The Russian's Christmas Present

by Dani Wyatt

  “Yes. Dead serious. Ten thousand dollars for one evening. All you have to do is show up and bid on me until you win…I’ll give you the money for the bidding. Just make sure you win.”

  “A bachelor auction?” She scratches her cheek on a squinted eye and she’s fucking stunning. Pink cheeks, long ice blonde hair sweeping over her forehead and dark eyes that have me lost already, except she’s so fucking young. Too young for a fuck like me.

  “Yes. It’s for charity and I’m doing it for my grandfather.” I shake my head, the need to explain my mother and my family more than I want to get into right now.

  I bite down on the inside of my cheek as I try to push the thought away of mounting her sweet pussy on my face as she juices into my mouth. Grinding and moaning as I dig my fingertips into her round ass cheeks.

  “You want to pay me to have a date with you? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Nyet.” I grunt out. Something primitive is taking over as I speak with her. “No, not unless I pay you to fuck me. Or, you pay me…either way.” The vulgarity makes her startle, but I finish. “Never mind, just win the date and you get paid.”

  I will fuck you, somehow, someday, is what I want to add, but from the trepidation on her face I get myself under some control.

  Mauricio and Irina, I love them, but they care too much about everyone. As soon as they sent Bria back to get me my espresso/vodka combo, they were going on about how she’s saving up to go to design school while taking care of her not-so-disabled, disabled father, how she lives on Pines Avenue, which is more than just a low rent area.

  It’s dangerous.

  It pissed me the fuck off, hearing that her own father, was not treating her like a damn princess.

  They went on, good old gated community gossip, and told me there was talk about a few of the girls from my former high school that were going to be at the auction. One of them hell-bent on making sure she won the bid for me. One in particular I’d rather stick needles under my fingernails than spend a second on a date with her. Charity or not.

  The way Bria is chewing on her lip is driving me crazy, but there’s one thing my father taught me about business and making deals. At some point in the negotiations, everything is on the table and there will be an uncomfortable silence.

  The first one to talk, loses.

  Except in this instance, as long as she agrees to my proposal, we’re both going to win.

  I’ve never wanted like someone like this. It’s insanity and Christmas magic all at the same time.

  “Okay.” She finally mouths ad I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for ten years. “Formal? Or, what should I wear? I mean, I have formal. I have pretty much everything. I know you couldn’t know, but I’m a clothing designer, I have plenty of formal dresses, or evening wear, or…” She rambles on for another minute or more and I feel like I live a lifetimes inside each word. Her sweet, lilty voice plays me like Yo-Yo Ma and I love that she is comfortable enough to talk until she’s breathless.

  I want to make her breathless in so many ways.

  When she finally comes up for air, I strain against the smile that pulls at my lips but when she presses her fingers to her forehead on a sigh, looking at me with a flush of embarrassment, I just want to kiss her so fucking bad.

  “I tend to ramble. Sorry.”

  “No, never be sorry for talking. I loved every word. You should talk all the time.”

  She swallows hard, blinking a few times, and I look at her neck as a fantasy flashes in my head of my red teeth marks and the sight of my hands bound there as she stares up at me, my cock buried deep in her tight cunt as she gasps…

  “So?” She’s giving me a strange look and I realize I was lost in my thoughts and missed something.

  “Sorry, I was listening but—”

  “Formal or just evening wear?”

  “Either. Whichever makes you more comfortable.”

  “Where is this event?”

  I give her the address and time, and realize I don’t want to wait until tomorrow evening to see her again. I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow evening to see her again. Which both confuses and frustrates me.

  I think about how Irina was chiding me about not being married and how I never had a good answer.

  Now I know.

  It’s not something you can describe. This feeling I have around this girl I’ve known less than thirty minutes. Fuck, I don’t even know if she has a boyfriend. A husband.

  Christ almighty.

