‘Nothing to worry about,’ he echoed, looking up at her.
Aniela was standing in front of him, and as she had been taking his pulse, she must have stepped closer than she’d realised; she was between his parted knees now, still holding up her left hand, with its cheap plastic Swatch, staring at it with ridiculous fixation. Lowering the hand, she found herself looking directly down at his upturned face, and for some reason, she couldn’t take her eyes off it. She had no idea what he looked like – and that doesn’t even mean anything, because nor does he, nor does anyone. No one even really knows. In his file, there wasn’t even a computer-generated projection of the results of Dr Nassri’s work, which was highly unusual: he truly was a man without a face.
But his clear blue-grey eyes, his strawberry-blond hair, his freckled skin, his aura of grace under pressure, those wouldn’t change after surgery. Nor would his body, his muscle tone, his flat stomach, his...
Aniela realised with horror that her gaze had dropped down his frame, down past his narrow waist to his lower abs, the bulge in his sweatpants... Feeling as if all the blood in her body had raced to her head, she backed away as fast as she could in the clumpy shoes.
‘I will change your dressings now,’ she said quickly, snapping open her bag, putting it on the trolley and shoving the whole thing behind him so that she was completely hidden from view. She tried to kick herself, to snap herself out of the insane state into which she’d slipped, but the moulded toe of her Ultra Lite shoe didn’t do much damage; she kicked her calf harder and stumbled, catching the trolley and making the monitor rattle perilously. She dealt with the change of dressings on Jon’s head as fast as she possibly could, a process facilitated by the fact that he was healing very swiftly.
‘The wound is closing very fast. You have good skin for this surgery,’ she said, in an attempt to bring herself back to the strictly clinical. ‘This kind of skin – white with freckles – is very good. Dr Nassri says it bleeds a lot, but it heals fast.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Jon’s voice was a soft rumble in his chest; it was as if she could feel the vibrations right up to his skull, under her quick-moving hands. ‘I never heard that. What’s bad skin for surgery?’
‘Smokers,’ she said. ‘And the darker you are, the more there’s a risk of keloids.’
She swallowed hard.
‘I don’t see the need for more gel dressings,’ she lied. Another day wouldn’t have hurt, and under normal circumstances she would have definitely replaced them.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
‘Great!’ he said. ‘So I just let the air circulate and it’ll heal on its own?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In a few days, when the scar has formed, we will start to put Vitamin E on it to help the healing. And arnica cream for the bruising. It is very effective.’
She started to pack the used dressings into a plastic bag, sealing it and putting it in her medical bag for disposal in the Clinic.
‘So does that mean you don’t need to come back to check up on me any more?’ Jon asked.
Aniela was wheeling the trolley across the room, back into the cupboard, fully in his sightline; she knew that, bending forward a little in the unforgiving white skirt, her bottom must look even bigger and wider than it naturally was. It was mortifying, this uniform; the A-line skirt skimmed her hips, hiding lumps and bumps, but it spread them out as well. And no one but tiny little Melody and her equally thin friends could look good in white.
She shut the closet door and turned to face him, her bag slung over her shoulder.
‘I should really come in every day,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m here for. But if you don’t want me any more – if you don’t want a nurse in any more—’ she corrected herself hurriedly – ‘you could ring Dr Nassri and tell him.’
‘That’d get you into trouble, though,’ Jon said acutely.
‘Oh.’ Aniela was so confused by now by her reaction to Jon that she hadn’t even thought of that. ‘Yes, yes it would—’
‘I won’t do it, then,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’
Jon stood up, taking a step towards her.
‘You seem like a very good nurse,’ he observed. ‘I mean, I’ve had surgery before, and nurses have been – I’ve had quite a few nurses – no, that’s not what I meant to say! I haven’t had – I mean – anyway, you seem very good. As a nurse.’
‘Thank you! I try!’
Aniela had no idea what she was saying now, none at all. It didn’t seem to make sense, and she had the feeling what he was saying didn’t make that much sense either. She stared up at him, at his poor swollen bruised face, and realised that he was holding out his hand to shake hers. She had no idea, either, why he wanted to shake her hand, but she responded, and as his fingers closed over hers she felt them tugging her gently, pulling her towards him. They stood there for a moment, his hand in hers, caught between their bodies, feeling each other breathe, their hearts pounding fast in excitement and utter disbelief.
