The Prince's Wicked Adventure

— So, for what purpose did you wish to see me at the steps of this modest gazebo at such a late hour appointed by you?

He, Harold Taylor the Third, born in the year eighteen fifty-four, the sixth hereditary prince of the Taylor dynasty and a representative of the collateral branch of the House of Windsor, was indeed very interested in the hidden springs of the processes that had led him to this gazebo.

Interested is not the word.

Intrigued.

His acquaintance with the young Lady Alice — who, however, exceeded him in age by a couple of years, he himself not yet having formally left the precarious threshold of adolescence — had taken place several hours

earlier under circumstances that almost anyone would have called not entirely modest.

His gaze had fallen upon her during a chance encounter upon returning from a traditional walk in the family park after lessons at school, which stemmed both from the quite natural interest of a male student in separately studying representatives of the fairer sex — though the prince as yet only very vaguely understood the meaning and underpinnings of such interest — and from the extremely inappropriate attire of the encountered stranger that had caught his eye.

The hem of the light pink dress was so short that it seemed, with a careless walk or a chance gust of wind, it might at any moment reveal her knees.

Harold even averted his gaze, feeling a certain agitation.

The governess, it seemed to the prince, was inwardly stunned by the stranger's shameless attire hardly less than he was, but managed to conceal it; as he had once heard, representatives of their vocation are specially taught not to show their feelings in cases where it can only cause harm. As if nothing had happened, she composedly introduced the prince and the lady to each other; it was then that Harold learned the name of the strange girl.

Alice, no less composedly, extended her hand for a kiss and even performed a curtsy, seemingly not at all embarrassed that the prince's gaze at that moment quite involuntarily slid towards her half-naked legs.

Having uttered in a half-whisper, with the requisite modesty, the requisite words of introduction, she in those same moments — secretly from the governess, known for being somewhat hard of hearing — added a few more words.

Appointing the place and time of a future meeting.

Could Prince Harold refuse? It would not have been in accordance with the rules of conduct for a knight and a gentleman. Moreover, the thought of the meeting evoked in him an inexpressible agitation.

Now, however, he was agitated by the thought of the unknown, hidden motives for the meeting.

— During our first meeting, it seemed to me that part of your mind was distracted and as if plunged into confusion by something, — Alice uttered melodiously and in a sing-song voice, not taking her gaze from Harold's crystal-clear blue eyes. — Upon some reflection, I seemed to have guessed what served as the source of your embarrassment, though for complete certainty I lack a direct, frank answer from your own lips. The essence is in the style of my attire, isn't it?

Harold felt a bit awkward.

— You are right, madam. — In his confusion, he addressed her with a term usually applied to a woman of common birth, even though his interlocutor seemed to belong to the nobility. — You see…

— I thought so, — Alice sighed regretfully, interrupting the prince mid-sentence. — It's about its length, isn't it?

The fingers of her left hand ran from top to bottom along the pink fabric of the dress to its very edge.

— I must confess something to you, Your Highness, if you promise me to refrain from laughter. The fact is that a significant part of my childhood was spent by me in lands that, though formally under the rule of the British Crown, can hardly in reality be counted among the suzerainty of any ordinary social order. The customs accepted in those parts are so bizarre and so different from everything known to us as the established order of things that even a small part of what I told about my stay in those incredible lands was enough for my uncle to gain fame as a great storyteller.

— You… mean to say… — Prince Harold, with unwritten efforts, put two and two together. — Sir Charles* is your uncle?

* Charles Dodgson — the official name of Lewis Carroll, author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."

Alice playfully placed a finger of her right hand to her lips.

— I beg you. You have no idea how many questions I have to answer in connection with this.

A smile itself parted the prince's lips.

He remembered the changes in the faces and voices of those around him, invariably occurring when they were informed of his status in the royal house.

— I promise not to torment you.

— I promise in my turn to reciprocate and not subject you to torments, — Alice smiled in agreement. — Though, for that, it wouldn't hurt to finally clarify the issue with the dress that so embarrasses you.