  What if men aren’t her jam? I can see myself eliminating a boyfriend, even a husband if necessary, but if she’s just not wired for my XY chromosomes, what the fuck am I going to do about that?

  “Fine. So, how is this all going to work?”

  “Work?” I answer, still half-crazed with the thoughts that she could have someone else in her life, male or female.

  She’s fidgeting, looking uncomfortable, and all I can think of is gathering her hair in my hands and kissing her luscious pink lips.

  “The money. How do I bid and whatever. Like, cash or what?”

  “I’ll give you cash and a card tomorrow.” I reach over and take her pen and little pad of paper where she’s scribbled my measurements and write down my cell number. “Message me when you arrive. I’ll come out and meet you.”

  I hand it back to her and let my fingers brush hers. As I do, that deep percussion booms again in my chest at the contact. My heart pounds and the Christmas carols that have been playing inside my head since she walked into the room fade behind the rushing of my blood in my ears.

  “Well, I should get back—” She tips her head toward the back room, but I can’t live another second not knowing.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” I blurt out as her deep brown eyes snap wide, then I add. “Or a girlfriend? Or…fuck it, anyone?”

  A tight smile curls her lips and there’s a seductive gleam in her eye. “And what if there is? This is just a business arrangement, right?”

  Fuck no, it’s not.

  The thought of another man with his hands on her has a violent surge of blood rushing through my veins.

  I can’t help it. I’m overwhelmed with the possessive sense this girl is mine. All mine. And I’m losing control of myself in a way I’ve never experienced before.

  “Answer my questions first. Don’t answer a question with a question. It’s naughty. Are you naughty?”

  “Maybe.” She glides her tongue over her bottom lip on that pout that makes me want to bend her over and fuck her right here. “But, no. I’m quite unencumbered by any romantic sort of relationship.”

  “Good,” I grit out before I can stop myself.

  She tips her head back, looking at the ceiling for a moment, before meeting my eyes. “It’s nice to know there’s a second Christmas. Since I didn’t really have a first.” She finishes the last words more wistful, almost like she’s saying them to herself.

  “Your family does not celebrate?”

  Her lips tug down and I regret asking because her smile is gone. “Not so much. We don’t really even do anything anymore. It’s just me and my dad and…well…” She blows out a long breath like she’s trying to reset the mood. “I really do love Christmas. I just don’t get to love it as much as I’d like.”

  “We will work on that.”

  “Maybe.” She crinkles her nose, turns and sashays into the back room, twitching her ass as she goes.

  I’m left standing there with my heart pounding and my cock nearly breaking in half, hard as fucking steel uncomfortably locked in place down my pant leg.

  Get your shit together, man.

  I think this is it. That feeling I’ve been waiting for my entire life.

  Now, I have to figure out what the fuck to do about it.

  Chapter 4

  Bria

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” I stare into the mirror at Alice, who is standing behind me with a curling iron, twirling my hair on the hot barrel.

  “I
can’t either.” She smiles. “But I’m fucking stoked that you are. Ten grand? Damn, girl. It’s about time you did something daring. I can’t seem to talk you into stripping…”

  “Yeah, you remember when you got me to put on your acrylic stilts? How did that go?”

  She giggles and starts on another piece of my hair. “We were close to an ER visit.”

  A flash of heat bursts on my cheeks remembering how Martel caught me as I tripped and nearly fell face first into the mannequin. His hand brushed my chest and it felt like all the air in the room disappeared.

  “Right,” I reply as Alice finishes up the last few curls on the front of my hair then puts down the curling iron and starts teasing the roots. “There isn’t enough insurance in the world that would let a strip club give me the stage.”

  Alice and I have been friends since the second grade. We bonded over those horrible pink snack cakes called Snoballs and protecting each other from Audrina Templeton, who for some reason made us the center of her destructive focus from the time we entered Mrs. Rubinstein’s class that September.

