Chapter 11

A day earlier Annie wouldn’t have recognized herself, rubbing up against Tom’s old boss, leaning into his startled grasp. But her circumstances had changed since then, and if she didn’t adapt, she’d be lost. She was too practical to pretend otherwise.

So, she’d come here on a mission—a mission to save herself from ruin. She’d had no idea how to defeat Miloz ... but, she’d been pretty confident that Ricardo would.

Still, her husband had posed a reasonable question: why should the venture capitalist help her, if he hadn’t been willing to help Tom? Except ... well, she did know something she could offer Ricardo to sway him. And in her desperation, she was fully prepared to barter.

Was she stupid to feel so sure this would work? She didn’t think so. She may not have known Serbia, but she knew American business types well enough. And she knew Ricardo. She didn’t believe there was a chance in hell that he’d spurn her advances. No, he’d been hitting on Annie for too long, been rejected by her too many times, to pass up a shot at her now. She was the girl who played too hard to get, the one who thought she was ‘better than that,’ and it made her market value sky-high.

All that was fine as far as it went, but wouldn’t he just betray her after he got what he wanted, like Miloz? Well, nothing was certain, but she believed Ricardo would keep up his end. The bluff, swaggering persona that animated him wasn’t really the sort to go in for treachery. True, he did step out on his wife—but even that, Annie supposed, wasn’t something he viewed as deceit, so much as fair compensation for the lifestyle he gave Evelyn. At heart, the man was simply far more impresario, than swindler.

By her reckoning, then, there was one path to salvation. It lay through Ricardo. And she intended to walk it to the end.

“Tom’s a dear,” she murmured, gazing up at him with a sly grin, “but he gets in over his head sometimes. It’s really comforting to have a capable man like you looking out for us. We’re grateful. I’m grateful. And ... I think it’s important that you know just how grateful I am.” Encircling his neck with her arms, she craned her head back and pulled him down into a long, insistent kiss.

Once again, her forwardness caught Ricardo off-guard. After only the briefest hesitation, though, he proved happy to oblige. And he turned out to be a very good kisser too. Unhurriedly, deliciously their mouths mingled. She took the lead, driving the tempo and intensity steadily forward, flicking the tip of her tongue between his open lips, inviting him to reciprocate. Then, their tongues danced and flirted deftly, rousing up tactile sensations that resonated exquisitely against the sparks kindling in her crotch.

They went at it this way for some time, lips locked in passionate accord—Annie tickling the short, wiry hairs at the nape of the man’s neck, while his strong hands groped freely across her back and ass. At a certain point, however, she sensed a change in his manner, and gently he broke the connection. Still leaning in toward her, observing her closely, he spoke with a slightly husky voice. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Annie was astonished. Ricardo was giving her an off-ramp?! Now granted, the gaping chasm between her normal behavior and her actions today must have been disconcerting—not to mention, pretty damn transparent. But even so, she’d never have guessed that the man had a withered, vestigial bone of chivalry in his body.

In answer to his question, however ... yes. Here, today, she very much did want this. Ricardo was appealing enough, but it wasn’t that. The thing she wanted was for this transaction to happen. Before she left the hotel, she wanted it to be firmly established that Ricardo owed her.

So, looking him squarely in the eye, she clutched the man’s wrist and guided his hand up under her skirt. Annie felt his fingertips shiver with anticipation as they combed the short, springy curls of her mound. and traced the supple, damp line of her labia. The touch made her shiver too.

Feeling his misgivings had been adequately addressed, the Cuban took up again where they’d left off—pulling her close with his free hand, while leaving the other lodged firmly between her thighs.

Now, as they went on kissing, Ricardo’s fingers roamed freely across her vulva—massaging her silky folds, and tenderly pulling her open to stroke the sensitive skin within. For such a blustery type, he had a surprisingly delicate touch, and her hips gave an involuntary wriggle of excitement at the way he inflamed her primitive longings. Eager for him to keep exploring, she pushed back on him with her mons, and widened her stance.

The growing bulge in the man’s trousers was pressing up firmly against her side by this point; and Annie snaked an awkward hand inside his waistband to feel for herself. His erection was warm, stone-hard, agreeably thick, and it jerked exuberantly at the brush of her fingertips.

