cock satisfied in a capitalist hole. That is my vote. Take us to your room, American whore, so we can spread those healthy American legs.”

  He thrust her forward, punctuating the remark with a humiliating smack on her behind. I’m going to have sex, Merritt thought as she walked to the elevator. I’m going to be fucked by two strangers who are openly hostile and regard me as little more than a convenient lay. Had she left all her senses back home? Had she really gone off the deep end as Lena had warned? Or was it the aftereffects of her harrowing day, the strange encounter with the colonel, and the hallucination or dream or whatever it was that had been induced by holding the colonel’s coin?

  “Now we begin the fun,” grinned the curly haired Timor as soon as the elevator doors slid shut.

  “Why are you still standing? Get on your knees!” demanded the dark haired Vonya, his voice suddenly vicious.

  He slapped her across the face when she hesitated. Stung, hurt and shocked, the slender historian slipped down to the carpeted floor.

  Timor sneered, hitting the stop button. “Oops. I think we have an emergency.”

  The emergency was in Vonya’s pants. Gripping a handful of her hair, he made her unbuckle his belt and unzip the fly.

  “Be quick about it, slut, or we will give you a taste of Vonya’s belt,” warned Timor.

  Merritt tremored, the very thought of being subject to such abuse sending tingles up and down her soft body.

  “The slut wants it.” chuckled Vonya, noting the keen response. “She wants to be beaten.”

  “Upstairs,” Timor promised her, “you will get all you want…American whore.”

  Vonya pulled his cock from the cotton underwear. The smell of him nearly made her gag. She’d heard that some European men did not shower as often as Americans and, in this case, it certainly seemed to be true.

  “You like it, huh?” Vonya forced his cock over her face, across her lips and up and down her cheeks. “This makes you good and wet, no?”

  She looked at him pleadingly, the answer, the shame written on her face. Only once before had the virginal Merritt come this close to an exposed penis. It had been in college after a night out with one of her professors. The twenty-year old blonde beauty had ended up with her head on his lap in the front seat of his car, the better part of four Irish whiskies turning her belly to fire.

  If it hadn’t been for the sudden need to vomit, she’d have sucked the man off and likely given him her cunt as well. As it was, he’d ended up with a hellacious mess all over the interior of his imported roadster. Merritt had thought it funny afterwards. It was a good lesson, and she never put herself in such a position again although she did still masturbate many a night thinking of the handsome older man.

  Vonya was larger than her professor. He pushed his large cock deep into her mouth. Merritt thought she might throw up, but Timor was hovering over her, warning her of dire consequences if she didn’t take the penis properly like the whore and slut she obviously was.

  “You will swallow him! You will drink his manly Zuravian juice!” Timor thundered.

  Merritt felt her heart sink. According to Lena, a thrice-divorced art historian and vegetarian, a woman must never do such a thing if she wanted to maintain her self-respect.

  “If a guy knows you’ll take that from him, there’s no limit to what he’ll expect. He’ll run all over you, treat you like a possession,” she’d lectured time and again.

  The cock made Merritt’s jaws ache, like one of those very large lollipops you sometimes try as a kid on a dare. Only this was salty and seamy and very, very dirty. A living, pulsing thing in her mouth, a dragon that wanted to be in her, poking, prodding. Later, she told herself, trying to wrap her mind round the idea even as she wrapped her lips, this same organ will be between my legs.

  She felt a stab at the thought of it. It was pain and pleasure both. Anticipation, lust and fear. How would she ever stretch so far? What if she were too small? Would the men punish her with their belts?

  “Make her swallow. Show her you are the boss,” Timor coached.

  “Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to concentrate.” Vonya was breathing rapidly, pumping himself, hips thrusting in and out of her captive mouth. She must please this man. She must drink his semen, and then take the other one on as well. And after that, she would lead them to her room where they would do whatever they wanted to her on her bed.

  “Swallow him slut. Take it down your capitalistic, exploiting American hole or I will rip off all your clothes right here and make you go down the hall naked!” Timor growled.

  Naked, she thought. Like the girl being dragged before Belok, the proud, hopelessly naïve little beauty so in need of discip
line, so in need of learning her place before the master. The Dark Prince. A wave of lust overcame Merritt as she imagined for the first time that it might have been her serving the dread ruler. The Lord of Zuravia, the terror of the 14th century.

  For all her life, as long as she could remember, she’d thought of Belok. Studying the pictures and carvings, the deceptively angelic face, the noble brow and chin, the sheer force of the eyes that seemed to belong to some later century, her own even.

  And now she’d seen him in the flesh, or at least met her own fantasies face to face. A foolish little stab of jealousy penetrated Merritt’s mind as she thought of how he’d used the red haired English girl and not her. Was her own skin not soft enough, worthy to be whipped? Was she not worth taming and shaping as his complete and utter slave?

  “Leave the socialist bullshit alone, Timor, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to make a political statement. I want hot sex.”

  “Don’t be a sucker, Vonya. Everything is politics.”

  “Ah, fuck the whole thing,” he snorted.

  Merritt opened her eyes, the reverie breaking as Vonya pulled himself out of her proffered mouth. She looked to him, her expression a mix of relief, pain and a confused longing.

  “You see, you straight arrow republican,” Timor accused, “the little whore wants to swallow. Don’t you, American whore?”

  She couldn’t answer. She prayed they would not make her.

  “Bully for her and you both, you Soviet throwback! Now you see what I, Vonya, the decadent Westerner wants.” The man repositioned himself, emboldened no doubt by her complete passivity. “Hold still, bitch. I’m going to come all over your face.”

  “Bravo,” howled Timor slapping his knee. “That is just as good, maybe better.”

  Vonya's teeth were clenched. His hand moved slowly up and down, squeezing, the strokes powerful, designed to bring about the deepest milking of his passions. Merritt had no choice but to watch, beholding the monster that would soon erupt.