ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories)

by Hawke, Jessa

  Of course I knew.

  A terse stalemate had occurred between Mama and I after the first month. We never spoke of it, but it was still there. It was in the fish oil she left standing near my bed with a spoon, in the waistbands she let out of my skirts in preparation. It was in the whispered phone calls to Baba Glasha and in the ponchik she was handing me now.

  I sat down at the table and transferred the fried ball of dough from one hand to the other, licking sugar crystals off my fingertips. Something wrenches in my stomach; something is not right. I stand, waiting for it to pass, but the next hit takes the breath right out of me and I gasp out loud. There is a pain low in my belly, and I drop to the floor, clutching my stomach for dear life. My Mama comes in with napkins in her hands and sees me on the floor; as she rushes to my side, the napkins fly up into the air and scatter like so many paper birds taking flight at the first sign of trouble.

  I hear somebody moaning, and it takes me several blurred minutes to realize that it is me, that I am lying on the floor in my Mama’s arms, that she has grabbed our phone and stretched the cord out tight, her frantic voice calling for help and saying our address. It is several blurred minutes until I realize that her hands are stained with my blood and that there will not be a Baba Glasha for me. Instead of the relief I should feel—finally, a solution to the problem—all I feel is an acute sense of fear that is almost stronger than the pain where the baby has been growing, because I had already settled myself into this path, and what comes next is more terrifying than I can imagine.

  Krim, Odessa, 1967

  Ah, Krim, Krim, pearl of the sea! Krim, with its wide-sweeping landscapes of craggy mountainous rock and waters of gut-wrenching beauty. The beach peppered with the multicolored array of suits and umbrellas, lovely tanned women in wide-brimmed hats and sunburnt men with hair on their chests.

  How strange to think about the person that I was in this glorious time. A young, gently-bred woman from an intelligentsia family. My mother, bless her heart, despite her sad story, had an education in Russian language and literature, and her love of our language passed itself on to me. I was well on my way on completing my asperantura, my graduate studies, in Russian folklore and popular culture, and I had found myself on a reporting internship in Ukraine’s most famed destination—a beautiful little spot that had clear beaches, fun for families and the singles alike. Young girls would save up money at their secretarial jobs for months and then beg off from work for a precious two weeks, just to pack their bags and go dikarem, or without actual hotels to come to. These girls would either find a hostel to stay in once they arrived, preferably one not too far from the beach, and get as nut-brown as the summer days would allow them. Wearing their white high heels and fresh flower-sprigged dresses, they would sip juice and kvass in the cafes by the seashore, hoping to meet some eligible man.

  And the men. Well, it depends on your point of view, the idea of whether or not they were actually available. The engineers brought their families and sunned themselves on the beach, then went back to the rooms they rented from the locals while their wives cooked cabbag-y borscht on the tiny shared stovetops to save money. The children might get ice cream in delicate little wafer cups and run around for hours, sticky and stuffed with sugar. For these, it was an innocent time, perhaps some of the happiest days of their lives. There was a different side to these vacations for others.

  There were the gigolos, the pretty boys who preyed on older women in their thirties who would believe any lovely words that were said to them. There were the summer flings and the graduate students who bunked out in camps together, keeping everything rated PG, as the American system goes, during the daytime, and then kissed each other by the flickering light of the campfires they built. But perhaps most dangerous and understated of all was the system that was in place for the authorities.

  To describe the situation is not so easy; it is far easier to live it. It was a time of great connections for the USSR, a time when still, the West was regaled as the high and mighty, grand poo-bah of the world, while our own shops went unstocked. It was not like before, certainly, where there were lines for bread and ration cards, or the time of my mother, when if the store downstairs suddenly had a shipment of salami, everyone would line up to get it, regardless of the quality or brand. But it was a time when imported goods—clothing, canned food, delicacies—were hard to lay your hands on. In almost all circles, women who wore brand-name clothing or served canned sardines were the ones dating powerful men. Some of these men simply had connections overseas—an uncle who had started his own business in the states and could afford to send mascara that actually came out of the tube wet, or Revlon blush that actually stained pale, weather-worn cheeks a ruddier hue.

