Winter's Gift Read online

  I love the feel of her skin, and I can’t help wondering what her lips and her tongue would taste like. But I push those thoughts away. I’ve read that sex workers don’t like to French kiss. They find it too intimate.

  When I’m done with her shoulders, Anna leans into my chest, tilts her head up, and locks her gaze with mine. Her expressive eyes betray a host of emotions—incredulity, warmth, sadness… I’m nearly hypnotized when she shuts her eyes and whispers, “Kiss me.”

  I cradle her face with both my hands and press my lips to hers. I nibble at their soft, delectable flesh, tease them apart, and thrust my tongue inside. As I kiss her, it occurs to me that I may be too rough, but I can’t help it. I push in deeper, holding the back of her head, my other hand on her back. She responds with ardor, wrapping one of her legs around my thigh so we can be even closer, touch even more. I drink in her incomparable taste, as my hands slide down to the small of her back and then her derrière.

  Sweet Jesus.

  I haven’t been so hungry for a woman in years. She’s making me wild. I break the kiss and back her to the bed. She climbs on it, then faces me and tugs at the lapels of my suit jacket. I pull it off and throw it on a nearby chair. Anna unbuttons and peels off my shirt, after which her deft fingers undo my belt buckle and unzip my trousers. I push them down along with my boxers. It takes me no more than ten seconds to kick off my shoes and remove my socks. When I look up, her head is tilted to the side, and she’s ogling my body appreciatively.

  Now I’m the one at a disadvantage, because I’m stark naked while she still has her silky number on, the minx.

  I gather the hem of her slip and slowly push the fabric up against her thighs.

  She watches me, motionless.

  “I like this garment,” I say. “I really do. But it’s got to go.”

  She nods, her lips quirking into an amused smile. “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t you sir me, Anna,” I warn her and continue pushing her slip up, higher and higher until it’s around her waist.

  Then I look at what I’ve revealed and immediately look away in the vain hope to calm down. But the image of her toned tummy, lithe thighs, and the treasure between them is so vivid and clear in my mind’s eye that I may as well turn back and stare some more. My hand is itching to reach out and cup her, but I’m afraid that if I do, I might lose what remains of my control and embarrass myself like a first-timer.

  I can’t believe what she’s doing to me.

  “Or else what?” she asks, her eyes full of mischief.

  It takes me a few seconds to connect her question to my earlier warning about sir-ing me.

  “Or else”—I give her a hard stare that dampens her hilarity—“I’ll call you Anna Banana.”

  She blinks and then bursts out in laughter.

  As I watch her giggle, a wave of strange, completely unexpected pleasure washes over me. Must be the glee of anticipation mixed with the pride in the effect of my quip.

  Only… there’s also something else, something I can’t quite pinpoint.

  She wipes her eyes and takes a few slow breaths. “That is the most ridiculous and adorable threat I’ve received in the last two months.”

  My pleasure vanishes. “What happened two months ago? Why are you getting threats? Who’s threatening you?”

  She shakes her head in wonder. “What does it matter? Forget it, Anton. It’s nothing, really.”

  “Answer me.”

  She sighs. “Fine. Two months ago, I started doing this. Selling my body. That’s what happened, OK?”

  “OK. And the threats?”

  “Mostly things that are supposed to humiliate me to various degrees or inflict mild pain. No death threats. Just fantasies spoken out loud.” She gives me a bright smile. “As I said, nothing to write home about.”

  I look at her slim, delicate body, and something heavy fills my chest. I wish I hadn’t insisted. I wish she hadn’t told me about the humiliations and “mild pain” her clients wanted her to suffer.

  Then I correct myself. I shouldn’t say “her clients.” I should say “her other clients.”

  Anna seems to sense the change in my mood. She draws closer and puts her arms around my neck. “I was having a good time. Can we go back to where we were before the ‘sir’ mishap?”

