Chapter 1

Yuri had long wanted to travel. He wanted the feeling of the road. Well, if your soul thirsts for the road -- it will get one. Only the route is laid out for us from above.

... You look at your wife. At her sweet freckles. Into those innocent eyes, with more magic in them than in New Year’s Eve itself. She has just used her magic in public. Stopped an inevitable fight from breaking out. But by what means?

You feel your wife moving her hips farther and farther away from you and thereby driving herself even deeper onto your opponent’s cock behind her. How do her actions fit with that sweet, innocent little face of hers?!

“Sorry I flared up,” you say to the woman you love. “Idiots like that get under my skin.”

You need to talk to her, to stay connected with her while she is doing something exciting, something disturbing!

“Well, think about it yourself, Yuri. Can you really talk sense into an old man?” She lifts the corners of her lips, but the smile is tense. Her ass continues to grind in circles against the insolent bastard’s crotch. “You know how it is -- at his age the brain hardens, dries out, turns wooden, loses its flexibility, becomes incapable of taking in anyone else’s different opinion...”

While she is speaking, her body is shaken by three sharp jolts! That is definitely not because of the train! You guess the obvious truth: your dark-skinned opponent, having recovered from his surprise, has decided to test what he can get away with! He is waiting: how will your wife react? She has been behaving ambiguously, but what now? Will she be outraged? Will she complain to you that a stranger is, in effect, fucking her through her clothes?

“Y-yes, you’re right...” you say, trying not to let your voice collapse into a whisper.

The whole prepared tirade about the insolent brute has dried in your throat; it will not come out. You study the old man. Short, shaved bald, apparently to put an end once and for all to any discussion of baldness, with white creases around his eyes on a face tanned even in winter. A stretched-out tracksuit with a cheap black jacket over it. The insolence on his face has always irritated you in people; you have always wanted to bring men like that to their senses, cut them down to size, remind them that in society a person ought to keep himself under control, within the bounds of decency! True, with your own negativity you usually provoked only negativity in return.

But your wife, it seems, had a more effective method of influencing insolent men...

Annette was not outraged by the shameless, unmistakably obscene jolts from behind. Only her breathing grew faster and scorching hot. She went on speaking to you as though nothing at all were happening.

“There. Since you understand that arguing is pointless, why do it? Whoever understands the inevitable doesn’t twitch for nothing...”

“Thank you for standing up for me,” says the passenger you saved from the bald man’s abuse, addressing both you and your wife at once.

The insolent man seems about to say something ... but he presses his lips together, hides the words behind them. Your wife is shaken by two more of his jolts.

“Miss,” you say to the “miss” of about forty, “no thanks needed. Happy New Year a little early!”

“And to you!” she answers. “Oh, New Year’s almost here ... and I’m still ashamed of what happened last year...”

She blushes, realizing she has said a few words too loudly. You exchange a smirking glance with your wife.

“You’re not like modern men. No one stands up for anyone anymore!” the woman says to you, trying to smooth over the awkwardness.

Suddenly you feel Anna’s coat start to rise. What is this -- the insolent brute, taking the absence of punishment as encouragement, has decided to cross new boundaries?!

Annette, ignoring the way her coat is being tugged up, says with a proud smile:

“ ... Yes. Don’t be a modern man, darling!”

“Be old-fashioned?”

“Just be a man.”

As she speaks, Anna twists her swan-like neck a little, glances back from the corner of her eye. Her coat is already hitched above her waist. You feel it. She feels it. Did Annette expect this kind of behavior from the brute? And what is she going to do?

You wait for her finally to be outraged now, to tell you she was wrong and now agrees: only a man’s fist will sober this idiot up!

But...

Anna again pretends that nothing is happening.

You remember what dress she put on under the coat.

Now it turns out the old man has reached the lower part of that revealing, short dress!

“Only...” Anna said, as if merely to fill the silence between you. “My dear real man, let’s do without unnecessary heroics and without attempts to remake people. Can’t we simply accept life as it is?”