Prince Mikhail Melikov towered over his elegantly dressed host and hostess in the foyer of their winter dacha outside Manguzeya, in Siberia, as his sleigh was being brought around. He was leaning over them and holding the silk-gloved hand of the fur and ivory trading house magnate’s wife in his appreciably larger satin-clad one while he murmured how wonderful their All Hallows’ Eve ball had been and that, yes, he had enjoyed dancing with their daughter immensely. The hostess was lost to his charm--and to his handsome face and broad shoulders and slim waist. He was elegantly dressed in evening clothes with satin lapels and finishes and gave off the aura of a powerful, sensual man, whose well-developed muscles were barely contained by the confines of the formal attire.

If she weren’t trying to find a match for her daughter, the magnate’s wife would have been happy to have a sexual liaison with the prince herself. There had been rumors, although they were a bit muddled.

Some who knew him well likened him to a wolf--intelligent, handsomely and powerfully built, but with a dangerous, wild, loner, almost ravenous streak, in him that lent an incongruity to wearing the formal attire of Russian winter balls. In the realms of ambition, money, and power, however, he was seen to fit right in. Any family seeking what he had to offer--and there were many--held its daughters out to him; the ones that didn’t have such ambitions hid their daughters whenever he was nearby. Some hid their sons as well.

He could have told those that were peddling or hiding their daughters that they needn’t have bothered, although more than one family who thought their handsome son had run off on his own, were wrong. Being matched with the fur-trader’s daughter was not the reason he was here. He was here to exercise his All Hallows’ Eve privilege. Each year on this night as far back--perhaps centuries--as anyone could remember, one of the communities within Melikov’s princedom was obligated to provide him with a fourteen-year-old boy trained to be a squire to be dedicated henceforth to his service.

This had been Manguzeya’s turn to provide the squire, and Vasily Solagovy, the fur and ivory trade magnate, in order to expose the prince to his eligible daughter, Sophia, had volunteered such a boy for the prince’s service. Prince Mikhail was here for the Solagovy’s All Hallows’ Eve ball, solely to take delivery on his new squire.

“The boy is not of your own family?” the prince had asked after having been introduced to the lad and expressed his acceptance, happily so.

“No, not directly. Alexei is the son of my wife’s cousin. Everyone in the family died of the fever except Alexei, who was at school in Saint Petersburg. He had no one, so my wife and I took him in.”

“Excellent,” the prince had said, and then with Solagovy looked quizzically at him, he clarified. “Excellent that you good people gave the orphan a home and excellent that, from what I can see, you have nurtured him into a beautiful lad--and excellent that I will be able to give him a home and he will have no divided loyalties or homesickness for his parents.”

Solagovy, looking at Mikhail with both admiration and speculation and determined to use the occasion to advance his daughter’s case as a possible bride for the prince, asked yet again if perhaps the prince should not spend another night here considering the blizzard that was raging outside. He was only slightly reticent in doing this, having given in to the scheming of his wife and daughter to bring their campaign to a close to entice the prince into marriage by bringing the daughter and prince in close proximity at night under one roof. Their assigned bedchambers would be just a few steps down a deserted hallway from each other.

The prince had somewhat of a reputation for his nocturnal activity--quite a varied reputation actually--and every noble family in the region had taken notice of his physical beauty, his standing at court, and his large fortune. And most of the young women and even some of the young men dreamed of lying under him. Many young men had lain under him.

Citing pressing business at home, Prince Melikov politely demurred again. He gave a slight start as, with the opening of the front door to the swirling snow and howling wind outside, his sleigh driver and his new squire, Alexei, came into the foyer and the candles in the chandeliers overheard flamed up.

But then the host and hostess were returning to the ballroom and their other guests, and the sleigh driver was holding a massive mink coat open for the prince to slip into. The young squire, on his first outing and nearly overwhelmed at coming to grips with his duties, stood trembling, ready to open the door and then rush out to the sleigh to let the steps down and take his perch beside the driver. Alexei was a beautiful boy, diminutive for his age, with alabaster skin and dark curly hair framing a face with full lips; a shy smile; large, dark pupils; and thick, curly eyelashes. Although slight of build, his body was perfectly formed, as demanded by the physical fitness championing prince in squires pledged to him on All Hallows’ Eve. In fact, the squire was of much the same physical presence as all of the prince’s man servants, save the sleigh and carriage driver, who had been with the prince’s family for several decades and who saw and knew all--and did whatever the prince asked of him.

