The Empress' Grand Master of the Hunt always catches his prey. As winter returns to St Petersburg, wolves prowl the streets - as does Count Kuritsa, who has his eye on seducing a shy yet alluring new arrival at court...
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As winter progressed, only two things occupied the Count's thoughts; the lone wolf, and Natasha. And while he continued to follow his old foe through the streets of Petersburg by daylight, when night fell he came in from the snow and sought Natasha out in the warmth; every evening taking a small, cautious step closer to her. They danced at the Imperial Ball, shared a box at the opera, and he spent several nights teaching her how to play cards.
At Christmas – to her surprise and excitement – he gave her a diamond collar.
They were sat alone in the back of his sleigh when he pulled it from the pocket of his coat. Her eyes lit up from the inside, like the bright windows of the cathedral before a service. "...I've never worn diamonds before," she told him, reaching out to touch the sparkling chain dangling from his fingertips. She tapped it with the tip of her finger and watched as it swung, curling and dancing like a fish on a hook.
"And now you shall," he replied, lifting the collar over her head and fastening the blue, satin ribbon in a bow at the nape of her neck.
She turned to face him, holding her head high. "...Well?" she asked him, grinning.
"...You wear them well," he told her with a smirk, deciding that he'd quite enjoy seeing her in the diamonds and nothing else. "When I catch that wolf, you'll have a pair of earrings to match," he promised.
Natasha narrowed her blue eyes. "...I think you're selling the pelt before you've killed the wolf," she warned him.
He stretched his arm over the back of the sleigh and around her, enveloping her in the snow-flecked fur of his bear-skin coat. "I'll kill it soon enough," he told her confidently. "...But I won't sell it. Not this one."
"Why not?" she asked him.
"This one will warm my bed," he explained, "to serve as a nightly reminder of my triumph."
The Count reached up and cupped her neck, brushing his thumb across the collar of diamonds gleaming in the dark. He admired them silently for a moment, then kissed her. Not the chaste cheek kisses of early winter, nor the tender embraces enjoyed at the foot of the stairs at the end of an evening, it was a kiss of savage intent; hungry, impulsive, violent even – smothering, tearing flesh with teeth and groaning at the pleasure of it. And while she might have hesitated before, she'd grown used to the feeling of his lips on hers and his hand heavy on her body. She'd come to expect it and to even hope for it, in much the same way that everyone had come to expect to wake up and see a blanket of fresh snow on the ground each morning.
Bolstered, the Count reached down and grabbed a fist-full of her skirt. He raised the petticoats onto her lap, exposing her thighs to the cold, night air.
She baulked a little when his hand moved upwards, along her stockings and over her satin garters. And the pad of his thumb traced the warm, wet apex of her thighs in much the same way that it had grazed over the diamonds around her neck, she gasped and pulled back. Her thighs clamped around his hand like a snare snapping shut.
«
As the old year changed into the new one, Count Kuritsa felt he was growing ever closer to killing the lone wolf, and bedding Natasha. While the scraps of goose and pork from Christmas he'd left in the courtyard outside his palace had attracted a couple of smaller wolves (whom the Count had shot and killed from his bedroom window), the lone wolf, he found, could not be baited. And while the tracks could be found pacing near the gate, they could never be enticed to come inside. Instead, they'd tramp off in search of other prey, which quite often turned out to be a waif or a wanderer. Fresh corpses – ripped apart like cheap fabric – along with the bright red brush strokes in the snow angered the Empress, who complained that her Grand Master of the Hunt had fallen short and was perhaps not as skilled as she'd been made to believe.
As the festival of Maslenitsa approached, the nights grew a little shorter and the snow began to thin, and the Count became impatient. He realised his chances of finding and killing the wolf were fading. Soon daylight would reign and the snow would melt and he was sure that the wolf would disappear once again. He became frustrated, lashing out at his hounds and snapping at his servants.
At the last masquerade of winter, Natasha comforted him. She was more beautiful that night than any other, he noted. In full bloom, she was warm and lively, and danced all night until she was out of breath and her hair had fallen from its pins. At the end of the evening when he offered to take her back to his palace, he was surprised when she agreed.
Behind the closed doors of his bed chamber and in the dark, she stepped out of her gown like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Dressed only in her stockings and diamonds, the Count was pleased with what he saw.
When she offered him her hands – finally divested of the gloves she always wore – he took them and turned them over; pressing a kiss to the blue veins along her wrist. For the first time, he noticed a deep scar entrenched along the palm of her hand. Angry and red.
"...Is this why you always wear gloves?" he asked as he pulled her arm over his shoulder and brought her body against his.
"...An accident. I touched something I shouldn't have when I was a child. I didn't know it was so dangerous," she told him with a shrug as she tilted her head upwards and seized his lips.
Once in bed she surprised him with her ardour. The timid girl of early winter was gone; replaced by a woman more beast than bride. She canted on top of him until she came, then pressed her body limply against his.
"...Did you ever catch your wolf?" she asked him, pressing her hands against his chest.
He grunted, angry once again. "Not yet," he told her, brushing the hair from her frosty blue eyes and running his hand down her flank.
"Perhaps it's hunting you, instead," she suggested, sitting astride him.
The Count chuckled beneath her, loud and deep.
"...Watching you," she went on, looking down at him as she stroked a hand across her diamond collar and between her breasts. "...Teasing you. Waiting for the right moment to finally strike."
Count Kuritsa frowned at her as she unwittingly rubbed salt in his sores, baited him like the bears he hunted. "It's a game," he said, grabbing her hips. "And I never lose."
Natasha smirked at him, baring her teeth. "...Neither do I," she whispered.
The Count gazed up at her in horror as she arched her spine and her pale skin sprouted a coat of brown and grey fur. Her short nose grew into a snarling snout and her hands shrunk into paws. When the transformation was complete, she pounced, digging her claws into his chest and flicking her tail like smoke swirling from a cigar. All that was left of Natasha was the icy flash in her blue eyes, and the diamond collar around her neck.
The Count screamed as she attacked, tearing him open with her teeth and feasting on his heart.
When it was done, she left the city and returned to the forest with blood on her lips and diamonds around her neck.