  Could it be that some of these girls earned enough to make their own purchases from the underground market that was going on at the time from people’s homes? Certainly. But you had to know who to go to, and often, their prices were outrageous. So what was the other source?

  My Mama never had too high an opinion of these. These were the girls who got involved with partiinuiye men, those men in white linen suits with shaved—or not—heads who had an in with the government. More often than not, they were involved with some policing work and were informants for government officials, for which they received hefty salaries and lived the life of luxury. Now, for posterity’s sake, these men were not bachelors; that was simply not the country we lived in. You could still get kicked out of medical school, for example, if you got a girl pregnant and never married her. That’s the way that it was—a community jury would be gathered and you would be sentenced or shamed into doing the “right thing.” These wives were homey, powerful women who enjoyed the highlights of their husband’s careers to the fullest extent. These men knew where to get the best fur coats and made sure to present them to their wives on their birthdays or when they were in the dog house, for example.

  These men enjoyed the freedom of travel in a way that ordinary citizens never could. They saw the length and breadth of the great united nation and stayed at the best hotels, ordering huge meals in the restaurants that ordinary families could never afford. Everyone seemed to know them, and tables were reserved under their names, where nobody else could be seated. And of course, there were the girls.

  More often than not, they knew what they were doing, but once in a while, they were young and innocent. Sometimes, they came equipped with their short dresses and stacked heels, rooming together until one of them or both were noticed by one of these men, and they would become their “girls” for the duration of the komanderovka, or working vacation. This meant good food in the highest quality restaurants, great dancing and flowers, little gifts of jewelry and trinkets—these men knew how to woo. If it had been any other situation, and sometimes it was, it might have been a little sickening and sad, but usually, both parties were cognizant of the demands of the situation. I know because of what happened to me.

  I was the kind of girl who always believed in great romance. Maybe it was the books I read, full of shining knights and brave girl soldiers who saved their men, friends who traveled the seven seas to gain rare flowers for their dying friends, mothers whose bones talked from beyond the grave. And so I never understood the hardened practicality of the women who went with the partiinuyi men, never could make peace with the exchange portion of it, even as an adult woman. I lived by the ideals of the time, and we were, if nothing else, an idealistic country that breathed bitterness even as it lived right. Nobody dared say a word about these girls to their faces, they cooed enviously over their designer jeans and silk blouses, but behind their backs, they whispered the worst.

  Whore.

  Prodazhnaya shluha, sellout slut.

  Even as the eyes of the speakers filled with cartoon-like dollar signs as they assessed the ruby red lipstick or brand new T.V. sets that they themselves had to save up for years to get.

  When I first arrived on the cape, I looked at the huge arrivals board at the bus
station where the locals, hostels, and hotels renting out rooms for the summer post their advertisements, most of them handwritten, some typed up. As I scanned the board, another young woman came up beside me and copied my motions almost exactly. We turned to each other and laughed.

  The room that we rented was one of the best, and we could afford it because we pooled together our collective resources. The first few days were spent sunning ourselves brown at the beach, but then I had to get back to work and she started disappearing for hours, always coming back around midnight, sneaking past the downstairs security because they locked down the hotel at eleven at night. Who she bribed and with what, I will never know, but I do know that one of those days, as I was penning the preliminary stages of my cultural interviews, Rita—for that was her name—came up to me and asked me to come on this date with her.

  They were fantastic guys, she told me, sweet and nice, and willing to meet us at the local discotech. I was not put on my guard because Rita was a good girl, so although I had my doubts about meeting up with some random men I had never met before, I trusted her judgment and said that I would join her. Granted, she had to cajole me for the better part of two hours.

