Red Sparrow

Without knowing why, perhaps to show them, perhaps to show herself, Dominika half closed her eyes and whispered, “Yes, honey… just like that… Oh, God,” and pushing the sound up from her belly: “UNNGGGHHH.” Shocked silence, and then the circle of girls roared their approval and applauded. Anya stared, flaxen-haired and wide-eyed and wordless, mindless of the general hilarity of the moment.

Anya of the meadow-flower-blue halo. She was struggling, aghast at the most salacious aspects of training, and clung to Dominika for courage and support. “You have to get used to it,” Dominika told her, but Anya cringed during the nightly films, holding Dominika’s hand tightly as the fuck circus raged on the screen in front of them. The little farm girl isn’t going to make it, Dominika thought. Her color is getting weaker, not stronger.

Then one night, after an impossibly depraved film that had her silently weeping, Anya came to Dominika’s room, eyes red and lips trembling, her cornflower syllables barely visible. She had come to her friend for solace, she was losing her mind. She had told them she was quitting, but they had said something to her—God only knew what—and she could not leave. Dominika pulled her by the hand behind the bathroom curtain. “You have to get through this,” she whispered, shaking Anya gently by the shoulders.

Anya sobbed and threw her arms around Dominika’s neck. She pressed her lips against Dominika’s mouth. The little idiot was trembling and Dominika did not pull away, did not reject her. They were on the floor of the little bathroom. Dominika cradled Anya in her arms, felt her shake. Anya turned her head up for another kiss, and Dominika almost refused, but then relented and kissed her again.

The kiss had an effect on Anya and she reached for Dominika’s hand, pulled it to her body, and slid it beneath her bathrobe onto her breast. Oh, for God’s sake, thought Dominika. She herself felt no passion, but rather sadness for the girl in her arms. Was this the bisexuality they had lectured to them about downstairs? Could they be observed behind the curtain? Was there audio in the room? Was this a serious offense?

Anya held her hand by the wrist and trailed it over her nipple, which swelled under Dominika’s fingertips. The bathrobe fell open and Anya pulled the captured hand lower, between her legs. Perversion? An act of kindness? Something else? Dominika’s unknown ancestral libertine—whoever she was—kept her going, an inexplicable out-of-body state where stopping now was only slightly less possible than going ahead. Dominika’s feather-light fingertips traced minute, perfect circles and Anya melted, her head turned in to Dominika, the line of her neck soft and vulnerable.

Sitting up against the bathroom tiles, Dominika felt Anya’s breath between her own legs and there was no reason now to stop. Her secret self told her to feel her body, and the sensation of Anya’s breathy exhalations radiated up her stomach. Dominika’s head dropped back against the tile and her arm gripped the side of the sink for support. She felt Prababushka’s tortoiseshell brush in her hand and pulled it down. Her great-grandmother’s hairbrush, her mother had brushed her own hair with it, it was her secret companion during the thunderstorms of her girlhood.

Dominika trailed the handle down Anya’s stomach, making the soft amber curve infinitely light, infinitely insistent. Anya held her breath and her eyes fluttered behind tight-shut eyes. Looking at Anya’s face, Dominika positioned the handle and flexed her wrist. Anya’s mouth opened partway, and her eyes showed a sliver of white, like the slack face of a corpse on a slab.

Anya stiffened and began shaking against the slow plunge and drag of tortoiseshell. She turned chin-wet to look up at Dominika and whispered, “Yes baby, just so, you’re cumming me,” and Dominika smiled and watched the little milkmaid thrash about while she put her own secret self back in the hurricane room inside her and closed the door.

After a few minutes, Anya sighed and turned her face up to be kissed again. Enough. “You have to go, quickly, now,” Dominika said. Red-faced, Anya gathered her bathrobe around her, looked at Dominika, and went silently out. Would there be bellowed accusations tomorrow morning? Was there anyone behind the mirror right now? Too tired to care, Dominika got into bed in the darkened room. The brush lay forgotten on the floor under the sink.

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