Eighty Days Amber (27 page)

‘So why now?’ I asked him.

‘Things went wrong,’ he admitted. An operation had ended badly and to keep himself afloat he’d had to betray
not just his criminal acolytes but also the Federal authorities, as a result of which he’d had to flee New York and was now on the run. He didn’t know what to do or where to go. He had been in hiding in a cabin by a lake in Illinois that he had told no one else about when he had come across the newspaper cutting with the photo of Viggo and me. He had a set of false documents which he would now be able to use again and had come to London. That was it.

My initial thought was that we were now one of a pair, both with our false passports and identities.

And I believed him. I’d always wanted to believe him, but he hadn’t had the courage to tell me the truth before.

I took his hand in mine and squeezed it tight. I wanted to kiss him so badly, yet something was still holding me back.

But the warmth of his skin against mine already lit me up inside. As if being hand in hand was a promise of more to come.

‘So what are you planning to do now?’

‘I have no idea.’

He looked at me with reverence, as if I was wearing the finest material and the slightest sudden movement would tear or crumple it, rather than the old tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt I had slipped on for my walk to the Heath.

It felt like our first time all over again. And this time, it would all be done right, with the benefit of experience and the joy of our reunion making up for the decidedly less than idyllic surroundings.

His bank accounts had been frozen by the authorities and with no means of accessing any money at all besides what he carried in his pockets, he was staying in a downmarket bed and breakfast near King’s Cross. It saddened me to see him
living in this place as I recalled the sleek, clean elegance of his Gansevoort Street apartment. But when I had suggested we could go to the room I occupied in Viggo’s mansion and explained that we were unlikely to be interrupted there, Chey said it would make him feel uncomfortable.

So we had made our way, giddy with anticipation, up the winding stairs of the building, stopping occasionally when Chey pushed me against the wall to steal a kiss, or slip a hand down past the elastic of my trousers, working a finger along the line of my panties and sending a shiver of pleasure coursing through me.

When we finally reached his room he tossed his leather jacket on a chair and sat on the bed watching me, his arousal plain to see even through his jeans. He held his breath as I pulled my clothes off and unhooked my bra, letting my panties pool at my feet before kicking them away. No music, no slow swaying or grinding. I’d spent years taking my clothes off for men for money and for me there was nothing sexy, let alone romantic, about a strip tease.

‘You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined seeing you like this again,’ he said. His voice was soft, almost as if he was speaking to himself. I came towards him and he brought his hand to my face and stroked the line of my jaw gently. I turned and pressed my lips against his knuckles, inhaling the faint fragrance of his skin as I did so. His scent was ineffable but familiar and deeply comforting.

For the next few hours, neither of us said more than a few dozen words. There were already so many words unsaid between us that silence felt more appropriate.

I was bare. The room was bare, just a small cupboard, a bedside table, a bed with a dark-blue chenille bedspread,
and a small rucksack in a corner that probably held all his present earthly belongings.

Chey’s eyes and fingers were drawn to the gun tattoo near my cunt. It was the first time he had seen it.

He stroked it tenderly, but he didn’t ask me any questions about its provenance. And when he took his eyes off the Sieg Sauer flower, as I had come to think of it, he went down on his knees and kissed it with his soft mouth. His lips were warm. His tongue slid across the tattoo just an inch from my opening and I wanted to moan and beg him to move closer. But I didn’t. I did not wish to interrupt the tender magic of the moment because of the rise of my lust. My need.

I knew that he must be able to smell me, my arousal, my wetness. I distractedly passed a few fingers through his thick hair. Unhurried, casual but deliberate, a signal to let him know that all was well and we no longer had to rush things.

We didn’t. He didn’t.

Chey’s examination was intense and thorough. I stood stock still in the shadow of his gaze as he reacquainted himself with my pussy, applying all the fervour of an explorer who has discovered an unchartered land. There had never been a more attentive audience, not even in The Place.

I revelled in his scrutiny.