If I pull away now, if I run out, nothing will ever be said again, she knew, with an instinct as sharp and clear as diamond cutting glass. I will come back tomorrow at the same time, check him over for five minutes and leave again, and we will never, ever, be this close again.
I couldn’t bear that.
His face was tilting down towards her, a bruised, pulpy mess. And though her eyes closed as she turned her own face up to meet his, craning her neck, it was not because she was in any way upset by the sight of his damaged features, but because being pressed against him, inhaling the scent of his body, was making her too dizzy to do anything else. His other arm closed round her, supporting her, his palm flat on her spine, his touch making her shiver from head to toe, and as it rippled up and up his lips met hers at the crest of the wave, soft and very sweet, gentle and unexpectedly tentative.
It was a true first kiss, or a whole series of first kisses. Each one was slow, each one was a question Jon was asking and Aniela was answering, and each one was gradually more confident, more compelling. His lips parted, and hers did too; with each kiss, they breathed each other’s breath, felt the yielding moisture of each other’s lips; pulled away fractionally after each one, came back for more, and every time they came back the fragile connection and trust between them grew. It was like watering plants, watching them push up their shoots from the soil, nurturing a tiny little flower into bloom; or sheltering a flame with your hands, nursing it, giving it oxygen without letting a gust of wind put it out, until, all at once, it was big enough and strong enough to survive on its own.
Aniela was flooded with sensation, gasping with it, her body burning up with heat. She touched the tip of her tongue delicately to Jon’s lips, exploring them, and heard him groan as he responded, his own meeting hers instantly; his hand slid up her back, slowly, surely; it lifted away, and she moaned in frustration, but it was just to avoid the heavy medical bag on her shoulder. A second later his big palm cupped her head, drawing it even closer, and his tongue drove into her mouth eagerly, so eagerly that she felt a snap of excitement, a firecracker going off between her legs, a tiny explosion which loosened her entire body. She moaned again, leaning into him, dissolving in the kiss, and in response he kissed her so hard that she felt his groin pressing insistently into hers.
His teeth ground with an audible click against hers, one of those little awkward moments that can happen when a kiss is overenthusiastic, and one of the parties hasn’t had much practice in making transitions easy and smooth. Aniela pulled back fractionally, turning her head to make the angle of the kiss easier; but Jon was already pushing away, his hands falling from her body.
He took a stumbling step back, turning away from her.
Mortified, feeling rejected and ridiculous, Aniela shoved her bag up her shoulder and fled in an awkward run on her clumsy Ultra Lite shoes to the door.
Dasha
The suite at the Dorchester, where Dasha was staying, was decorated in t
he lavishly overstuffed English style: swagged and pelmeted yellow and blue chintz curtains, caught back with huge tassels over a whole second set of curtains, a blue which echoed the pattern of the chintz; fringed and layered cushions on big yellow velvet sofas; polished credenzas and desks with unnecessary tiny drawers the inhabitants of the suite would never use; side tables laden with ceramic vases and table lamps. Usually, Dasha enjoyed the décor, which was very similar to the interior of her Monaco apartment. Rich Russians did not do minimalism. The more possessions they had, the better. And all these layers of curtains and cushions that needed to be plumped and dusted, these antiques and framed pictures and mirrors that needed to be polished, spoke also of the money that was available for a stream of staff members to bustle through the apartment, keeping it perpetually pristine.
However, when one was in a hurry, all those side tables and extra armchairs were just a series of obstacles. Dasha navigated through them at high speed, cursing at how many there were, how many stupid objets d’art the Dorchester had crammed into the living room. The corner suite had lavish views over Hyde Park, but its trees were bare now, its grass dulled by the lack of sunlight, the low grey sky, and Dasha didn’t even glance at the park as she dodged the furniture roadblocks, heading through into the huge bedroom with its king-size four-poster bed, spread-eagled on which was the only view in which she was interested...
