From Russia with Love

His legs ached and his chest burned. He starting panting and his feat felt like they were on fire. He could feel blisters painfully forming. He started to feel hungry as his stomach rumbled and his mood plummeted further still. The cold bit at his bones and he could her the wind howling in his ears. He could barely see but for the light of his phone in the dark. He focused on that point in the centre of his screen showing him the way. He tried to numb his mind to the hell outside his body and focus only on his objective.

That was just the first hour.

I took him a full 5 hours to get to the same river Natasha arrived at early and to say it had been the single worst experience of his life would be to undersell his utter and complete hatred of the pain of the last 5 hours. The only thing that keep him going was the inescapable knowledge that he would be dead if he couldn't catch her. When he finally got to the boat he slumped to his knees and cried.

He had expected them to be together at this point but now he realised that his torment was not even over yet. He would have to row. If there was one thing in this world he truly despised more than Hiking it was rowing. But he couldn't giving in, he had to keep going.

So although his arms felt like lead and his legs like sacks of sand he stumbled into the boat and began to row. He wasn't even keeping a lookout for Natasha anymore. If he didn't find something or someone soon he was going to die.

He rowed and rowed and rowed. The wind had picked up and water kept splashing up on to him. He didn't have the energy to care. The wind was so strong that at one point he felt his oar lifted in his hand it hit him in the face. The blow drew blood from his forehead and his vision blurred a little. He tried to stand up forgetting for a second what he was doing and the wind blew him out of the boat and into the water. The river was deep and he floated down through it. He had spent all his energy and he couldn't keep going he just couldn't. He drifted out of consciousness and his eyes closed, the cold sapping his energy.

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Like a spear she plunged into the water. Separating the water with a perfect point shape with her hands she hit the cold liquid with a sound that rang through the deserted forest. Years of training and discipline making her technique flawless. The water froze her skin but she was beyond feeling it. Her head darted from side to side desperately searching for him, her hair floating in the water blocking her vision. She wasn't dressed for swimming she had just enough time to throw her coat off before diving. As her hope started to fade and panic set in she saw his body floating downward unmoving. She kicked with all her might and further into the cold water she went. The pain of pushing deeper and deeper bit at her bones and she had to fight not to scream.

She grabbed his torso when she got to him and kicked as hard as she could dragging him to the surface. He was heavy but her legs were long and strong. If it was a weaker person trying to swim to the surface they would both have drowned but her strong legs kicked and kicked. She could see the moonlight on the surface of the water and she focused on that point blocking out everything else around her. With a gasp she broke through the surface and inhaled air that had never felt so good. She pulled Bram to the shore and dragged him onto dry land hoping that it was not too late.

Her lip locked his and she hurriedly performed CPR breathing into him and then pushing in on his chest repeatedly. Their lips had touched so many times but never like this. It felt so different, he was cold and unmoving there was no passion just a functional technique practised to perfection. Eventually he started to cough and sputter and she hit him in the back getting him to expel as much water as possible.

She grabbed her sleeping bag and stripped Bram of his wet clothes. Pulling the sleeping bag around him, she stripped too. She just managed to squeeze herself in with him. Skin to skin contact was the fastest way of getting heat into him. She just prayed she wasn't too late.

She lay with him for a while but after a time his breathing began to stabilize and he seemed to be warming up. He had been like an ice block when she pulled him out but now he was coming back to her. She couldn't help but cry.

"I thought I lost you" she whispered.

"You can't lose me, I would even follow you into hell itself" he replied in a faint but serious voice for once.

"I think this is pretty good evidence of that, since Russia is kinda the closest place to hell on earth anyway" His voice was still faint but he couldn't help himself from teasing her even while still recovering from nearly drowning.

Natasha stayed silent realising how part of her loved his constant teasing and feeling so grateful that she hadn't lost that. She snuggled into him and just lay there waiting for the sun to come up and shine on their faces.

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"How are you" Natasha said still a little concerned.

"Well I could use some more room here, I know you are quite keen on me and all but this is a bit much I do need to breath woman."

Ugh, well he is back to his old self she thought

An otherwise romantic morning rather lost its appeal as they squeezed and slided trying to extract themselves from each other and escape from the sleeping bag. To make things worse one particular part of Bram's body decided to take this moment to become bigger not smaller and make their task more difficult.

"Oh for god's sake you idiot is now really the time?"

"Well you never finished me off before so this isn't really my fault and ow- can you be a little careful that is sore. "

"Try to push me a bit can you? It would be a change if you made yourself useful for once"

"With this monster down here I don't think you are going anywhere. I suppose you will just need to help me relax before you can get out"

"Oh really, "this monster" I can't stand you sometimes"

Letting out a series of curses in Russian she tried to pull herself up towards the exit of the bag once more but just as she moved up a little Bram push up and his penis slipped into her.