  My first sign should have been how Rita looked when she came out of the bathroom dressed to go to the disco. She was tarted up and in a blood-red dress that was tight around her bust and rear. Me, I was attired in the pale pink dress my Mama had sewed for me with her own two hands, but Rita’s was something imported. Still, I took the lipstick she gave me and pressed it against my own two lips.

  We laughed all night. The two guys were just fine; mine was an engineer and Rita’s would not disclose the nature of his job. They dined and wined us, or rather they would have if I drank. At some point, Rita tried to press a glass upon me, but I firmly rebuffed her, which drew some odd looks from the two men. Apparently, they had never met a girl who did not drink, and it threw them off. When we danced to the live music at the restaurant, my engineer grabbed my hand and my waist with an easy familiarity that would have put me on my guard had I not been distracted by the fact that I was me, and I had never been inside such a fancy place before. Mama and I, we did not go much for cafes, and I had never gone with guys before. No respectable girl did, unless you had known him since grade school. It was just that Rita seemed so comfortable, laughing in her guy’s ear, blushing when he whispered something to her, that I trusted the situation. Can I say that I liked how he pressed his palm into the small of my back? I can say that I stopped him immediately and put his hand between my shoulder blades, as is appropriate in a public place. He got this bemused grin on his face and told me he liked a good girl, which rang true, but with a kind of poisoned sincerity.

  Needless to say, I was glad to shake them off by the end of the night, although I cannot say the same about Rita. She clung to her guy’s arm, stumbling a little as we neared our hotel; it was only then that I realized she was tipsy. I peeled her off his arm and firmly rebuffed the attempts of the men to enter into our room. At that point, I was more than a bit put off by their actions; what manner of men try to enter a girl’s room at night? The night watchman was already giving us a look that said it all; good girls do not invite callers up to their room at night, and that was fine in my book.

  We slept peacefully that night, although conversations with Rita were stilted for the next day. It turns out that she was hoping to snare herself her guy for a permanent situation because she wanted an apartment in the city and would not be able to get one on her own salary. She called me a little girl and an incredible prude, because all I had to do was be friendly to the guys. I told her I had been friendly and it had been misinterpreted as a willingness for something more. At seven that evening, she dolled herself up and went out for the night.

  The night crickets were chirping their merry little song and I had been sound asleep when suddenly, I shot up straight in bed. What woke me, I will never know, because not a sound was made until I was wide awake. All I know is that my heart nearly stopped when I saw a figure sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me sleep. It was the engineer from the night before.

  “Privet,” he said to me, even as Rita snored in the bed beside mine. “Rita gave me and Vasik the key to your room last night. Want to have some fun?”

  I screamed. I screamed so loud and so hard that not only did Rita awaken, but the night watchman came running. I don’t know what the engineer gave him to hush up the story, because you can imagine the conclusions everyone came to when they heard my shouts, but it was never spoken of again. As soon as the watchman saw who my night visitor was, he clammed up; that is when I knew who he was, and what kind of girl Rita was. Of course he got a key to our room, and of course, a night visit was to be expected. As the engineer left, throwing me a very confused look—why wouldn’t he, most girls would have leaped at this chance—I felt a sickness settle in the pit of my stomach.

  The next morning, I bought a sleeping bag with the bulk of my money and went to join the other folklore-collecting students in the tent community outside. The next time I saw Rita, she was hanging on the arm of another high-ranking guy, this one with a paunch and a bald spot, grasping his arm, a gold bracelet glittering on her arm.

  * * *

  The Russian man is a unique man because he is always a man’s man. Ever since the second World War, there has been such a dearth of men in the country that snaring a husband has become the top priority of every woman from the age of eighteen and on. Romance has been replaced by practicality—if he has a job and drinks only with his buddies after work hours, he is already quite the catch. Education is all well and good, but nice kotleti and blini are what keep the man coming back after his morning cigarette and stretch.

  But it is more than that, it always is. There’s this look in a Russian guy’s eyes when he even glances at you, that makes you feel lucky that he even has his eye on you. It is like he can see through your clothes into your woman’s heart, into the part of you that beats wild against the goodness, and that it appeals to him in the most primitive way there is.