Her groping soon confirmed that Ricardo was better-hung than Tom, without question, but still in the same general ballpark. Not a statistical freak, like the man who’d possessed her that morning. Even so, there was an intangible quality to the Latino that Miloz just couldn’t match, for all his outsized dimensions, raw strength, and ruthlessness. It was Ricardo’s life-force that truly set him apart. His energy, his zest, his vitality. Annie could feel that special vigor of his in the pulse pounding through his shaft, just as she could see it in his movements and expressions—and it made her own heart beat more quickly in response.

Well, even if she did have an ulterior motive for being with Ricardo (she thought), that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it too...

Disengaging herself, she edged back to create a hint of space between them. Then, tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth and a glint in her eye, she stripped off his shirt and plunged her fingers through the dense black hair on his chest. Thirstily, she skimmed her lips across his collarbone and pecs, ran her hands over his flanks, tasted his nipples with loving care. The Cuban-American wasn’t lean like Tom, nor sculpted like Miloz, but he had a strapping, burly build that conveyed substance and easy self-assurance.

Kneeling before him, she deftly undid his belt-buckle, then his fly, and slid his pants and briefs down. She liked everything about Ricardo’s penis when it spilled into view: its warm, brown color; its soft, springy, circumcised head; and its lavish-but-not-menacing proportions. Being penetrated by Miloz had been fulfilling, in a way, but also unnerving. She didn’t know if she could have handled a second one like that, not so soon after the first.

Now normally, Annie wasn’t a huge fan of blowjobs, and she doled them out to Tom sparingly. The sensations were nice, and she liked how thankful her husband was afterwards. But somehow the act had gotten tangled up in her head with college gender-studies classes, and discussions of Philip Roth. Every time she thought of having her husband in her mouth, she was nagged by the sense that it would be degrading to her, or somehow show subservience. She knew it was silly—Tom went down on her without worrying about antiquated masculine norms—but the idea was hard to shake.

Today, however, her frame of mind was very different. The events of the morning had burned all such trivialities from her brain. The only thing that mattered now was extracting herself from that Serbian predator, and she’d do whatever it took to accomplish it. At the moment, that meant earning Ricardo’s gratitude. And a blowjob seemed like an excellent place to start.

Fondling his balls and nuzzling them tenderly, Annie began lapping her way slowly up his rod, like a cat washing its paw. When she reached the rim of the glans, she ran the tip of her tongue along it—eliciting a groan of pleasure from Ricardo at the way it pricked his nerve endings. Glancing up at him through her eyelashes, she smiled and kissed the tip seductively. Then she took him between her lips.

Affectionately, she suckled Ricardo, caressing him with her tongue. Languorously, she ran her head up and down the pole a few inches, enjoying the tingle as the soft, sumptuous flesh of genitals and mouth combined. The man leaned his head back and grasped the sides of her face lightly, in what she took as a gesture of appreciation.

Annie had a healthy gag reflex, but she willed herself to relax and gradually acclimated to his bulk. Each time she sucked him in, she went just a bit further. She’d seen an article in Cosmo once, titled ‘Deep-Throat Your Boyfriend and Drive him Wild!’ At the time, it’d seemed like a dispatch from some alien planet, and she’d skimmed it with purely clinical interest. Now, though, she very much did want to drive Ricardo wild, and she resolved to give it her best shot.

Grasping onto the Latino’s hips, she started to work him more aggressively, in and out. Gradually, little by little, she forced herself to take him deeper. Feeling him graze her palate ... slide over the back of her tongue ... squeeze down her gullet ... it made her want to choke. But, she refused to give in to the impulse. Making room for his dick in her esophagus wasn’t so very much of a sacrifice (she told herself), in exchange for being rescued from the scrape she was in.

Even so, despite her best efforts, she did hit her limit. With lips straining to envelop him, jaws yawning wide, Annie still came up short—a scant quarter-inch of him remaining untouched. If she went the rest of the way, she was sure she would retch. So, praying it was enough, she began to bob eagerly, pressing right up to that threshold, again and again and again.

Her head felt stuffed—her neck bulging out perceptibly with every lunge. Yet through it all, Annie kept peering up through her lashes at Ricardo, locking his gaze with hers, laboring to convey how very much she (in a certain sense) wanted this. Her eyes streamed, mascara tracks running down her cheeks; while thick blobs of spit collected at the corners of her mouth and dribbled down her chin. She didn’t care. The only thing she cared about was providing full value, in exchange for the future consideration she expected to receive. Judging by the hungry elation on the man’s face, she was succeeding.