Prince Melikov gave the squire a piercing stare as he shrugged into the mink coat. He accorded Alexei a slight nod of the head, and, after a moment of trying to match his employer’s stare, the squire cast his eyes down in filial obedience and sexual submission. It was a momentary check in the levels of status and privilege of the nobleman and two servants in the foyer, but just a moment. At a signal from the sleigh driver, the squire threw open the door to almost be tossed back immediately by the howling wind and then thrust himself out into the night to reach the sleigh before the prince and driver did.

As the prince reached the sleigh, Alexei let down the steps. The prince paused there for a moment, gaining his balance and reaching for the handholds to help pull himself up into the sleigh against the current of the wind. The squire placed his hands on the prince’s leather boot momentarily to help his master steady himself. He shuddered at the feel of the leather. Rich material moved him. Satin possibly the most of all. The prince looked down and their eyes met. In the eyes of the squire was slight fear, but also a note of resignation. Once more the squire dipped his eyes in obedience to the master. In the prince’s eyes, slight amusement, more than a slight interest, and a touch of hunger.

Moments later, the sleigh was lumbering off into the blinding snow, almost immediately lost from sight from the entrance to the Solagovy family’s dacha by a swirling white cloud, and on its swift, but precarious journey across the fields to the prince’s winter hunting lodge.

From where he sat in the back of the sleigh, wrapped in his luxurious mink coat and contemplating the cigar and cognac awaiting him before his own roaring fire at the end of the journey--as well as, perhaps, a bit of dalliance during the journey--all that Prince Melikov could see outside the sleigh was the unforgiving world of white swirling snow and the blur of passing tree trunks. The moon was struggling to be seen through the cascading snow from above, but it provided no more than an eerie light giving a hint to the undulating hills the narrow track of the sleigh was shushing through. The moon was trying to valiantly cast light on the activities of the night, but it slipped behind clouds and failed in its own recognition of inevitable events unfolding by forces beyond its power.

Good, the prince thought. He much preferred the dark and the pleasures of the night.

Looking ahead, the prince observed the backs of the two heads, the driver, in a fur hat, with puffs of gray tumbling around his ears. The driver was hunched over and snapping the reins of the four black horses, their heads rearing as they pulled the sleigh through the almost-frozen mud and over snow and ice and snorted their billows of breath clouds. The driver was the ultimate servant. His eyes would ever be forward directed, checking the horses, and ever watching the approaching road, no matter what happened inside the sleigh during the precarious journey.

Next to the driver, bareheaded and shuddering, not only from the cold, sat the young, virginal, newly acquired squire, Alexei.

Save for the snorting of the horses, the occasional crack of the whip, the shushing of the sleigh runners, and the jingling of the sleigh bells, serving the purpose of warning of their approach to any other sleighs out on this dark, snowy night, all was silent as the grave. But it was a silence full of tension, waiting for something momentous to happen, like the long, drawn-out, shimmering note from a violin.

The prince leaned forward and touched the shoulder of the squire, who jerked in surprise, but who nuzzled into the satin of the prince’s glove as the prince caressed his cheek. The prince pulled back his hand and the squire turned and looked back at him. His eyes were big, his pupils bright, whether with anticipation or fear, it was not known. And, on his part, the prince didn’t care.

The squire, Alexei, had already learned much of what the duties of an All Hallows’ Eve offering to the prince were to be, and, as a destitute orphan who had been living by sufferance and his wits for some time now, he did not fight it. Alexei had given up on life and didn’t really care much what happened to him. He’d lost everyone he cared about in life, and the Solagovy family had treated him worse than they did their field peasants. He could have died and he would not have fought against it.

