Something Else 2

He has me naked and star-fished.

The bindings are red velvet bell-cords. Their plush interleaving secures my ankles and wrists to the curlicued frame of bed head and base.

But though I may have been stripped of my clothes, I am draped in riches.

Cesar Ritz called his creation "a small hotel in London". But Cesar would likely have described Versailles as a modest country retreat.

How perfect. This calm understatement of voice. This raging braggadocio of vision. I know many men where both are in similar balance. Though of course, completely the wrong way around.

My gaze tracks the endless unfolding of the plasterwork acanthus from ceiling frieze to doorway capital, then strays over the burnished bureau and lacquered tables to a chaise longue whose cushioning seems spun from finest gold.

But then, there's gold everywhere, on mouldings and chair backs and table legs and even in the glasses we've but recently finished, gold vodka, Grand Marnier, peach liqueur and champagne.

July at The Ritz, with the bedroom casement open wide to admit the soft sound of afternoon tea on the patio below, the distant laughter of lovers amidst the heavy-headed trees of a Green Park summer.

He wants to blindfold me soon.

But he wants to finish talking dirty first.

'So is it,' he asks, 'twat? You know, the short 'a'. Or: "twaart", the way you English say?'

'Nobody says twaat.'

'No?'

'And not twat, either.'

'It is a strange word.'

'Used by even stranger people.' I can't resist smiling though.

'Just. . . pussy then.' He pauses. Savours the word the way we've just savoured our cocktails. 'Puss-eee.'

'Ah-huh. Not "ee". Puss-i. Pussy.'

He smiles at me, encouraging complicity. 'What you say.'

'I might. Were I unfortunate enough to be an American.'

'Yes?'

'Americans can't tell a cat from a cunt. Or from a fanny, either.'

'Fanny?'

'They sit on it over there. We fuck it over here.'

He shakes his head in slow bewilderment. 'None of this they teach in language school.'

We met at 2pm at The Dorchester. Where he's staying.

At 3pm we checked into The Ritz. Where I prefer to be.

Before all that though, at 1.55pm London time, the transfer went through, $15,000 US into my account from one of his, Switzerland via Liechtenstein via Grand Cayman.

My first impression is, he's an American, though fortunately, not an ugly one. The dark suit is carefully, and expensively, tailored, the tie a pink pastel adrift on the white background of the shirt. His shoes aren't black patent but their lustre's nearly as deep.

His eyes are blue, almost unnervingly pale. He's 55 and has lost most of his hair but nothing else has been yielded to time: face almost unlined, a physique that's compact and firm rather than flabby.

It's his voice that misleads, but then, it always does where educated Russians are concerned. As if they all grew up in Boston.

Pity about the giveaway, then: Old Bostonians don't generally roam the globe with a quartet of bodyguards whose names may have been changed but whose initials still read KGB.

Also: Old Bostonians tend not to travel from airport hubs to city centres in mini-cavalcade, there to occupy not rooms or suites but an entire floor.

Naturally, they wanted to be here in this room with him. And naturally, I said they were welcome. That's democracy. And $60,000. Validated transfer, if you don't mind.

Apparently, the employee incentive scheme doesn't run to that. So there's one out in the park and another in Piccadilly, perimeter security, walking around the arcade. The other pair are downstairs in The Palm Court. It's where all who've served Communism come to sip tea. They'd both like to be upstairs, outside our door, but this is The Ritz where everything is of note, and everyone is noticed.

I sometimes think, it'd be nice to have all the money that brings that kind of power. But that kind of paranoia? No thanks.

I watch him. He watches me. We'll change places later, but for the moment, I'm on the bed with hands aching to be free, while he's on the chair at comfortable liberty, one hand resting on the chair arm, the other slowly ministering to his balls and his cock. He looks good naked. Though I look even better.

'Language school?' I prompt. 'I thought you'd at least have a private tutor.'

'When I was in the Service.'

'Ah.' I nod. 'Before eighty-nine.'

'Correct.'

'You miss it? What you used to do?'

He laughs, a smooth, rolling bass. 'Why should I miss it?'

'Right. Nostalgia. It isn't bankable.'

I'm expecting his laughter to continue. Instead, his eyes hood and narrow. Eventually: 'You are a bright lady.'

'Though still a couple of billion short.' I watch his hand at work, all the slow mesmeric pumping. 'This hotel,' I tell him. 'You could buy it without even thinking.'

'This entire country, I could buy.'

'You definitely wouldn't be thinking then.'

