‘Fuck,’ he moans, anxiously trying to move backwards from the edge - but I just slap my face with his full-blooded cock, making him stay right where he is. I spit on it and reach for his balls, pulling and slightly biting them before stuffing my throat again … sending him to the wall.
I keep rubbing his balls and moving my head until he makes his final and harshest move, when he suddenly starts shaking, bleating like a lost sheep and profusely filling my mouth with the pungent liquid, which I pretend to swallow.
‘Oh,’ he moans, shaking off the last chlorine-smelling drops. ‘You’re crazy,’ he exhales, still heavily breathing, his arms and neck so tense that I can see his pulsating veins. ‘At least the dessert was worth coming for,’ he says, leaning backwards.
‘I’ve heard there are good desserts at Cipriani in Venice,’ I say, repeating a phrase from some movie, realizing only a few moments later what he really meant.
‘Let’s go there.’
‘To Venice? Now?’
‘I’ve got the plane,’ he giggles, zipping up his dad jeans. ‘Venice is a nice city. Let’s go there … finally spend a night together,’ he says, a little bit distractedly. ‘You can fly with me to London after … I’ll book us a suite.’
‘I thought you had a house in London?’ I ask.
‘It’s in Surrey … in boring St George’s Hill … only good for beekeeping, besides the bodyguards and safeguarding some important docs.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE EXECUTION
On Monday morning the black Maybach takes us through the rush-hour traffic that is moving at a snail’s pace through the multi-lane roads of Moscow, to the already-familiar airport.
‘Habibi, sixty days for the shipment is way too long,’ Ahmad argues with me on the phone. ‘Thirty working days.’
‘Hang on.’ I mute the call and ask Akbar if he can speed up the lithium delivery.
‘Pfff,’ he sighs. ‘It takes at least five days to drive it from Siberia to Italy, and another two days to ship it to Tripoli … I’d have to get the plant tomorrow to meet that deadline.’ He shrugs, and I get back to my phone conversation.
‘Ahmad, thirty days is a bit too tight,’ I say, hoping to find a compromise.
‘Then no deal,’ Ahmad says abruptly.
‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll get back to you,’ I say, hanging up, realizing my entire plan is about to collapse.
‘So how realistic would it be to for you to get legal ownership of the plant tomorrow?’ I ask Akbar, teasingly putting my freshly-manicured hand on his crotch. Its classic red matches my lipstick and handbag, and complements my tight, open-cleavage Cavalli dress.
‘I’d need a miracle,’ Akbar grumbles, looking out of the window.
‘I thought you specialized in miracles,’ I wink.
‘This case is more complicated than you think … too many parties involved … too many possible consequences,’ he says, visibly frustrated.
I automatically quote Dostoyevsky: ‘Faith does not spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There is always a way to get what you want,’ I murmur, licking inside his ear. ‘It’s just a matter of how badly you want it …’ I unzip his pants and start playing with his balls.
A few moments later Akbar’s phone rings:
‘Da … how much … do it,’ he says firmly, before turning to me: ‘I might actually get it tomorrow. Keep your client hot.’ He sighs, grabbing my hair and forcing his flesh inside my mouth, down into my red lane … throttling me … but I have to resist … this is the castigation I am due.
On the plane we go for the usual drill: food, drinks, a small mountain of charlie from the ivory mosaic drawer and some extensive petting on the L-shaped couch … right up until we touch down.
Once on the ground, we get onto a private road and in no time at all reach a grand medieval establishment with lancet windows and a sign at the entrance that reads ‘Cipriani’.
‘Oh my God, we are actually staying here,’ I exclaim, buzzing with excitement.
‘I wanted to be romantic,’ Akbar declares, opening a French door to the exquisite hotel lobby with a huge crystal chandelier hanging from a decadent ceiling, and a vaulted terrace overlooking the marshy lagoon and the city skyline beyond.