  We were both from what everyone in this town calls ‘The Pines’, which is Pines Avenue and the surrounding area known for trailer parks and low rent duplexes, along with subsidized apartment buildings.

  There are more liquor stores than grocery stores these days. But, when we grew up, it wasn’t a war zone, it was working class, and to us it was just home.

  “I’d give you lessons,” Alice goes on. “I told you that bunches of times. You could make so much more money.” She tips her head toward the window where the sun is already down, and the early winter evening has taken over the sky. “And, you get to sleep in.”

  Alice’s work has paid for her pre-med as well as room and board at Marygrove College about an hour from here. She’s staying with me for her winter break, but her classes start in a few days and I don’t begrudge her the path she’s chosen for her college funding. She’s smart, and she’s gorgeous, with that perfect blend of a flat stomach centered between her natural double D’s and a rear end that makes most grown men cry. Her cocoa colored hair hangs in perfect rinlets and curls down her back and I’ve never seen eyes like hers before. They are a greenish-blue like a some tropical lagoon and I’m pretty sure she could hypnotize someone with just a look if she wanted.

  My eyes are brown, wide, but nothing special. My body stores some extra fluff all over year round, but I gave up the self-loathing years ago. I am what I am, I feel good and the number on the scale can’t continue to determine my self-worth or my mood.

  I love that Alice is chasing her dreams on her own terms and envy snaps at me whenever I think of my own dreams of design school, which seem more out of reach every day.

  Except, if all goes as planned, I’ll have ten grand that may just jump start my dreams after all.

  The alarm I set on my phone goes off and my stomach flips.

  “I gotta get dressed.”

  I take one more look in the mirror, barely recognizing myself.

  Another side advantage to working as a stripper, is Alice has some mad skills with hair and makeup, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear I was looking at myself through some glam IG filter, not at the mirror over my dresser. It’s not that I’m an au naturel gal all the time, but when Alice gets ahold of a face, it’s makeup art at its finest.

  As I move to my bed where my dress for the evening is waiting, my father’s voice bellows through the bedroom door.

  “Bria!” He sounds pissed, which is how he sounds the majority of the time. “I need to talk to you.”

  Alice shakes her head on a sneer, hissing, “Don’t give him any more money.”

  I flick my eyes to the door and clear my throat. “Coming,” I yell, then look at my friend, putting my finger to my mouth.

  “He just got his disability check last week.” She grits out shaking her head, frustration clenching her jaw.

  “I know,” I answer in a hushed tone, waving at her to keep her voice down, but she gives me an eye roll as I open the bedroom door and head down the hall to the den where he spends most of his time.

  Looking inside, it’s a disaster. I cleaned in here yesterday, but already there are empty beer cans, two empty whiskey bottles and a mess of pizza boxes and take-out containers. The scent of sour alcohol and sadness wrap around me like a heavy fog as he spins in his wheelchair and his watery red eyes focus on me.

  For a second, he stares, and I wrap my arms around my waist as my stomach knots. “What do you need? I’m on my way out.”

  “On your way out? You taking up with Alice then? All painted up like a working girl. And your hair. I hate it. I hate that color. It’s cheap.”

  “I have a charity event. What did you need to talk to me about?”

  “I need twenty bucks. I need to pay for a prescription.”

  “I refilled everything for you already…”

  “It’s a new prescription. None of your business. I just need the money.” His frail body is lost inside the cotton pajama bottoms and tattered blue robe he wears almost every day, even though I’ve bought decent-fitting clothes for him from the thrift store down the street.

  Sometimes, I believe he likes living this way. Playing the victim. Soaking up pity like it somehow legitimizes his self-destruction.

  I start to tell him no, but the argument that would ensue would sap any of the positive energy I have going into this evening, so I walk back to the bedroom, give Alice a look, letting her know I don’t need her chastising me right now, and get a twenty dollar bill from my purse.

  When I return and hand it to my dad, he doesn’t thank me. Instead, he narrows his eyes on a sniff.