He shrugs. Unfolds himself from the chair. Comes over to the bed. Says:

'Open your mouth wide. I'm going to push it down your throat.'

He bends over me. Lets me see its length. It's engorged now, all the way from that shiny purple bell to the curling hair at the shaft's base.

He's managed to milk himself, deliberately or inadvertently. Either way, there's a bauble of sperm, shimmering in its elasticity, but still clinging to the darker pink of his drawn back foreskin.

The bauble breaks on my tongue as his cock enters my mouth and is, as he promised, pushed down my throat.

'You like your mouth fucked,' he says. Not a question.

'Mmmm.'

The tip of my tongue chases his moisture around my lips. I open my eyes again, see him back in the chair again. Slowly masturbating again. He could've orgasmed before though I'd guessed he would not: there are a lot of moments in $15,000, and he knows the price of each of them.

He studies me. 'Say "fuck my mouth".'

'Fuck my mouth.'

'Again, please.'

Please??? God above, the formality of the super-rich. 'Fuck my mouth.'

'I think maybe I bring in one of my men, yes? His cock, it would go all the way to your stomach.'

'My kind of guy.'

He laughs. 'No. Your kind of money.'

'Everyone has to earn a living.'

Though some, of course, earn it easier than most. Like this one, here. Right place. Right time. The chaos of 1989. The lost archives of 1990 and with them, all those State titles of ownership. Also that same year: the collapse of the economy, assets stolen, jobs lost, lives wrecked, a very big country plundered, a lot of very little people defrauded.

And after all that, the emergence of the new elite, sprung from nowhere but accepted everywhere because though corruption stinks, the scent of wealth is always stronger, always more alluring.

There is no conscience now. Just gilt by association.

And here I am. Associating, too.

'So,' he says. 'Not twat.'

'That's right. Not twat.'

'And not. . . I shoot my balls.'

'Empty them.'

'Of course. I empty my balls.'

'Better.'

'I shoot my load.'

'Good.'

You say it, then. Shoot your load.'

'Shoot your load.'

His hand is moving faster now. I think the blindfold is due.

'But where do I shoot though?' Saying it as if to himself, easing out from the chair again, standing with legs spread to let the sunlight bathe his genitals. He picks up the blindfold, moves towards me. 'Where though?'

'Where?' I make a question of my eyebrow.

His fingers slide over my labia then slip inside. I almost spasm, I've been waiting that long. Yearning that long. 'Into you?' He's still musing. 'Or. . . onto you.'

'Condoms are there.' I nod towards a pie crust side table. 'If it's into.'

He sighs. 'Then I think. . . Onto.'

'Yes. Onto.'

His fingers withdraw, track over my clit and move slowly upwards. 'Onto here? Your belly? Or. . . ' At my left breast now, probing its soft underside then moving across to do the same with the right. 'Onto these?' He palms each of them in turn. Carefully and deliberately flattens the nipples. 'Or. . .'

'Or?'

His hand cradles my jaw. 'This could be into. Into your mouth.'

'Mmmm.'

And now his fingers are walking the side of my face, over my cheek, brushing my eye, settling on my forehead. 'Or here.'

'Be a waste, I'm wearing a blind fold.'

'I like blind folds.'

'I'm here to be fucked. Not executed.'

His laughter resounds again, a wonderfully joyous wracking of his entire body: when he comes, his convulsion will surely be no greater than this.

He turns aside, casts the blindfold onto the onyx table. It drapes itself over the condom pack. Then he sits down beside me, one hand at my breasts, the other between my legs. Says:

'You know what we said. Before.'

'Your turn. My turn.'

'And when it is your turn, you will. . .' Frowning, hunting for the word. 'Squirt.'

I loathe the word, but let it pass. 'Yes.'

'You will do yourself for me until you squirt. And you will squirt onto my face.'

'More like into,' I say. 'There's. . . Pressure. You know?'

'Pressure I like. So. I will wear the blindfold then.'

'It'll get soaked.'

'Then I shall take it off after and wring it out. In your mouth.'

A shudder runs through him. I hope he's not milking again, the carpet's pure wool and the rose petal pattern doesn't need beading just yet.

He stands up abruptly. Claps his hands. Looks down at me, gaze raking every inch of my spread-eagled form.

'Okay! We are ready! I fuck your cunt. I fuck your mouth. Then all this in here' – he cradles his balls, pushes them up so they spread – 'all this, this load?'

'Your load. Yes?'

'You take my load onto your face. No: all over your face. Say it.'

