Eighty Days Amber (9 page)

Then I walked, carefully, in short steps to his office to show him the finished result.

Chey looked up from his computer screen and grinned wickedly.

‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

I moved unsteadily towards him until I stood directly in front of his office chair, where he was reclining, now bereft of both his business shirt and tie and wearing just a pair of loose-cut jeans that sat low on his hips, exposing the V of his lower abdominal muscles.

‘Spread your legs,’ he said.

I complied, revelling in the fervour of his gaze, the appreciation with which he was admiring my body.

He tested my slit with his fingers, checking to see how wet I was, and then moved his fingertip around my clitoris in tiny circles, beginning slowly and then speeding up as I began to relax and press myself against him. My legs wobbled and I almost lost my balance as his caresses became more vigorous and I let out a low moan, inviting him to continue the dance of his hands on my body. He caught me as my thighs buckled and spun me around, pushing his papers out of the way and clearing a space on the desk that I could lean against.

The peculiar cut of the boots meant that my stance was
skewed. Within the shoes I was standing on my toes, my buttocks pushed into the air and my back arched, my forearms resting on the table. I could hear his breathing behind me grow ragged as he surveyed my form, and I imagined how I must look in the thigh-high boots with his leather harness framing my backside and restraining my natural movement. Each time I shifted forwards or back, the bells on the nipple clamps tinkled, reminding him that I had condescended to dress this way at his request, a fact that he seemed to enjoy as much as the way that I enjoyed his appreciation.

He grasped a handful of flesh from each buttock, pulling, kneading, then holding me open, spreading my arse cheeks wide and then testing the tightness of my anus very gently with just the tip of his finger.

I heard the sound of his office drawer rolling out, the click of a bottle lid, and then he resumed his ministrations, slipping one finger, and then a second inside my arsehole, while he continued to tease my clit with his other hand.

My knees were aching from the forced pressure of the awkward position necessitated by the boots, and my nipples throbbed beneath the clips, but all of those things faded to nothing as the pleasure from his touch swamped my brain and every thought turned to sensation, as if whatever part of me was conscious flooded out of my head and into my body.

‘That’s it, relax,’ he soothed, and I felt myself opening up to him more, allowing him in, and I pushed back, feeling the head of his cock pressing against the nub of my arse.

If there was one thing that was sure to draw a stunned hush to any of the late-night dormitory conversations in my dreary state school in Donetsk, it was a mention that a man’s cock might fit not just in a woman’s pussy, or her
mouth, but in another place as well, the most intimate and taboo of all: anal sex.

But once I had recovered from the initial shock of Chey’s desire to explore me there, I found that I loved it, or, at least, that the feeling of his fingers inside me as he fucked me or played with my clitoris was certain to send me rocketing to an orgasm. Now I wanted to feel more, to feel his cock inside me, to allow him to possess all of me, fill me to the brim.

I gripped his desk with my hands, holding back a wince as my opening struggled to allow him in. He stopped, waiting for the initial discomfort to subside, stroking my back, caressing my neck, touching me softly in encouragement until I relaxed further and pushed back again, stretching to accommodate every last inch of him.

Then he began to thrust, at first gently and then harder as I moaned in pleasure and encouragement. He took hold of my hair tightly, wrapping its length around his wrist and pulled, guiding my movements as I bucked against him until I felt him stiffen and then release inside me.

I straightened my back, preparing to turn and kiss him but he held his hand down on my lower spine, directing me into position.

‘No. Stay there,’ he said softly, dropping to his knees so that I stood over him as he teased me with his tongue, licking my clitoris, delving deep into my lips in exactly the way that he knew I preferred, then flickering his tongue until I came with a cry. His face remained pressed against me, as though he wanted to drink in my orgasm, lap up every last ounce of pleasure that I expelled.

I was unable to support myself any longer and when my knees gave way beneath me he caught me in his arms and
lowered me onto the floor, pressing his lips against mine in a slow, passionate kiss.