‘Signore e Signora Gromov, welcome,’ says a friendly Italian woman, guiding us through this treasure trove of old-world charm to our lodging on the top floor. ‘You have the Casanova suite, it has many original paintings of him.’ With a smile, she opens the door to the spacious, elegant, Venetian rococo-style room, complete with lacquered furniture, colorful lamps and mirrors.
‘Did she just call me Mrs Gromova?’ I ask, enthusiastically pulling back the silk drapes to reveal an extravagant multi-level landscape garden containing fountains, palm trees, exotic flowers and a surprisingly large and stylish pool. The view is enhanced by the lagoon, busy with gondolas, and the immense city, a fascinating work of art in itself … although there is some dissonance somewhere … maybe a smell … a smell of something rotten.
‘Do you like to be called Mrs Gromova?’ He stuns me with the question. ‘Or I could take your last name … Akbar Kuznetsov. I’ve really been thinking about it, think it sounds better … here,’ he says, getting down on one knee in front of me, ‘it’s not a ring … yet … but at least it has diamonds.’ He takes the diamond-studded cover from his iPhone and gives it to me.
‘It’s so unexpected,’ I say, playing along, feeling he has not really made an effort, but still accepting the gift … these are diamonds, after all. ‘Yes, you can take my last name,’ I exclaim theatrically.
Soon enough, we change into swimwear and walk down to the enormous, heated salt-water pool, ideal for Akbar’s six-foot-five frame.
With its sculptured trees and pleasant scent of jasmine, the Casanova garden is a perfect place for the famous peach Bellinis we keep ordering until it starts getting cold at sunset. The tulips, hibiscus and crocuses in massive pots are now closed up, unleashing their true fragrance - and it smells like luxury.
We tipsily stumble back to our room. I clumsily change for dinner into a complicated, brightly-colored chiffon dress with lots of lace, which constantly gets caught on my heels as we walk to the elegant patio, where a classical pianist is playing.
We methodically go through the countless small portions of the taster menu and finally get to the long-awaited dessert, which turns out to be a take on chocolate bread and butter pudding.
‘My dessert is a lot more finger-licking,’ I wink with a lingering, salacious gaze. ‘It’s gonna be even tastier when we have something to celebrate.’
‘We should be able to sign the contract with your guy by the end of this week,’ Akbar boasts, checking something on his phone.
‘Really? That’s fantastic news!’ I exclaim, wreathed in smiles. ‘To our first contract,’ I toast. ‘So, can I confirm the delivery in thirty days?’
‘You can … the contract start date would be some time early next week, when we receive the payment advance.’
‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’ I raise my glass and propose another toast: ‘To the most amazing man on Earth.’
‘There’s going to be a snow rally in Sochi over the weekend – an exclusive event for the CEOs of strategic enterprises, blah blah blah … Come with me?’ he unexpectedly asks.
‘With you I’ll go anywhere,’ I say extravagantly.
‘There’ll be everything you like,’ he elaborates. ‘Rich men, sports cars – a good opportunity for you to meet them.’
‘Aren’t you concerned they’ll see me with you?’
‘I don’t care … they all have a finger in the pie,’ he responds.
‘I’d be delighted to join,’ I smile, eagerly anticipating being introduced as his official girlfriend.
The view over Venice under the stars is simply divine as we down a few more Bellini variations. Mozart’s exquisite melodies become
less and less perceptible, to the point where it is not clear if there are any sounds at all … or is that just the discordant loudness in my head? At some point the restaurant stops serving drinks, regardless of Akbar’s indignation, loudly voiced in Russian … High and dry, we wobble back to the suite.
Akbar opens the door onto a room aglow with hundreds of burning candles.
Guided by their light, he takes my hand and leads me to the bed. The candlelight appropriately spotlights the images on the wall, which feature Casanova playing the fool and messing around.
Akbar gently kisses my neckline, releasing me from the laces of my byzantine dress.
