Red Sparrow

Dominika put her hand behind his head and pressed their lips together more tightly (No. 13, “Unambiguously signal sexual willingness”) and took a trembling breath (No. 4, “Build passionate response by evincing passion”). He pulled away and looked at her with wide eyes. She caressed his cheek and then, staring into his eyes, placed his hand on her breast. He could feel her heart beating and she pressed his hand more hotly against her (No. 55, “Display carnal abandon to authenticate physical arousal”). She shuddered. Delon was still staring, his hand motionless. “Nadia,” he whispered.

Eyes now closed, Dominika brushed her cheek against his and brought her mouth close to his ear (No. 23, “Provide aural prompts to spur desire”). “Simon, baise-moi,” she whispered, and they were up and staggering into the dim little bedroom (which was in truth illuminated brighter than Moscow’s Dynamo soccer stadium but with invisible infrared light), and Dominika stepped out of her skirt, shrugged off her blouse, but kept her low-cut brassiere in place (No. 27, “Employ incongruity of nudity and vestments to whiplash the senses”), and watched Delon hopping ridiculously out of his trousers while she trailed her hands down her thighs (No. 51, “Auto-stimulate to generate pheromones”).

He was like a mating turtledove in bed, fluttering, feathery, weightless as he lay on her body. He nuzzled gently between her breasts; she hardly felt him, but she arched her back, threw out her legs (No. 49, “Generate dynamic tension in the extremities to hasten nerve response”) and focused for an instant on the aperture in the light fixture on the ceiling, but his head was lifting from between her breasts to look at her again, and she met his eyes and he sighed and fluttered more energetically on top of her. Dominika closed her eyes (No. 46, “Block distractions which derail responsiveness”) and called his name again and again and felt a building tremor run through his body, and she helped him (No. 9, “Develop the pubococcygeus muscle”), and he whimpered, “Nadia, je t’aime.”

She ran her fingers along his neck and whispered, “Lyubov’ moja,” my love, and knew what was happening when the door to the bedroom exploded inward and the orange-tinted bulb (better contrast for the digital cameras) in the overhead fixture flooded the room with light and three men in suits crowded into the room. Their shirt collars were wet and their eyes shone like pig eyes in a truffle forest. They had been watching from next door, and the smells of their sweat and day-old shirts and week-old socks filled the room.

The minute the door opened, Dominika sat up in bed and clasped the terrified, shrinking Delon to her like a favorite doll and started screaming in Russian for them to get out. She knew Simyonov was blowing her careful recruitment to smithereens. He could not wait, he had to proceed according to his artless script. It was a blow against her. She was paying for her glib performances around the conference table, her disrespectful interruptions. She remembered trying to talk like one of the old boys: “This beet is almost cooked,” she had said. Well, the old boys were showing her who ran things.

They tore Delon from her, dragged him off the bed, and marched him naked to the living room. They pushed him on the couch and threw him his crumpled trousers. He looked up at the hulking men without comprehension. Dominika continued swearing at them from the bed as she gathered up a sheet to cover herself and get to her feet. She was nearly blind with rage and her body, throat, head felt tight, and her ears were filled with a rushing sound.

She was determined to drive them out of the room and retrieve the situation. Before she could stand, the third man grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her off the bed and into the living room. When Delon saw her being manhandled he made to rise, but the other two men pushed him back down. The man spun Dominika to face him and slapped her across the cheek. “Shalava, suka!” he spat, and threw her to the floor. Staged scenario or not, Dominika looked up at the bastard who had called her a slut and a whore, and measured the distance to his eyes.