He knelt over me and removed the nipple clips gently, then unzipped each boot and eased them from my feet, massaging my ankles and toes as I felt the blood rushing back and my normal circulation returning.

‘Why are you smiling?’ I asked him, watching the look of amusement pass over his face.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d do it. Wear the costume I bought you. Thought it might have been a step too far.’

I considered his comment.

‘I wore it for me,’ I said. ‘To see if I could. To see what it would be like. Curiosity is my motivation for many things.’

‘My curious cat.’

I half expected him to continue in the same vein and buy me a catsuit next, but he didn’t. Instead, he gave me a tiny silver chain that fastened around my ankle, with a charm attached, so small that you would not have been able to identify the shape without looking at it closely. A horseshoe, fashioned from amber.

It was one of many gifts that he had bought me, each carved from the same stone. Those magic rocks he allegedly traded in, those stones from the depths of time on earth.

The next time I danced, I imagined he was riding me, that I was his pony girl. The dance was wild, excessive, animalistic; the colours in my cheeks so scarlet that for my second, later set of the evening I had to borrow some white concealer from another of the dancers or I would look like Snow White. After she’d been fucked by Prince Charming, of course.

Blanca, the Czech madam, tut-tutted as I left the stage,
but there was a complicit glint in her eye, as if she knew point by point what Chey had done with me the day before. I blushed even more as I passed her on my way to the dressing room.

‘No pink, Luba. No pink.’ And she wasn’t referring to my cheeks. In my abandon, I had displayed too much to the men in the audience.

Not that any of them had complained to the house.

Until I met Chey, I never knew amber could come in so many shapes and colours.

Back in the Dominican Republic, in response to some of my initial questions about his trade, he had taken me to a small private museum sited in a run-down commercial centre, which housed an incredibly varied amber collection. He had explained how these stones had evolved from dead fossils into rare pieces and how the amount of cloudiness and shade affected their value. I had never worn or owned amber before, and my first gift from Chey was a large stone, which he had a local artisan set inside a steel locket. It was too heavy to wear as a necklace, so Chey suggested I might wear it as a bracelet that same evening, around my arm. I had spent a long time in the sun and discovered that I tanned with remarkable ease without burning, despite the natural paleness of my skin, although I had of course taken the precaution of rubbing much in the way of strong lotions and skin moisturising products into my shoulders and arms. He marvelled at the supernatural way the colour of the stone combined with that of my skin, in a mini-symphony of brown and orange where the demarcation line between live flesh and dead blurred. The dress I wore was white.

A few days later, he gave me a smaller amber piece,
almost milky in appearance, and presented it to me in bed, waking me from an afternoon slumber, ordering me to lay down on my back and almost spreadeagle myself across the crisp sheets, as a gentle breeze rustled the open curtains to the balcony that lead to the adjoining beach. Gently, he deposited the stone in the pronounced hollow of my belly button.

‘It brings out the lioness shade of your cunt,’ Chey said, pointing out to my pubic thatch and drawing a finger between the moistness of my opening in appreciation of my charms. I tried not to blush. And, of course, one thing quickly led to another and we were late for dinner. That night he had convinced me to sit at the table of the exclusive restaurant in which he had booked us, pantieless and my pussy still raw and screaming silently from the repeated assault of his caresses and his vigorous thrusts.

In New York, he added to my collection of amber pieces with exaggerated generosity, each piece tailored to my mood, the clothes he bought for me or the shades my body passed through when he fucked me and turned our lovemaking into a ceremony that bordered on the holy.

I could swear that whenever I danced within a day or less of being fucked by Chey, every anonymous male gaze in the audience knew all about it, just by watching the way my breasts swayed, my cunt gleamed or my arse shone in the target of the spotlight. The thought excited me. Wildly.

I was wanton, I was a woman. I was Chey’s woman.

If only he wouldn’t keep disappearing without warning, refusing to tell me where or why he was going. My heart and sex called out for him in the middle of the night in the large empty bed, and those nights went on for ever, my
whole soul missing him, my body in the grip of withdrawal symptoms, my need to be filled like a hunger that could never be sated.