He’d learned a great deal early that afternoon, as a matter of fact, and he had had some inkling of what was required. Nothing was known--or at least nothing was openly discussed--among the Russian aristocracy what this privilege entailed, but the servants had their stories, their accumulating legends, and Alexei had had some warning. Thus, when his interview with the prince that afternoon had been held in private in the prince’s bedchamber, it had included the prince making the boy kneel, naked, in front of him, and to take the prince’s shaft in his throat and to make love to it until the prince had spilled his seed. Alexei was not innocent to the sucking of another man’s cock. It was common practice for a beautiful boy living on the sufferance of a benefactor to perform this service for his benefactor, and Alexei had done so in the past for Master Solagovy.

The prince had followed with an act Alexei was unexperienced in, however. He made the boy lie beside him on the bed, naked, and ran his hands over Alexei’s body, eventually centering on the boy’s groin and stroking the boy’s shaft and fondling his balls until the boy had given up his seed. Simultaneously stroking himself, the prince had climaxed again as well. If anything, it was the first pleasure Alexei had had in years. Alexei was so weary of life that he denied the prince nothing. Indeed, it was not his position to deny the prince anything.

The prince had gone no further then, but had quizzed the lad for assurances he was a virgin to anal penetration still at the age of fourteen, and when assured, informed him that it would be the prince’s right to claim that as well, which he surely would do. Alexei had learned what an orphan in this world might have to accommodate to survive. And he was resigned to adjusting and to have his virginity grasped from him by Prince Melikov at a time and place of the prince’s determination. It was just lucky that he was attracted to men and the prince was such a handsome specimen of a man.

The squire now, in the sleigh shushing across the snow, understood what the prince wanted. He climbed over his seat and into the back of the sleigh. The prince, smiling broadly, opened his mink coat up wide and spread his legs. The satin-lined fly of his dress trousers was already open, and a long, thick, erect cock curved up from the opening. Resigned, but trembling, the fourteen-year-old Alexei squire sank to his knees between the prince’s thighs, and the prince closed the mink coat over him--over both of them. Inside the covering mink, the prince reached down and took the squire’s head in his satin-gloved hands. For several minutes, he rubbed the boy’s cheeks on his erect cock until he had turned Alexei’s face so that his cock slid between the boy’s full lips. The satin gloves moved the squire’s mouth on the cock.

The smooth satin gave solace to the young orphan who had known little of such finer fabric but who had known he would do what he must to survive. His hands roamed on the powerful, elegantly clad body of the prince as his mouth gave suck. The lining of the trousers was satin, a strip running down the side of the trousers from the waist was satin. The prince’s cummerbund was satin, as were the lapels on his jacket. The lining of the enveloping mink coat was satin. Even the prince’s shirt was white satin. The squire took comfort in running the smooth, cool satin fabric through his fingers while the prince moved Alexei’s head on the cock, holding his cheeks in the satin-gloved hands.

The prince leaned down and voiced a command, and Alexei, fully embraced in the warmth of the mink coat, slowly shed his clothes without losing contact of his mouth with the hard cock. When he was naked under the mink, the prince moved the satin-gloved hands to the boy’s waist and pulled him up onto his lap, facing him. The prince’s suit coat had spread so that the squire’s chest was rubbing on the white satin of the prince’s shirt. The squire moaned at the feel of the fine material on his bare chest. The prince had palmed the squire’s buttocks and was kneading and separating them with his satin-gloved hands. His long, hard, thick, curved cock had snaked into the boy’s crack and the upper side of that was rubbing across the squire’s hole. Kneading the plump, white buttocks with satin-gloved hands, the boy’s entrance was stretched and rubbed across the bulb of the cock again and again. The virgin moaned, mewed, and breathed heavily as his entrance slowly opened to the intention of the cock.

Alexei’s cheek and hands went to the comforting satin of Prince Melikov’s coat lapels, and he panted quietly and whimpered, knowing what was coming but taking comfort in the feel of the rich fabric. Even the satin of the gloved hands rolling and squeezing and separating his buttocks cheeks was arousing to him. He could do this. He had known since earlier that day--and had suspected from earlier--this would be expected of him.

But he had not known everything.

The prince squeezed and parted the buttocks cheeks and rolled them up so that the bulb of the upcurved cock was throbbing at the entrance of the hole. The squire whimpered his fear, feeling the bulb in position.

The storm outside the sleigh had not abated. It had picked up and the wind was howling. The sleigh driver cracked the whip, knowing there were miles to go and that the landscape was becoming more threatening, the swirling snow more enveloping.