The fingers of her left hand slightly fidgeted with the edge of the aforementioned garment, causing the prince to involuntarily lose the thread of the conversation.

— I, in truth, am so poorly oriented in the other customs of my homeland that at times I feel like a foreigner in my own country.

Alice pinched her thumb and forefinger around the pleated edge of the dress, as if clamping it.

— Is it too short? Or, on the contrary, too long?..

Barely uttering the last words, Alice slightly moved her left hand upward, moving the edge of the pink dress up with it, exposing her knees; the prince felt as if his cheeks were being pricked by a billion microscopic needles, but he could not look away.

— Or is the length still too great like this?..

Stepping back and thus, wittingly or unwittingly, providing Prince Harold with an even greater view, Alice gracefully touched the edges of the dress — now with both hands — and allowed the garment to ride up even higher, exposing incredibly white thighs, the perfection and beauty of which he had seen in anything remotely similar perhaps only in courses on ancient sculpture. Was it ever seen that a civilized lady, not some Hellenic pagan, would bare herself so much?

And she clearly had no intention of stopping.

As if showing off — oh heavenly powers, thunder and lightning, she really is showing off! — she raised her palms even higher along with the edges of her dress pinched between the tips of her slender fingers. A little more — and the view would open to what in those same courses on ancient sculpture and similar classes was bashfully called the pelvic part of the body.

— What are you doing?.. — Harold finally found his voice.

Alice's fingers froze, pressed tightly against her body through the thinnest fabric.

Alice herself took a step forward, thus once again riveting the prince's gaze to her own naked legs.

— You don't like it?

— I… don't… that is…

The prince's gaze wandered, yet not retreating too far from the spectacle presented to him, while his thoughts flatly refused to gather into a single whole and express themselves through speech.

To be completely honest, he could not say with all honesty that he did not like this.

But does that plane even matter?

— Ask yourself. — Alice seemed to be drawing him deeper into herself with her enticing gaze of bottomless blue eyes. — Ask yourself, forgetting about mentors, authorities, prohibitions, traditions, rules. Turn to your own desires and feelings.

Prince Harold for some reason felt himself on the edge of an abyss…

— Do you like this?

The abyss was attracting…

— Yes.

Was it he who said that? It sounded so dry, completely devoid of the stylistic embellishments his diligent teachers had taught him to inlay his speech with.

Blood rushed to his face.

— You would like, — Alice uttered quietly, not taking her gaze from his eyes, — for me to lift the dress all the way? For me, — she paused slightly, — to take it off?

The blueness of her eyes echoed with infinity…

— Think about what you yourself want. Only you alone. What no one else can know or want but you.

…and at the same time — with something witch-like.

Harold suddenly remembered something from the tales told to him in childhood by his elderly mother Agrippina about the temptations of holy righteous men. Is a simple mortal capable of resisting temptation?

Alice stepped forward, once again switching the prince's attention to the insanely naked legs…

— Yes, — he exhaled hoarsely.

Stepping over the edge of the abyss turned out to be all too easy.

The first sensation — panic.

— I don't… That is… — He flushed crimson. — I mean, I…

The barely perceptible coolness that had reigned before in the depths of the bottomless blue eyes imperceptibly changed to warm tenderness.

— Don't be afraid, — Alice whispered.

She took a step back, allowing the prince to once again get a better look at her.

— That's right. You — w a n t…

As if holding him with her unblinking gaze of her bewitching blue eyes, Alice, with a familiar movement, tightened her fingers around the edge of the pink garment and slightly moved them upward, beyond the already reached boundaries.

Feeling as if he were burning alive, as if already anticipating the inevitable hellish torments beyond the fatal line, he could not take his eyes off the most exquisite outlines opening to his view, off the buttocks surpassing in elegance any corresponding part of any sculpture, off the folds of skin a few inches below the delicate navel, never seen by him in his life but somehow strangely stirring; with belated amazement, Harold realized that his interlocutor wore neither a corset, nor pajamas, nor any other obligatory attributes of a social lady's attire.