The silly pencil drawings follow us to the bed. Just above it, there is a strange, poorly-lit sketch. I take a stoutcandle - its glow highlighting the flabbiness of Akbar’s body - and reverently hold it in front of me, almost as if I were praying, trying to get a proper look at the drawing.
‘Come on.’ He takes the candle away, slowly pushing me onto the bed and starting to take my lingerie off.
The drawing stares at me. This is Casanova on the way to the scaffold … but why is he fooling around? Imagine what must have been going on in that man’s mind at such a moment; what dreadful convulsions his whole spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul, that’s what it is.
Akbar gets on top and surges inside me … I instantly grab his hand and take two fingers into my mouth. I lick them … I hold onto his hand … gasping for air … groaning.
He firmly holds my throat … strangles me … giving me just enough air to stay conscious … whirling me into dizziness. Isn’t that a mockery? You think how cruel it is, and yet, by heaven, those innocent people do this out of the kindness of their hearts and are convinced they are being humane …
I squash Akbar’s rigid pole inside me, squeezing my internal muscles as hard as I can, breathing heavily, moaning and howling.
Then three or four hours were spent on the usual things: the priest, the breakfast at which he was given wine, coffee and beef …
‘Do you like to be fucked this way, bitch?’ Akbar slaps my bum, grabs my hips and wrenches them, so that I have to work hard not to drop down from the dangling rope.
Finally, he is taken through the town to the scaffold. I think that as he is being driven there he feels he has still an eternity to live … All around is the crowd, noise, and shouts, ten thousand faces, ten thousand eyes …
Spontaneously, I take the candle from the shelf and hold it in front of me … like in church … Without thinking twice, I spill the hot wax all over my chest, gulping from the sharp, well-deserved pain.
But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now this very instant your soul must quit your body, and that you will no longer be a human and and that this is certain, certain!
Akbar gradually slows down and just when I start to feel some kind of pleasant sensation, his deflated balloon falls out of the pot.
‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen as often as I like any more,’ he sighs, curling up next to me in a fetal pose. ‘Don’t go,’ he orders, snatching my hand just when I am about to get up. ‘Stay,’ he entreats, as if he wants to be nurtured like he would be by a mother … and a martyr. ‘You are my dream woman, let’s have children together.’
‘What about your wife?’ I ask, slightly pulling my hand out of his grip.
‘I’ll sort it out, so to speak.’
‘When?’
‘Do you want me to call her now?’ He grabs his phone from the nightstand. ‘Do you?’ he repeats, unlocking the screen.
‘Mm, I don’t know …’ I mutter, fighting the temptation to tell him to bloody do it. ‘It’s gonna have to be your choice,’ I say firmly.
‘I’ll do it,’ he says with devotion in his eyes, ‘… personally, when I’m back to Moscow, so to speak.’
Planting a smile on my face, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, grabbing my phone to give Ahmad the green light to wire the money. I also text Richard and suggest meeting up in two days’ time, on the evening Akbar will be having dinner with his daughter.
By the time I’m finished in the shower, I have a response from Ahmad: ‘We’ll send the pre-payment tomorrow.’ This causes a sudden onset of immensely powerful burning, and a tingling sensation all over my body. With renewed confidence, I walk through the darkness of the room back to the bed, taking down the ludicrous scaffold sketch on the way.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PARKA
The next afternoon we fly to London. Akbar is very quiet the whole morning, constantly typing something on his phone with a serious expression. The moment we take off, he opens the ivory drawer and gets straight into snorting line after line after line.
‘You shouldn’t do so much coke,’ I chide.
‘I don’t need you to tell me what to do,’ he reprimands.
Offended, I retreat into the corner of the L-shaped couch, cross my arms and legs and look at the golden floor, playing with my hair.
When the door opens after touchdown, the chilly air rushes into the cabin, piercing through my bones. Watching the cold, gusty wind and rain surge through the trees, I intuitively roll into the cashmere Hermès blanket I’ve been sitting on.
