Eighty Days Amber (Eight Days)

by Jackson, Vina

  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 som
ehow 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.

  Not only did he have to escape to somewhere faraway where no one would know him or of him, but he also had to convince his pursuers that he was no longer harmful to them. Sadly, these were not the kind people you could negotiate with or have reasoned conversation with to clear the muddied waters. They were dangerous men.

  I only knew one thing: wherever he went, I would be going with him. I was determined that nothing would sunder us apart any longer.

  ‘You’ll need a different identity, a whole set of new papers,’ I said. ‘And that’s just to begin with.’

  ‘Not only is that expensive and difficult, but you need the right contacts to set it up properly. You’d require complete professionals, not a back-alley store with would-be inexperienced forgers. And all the guys or organisations I once knew on that side of the law are not the sort of folk I could now run to begging for a favour. They would just give me up,’ he reasoned.

  However, as distasteful as it might prove, I could see the glimmer of a solution.

  I fetched my handbag and pulled out my current German passport and the identity card that I had been using and handed them over to Chey.

  He gave them a long look and then asked, ‘These are yours? You have false papers?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do they look authentic enough?’

  He held them up to the light and studiously peered at them.

  ‘They look very good, although I’m of course not an expert. But yes, they seem real,’ he admitted.

  ‘I can get more,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘From the same people.’

  ‘How much would it cost?’

  ‘Just our pride,’ I said.

  And I revealed to him how I had been provided with the false set of papers by the Network and the work I had undertaken for them.

  Chey knew that since our first time together I had been with other men. He had met Viggo, of course, but had quickly realised that the rock singer had been more of a fuck buddy to me, where emotions had not been involved and, anyway, he had taken a liking to the guy and had not been jealous that I had been to bed with him. He must have guessed there would have been others, anonymous pick-ups and solaces for loneliness here and there, but I had never told him the story of the dancers and what we did for rich customers.

  ‘If I agree to one final performance, I am confident they will provide me with a new set of papers for you to use,’ I said.

  He bowed his head.

  ‘And you think that is the only way?’ he whispered, already aware of the likely answer.

  ‘Yes.’

  He took me into his arms and hugged me close.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but let me be the dancer, let me be your partner this time. You can train me beforehand, teach me.’

  We kissed.

  ‘The client much admired your set on the boat in Sitges,’ I was told by Madame Denoux. ‘He’s been wishing to book you for a repeat performance ever since. You’re lucky.’

  ‘I’m pleased.’ Actually it was more relief that I felt. I’d feared that in the many months since I had voluntarily dropped off the Network’s radar and catalogue, I might have been forgotten and replaced by new dancers.

  ‘And when he heard that you proposed a farewell performance on New Year’s Eve, your swansong so to speak, he was absolutely delighted that he would be in a position to make it happen.’

  ‘And he agrees to all my terms?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Cash at the door, albeit without our commission and the cost of the papers you desire duly deducted, naturally. Your choice of dance and partner, although the client, who is Russian as you no doubt guessed, one of your compatriots—’

  ‘Not necessarily, I’m from the Ukraine.’

  ‘Oh.’ I could sense her frowning at the other end of the line back in her New Orleans house.

  People always thought we were all the same. Although I’d grown up speaking both Russian and Ukrainian, because of my mixed parentage, they were two distinct language
s, and our cultural heritages were very different. But over the years I had grown tired of correcting the people in the West who made that common mistake.

  ‘Well, he’s the client so who cares about the nationality, eh? He’s paying and paying well. He’s been told the set will be something truly special.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I confirmed hastily, although at this stage I had no idea what Chey and I would be dancing. All three of the scenarios I used to perform with my erstwhile professional partners were fairly elaborate and the fruit of considerable prior training and I didn’t think I could teach Chey all the steps let alone the particular subtleties of the required movements in time. ‘And someone from the Network will meet me on arrival with the documents we ordered?’

  ‘They will. Why do you require the papers right there and then? We could FedEx them to you in London . . .’

  ‘I have my reasons,’ I said.

  ‘Then of course the client has also agreed to the date you specified – New Year’s Eve, although it is at very short notice, Luba. Your terms did make the negotiations rather awkward. Fortunately, he has a residence in Dublin so, as requested, it will all take place in the British Isles.’

  That was something Chey and I had insisted on, to avoid facing too many airports and officials with his current documents.

  I’d never been to Dublin. Neither had Chey. But we’d achieved our first goal of obtaining a new set of documents for him. Mine had not aroused any suspicion during a few years of globetrotting, so I felt safe to use them again.

  The only problem was the second half of the plan. Where to run to and how to disappear and escape the clutches of Chey’s pursuers?

  We had a week left to come up with a miracle. And we were clutching at straws.

  ‘I think we have to rely on the kindness of strangers,’ Chey said. ‘We need outside help. This isn’t something we can manage alone.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked. I briefly thought of Dominik, thinking as I did so of how attracted I’d been to him in the absence of Chey and the way I had shamelessly approached him in Barcelona. He was a writer, maybe he could come up with something, but then I quickly remembered the strongly autobiographical nature of his book. Another creative man who didn’t entirely rely on his imagination . . . Just like Viggo.