  As she speaks, her silky groin presses against mine, and everything else becomes irrelevant. My hand acquires a will of its own and cups her, my palm rubbing, my index finger pushing inside, coaxing her sighs and whimpers. She grips my neck and throws her head back. I revel in her response, in the knowledge that she wants me with an intensity that matches mine. It’s not just her flushed cheeks, diluted pupils, and guttural moans that tell me how aroused she is. I hold much more tangible, exhilarating proof of her desire in my hand.

  My fingers are soaked in proof.

  It shouldn’t really matter, and I shouldn’t care, considering our circumstances. But it does. And I do. Very much, indeed.

  “I have condoms in my purse,” she says.

  “I got some, too, in the pocket of my trousers.”

  We grin at each other and then she says. “Let’s use yours. Unless they’re caviar-flavored.”

  “Please. I may be an archetypal Russian nouveau riche, and caviar is certainly very much part in my daily life, but not during sex.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  We stop joking after that. In fact, we hardly say anything at all for the next hour, letting our bodies communicate instead. Which they do with gusto and dedication. They talk to each other of passion and tenderness, of lust that builds to a fever pitch, and then of glorious release. They rub, knead, kiss, lick, suckle, and bite. When their hunger is sated, they just touch—legs entwined and hands interlocked.

  This is precisely when I realize a shocking truth: Right now, in this bed with this woman, I’m almost religiously serene and at complete peace with the universe.

  When I wake up in the morning, Anna is in the shower. I grab my phone, prop myself up against a pillow, and check my voice mails and emails. Ten minutes later, she steps into the room, wearing a white bathrobe and smelling of lavender and honey. I want her again. But I have a meeting at nine with my marketing team, and I don’t like showing up late.

  It’s either quick sex or a quick breakfast. I opt for the breakfast—the sex will wait until next time. Because, in spite of all my misgivings about this situation, I have decided there’ll be a next time. On Saturday.

  “Good morning.” She smiles and gives me an expectant look.

  “They serve fantastic breakfast here,” I say. “Can you be ready in twenty minutes?”

  She nods, and I head to the bathroom.

  The breakfast is good, indeed—a substantial yet refined morning meal one can expect at every Ritz-Carlton on this planet.

  As I work through my omelet, a foolish but irresistible idea hits me. I beckon to the server who takes my extravagant order without blinking an eye.

  I turn to Anna. “The caviar curfew is lifted.”

  “Must we?” She screws up her face in the most adorable fashion.

  “I’m afraid we must.”

  “OK.” She sighs, but the laugh lines betray her amusement. “As long as you don’t insist I eat it with a spoon.”

  “You can eat it any way you like. Personally, I prefer it on buttered toast.”

  “Why, that’s a brilliant idea.” A full-blown, toothy, dimply smile spreads across her lovely face.

  I could stare at it all day.

  “Since we’re being decadent this morning,” she says, “I’m going to ask for soy milk when our waiter returns.”

  “You’re pushing it.”

  “I know. But when in Ritz, do as the Ritzniks do.”

  I chuckle and then blurt, “Why are you doing this, Anna?”

  “What? Ordering soy milk?” She’s still smiling, but the laugh lines are gone. She’s too perceptive to have missed my meaning.

  “You obviously have the brains
for a more”—I pause, looking for the right word— “respectable occupation.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she retorts.

  My stare gets a notch harder.

  She shrugs. “It’s elementary, Watson. I do it for the money.”

  “Until two months ago you managed without it. What changed?”

  She looks away for a moment. When she turns back, her gaze is every bit as hard as mine. “You’ve paid for sex, not for confessions.”

  It’s my turn to look away. I’m furious, but she has a point.

  “I’d like to see you on Saturday night,” I say, fixing her with my stare again.

  “Of course.”

  I should be satisfied by her immediate and unequivocal consent, but instead, it aggravates me. I hate how docile and dispassionate it sounds.

  I abhor the subtext that it implies.

  Chapter 3

  The Fourth Dimension

  It’s Saturday afternoon. Thursday and Friday came and went at their usual manic pace. Between meetings, negotiations, conference calls, brainstorming and strategizing, I hardly had time to eat. To be honest, I didn’t even feel like it, having lost my appetite since that night at the Ritz. Not that I consciously thought of Anna. But there wasn’t an hour during those two days, whether in my office or my apartment, where my mind didn’t dwell on that night. Which invariably made me hard and then vexed and angry with myself.

  The only Anna-free moments have been my phone calls with Lena every evening. I can’t wait for my little girl to finish grad school in Switzerland and come home so that I can start involving her in the business. She’s far from keen on the notion of working for me, but I’m sure with time she’ll come around. All I need is patience—a quality I have by the bucketload.

  So why can’t I muster enough of that legendary patience to stop myself from pacing this room and glancing at the clock every five minutes?

  The phone rings. It’s Mama. She reminds me about her New Year’s Eve dinner next week—a tradition she’s maintained from the old Soviet days—and complains that Lena won’t be there. I explain that Lena is too young for Soviet traditions: She comes home for Christmas but prefers to spend the New Year’s Eve with her friends in Switzerland. And then Mama asks if I’ll be bringing a friend.

  “No, unless you want me to invite Gary with his wife and kids.”

  “I love Gary and his family, and you can certainly invite them, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, I know what you meant. You’ve asked me this question every single year since my divorce. It’s been eleven years now—time to put the matter to rest, don’t you think?”

  “You did almost bring someone here three years ago,” she says. “Your father and I were so much looking forward to meeting her, and then, a week before New Year’s, you broke up with her.”

  “I discovered things about Eleonora that made it difficult to trust her.”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” She sighs. “But, my boy, you have such high expectations of everyone! I’m sure the thing you discovered about the poor girl was totally innocuous, which is why you’ve never told me what it was. Did she buy her driver’s license?”

  “Mother!” I’m doing my best to sound shocked. “You’re a former member of the Communist Party. I can’t believe you’re calling graft innocuous.”

  I tut-tut for more impact.

  She sighs again, but says nothing.

  Thing is, her guess isn’t too far off the mark. The private eye I hired to look into Eleonora’s past dug up a first marriage she’d forgotten to mention and no record of the MBA she’d mentioned very distinctly.

  What choice did I have but to break up? I couldn’t allow a cheater and a liar into my life again. Only fools don’t learn from their mistakes. And I like to think that I’m no fool.

  Finally, at seven, I grab my car keys and coat, and head out. The plan is to meet with Anna, have dinner in Moscow’s best jazz club, and go to the Ritz. I’ve booked the same suite, which is hardly a rational choice, considering the abundance of other perfectly suitable and considerably cheaper venues. But I don’t care. This whole affair is outside the realm of reason and normalcy. I feel as though I’ve wandered into another dimension, a parallel world where all that matters is being able to hold Anna again.

  At some point during the night, as I drift off in the satin sheets, drugged by Annushka’s intoxicating smell and exhausted after our wild lovemaking, she murmurs something that breaks me out of my drowsiness. She herself is dozing off in my arms, but I have a strange feeling her words were more than just a good-night, and I want them to reach my consciousness.

  “Come again,” I say.

  “Appreciate it,” she murmurs, hardly opening her mouth. Her eyes are shut and her breathing even.

  “Appreciate what?”

  “Your not hurting me.” She sounds a little less sleepy.

  “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “Because of who I am. Because you’re paying for this.”

  We’re both fully awake now and staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Don’t you feel entitled to my body?” she asks.

  “Is that how your average client feels?”

  “My average client is a lot older than you,” she says. “He may feel like performing all kinds of extravagant acts, but he rarely has the energy or the stamina to execute them.”

  Anger fills my chest. I’m not sure whom it’s directed at—Anna or her dirty-minded average client.

  “Don’t these men disgust you?” I ask.

  “I’ve cleaned apartments and offices for years,” she says. “When you get to the toilet, you tell yourself it’ll only take few minutes, and you hold your breath and do it.”

  “What a flattering metaphor.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” She strokes my cheek. “With you, it’s different. I don’t need to… brace myself.”

  I cringe at how embarrassingly close I am to believing her.

  “So you’re a niche call girl,” I say with a sneer.

  “I guess.” She smirks back. “I seem to appeal to men like you.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “I’m physically fit and sexually conservative. What exactly do I have in common with your sleazebags?”

  “Money, for one. Refinement. A penchant for women who can hold a conversation.” She pauses before adding, “But you’re the youngest and the most… vigorous client I’ve had so far.”

  “How many have you had exactly?”

  “Five. You’re the sixth.”

  “When I called your pimp last week, he asked me if I was married. Would you have turned me down if I was?”

  “Yes. And please don’t call Filip a pimp.”

  I laugh. “Why? Would it upset his delicate sensibilities?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I don’t insist—I’ve got bigger fish to fry. “So you escort single men only?”

  She nods. “Mostly divorcees. One widower and one dyed-in-the-wool bachelor.”

  “Doesn’t it limit your client pool?”

  “It does. But it’s OK.” She gives me a tired smile. “I’ve kept my day job.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re a striptease artist.”

  “Nothing so exotic. I’m a lowly assistant.”

  “What sort?”

  “Legal.”

  I rub my forehead. “Let me get this straight: You have a degree, a qualified job, and yet you feel compelled to moonlight as an escort?”

  “First, I don’t have a degree—I could only afford one year of law school. Second, in twelve nights as an escort I’ve made more than I would in a year working my ass off in my day job.”

  I search her eyes. “Why did you bother studying then?”

  “That’s a very good question.” She shuts her eyes and snuggles back into the crook of my arm.

  We meet again on Tuesday and then on Thursday. Each time I’m with her, I sink a little deeper into the parallel universe wher
e she’s the unique deity. The little self-command I have left goes to making sure not to call her Annushka out loud. I don’t even know why it matters, but it does.

  When I manage to stay away from her, I’m in a foul mood because I can’t stop thinking she might end up in another man’s arms.

  On Friday morning, I pick up the phone to call Filip and book Anna for the whole month. I have an amorphous plan to exhaust my lust for her during that time or, if I fail, extend the lease to a year. But something happens as I dial Filip’s number. For a brief moment, I fall out of the Anna dimension and experience a bout of clarity.

  I hang up.

  Who am I kidding? Here I am, plotting to turn a call girl into a surrogate girlfriend by outbidding my competition and bulk purchasing all her moonlighting hours. Only no money in the world can change the truth of what we are and what we’ll remain to each other—an escort and her client.

  Because that’s what she is, my sweet Annushka—a geisha for the rich, a glorified prostitute.

  As for me, I’m a raving lunatic. I’ve lost my mind, given in to a folly, let this peccadillo go much too far.

  It’s time to end it.

  Chapter 4

  Peredelkino

  “Yes, the weekend of December 31st. You’ll accompany me to a dinner at my parents’ dacha in Peredelkino on Saturday evening. I’ll return you home on Sunday after breakfast.”

  What I’ve just said is so wild that I’m half hoping Anna will tell me she’s otherwise engaged and put an end to my ludicrous scheme.

  Between yesterday and this morning, I managed to convince myself that taking Anna with me to Peredelkino was a good idea. The thinking that took me from my resolution to stop seeing her to this moment is a little fuzzy in my head. It’s brewed in doubt, want, yearning and self-loathing, all of which I partook of during my sleepless night.

  By dawn, two arguments carried the day. The first was the warped idea that seeing me with a date would brighten my mother’s holiday season. In a few weeks, I’ll tell her Anna left me for another. Which, on some level, will be the truth. The charade may even produce a positive side effect of shutting down Mama’s harping on my love life for a few years.