‘Here, this is Ibrahim’s.’ Akbar passes me a large camouflage jacket and a hat he takes from underneath the seat. ‘He must have left it behind after his trip to Siberia.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, involuntarily putting on the stinky combat parka, not failing to notice a few brown bloodstains.
I put on the military hat and carefully walk down the slippery stairs in my pointy Louboutins and hasten through the puddles straight to the car that’s waiting for us.
We drive into the monotonous wet drear of London, where passing red buses provide the only occasional fleeting injections of joy.
Soon we enter yet another luxury hotel reception: air conditioning at full blast; shiny, monochrome interior; slow, friendly staff; Vivaldi piped through the speakers.
It now comes as no surprise that our suite is the size of a soccer field, and filled with antique furniture. On the terrace, pine bushes growing in stylish white pots stand in a line like Snow White’s dwarfs, looking out across the bustling - and not exactly dry - Knightsbridge, to the grassy sward of Hyde Park beyond.
‘Nice room,’ Akbar says, pouring himself a large glass of whiskey and crashing on the white upholstered sofa.
‘Yeah,’ I nod, getting more and more pissed off that he has stopped paying any attention to me, and did not even open the car door for me.
‘You look like G.I. Jane in that outfit,’ he comments.
‘Demi Moore, huh? Do you want to fuck her?’ I ask, pulling the hat down lower over my eyes and walking towards him, determined show him who the hot butt is around here.
‘Oh … that was a long time ago,’ he mumbles.
‘Pull your pants down,’ I order, in stereotypical Russian military style.
‘OK,’ he cynically smirks.
‘You do what I say, Private Gromov!’ I press the pointy end of my shoe right down on his cock, exerting more and more pressure, feeling my power. ‘Squad will turn to the left in file,’ I command, getting carried away, slightly pinching his balls with the point of my shoe and shuffling his wobbly penis to the left, feeling it gradually getting bigger and harder.
Suddenly, he gets up, grabs me and turns me around, and bends me over the armrest of the ultra-plush sofa, burying my head in the stinky, suffocating mountain of parka.
Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!
‘What the hell?’ I shout, trying to fight and extricate myself from his iron grip, but he forcefully spreads my legs and abruptly stabs his giant weapon inside me.
‘Take it, bitch,’ he sneers, angrily pumping, painfully and repeatedly spanking my rebellious back with his heavy palm.
Devil knows, maybe there is pleasure in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces … But maybe he wants to try other pleasures as well.
‘Stop,’ I howl in a disobedient, croaky voice, wanting to release myself from the pain that is simultaneously sharp and dull, but it only makes him move more vehemently.
‘Fuck off, sergeant,’ he roars, digging my head out from the miniature greenhouse effect of the jacket, folding my underpants around my neck, harshly tightening them, making me gasp for air.
Akbar plants his lacquered loafer right next to my face on the white sofa. ‘Kiss my shoe,’ he orders, grabbing my hair and forcibly angling my head so that I have to lick his cold, reptilian toe. ‘Kiss it,’ he repeats, gagging me tighter.
Squinting, I obediently kiss his toe as if it were a black polished boot, the act symbolizing my vulnerability and submission. At that very moment, Akbar starts trembling … like a high priest invoking the higher spiritual powers to kill demons.
Eventually he bends over me and releases my hair.
I slowly turn around, finally liberating myself from his grasp, and throw the clammy jacket off. ‘It’s probably about fucking time to take that thing to the dry cleaner’s,’ I shriek.
‘Jeez, Katya, what the hell was that?’ he asks, still breathing heavily.
‘Whatever it was, it was really painful,’ I say grouchily.
‘It was so surreal, uncontrollable … like a trance.’
Snow Job: The Great Game
‘Glad you enjoyed it,’ I huff.
Snow Job Page 17