"Oh, ahh" she let out a cry of surprise and pleasure(although she tried to hide it).

"You fucker!"

"Well if you insist" and from the position he was in he proceeded to do just that by thrusting up into her repeatedly.

"uuugghhhh" She let out more another cry. Natasha had always been shy about her own pleasure often preferring to play a more dominant role. But as she felt his dick hitting just close to the right spot she started to move her own body a bit aiming at just the right angle.

"AAAHHHH" she screamed. The other reason why she was a little shy was that she had always had very loud orgasms. Even when she masturbated she had to bite down on a pillow to avoid being discovered. It had left her very reluctant to let go in sex and relax, but now...

"OOOOOOOHHHHHH MY FUCKING GOD AAAAAAHHHHH" She screamed at the top of her lungs and the birds in a nearby tree scattered from the sound.

Bram was panting and making a far bit of noise himself but he couldn't compare to anything that her lungs could produce. He was mostly hoping his eardrums would burst from her orgasmic high.

Just as he was about to come though he managed to make enough space to pull out of her and his penis shot all over her belly and thighs drenching her.

"Why did you do that?" Natasha asked. "I didn't think cumming on me turned you on."

"It doesn't but we needed some lubrication"

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After they had successfully extracted themselves (and cleaned up a bit from the earlier lubrication) out of the sleeping bad Natasha turned to him.

"Something is going on. First you knew I was looking for the USB so you hid it. Second there was 2 rowboats when there should have just been one. I want answers."

He sighed and sat down on a rock his clothes were drying in the sun so he wore a spare pair of jeans she had packed and her coat. He was wearing no underwear since they were soaked too. The morning was surprisingly warm considering the night but he was still shivering.

"I found out you were KGB about a month ago. That your assignment was to get close to me because of my work and feed information back to the Kremlin. I was ordered to eliminate you."

"I couldn't do it though so I told my contact that you had the data already. That you had stolen it and thought I hadn't noticed. That your plan was to wait for the holiday we had to Russia and then leave me, taking it with you. I persuaded them to let me find where you hid it first before killing you."

"I wasn't sure if for you any of this had been real so I didn't say anything. I just wanted to have a little more time with you. I knew I shouldn't keep putting it off but well.." Bram paused for a moment.

"Anyway that's how I knew to hide the USB. But I had a plan at this stage. We needed- still need in fact - to run away together. So I arranged for a second rowboat."

"My Intel was that there was this secret facility that you would want to take the data too. I knew it went up this river here. He gestured around himself."

"I paid a guy to go to the river early in the morning and have a second rowboat here. I told him there would be one here already and it was at the base of this river. I assumed there was some sort of a road to drive to the river or at least a trail but oh no the fucking Russians make hiking a requirement to get to their secret base." His voice had turned to one of disgust but he caught himself as he saw her very angry expression staring back at him from the person who just saved his life.

"Anyway the plan was we would drive here get in the boats row further down here and fake our deaths. We could crash into some of the rocks ahead and make it look like we had drowned. The CIA and KGB would think I was defecting and coming with you and we had both died drowning."

"I would never die drowning" Natasha replied proudly.

"Apparently" he said appreciating for the first time how tough she really was.

"They will never allow me to live if they find me with you. First they will interrogate me then kill me."

"We need to escape." Natasha finally admitting to herself something she had long known.

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"The initial plan can still work but it has to look like you shot me then drowned. We don't need to worry too much about the bodies because this place is filled with Russian bears. They are more vicious than other bears around the world and they will eat an entire human body, even carrying the bones back to their dens."

"But we do need some of my blood." Natasha took out a small penknife she had and made a small incision in her arm just below her shoulder. Bram helped her collect as much blood as possible in a bottle they had and the smeared it on the boat, before crashing it into the rocks. They were able to aim it pretty well to create as much damage as possible and then they had the second boat pulled up on the shore near the first crash.

"I can draw some bears here with food and hopefully they will buy it. Even if they don't we still have the USB as leverage. If either of them comes after us then we can threaten to send it to the other side."

"Where do you want to go?"

Bram looked at her surprised she was asking him.

"Anywhere but Russia" He shook his head. "How about Tibet?" he said after a moment

"Actually I have always wanted to see the mountains there, we could climb them together!"

"No"

"But they are so beautiful I think-"

"No way am I going up a mountain unless the entire red army is behind me"

"You whine about everything, Don't you want to feel what is like to be alive!"

"Feeling alive for you usually means things that could get the rest of us killed, so no"

As the 2 of them continued to make their way into the trees their voices started to drift further and further away. Bram was dressed again and back to his usual self and despite their constant fighting their voices had a lightness too them. They might be in danger but they both knew there was no going back now.

Fin