  I hate the way those looks make me feel. When I see a good-looking guy on the bus and he knows he’s good-looking, and he gives me one of those glances, the appraising ones, it makes me feel dirty inside because I know that I like it. I have tamped down on those feelings for so many years that they have almost become a non-issue. Almost.

  The worst of the glances come from the partinuyi men, the ones who can buy any woman they want. I conduct my research, observe the girls that go with them and vow that I will stick to my roots, my upbringing, and do my mother proud. She calls me once a day to ask how I am doing, and I let her know that I am fine, and that I am being good. I vow that I would never fall for any of these summer flings, because I am not that type of girl, and she laughs gently and tells me good, good, but she would not judge me if I cut loose and enjoy myself a tiny bit. It turns out that the Lord has a funny sense of humor because that is when I saw him, this golden bronze god on the beach.

  Arkadii was a handsome son of a bitch. He had these huge, prominent ears, ice-blue eyes, and a soccer player’s build. Every part of him was lean muscle, and his face was prickly with a permanent five o’clock shadow. He was more discrete than the rest; I saw him with a woman only once, and it was the strangest thing. Not that he was with a girl, but how I felt when I saw him lean over her behind the hotel, her starry little eyes looking up at him with as if she wanted him to swallow her whole. Of course, she probably wanted the brooch he would probably leave on her dresser after the week was done, as was the due, something she could don and tell her girlfriends back in the neighborhood her boyfriend had gotten her in these times when nothing could be had from overseas. When I saw him lean in, I had to walk away, even though my curiousity was burning and I wanted to see what Arkadii in action was like. A twig snapped beneath my foot and the couple looked up. The girl looked outraged at the interruption, but also smug, as if I had interrupted something that she knew I wanted to be a part o
f very badly. I hated her because, as I realized not long after, she was right. Arkadii’s face wore a different expression, however. Our eyes met and held for a beat longer than was appropriate for the situation, and then, I collected myself, heart thudding secretly.

  “Carry on, lady and gentleman,” I cracked, and then coolly turned on my heel, walked a few steps out of their sight and fled.

  I was compiling my notes on the white sands of the beach the next day when he came up to me, sat down beside me on the towel, droplets of water clinging to his skin like diamonds. I lost my breath for a moment.

  “So, do you often spy on random men who catch your eye?” he asked me without even turning to look me in the eye.

  “Who said anybody caught my eye? You were engaging in an act of public indecency—”

  “And you wanted to watch.”

  “How dare you—”

  “Come experience it instead. Tonight. I will pick you up at eight.”

  I said nothing. I was flummoxed. I was blushing. I was having a coronary attack right there, over my notes about regional toasts and white grains of sand. I followed the lean line of his back with my eyes, felt my flush deepen as my gaze snared on the navy of his swimming trunks. A thousand doubts ran through my mind, a thousand reasons to say no, but I was left only with one thought and one thought alone.

  “What do you do?” I asked him. He finally turned around to face me, those baby blues the color of the sky after the clouds have cleared.

  “I own a store,” he said, and offered no other information.

  I suppose I should have known then, realized it and saved myself a world of pain afterwards. But being with Arkadii was intoxicating, more intoxicating that this nation’s love affair with alcohol, like the movies, like the stories of sacrifice for love. I hardly recognized myself. Who was this girl on this handsome, lean man’s arm? Everywhere we went, people knew who he was. The best tables were reserved for him; he danced with grace and pizazz. When he held me, it was nothing like the engineer I had danced with; nothing about it felt sleazy. In Arkadii’s arms, I felt like a woman, rather than Mama’s little girl. It had something to do with the honesty I sensed behind the jokey manner in which he presented himself. Maybe I was just searching for the vulnerability behind the charisma he oozed from every pore; maybe I took it as a sign that for the two weeks he wooed me, he never even looked at another woman. There was, as he put it, no other girl for him, and I believed it.