  “Charity event. What charity event?”

  “It’s the annual Parkinson’s Fundraiser at Meadowbrook Hall.”

  “Meadowbrook Hall?” He scoffs on a snort. “How did you get invited to Meadowbrook Hall?”

  I shrug. “Someone from work invited me. It’s a fundraiser and it’s always decorated so beautifully for Christmas. It should be fun.”

  “Christmas is over,” he huffs, knowing full well the well-known event hall and hotel will still be dressed to the nines for the holidays.

  I look around the cheerless room. There is no sign of Christmas here or anywhere in the house. My father forbids any decorations, so Alice and I put up a small fiber-optic tree in my bedroom and some cranberry and popcorn garland we made ourselves draped everywhere with twinkling white lights. She wanted to take it down after New Year’s but I didn’t. Truthfully, I’d leave it up all year if I had my way.

  It’s my own little Christmas act of defiance, and as long as we keep our door closed, he pretends he doesn’t notice. Alice’s parents were killed in a car accident the summer after we graduated from high school, and although she has a sister that doesn’t live far, she spends a lot of her weekends and holiday breaks here with me.

  She hates that I’m here alone with my father and I know her staying here is more for me than for her.

  “You’re going to wear one of your homemade dresses?” He coughs. “You’re just like your mother. Trying to fit in where you don’t belong. She never could just be happy with what we had. Always wanted more. See how that all turned out for us.”

  He rolls his wheelchair toward his recliner and fishes in the cushion, pulling out a pint bottle of the cheapest whiskey the corner liquor stores sell and takes a drink.

  My mother’s been gone over four years now. She left on Christmas Eve, telling me she would get settled and I could come live with her. That never happened.

  She lives in Florida now with her new husband, who is what my father refers to as her golden ticket. Thirty years older with a heart problem and a thick wallet. I’ve heard from her less and less as time’s gone on. Her new husband doesn’t have much use for me, and from what I can tell, Mom is more of a pet than a wife.

  But sometimes money is more important than family. At least that’s what she’s taught me in the last few
years. I felt like things were pretty good growing up. I mean, we were on the high side of poor but there were no big fights between them.

  My dad worked in a warehouse for one of the local machine shops. No drinking, no big drama. Just this underlying disappointment my mother always seemed to have with the fact that she married a working man, whose general aspirations ended at getting overtime and a vacation at a lake cabin for a week every summer.

  “Come on.” Alice comes into the den, breaking the tense silence with my father. “You need to get dressed or you’ll be late. And you’re not going to be late.” She glares at my dad, who rolls his eyes and turns back toward the TV, punching the remote and blaring the volume on a World Series of Poker.

  I think he’s afraid of Alice. She doesn’t give him an inch.

  I pay most of the expenses here, outside of the house itself which has been paid off since before Mom left thank goodness or homelessness could be a real possibility. I do my best to take care of my father, even though I know in my heart he’s not as disabled as he plays. His back injury started after the divorce, but when it’s time to hustle to the liquor store or a local poker game, he is miraculously cured.

  The new job at Mauricio’s pays almost double what I was making at the fabric store, and both Mauricio and Irina promised that if things worked out I might even be allowed to sell some of my own designs there sometime in the future.

  It’s not much, but it’s a start, and right now I’ll take whatever I can get.

  Alice takes my hand and we work our way back to our bedroom without another word.

  Inside, she helps me into my dress and shoes, and does some final touches on my hair and makeup, before spinning me around and taking a picture with her phone.

  “Gorgeous. If you’re not careful, you’re going to have the whole lot of them throwing money at you to win them all.” She opens her mouth on a dramatic silent laugh. Her legs go up to her shoulders and her long wavy brown hair is almost to her waist. She really could be a model and I guess, in her own way she is. When she recovers, she shrugs and looks at me again. “But, really, you are just so extra. Don’t ever forget that, okay?”