'Shoot your load. All over my face.'

He nods, more animated than ever. 'Yes. Yes. Shoot your load.'

I wonder if this kind of stuff features in Berlitz. And, if you're unable to follow the words, whether the illustrations are good enough to explain the action.

But then, finally, he's thrusting into me, all the heat and all the hardness I've had to wait for, all his fullness for all my emptiness –

'Say it, woman!'

'Fuck me! Fuck me!'

Pounding, pumping, pistoning, I'm already bucking against the restraining cords, I want to writhe and twist and break free yet somehow in that self same freedom remain in this selfsame place, spread wide, trapped tight, fucked hard, oh fucked and fucked so hard, so well.

And withdrawal, his body hauling itself up mine, when his cock goes in my mouth I really can taste how it's different from before, some sweet slurry dripping from his flesh, my own darkness borne briefly out into the light before being returned to me

Then straddle of limbs, knees bracketing my face, his balls and his cock directly above, silver threads quivering from my lips to his slit:

'Say it!'

'Come on my face!'

'Shoot your load!'

'Shoot!'

'Again!'

'Shoot!'

'Louder, say it!'

'SHOOT!'

I am released now, free to get up and roam this gilded cage. He'd prefer it if I didn't dry off, he wants to see the white loops in pendant fall, their remorseless coursing from my jawline to my breasts and then in narrow runnel down and past my belly.

I don't mind the wetness – no, the truth: I enjoy the wetness – but I certainly mind the stinging in my left eye where the splashing has got in amongst the lashes. Sperm-soaked bitch I might be, but a bloodshot one, no way.

I go in the bathroom first to mop at my face, to sponge his load from my eye, and in a while he follows me in, stands sideways at the toilet, the better for me to see with what vision I still have how strongly his urine can go arching into the bowl.

For a moment it looks as if we're going to revise our schedule, he wants me in the bath tonight, to lie there on my back to be soaked in piss but I've already said I only drink champagne of an evening, he'll have to fill up on that first.

He's still pissing when I finish, and I tell him to stay there whilst I organise Room Service because I know how he is and the protocol to which I must adhere: he can be seen at a premiere, a party, or some intergovernmental convention, but he cannot be even so much as glimpsed by someone dancing attendance on a hotel room.

I don a house robe, unblemished white towelling with the letter R scripted over the left breast, then when the waiter arrives with the little cart I thank him politely but briefly and usher him out again before he can start fussing with the crockery, the cutlery and those shining silver-plated covers.

I lose the robe to get naked again as soon as the waiter has left, go across to the bathroom and tap lightly on the door, it's all OK, the coast is clear.

Thinking: or is that another phrase he's never learned?

He's on the bed, hands folded behind his head. I'm at the cart, pouring tea and popping the food covers. It's all so very. . . English.

'Egg and cress sandwiches,' I tell him. 'You like?'

'What else is there?'

'Smoked salmon.'

'I do not like fish.'

'I'll eat 'em then.'

I stack the silver tray with his tea, milk and sugar, as well as a plate of triangular sandwiches, tiny sailboats on a china sea. I set the tray down on the bedside table, go over to the same chair he occupied before.

I watch him without speaking. He's good to look at. Nice enough to be with, to bother with. If you put out of your mind all those hints of a past that even a nervous Press can't quite exclude from the record, well. . .

'You are thinking,' he says.

'Yes.'

'What?'

'Oh, I don't know. It's just so. . . Good.'

'You wish to rest?'

I hesitate, then shake my head. 'It's you,' I tell him.

He chuckles in quiet self confidence. And that's nice, too, though when you buy and sell the way he does – companies, countries, doesn't matter which -- when you buy and sell women the way he does. . . Well, yes. You can be confident.

I wonder about his wife. His university educated kids.

Finally, he asks: 'And what is it about me?'

'Just looking at you. Lying there.'

'You like?'

'Yes.'

He returns my gaze. 'If you were with me all the time, I would have you naked all the time.'

'I hear it's cold in Siberia.'

'But think of it. In the snow. You could be stretched out there. Naked. Have you ever been fucked in the snow?'

I laugh. Play along. He's using language again for his own needs. 'No. I've never been fucked in the snow.'

'How about,' he says slowly, 'how about you being stretched out there while I watch you being fucked by my people?'

'We talking about your bodyguards? Or the entire Russian nation?'

The laughter convulses again. Eventually he says: 'I could fuck you again but – '

'I hope you will.'