I spread my legs apart knowing that this was the view that he had always loved most, this intimate vision of me.

His fingers separated my folds delicately. His tongue slid along the length of my slit. The pad of his thumb grazed my nub as delicately as the brush of a rose petal.

With every new sensation the fire of my ardour grew, coiling from deep inside me and snaking its way up my
spine and into my brain until the two blended and I was aware of nothing but the exquisite feelings that Chey was so expertly orchestrating, as if he had spent the years we had been apart doing nothing but memorising all the ways that he had pleased me when we had been together.

He rose to his full height and we kissed again, his lips sea-wet with the salt-tart tang of me, his tongue seeking solace in the harbour of my mouth.

I ran my hands under his T-shirt, tugged at his buttons with tremulous fingers, pushed it up to reveal his perfectly muscled torso, keened with all the frustration of unsated desire.

He slipped the T-shirt over his head and, undoing his belt, dropped his jeans to the floor. Slipping his boxer shorts down, he finally released his growing erection and it was now his turn to present himself naked to me; his powerful shoulders, the darker targets of his hard nipples in the sculpted landscape of his chest, the long, solid legs and the straight line of his powerful cock. He was as hard as he would ever be now, his erection rising from the curly jungle of his pubic hair, his heavy balls hanging low.

I looked him in the eye, seeking his approval.

He nodded and I dropped to my knees, took hold of his cock and brought it to my mouth.

His smell was natural, heady, real. I wanted to taste him, to experience the primal reality of what he was.

Somehow he grew even harder against the pliant softness of my tongue. I took him as far into my throat as I could manage, wanting him to fill every part of my being until the melancholy of his absence had been completely extinguished.

I sucked him like a woman possessed, as if catching up
for the days, the nights, the weeks I had missed, as if the way to his heart journeyed through the beat of his cock. Sensing the madness of my appetite, Chey slowed down his own movements inside my mouth, patting my head as if to say we had all the time in the world. Right there and then I felt unleashed, wanting him to come and flood my mouth with his juices, to drown me. But he was right, there was no hurry.

I had to savour every moment of our first lovemaking in ages. Make it last. I loosened the grip of my lips on his shaft.

Finally, as we both reached a nirvana state of exhaustion, he said, ‘I want to come inside you’, and my heart exploded. My avid mouth let go of his cock and I allowed him to lay me out on the bed, to widen the angle of my legs and, like a carefully rehearsed ritual, to lower himself between my thighs.

As he penetrated me, I quickly reached that mental beach where the whole world disappears from sight, and I existed only as an extension of my nerve endings and I could think of nothing else than the union of our bodies, and how every part of my life had been leading to this moment, my vagina pulsating against the hardness of his cock and orchestrating the rise of our mutual pleasure. We were one, as we once had been. Made for each other. Every piece of our souls and our bodies fitting together like a jigsaw. This was no longer a dance of opposites, it was Chey and Luba, together, joined again in the most intimate way.

He began to move against me, his rhythm picking up pace as I matched him, thrust for thrust, feeling every inch of him as he pushed further and further inside me.

It was good.

It was fucking more than good.

It was what I was born for.

And when I came, I screamed. My lovemaking had never been particularly noisy, but the howl that rose over the industrial rooftops of King’s Cross that evening was like the sound of my rebirth, an affirmation of life.

In response to the sheer strength of my arousal, Chey jerked hard moments after I did, crying out my name as his hot come flooded my pussy.

Damn the neighbours, I thought, as we simultaneously lost control. I thrashed wildly in his embrace, feeling the weight of Chey’s hard body anchoring me, pressing against me, adhering to me.

I was cunt.

I was Chey’s.

We stayed in his room that whole night and the whole morning that followed. Only water from the tap sustained us.

We fucked, we made love and then we fucked again. We were raw, we were mad, we were happy, we had a reason to live.

And even though the future was patiently waiting for us around the corner, it could wait.

For now.