The edge of Alice's garment rose higher and higher; at some point, Harold realized — oh heavens — that the part of the lady's flesh that frivolous courtesans — at least, that's how his governess, Miss Sanders, characterized these ladies — usually display for viewing from above through a décolleté neckline, had become visible to his view from below. But the prince did not have time to inhale, exhale, or even blush properly anew; before he could think or feel anything, Alice allowed the edges of the dress to ride up even higher — and with a very natural movement simply took it off over her head, standing before him completely naked, in the costume of Eve before the Fall.

— Do you like it?

She tilted her head slightly; her eyes sparkled. The prince involuntarily marveled, catching himself on the fact that even now, with all the unimaginability of the spectacle he was beholding, part of his consciousness continued to pay attention to Alice's blue eyes.

— Do you like what you see? — she whispered again. — I would like you to admit it… aloud. Mostly for yourself.

She licked her lips, not taking her eyes off Harold.

Admit it aloud? Admit aloud that he likes seeing Alice naked? He seemed to feel with living skin the heat of the governess's slaps, who had once caught him studying drawings of ancient Greek sculptures too intently.

— I like it.

He swallowed. His heart, it seemed, was ready to burst his chest from within.

— What do you like?

Alice's eyes mysteriously flickered. Again that tantalizing desire to plunge headlong into the abyss…

— Seeing you. Naked.

Alice smiled slightly, as if congratulating him on a small victory — or congratulating herself. She took a short step forward, looking intently into his eyes.

— If you had looked carefully into yourself, rejecting everything that constrains aspirations, back then, when we had just first seen each other, would you have already felt within yourself the desire to see me naked?

Alice took another step forward.

To imagine — to recall and examine — his former sensations turned out not to be difficult, but all too easy…

— Yes.

— So, — she licked her lips again, — one could say that even then you wanted to see me without clothes?

— Yes.

His head was spinning.

— Say it.

— I… wanted to see you naked from the very moment of our meeting. Wanted… to see your naked body. To see all of you.

Why was he experiencing such wild pleasure, deliberately uttering words for which Miss Sanders would have killed him immediately? Perhaps because he knew: it pleased Alice.

Or was it not only that?

Alice smiled now completely openly, triumphantly, coming even closer. In her gaze, for a moment, something similar to that expression in the eyes with which his high-born parents sometimes looked at each other flashed.

A sense of possessiveness.

— And what do you want now?

She looked directly into his face, eye to eye. He managed only one word in response.

— Touch.

Alice took another small step forward, as if in timid hesitation, and unexpectedly clung to the prince's chest. Harold uncertainly embraced her, absorbing, imprinting in his memory every moment of touching a completely naked girl. Suddenly he felt Alice's slender, graceful fingers slip behind the belt of his trousers and touch what various people around him had called shame, the reproductive organ, a funny childish word, an adult obscene word, and even the whimsical Latin term 'penis'.

Harold had been feeling a considerable tension of flesh there for more than the first minute, initially causing him particular shame before Alice.

But the touch of her fingers…

…where only his own fingers had managed to slip before…

He was scalded by a blush of shame.

From memories of what he sometimes did, from what Alice was doing now — and also from the fact that she was now again looking intently into his eyes, thereby giving rise to an irrational guess, turning into certainty: she knew.

— Do you often do this? — she confirmed his guess.

A sweet, gentle whisper in his ears. In his head — memories of hundreds of cases, unknown and never to be known by the governess, hundreds of subsequent flashes of shame and attempts to somehow overcome the ungodly desires.

— Uh… do what? — he asked.

Alice slightly raised her head and looked deeper into his eyes.

— No need for falseness. This is no place for untruth.

Though not fully understanding what 'here' she meant — surely not about the gazebo? — he nevertheless within himself, with all his soul and all his flesh, understood that she was right.

Just as he felt with all his body and all his soul the naked girl pressed against him.

And the tips of her slender fingers.

— Often, — he exhaled.

— Do you like it? — she whispered sweetly.

The prince hesitated with an answer, listening to the wild, mad, utterly frantic sensations. The thought that this girl, this impossible lady, was voluntarily doing to him what he had done