Muffled, pleading noises came from behind the ball gag as Marcos, Dasha’s Brazilian toy boy, saw her enter the room. His big dark liquid eyes opened wide, his thick silky black lashes fluttering as he tried to convey how very much he wanted her to untie him, his head twisting from side to side: since his wrists were lashed to opposite sides of the headboard, his feet to the posts at the foot of the bed, opening his body like a slender, pale-brown X on the yellow shantung silk coverlet, his head was practically the only part of his body that he could move.
Practically, but not quite. Dasha climbed up on the base of the bed, kneeling between Marcos’s slim legs, sliding her hands beneath his small tight buttocks; a moan escaped him as he felt her slowly ease out the butt plug which she had inserted before she left him to head off to Canary Wharf. His large, uncircumcised penis, which had been resting fatly on his thigh, stirred as she removed the plug, twisting it as she did so: as it plopped out, his hips bucked, his penis swelling further. Marcos, like all Brazilians, loved the sun, and he loved to sunbathe naked. His foreskin was as tanned as the rest of him, smooth and brown, and, like the rest of his body, it was shiny with the baby oil with which Dasha had anointed him after tying him up.
Pulling back her hand, smiling in anticipation, Dasha slapped his cock. Behind the ball gag, Marcos’s moan rose to a buzz, and his hips bucked again, eagerly, wanting more. That was a mistake. He should have stayed still. Dasha never liked to give him what he wanted. Deliberately ignoring his tumescing cock, she crawled up his slippery body, not caring about the oil on her expensive clothes, rubbing herself against him with lubricious relish. Pulling open her silk shirt, she shoved her surgically enhanced breasts against his depilated chest, grinding her crotch into his. When she finally slid the gag out, his pouty lips were swollen and bruised from having been stretched around the rubber ball; deliberately, she crushed them under her own, biting and smushing them down, hurting him, barely giving him a chance to breathe, her tongue driving deeply, invasively, into his mouth.
She kissed him for a long time, as if she were marking her territory; when she pulled back eventually, he was gasping, moaning, his cheeks flushed.
‘You hurt me!’ he said, his words reproachful but his tone flirtatious. ‘You hurt me so bad!’
‘Hurt? You don’t know the meaning of the word yet. D’you want the big dildo, you slut? The one I call Putin’s Surprise?’ she said, hovering over him, her lipstick smeared now. ‘You want me to go and get it now, shove it right up you?
Marcos shivered in fear and pleasure.
‘No, Dasha! Not Putin’s Surprise!’ he begged, trembling from head to toe.
‘Maybe later,’ she said, smiling evilly. ‘Or tomorrow. Maybe, if you are not good today, tomorrow you get Putin’s Surprise inside you, not some little butt plug your slutty arse can’t even feel by now. And I leave you tied up for twice as long.’
Marcos’s big eyes widened still further in anticipation; but then a practical thought struck him.
‘Not too long. They need to come in to clean,’ he pointed out. ‘They ring on the door many times while I am here.’
Back in Monaco, Dasha’s staff were like the Three Wise Monkeys; the Dorchester’s cleaners, however, could not be expected to dust and hoover around the prone, naked, butt-plugged body of a Brazilian gigolo.
‘And also, the oil is all over the bed,’ he added even more practically, jerking his head to look down at the greasy slick of baby oil on the shantung silk. ‘You put too much on. They will have to soak it for ages, and it may not come out even then...’
But while Marcos had been speaking, Dasha had hoicked up her tight skirt to her waist. All she was wearing underneath it were thigh-high Wolford lacy hold-ups, nothing she needed to remove before she squatted over Marcos’s mouth and shoved her bare crotch down onto it.
‘You talk too much,’ she said. ‘I don’t pay you to talk.’
She sighed in contentment as Marcos started doing with his lips and tongue exactly what Dasha did pay him for. Leaning forward, she grabbed onto the headboard, manoeuvring herself into exactly the right position, not caring that her knees were digging painfully into his shoulders, that the spikes of her heels were carving divots into his chest. The thrill of confronting first Nassri, then Grigor, then Jon, had worked her up into a high state of excitement and arousal, bringing back memories of when life had been a perpetual adrenalin rush of conflict, aggression, and battling for supremacy.