'But. But. . . ' He frowns. Shakes his head. 'To soon.'

'How long's it take, to get hard again?'

His gaze follows mine, down to his cock, a small and quiet curl of flesh in his pubic fuzz. 'Longer every year.' He seems sad, but then brightens. 'My load though. . . '

'What about it?'

He spreads his legs. Raises his hips so I can look at his balls.

I nod. 'Your load's still good.'

He reaches down to manipulate his sac. 'Yes.' We stay like that for a while, neither of us speaking. But eventually I can't wait any longer:

'Hey.'

He opens his eyes, peers in frowning concentration as I push myself back in the chair, almost threaten to topple the damn thing over, managing to get first my left leg over the left chair arm and then my right leg over the right chair arm.

It's not a position I can sustain for long: I may be athletic, but I'm no contortionist. And my ass cheeks are spreading wider than I want, I can feel the way the flesh is puckering and parting. If he's to watch what I do between my legs I'd rather he concentrated on one hole, not both.

'My load's good too,' I tell him.

'You want to come?'

'Yes.'

'Over my face?'

'Every last drop.'

He grins. 'In my mouth?'

'Swallow it all.'

His cock is already stirring, and that's good. He says, wonderingly: 'A woman's load, is beautiful.'

'Can be.'

'Your load.' Both hands at work now, feeling himself out. 'I think I take it now.'

'We blindfolding you, or what?'

'At the end, yes. So when it hits me. . .' He pauses. Shivers. 'Like the sudden rain, yes?'

'More like a sudden hosing.'

'Hosing?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'And when you have finished, we take off the blindfold, and we – '

'I know what we're going to do with the blindfold.'

He smiles. 'You know, how the Americans say?'

'Say what?'

'You really are something else.'

Do myself. Do myself in front of him, making it fast, making it fucking furious because though the position I'm in may be great for display it's anything but as a means of being displayed.

The chair's rocking and jolting and if it's an antique then I really am sorry and if it's not then I really am doomed, going ass over elbow – or, given my present position, something even more anatomically exciting -- straight into the wall.

Working my clit like I'm trying to erase it, thrusting in my fingers like I'm trying to split me, there's wave after wave surging within and each of their echoes is swamping me without, my body's so buckled it's screaming for release, it's all I can do to keep my gaze locked on his, see the way he's spread eagled just as I was, all the velvet cords straining.

I'm trembling when I quit the chair, it's a real effort of will not to lose it right this second, I need to breathe deep on this sun-fleck'd air, on this cooling breeze from a separate world.

I move across to the bed, press one hand on his cock. Feel all its life and all its strength swelling fast under my palm.

'You have to tell me,' I say. 'Tell me when to come.'

'Yes.'

'You have to – wait a minute, where's the blindfold?'

His smile is wide and warm, his lips, his cock, so beckoning. 'You moved it,' he says. 'For the tray.'

I nod. Can't speak. All this action, all this artifice, all these artefacts. A whirl. Girl in a whirl. And I can't be, not now, now that we've reached this point.

The blindfold's on the floor, twin panes of black plush, some kind of white frilly edging, it's more a pantomime prop than a sex aid but hey, it's what he's brought.

I get it on him and ask if he's ready, if he's comfortable, and he says yes over and again, yes yes yes so I breathe deep to steady myself this final time and straddle his chest and lean back so I can line myself up and judge the distance and he's saying:

'Your load, your load'

and I lean forward now and brush his lips with mine and say:

'oh fuck, I need something in my ass'

and he'd be writhing now if he could, just like I'd wanted to, he's struggling to thrash against the cords now, just like I tried to.

'Just one second,' I tell him. 'Just one second, my love.'

The cart still holds the covered salver of all those salmon sandwiches he wouldn't eat and in a way that's my only disappointment of the day, I thought with his background, his training, he'd know enough to realise that his taste in food was bound to be documented somehow and somewhere: likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, the petty vulnerabilities that make all of us mortal, but no, he hasn't thought, and no, he hasn't realised, still over there on the bed trying to pitch and heave while I lift the silver plate lid and grasp the Airweight, it's what I ordered in and it's what they've delivered and will take away when they clean up, after I've gone.

And I'm back to the bed with the .38 in one hand and a cushion in the other, it's light and it's small enough to hold in one hand because I checked that almost the moment we walked in, I'm back at the bed to straddle him and he's saying:

'Now, you do it. You give me your load'

which happens to be -- or should be unless the armourer's fucked up -- 148-grain hollowbase wadcutters: