by L. L. Ash
“Sure. Ok.”
Then silence.
“What part?” I asked eventually.
“Columbus Circle at noon. I’ll be waiting.”
Before I got the chance, she hung up and left the line dead in my ear.
Hot damn. She needed to stop being so sexy and demanding and…
Ok, not going there.
I took a deep breath, then took one last drag of my cigarette before stamping it out and sitting up. If I was going to meet her at noon I needed to hurry and shower.
Jogging toward Columbus Circle, I got there just a couple minutes past noon because I was an idiot and decided that lunchtime in Manhattan was a good time to take a nice, refreshing walk.
Needless to say, Adele was there already, hands holding onto a white plastic bag.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly, already tired after my long jog.
“What happened to you?” she asked with an amused expression on her beautiful face.
“I decided to walk from my apartment. Which of course was stupidity at this time of day. I should have known better.”
She laughed and reached up, tousling the damp hair that was sticking to my forehead after the run.
“It’s cute,” she gave me a half smile before biting her lip in nervousness.
Aw shit…
My head was dropping before I could stop myself and I was releasing her lip from her teeth with my mouth, consuming her as if I’d never tasted her before.
A brief memory of the honey between her thighs assaulted my mind and I couldn’t help the greed to have her that devoured me from the inside out.
“We-we’re in public,” she panted against my lips, moving away from me.
“Fuck,” I ground out, pressing my forehead to hers for a moment as I tried to regain my fragile controle again. “Sorry, Adele.”
I backed away a little, trying to remind myself that she wanted my company, not my body.
“Don’t apologize,” she breathed heavy against my chest, not backing away any further. Her hand pressed against my chest, unmoving as we just stared into each others eyes.
Suddenly Adele blinked and drew away, holding out the bag to me.
“Matzo ball soup,” she said with a weary smile. “I might have lied a little when I said I planned a picnic.”
I blow out a chuckle, feeling my anxiety melt away at her words.
“That’s ok. I like a good soup.”
She motioned me to follow her so I did, walking beside her as we found a spot in Strawberry Fields to sit and eat.
“Can I ask you something, Serge?” she asked me suddenly, plopping down on a bench and digging into the bag.
“You can ask me anything, babe,” I told her, that word still feeling like poison on my tongue.
I wanted to call her malishka, my baby girl, more than anything, but the name was too familiar and I couldn't do familiar with her anymore. She was too dangerous and I needed that wall up between us so she didn't pierce the armor I'd carefully assembled around myself since I was a kid.
“What's going on with you?” she asked, not mincing words.
If I wasn't so anxious about her words, I'd be going hard for her again.
Blessing in disguise.
“What do you mean,” I asked back, trying to act like I wasn't being weird.
“I mean the man I got a few nights ago is not the same man I had the first few times… “
“I still don't know what you mean,” I shrugged. “You mean because I'm making you pay now?”
Her face got red and severe, her chest suddenly heaving.
“You really know how to be the world's biggest asshole, don't you?”
I forced a cheery smile.
“It's just part of the job.”
She stood up slowly, her eyes blazing hotter than her skin as she took the two containers of soup and lifted them.
No… she wouldn't…
Hot liquid streamed out of the styrofoam cups and into my crotch. I howled and stood up, plopping the two bready balls into the pavement.
“Are you fucking psycho?” I started yelling at her.
“You can take your services elsewhere,” she growled back. “I'm done.”
Adele went stomping away as the brothy soup started to cool and chill against my skin through my jeans. Shivering, I run after her.
“Adele,” I started, but she pushed me away and kept stomping all adorable-like in her high heels.
This could wait. For now my dick was slightly singed and simultaneously freezing off, and I needed to go home and change.
I made it out of Central Park and got a cab so I didn’t have to walk all the way home with a huge spot on the front of my pants that make it look like I pissed myself.
Great look for me.
But I so fucking deserved it, and my respect for Adele grew the moment she dropped that steaming hot soup in my lap. She was a woman who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself, and that was so incredibly sexy to me, I just wanted to find her and hug her and kiss her and fuck her.
Sighing, I made the walk of shame up through the extravagant lobby of my building and up the elevator.
Natalia was in my personal apartment, cleaning when I walked in.
She saw me with the crotch stain and looked up and down, assessing me.
“You either drank too much or you upset a woman,” she said in her thick accent.
“The latter,” I frowned.
She laughed and I gave her the stink eye.
“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often, lyuba. How the women share you, I have no idea.”
“Because they don’t really care about me,” I shook my head, dropping my jeans on the wooden kitchen floor for Natalia to pick up later.
“Well, the others might not, but this one does,” she smiled, a devious little smirk as she got back to work.
“What does that mean?” I demanded, tearing off my jacket and shirt next, both splattered in chicken broth.
“It means, be careful with women who will abuse you.”
“I deserved it,” I shoved my hands through my hair, messing it all up as I stood there just in my soggy underwear. “Besides, she’s...she’s different. She cares because she’s a good person.”
“A good person? Who hires a man instead of finding one?”
“Not everyone has been blessed with good luck to find mister perfect, Nat.”
“Maybe she sees the good in you,”
“What good?” I scoffed. “Please get these in the laundry right away before the smell sinks in.”
I dropped my underwear on the way to the bathroom and cranked up the hot water.
“One day you will find a woman!” Natalia called from the hallway where she was probably picking my boxers up off the floor.
I didn’t answer.
She could say what she liked, believe what she liked, but it didn’t change the facts that no good woman would want me after what I’d done with my life. And I was ok with it. I am ok with it.
Nothing would change it, anyway.
But there was one thing I could do, and I intended to do it just as soon as I didn’t smell like soup.
I stopped to get some flowers on the way to Adele’s office. The studio was in full swing as I walked in, having stepped right past security because one of the assistants confirmed that I was Adele’s boyfriend.
So I was moving through the hallway to her office with a bouquet of roses, one picked out to make eleven, just as Babushka always told me to do. Not that I ever brought a girl besides her, flowers.
I knocked on the door, still figuring out what I was going to say to her when she told me to enter.
She looked up at me with a frown still on her face.
“What are you doing here, Serge,” she asked absently as she went back to her computer.
“I wanted to apologize,” I told her.
“You don’t need to apologize. I’m a big girl and like you said, this is a relationship where we trade
for goods. You don’t love me and I don’t love you. We can end this anytime and call it a day.”
I just shook my head.
“I don’t want it to end...”
“You can leave, Serge,” she said sternly.
I placed the roses on her desk and leaned down so that we met eyes.
“Malishka. Look at me,” I demanded and she jerked her eyes up until she was looking, not at me, but into me.
“I’m sorry for what I said. I was an asshole. I’m... This whole thing isn’t playing out like it should be and I’m trying to put some emotional distance between us. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be near you. I love your company and your sass and your nervousness… You’re sugar and spice and everything nice and I don’t want to lose that.”
“As a customer?” she eyes me, lips pressed together in anger.
“As a friend,” I specified.
“So I’m just your friend?”
I blew out a breath in frustration.
“No, but...”
“Our relationship is revolved around you hooking up with me. How is that healthy or good?”
“Who the fuck cares about what’s healthy and good?”
She huffed and sat back in her chair, an unfriendly smirk on her pretty, pouty mouth.
“Sometimes I forget how young you are, Serge. Maybe that’s something you haven’t grown up to understand, yet.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I clenched my jaw.
“It means that healthy, good relationships are all we have. I lost the last one I had when my mother died, and that’s why I went to you. I’m too...” She looked up and wiped a tear from under her eye before going on. “I’m not interested in a fuck, Serge. I’m not interested in a guy who will warp and chameleon into the perfect little boyfriend. I want something real, something permanent. Maybe that was my mistake when I contacted you. I just...I thought that maybe you’d be real with me. I don’t care if you make your living having sex, Serge. I care if you lie to me and pretend to be something you’re not. I thought those first few dates were the real you, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe that’s just what you thought I wanted and this is you. Young, immature, sexcrazed...”
I sat heavily on the chair across from her, those words slamming into me like a freight train.
“What you’re looking for is a real boyfriend,” I said finally.
“I-I guess so,” she plopped into her chair as well, us both staring at each other.
“Then why the hell did you contact an escort?”
“Because men want me for my money. I’m a challenge. Something to conquer. I thought that maybe if I paid someone...they wouldn’t care about my money ‘cause they were getting it. I thought maybe I could have a relationship that fit my timing and worked on my terms.”
“Talk about a fucked up version of a relationship,” I quipped and a brief smile flitted across her face.
But then it collapsed to a thoughtful frown.
“Why are you so lonely?” I asked her, my voice low and serious.
“Because I have trouble giving up control,” she said simply. “Men don’t like that. They also don’t like that I make more money than them. And women? Women are threatened by me.”
“I thought you and Rachel were friends.”
She shrugged.
“She’s tried to be there for me after my mom passed, but we’re just work friends. We don’t see each other out of the office, and in those really important times, I’m still alone.”
I bit my lip, trying to think.
There had to be a solution.
“While the flowers are nice...”
She looked at them and then back up at me with a raised eyebrows.
“Where did the twelfth one go?”
I grinned.
“Gave it to some random old lady on the way here. It’s an insult to give a woman an even number of flowers in Russia.”
“You’re so weird,” she chuckled and fingered the velvet petals of one rose.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked her after a short silence.
“Got a penny?” she lifted that perfectly curved eyebrow again.
“Somewhere...” I shoved my hands in my pockets as if I was looking for change.
She chuckled, just like I’d hoped she would, then plucked one petal and brought it to her nose.
“I don’t know. I’m just...thinking about what you did last time in this office.”
Her cheeks pinkened immediately and a smile bloomed across her lips.
“Care for an encore?” I asked, a smirk playing on my face.
She blushed harder and shook her head.
“Are you kidding? That’s when everything went to hell between us.”
“Like it can really get worse,” I scoffed. “You just told me you want a boyfriend, not an escort. You basically just broke up with me.”
And sorta, kinda, broke my heart, too.
“We weren’t together. Only people that are together can break up.”
I shrugged and looked at the big wall to my left where a bookshelf was placed with lots of little knick-knacks and a few paintings that were beach inspired.
Totally her.
“So the real question,” she asked me, “is, why are you here? You made it clear where you stand, but your actions don’t seem to back up what you say. And it’s confusing.”
“Yeah? Well, join the club,” I laughed bitterly. “Guess I don’t have much of a choice in how this plays out, anyway. I should just cut my losses and move on.”
She just sat there and nodded.
So we both knew what we should do, but there we both sat.
“Or maybe we could try it your way,” I said at last, looking up to see what her reaction would be.
“What does that mean?”
“It means...what if I really...act like your boyfriend? What if I give you me, instead of the other versions I create for the others?”
She looked confused still.
And fuck, I was confused, too. Adele was bad juju for me, I knew that, but for some reason the thought of her not being in my life was starting to cause a panic attack in my chest.
“I mean, we can do the boyfriend experience. And it can be like how it was before.”
Her hand curled around a pen that was sitting on the top of the desk, and I wondered momentarily if maybe she’d stab me with it.
I wouldn’t blame her.
“So...what?”
“So, we go on dates, I keep pushing you and you keep resisting because that’s what we’re good at. I’ll go home with you and cuddle you. I’ll be at your beck and call, just like you wanted, and when you’re done with me, you kick me out. No hard feelings. And maybe if I’m lucky, you’ll let me Goddamn fuck you the way you need me to.”
She cracked a smile.
“I am sorry for all the times I sent you home with blue balls.”
I barked a laugh.
“No you’re not.”
“No I’m not,” she agreed, that smile turning into a grin.
At least the mood in the office had lightened, and I felt hope that maybe she’d take my offer.
“That’d get awful expensive after a while,” she said finally, a wicked look on her face.
“Then maybe I’ll have to give you a discounted rate.”
“What kind of discount are we talking about here?”
“Oh my God… this is going to end with me paying you, isn’t it?” I asked her, blank faced, and she burst into a laugh.
“How about this?” I asked, leaning forward and resting my elbows on her desk. “Twenty-five thousand a month. You call me when you want me, day or night, and I’ll come if I can. I still have other clients, but they’re usually quick and I have a lot of free time on my hands. So this is basically a bulk rate.”
She bit the inside of her cheek in thought.
“And what if I just feel lonely at night?” she asked.
“Then call me. I’m a good cud
dler.”
A smile broke across her face and she nodded.
“But this only works if you are real with me. I don’t want your suave, bad boy, or young buck personas. If you promise to be you, and to be truthful, then we have a deal.”
I put out my hand and she took it in a firm shake.
“Starting now,” I nodded. “I expect payment by the first of every month. And just so you know, me not expecting payment every single day...that’s a new thing for me. I never trusted a woman to stick to her word.”
“Then make a contract for me to sign,” she shrugged.
I shook my head.
“This whole thing is based on trust. If I want you to trust me, I have to trust you.”
“I think that’s the most mature thing you’ve ever said.”
“Shut the fuck up and kiss me,” I mumbled and she just laughed. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
She got up from behind her desk like a good girl and walked around to me, perching in my lap.
I was almost instantly hard with her ass in my lap while she leaned forward and put a peck on my cheek.
“You are the worst sort of cocktease,” I sighed.
“I know,” she winked at me and hopped out of my lap, going back to her desk. “Now get out. I have work to do.”
Well fuck me… If I wasn’t hard already…
I stood, proudly displaying the tent going on in the front of my woolen, tweed pants.
“You miss out on things when you’re a cocktease,” I told her, straightening my black pea coat.
Her eyes dipped just where I wanted them to and I saw heat flush across her cheeks.
She wanted me. She so wanted me. But for some reason, she was denying herself. I had to figure out why, and I had to change her mind.
The woman needed a good fuck. Bad.
It had absolutely nothing to do with me and my insatiable appetite for all things Adele...
Cue eye roll.
“Call me,” was all I said for a farewell, going to the door.
“Wait,” she finally called when my hand landed on the handle.
I turned and she was right there, slipping her arms around my neck and placing a firm kiss on my lips.
“What if I make dinner for you?” she asked me. “You have anything against going to my house instead of yours.”