Dasha’s life in Monaco was the acme of luxury, interspersed with trips to the Costa Smeralda to sun herself on yachts, to Chamonix for the skiing, to New York and Paris for shopping binges: she had no need to ever work again.
But part of me misses the old days. Grigor and me, together against the world, fighting back-to-back to carve out the life we’d both always dreamed of.
Pulling out those Polaroids of the lesson Dasha had taught Arkady Chertkov had made her very nostalgic. Russia twenty years ago had been the Wild West, where anything went as long as you had enough money, a free-forall where the law was on the side of whoever could buy it. Now Putin had clamped down, the law was his; it no longer belonged to the oligarchs. That was why Dasha had nicknamed the huge dildo – technically called a Man Rammer– ‘Putin’s Surprise’. Because it fucked you up the arse when you least expected it.
‘Aaah!’ she yelled, grinding her hips down onto Marcos’s face as he desperately tried to breathe through his nose while still servicing her. ‘Yes – like that, you slut, you filthy whore! Eat me out like that! Aaah!’
She was coming, spasm upon spasm, her calves slipping against his heavily oiled chest, her heavily ringed fingers gripping the headboard; her cries were full-throated, utterly uninhibited. All her life, Dasha Khalovsky had taken what she wanted and paid the price for it. Marcos, whom she had poached from a South American oil millionairess in Sardinia last year, was a highly expensive little piece, venal and grasping, with a diamond-studded price tag; but he was worth every penny. Like a pedigree pet, it was important to keep him well-exercised and fully occupied – that had been the Uruguayan millionairess’s mistake. Dasha made sure that Marcos was never bored, never knew what was coming next.
As she lifted her lower body from his face, his lips red and dripping now, he licked them lubriciously, staring eagerly at her, knowing that she was deciding whether to let him come or not. If he had begged for it, she would, capriciously, have denied him; but his big cock butted against her buttocks, and she couldn’t resist it.
She wouldn’t untie him, though. She loved him pinned down, squashed under her. Loved how powerless he was, even wh
en his cock was inside her. Sliding back, she rose and then sank onto him expertly, driving him right up inside her with a single stroke.
‘That’s right, you whore!’ she said gleefully. ‘I’m going to ride you for a long time, and don’t you dare come before I’m ready – or I’ll paddle your balls so you won’t sit down for weeks!’
Threats made Marcos even harder; she felt him swell inside her, his girth thickening. For a slim boy, he was hung like a horse: The Uruguayan bitch had been livid when he had left her for Dasha. But she spoiled him, and that’s not what he really wants. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen, she thought complacently, settling in for a long canter: reaching behind her for one of the poles of the four-poster bed, she ripped off the tasselled tie that was holding the curtain looped artistically around it. Leaning forward, groaning in pleasure as his big, thick cock hit a different angle inside her with the movement, she slid one huge tassel under his neck and grabbed it as it emerged on the other side. One end in each hand, the wide chintz strip of fabric running behind his head, it was an improvised set of reins.
‘Giddy up!’ she said, beginning to lift and sink her hips in a rhythmic, riding movement, dragging the halter taut, forcing Marcos’s head up uncomfortably; the muscles in his slender arms strained against their restraints, his narrow hips jerking up to meet Dasha’s pounding buttocks. ‘Giddy up, little pony!’
Her huge breasts were bouncing with every rise and fall, the sight of them, still in their red lace bra, low-cut to show almost half of their melon-round swell, exciting her even more; they were perfectly symmetrical. Dr Nassri had done a truly excellent job with her boob enlargement. A laugh escaped her as she remembered him, caught out watching himself coming over her, turned on by the sight of the boobs he’d just made.
I got the last laugh, didn’t I, Hassan? The thought of the events of that day – of how she had screwed over three men, one after the other – of how she had got exactly what she’d wanted, what she’d planned for – sent her into the first of many rich, blinding orgasms. Just like the old days – no, even better! In the old days I had to sneak around to get properly fucked, do it behind Grigor’s back – and in Russia, they don’t have boys like this one, sleek little South American sluts with clever mouths and lovely smooth bodies—
Bad Angels Page 13