10

Dancing with Death

The first thing I wanted to do was get Chey out of that King’s Cross bed and breakfast. Not only was the place unfit for purpose, but I found it demeaning for him to be staying there. He argued that its anonymity was best suited to his situation, but I quickly managed to convince him that moving in with me into Viggo’s mansion was the natural solution. Even though the building’s security was minimal, the fact that Viggo was in the public eye was a form of reassurance, as whoever was trying to locate him would not think of the Belsize Park house as a natural hiding place. The place was roomy enough and both Viggo and Lauralynn were now spending such long hours in the studio that his presence there would neither displease them nor prove an inconvenience. I explained the loose nature of the relationship that had somehow evolved there with my two sometimes lovers and friends and he took it in his stride, a faint smile lighting up his face, as if amused by my propensity for left-field behaviour.

He agreed to my plan.

We waited until evening and he settled his meagre bill in cash. He thought it would be dangerous to use his credit cards and had enough money to last a few months, he told me. The US Federal authorities had cut him loose after his identity as a mole with the Russians had been uncovered,
and his role in the whole affair had been expunged from any public records. Not only would they not prove of assistance, but Chey had a suspicion that some of the officers involved had links to the Russians and had actually given his identity away. He could expect nothing from their quarter.

Viggo and Lauralynn were wonderfully understanding when I introduced Chey to them. I had mentioned him in passing once or twice and they had noted the melancholy that took hold of me whenever I thought of Chey, and they appeared to be genuinely happy for me. It had been obvious to them during the course of the previous weeks that our triad of sorts was coming apart and the bond between the two of them was becoming stronger despite Lauralynn’s professed preference for women, but they liked me enough to welcome the fact that my new lover was also my old lover. Even gentle perverts have a soft streak.

The arrangement worked. A month passed during which we all settled into our new roles and shared the large house while maintaining our respective privacy. Chey and Viggo actually became good mates when Viggo discovered that Chey was a treasure trove of information and knowledge about rock music, something I had never known. Many an early evening was spent with the two of them selfishly sitting chortling in a corner, filling their iPods with new playlists they were coming up with, while Lauralynn and I cooked or gossiped. For the first time in ages, I didn’t even open the pages of a book for four weeks in succession. I had other things to do at night, rediscovering Chey and learning to fully relax in the clutch of his embraces and live for the moment, as he orchestrated every emotion in my body and heart to repeated climaxes I never even knew I had in me. Now there was no shadow in our relationship, we could see
how well we fitted together, not just bodies but minds. Even the silences we often shared, after our lovemaking or at odd moments during the day, were filled to the brim with significance and intensity.

We were lying in bed, sated from our earlier exertions, his hand delicately washing like a wave over my exposed rump, his touch light like a feather, as we both awaited the seductive and replenishing embrace of sleep when his mobile phone buzzed. It was the first time it had rung since he had joined me in Viggo’s house.

We both glanced at the bedside table, surprised by the insistent sound.

‘Do many people know your number?’ I asked Chey.

His face darkened. ‘No. Very few.’

He gingerly picked up the phone and brought it to his ear.

The muffled rumour of a voice reached me as Chey nodded a few times and hummed and hawed. Then the conversation ended abruptly, with him just saying ‘Thanks’ to his distant interlocutor.

He turned to face me.

‘It was Lev,’ he said.

‘Lev?’

‘We worked together, straddling the good side and the bad side, so to speak. He’s okay, if often a real pain in the arse,’ he explained. ‘He’s still involved. Somehow his cover wasn’t blown, although it must have been a close thing. It seems they know I’m in London.’

‘Damn . . .’

‘Just the city; not where I am.’

I was afraid. It felt like a circle was closing in, threatening our happiness.

It made sense that we couldn’t remain in Viggo’s house indefinitely. It had always been a temporary solution while we stepped back and gathered our thoughts. In any case, being cooped inside it was becoming increasingly frustrating for Chey, with just a few short walks along the more unpopulated paths of the Heath in the early hours of the morning possible to alleviate his voluntary imprisonment.