It was after another of those long nights that the worst happened.

I had been celebrating a record evening for tips with Alice and Maya, two other Russian dancers who worked the same circuit as me, at the bar of the Algonquin on 44th Street, dressed in all our finery, which by then I could afford. We were leaving the hotel and hailing separate cabs to drive us to our respective homes, in my case the mostly empty Gansevoort Street apartment that I shared with Chey, when I caught sight of a familiar silhouette lumbering across the opposite sidewalk. I hadn’t seen Lev for weeks, since he’d introduced me to Barry and the Tender Heart.

I called out for him and he looked over, a furtive, embarrassed air about him at seeing me. At first, it seemed that his initial instinct was to flee from my presence, then he did a double take and waited for me to cross the road and join him by the steps leading up to the Royalton Hotel where the Philippe Starck bar was one of Manhattan’s classy joints.

‘Luba.’

‘Hi, Lev . . .’

‘You look . . . good . . .’ His eyes seemed to be avoiding mine.

His nose was bulbous and distinctly misshapen, there were black and purple circles beneath his eyes and the way he stood betrayed a limp or some pain in one of his legs.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘No.’

‘Chey didn’t tell you?’

‘I see so little of him, but tell me.’

He hesitated a moment then looked me in the eye. ‘He did it. He beat me.’

‘Why?’ I asked, incredulous.

‘Because of you.’

‘Me?’ What had happened? I was genuinely perplexed. Had this been Chey’s immediate reaction, I might have understood it. I guessed that Lev or Barry must have told Chey how I found my way to the Tender Heart, and his anger was unsurprising. I knew men could be jealous. But I had now been dancing for weeks, and after his initial shock, Chey had seemed accepting of my profession, even proud of me and the way that I danced. I could feel myself beginning to boil inside, adding this to the long list of things that Chey kept secret from me, that he lied about.

‘Well, he was unhappy that I suggested you should go . . . dancing. He was furious. I’ve never seen him so angry.’

‘He did . . . this to you?’ I appraised his bruised features. He was unappealing at the best of times, but now looked like a recovering gargoyle. I remembered the way that the men at his Dojo had avoided Chey’s gaze. No wonder, if this was what he did to his friends at the slightest provocation.

‘The nose has been reset,’ Lev said. ‘The marks will go, given time. And my leg will get better.’

I was furious. Lev was just a passing acquaintance and not someone I would choose to spend much time with. But he had been there when I needed him. How could Chey not only have done this but also kept it from me?

‘He’s a jealous man, Luba. It’s just that you don’t realise the power you have inside you. It can do that to men, you know.’

The yellow cab I finally caught couldn’t race down 5th Avenue towards the Meatpacking District fast enough for my liking. I was seething inside and absolutely determined to have it out with Chey once and for all and discover who he really was, whether it would suit me or not.

Of course, when I arrived, he was not at home. Worse, his closet door had been left open and bore witness to the fact that he’d packed in a hurry and at short notice. Which meant he would be away for at least a week, if not longer.

On my bedside table, his idea of a parting gift was yet another piece of amber. The tenth, by my reckoning. But I was determined not to let him get away this time. I jumped into the shower and, full of rage, scrubbed myself clean, as if I was washing Chey away from my skin.

Later, wandering across the vast apartment in darkness, and unable to compose myself enough to go to bed and find sleep, I noticed a drawer in his study had been left open.

Inevitably, as it was always locked, as were so many other areas in the apartment, I approached and snooped.

Sheets of uninformative shipping documents in a variety of languages, a surprising amount of paperclips and elastic bands and beneath this mess, a gun.

Black and shiny.

Smelling of oil.

My heart jumped.

I gingerly picked it up and looked at it closer.

A Sieg Sauer.

It looked dangerous but beautiful.

Like my lover.

My heart sank.

After fleeing Russia, had I ended up with an American bad man, an American gangster?

4

Dancing with the Guns

When I found the gun, my whole world went cold.