Jeff Gelb: Hot Blood: Tales of Erotic Horror

She kept her eyes focused on him as sharply as a camera. "You desire me," she said.

Gil didn't reply, but uncomfortably sat back on his bar stool.

Without hesitation the woman leaned forward and laid her open hand directly between his legs. She was very close now. Her lips were parted and he could see the tips of her front teeth. He could smell the Bacardi on her breath. Warm, soft, even breath.

"You desire me," she repeated.

She gave him one quick, hard squeeze, and then sat back. Her face was filled with silent triumph. Gil looked at her with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment and disbelief. She had actually reached over and squeezed him between the legs, this beautiful woman in the white dress, this beautiful woman whom every businessman in the bar would have given his Christmas bonus just to sit with.

"I don't even know your name," said Gil, growing bolder.

"Is that necessary?"

"I don't really suppose it is. But I'd like to. My name's Gil Batchelor."

"Anna."

"Is that all, just Anna?"

"It's a palindrome," she smiled. "That means that it's the same backward as it is forward. I try to live up to it."

"Could I buy you some dinner?"

"Is that necessary?"

Gil took three long heartbeats to reply. "Necessary in what sense?" he asked her.

"In the sense that you feel it necessary to court me somehow. To buy me dinner; to impress me with your taste in wine; to make witty small talk. To tell me all those humorous anecdotes which I am sure your colleagues have heard one hundred times at least. Is all that necessary?"

Gil licked his lips. Then he said, "Maybe we should take a bottle of champagne upstairs."

Anna smiled. "I'm not a prostitute, you know. The barman thinks I'm a prostitute, but of course prostitutes are good for business, provided they are suitably dressed and behave according to the standards expected by the hotel. If you take me up to your room now, let me tell you truthfully that you will be only the second man I have ever slept with."

Gil gave Anna a complicated shrug with which he intended to convey the feeling that he was flattered by what she had said, but couldn't take her seriously. A woman with Anna's style and Anna's body and Anna's sexual directness had slept in the whole of her life with only one man?

Anna said, "You don't believe me."

"I don't have to believe you, do I? That's part of the game." Gil thought that response was quite clever and sophisticated.

But Anna reached out toward him and gently picked a single hair from the shoulder of his coat and said very quietly, "It's not a game, my love."

She undressed in silence, close to the window, so that her body was outlined by the cold glow of the streetlights outside, but her face remained in a shadow. Her dress slipped to the floor with a sigh. Underneath, she was naked except for a tiny cache-sex of white embroidered cotton. Her breasts were large, almost too large for a woman with such a narrow back, and her nipples were wide and pale as sugar-frosting.

Gil watched her, unbuttoning his shirt. He could sense her smiling. She came over and buried the fingers of one hand into the curly brown hair on his chest, and tugged at it. She kissed his cheeks, then his lips. Then she reached down and started to unfasten his belt.

Gil thought: This is morally wrong, dammit. I'm cheating the woman who gave me my children; the woman who's waiting for me to come home tomorrow. But how often does a man run into a sexual dream like this? Supposing I tell her to get dressed and leave. I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what it could have been like.

Anna slid her hands into the back of his trousers. Her sharp fingernails traced the line of his buttocks, and he couldn't help shivering. "Lie down on the bed," she whispered. "Let me make love to you."

Gil sat on the edge of the bed and struggled out of his trousers. Then Anna pushed him gently backward. He heard the softest plucking of elastic as she took off her cache-sex . She climbed astride his chest and sat in the semidarkness smiling at him, her hair like a soft and mysterious veil. "Do you like to be kissed?" she asked him. "There are so many ways to be kissed."

She lifted herself up and teasingly lowered her vulva so that it kissed his lips. Her pubic hair was silky and long, and rose up in a plume. Gil kissed her, hesitantly at first, then deeper, holding her open with his fingers.

She gave a deep, soft murmur of pleasure and ran her fingers through his hair.

They made love four times that night. Anna seemed to be insatiable. When the first slate-gray light of morning began to strain into the room, and the trams began to boom over Hogesluis again, Gil lay back in bed watching her sleep, her hair tangled on the pillow. He cupped her breast in his hand, and then ran his fingers gently all the way down the flatness of her stomach to her dark-haired sex. She was more than a dream, she was irresistible. She was everything that anybody could desire. Gil kissed her lightly on the forehead, and when she opened her eyes and looked up at him and smiled, he knew that he was already falling in love with her.

"You have to go back to England today," she said softly.

"I don't know. Maybe."

"You mean you could stay a little longer?"

Gil looked at her, but at the same time he made a conscious effort to picture Margaret, as if he were watching a movie with a split screen. He could imagine Margaret sitting on the sofa sewing and glancing at the clock every few minutes to see if it was time for him to be landing at Gatwick Airport. He could see her opening the front door and smiling and kissing him and telling him what Alan had been doing at playschool.

"Maybe another day," Gil heard himself saying, as if there were somebody else in the room who spoke just like him.

Anna drew his head down and kissed him. Her tongue slipped in between his teeth. Then she lay back and whispered, "What about two days? I could take you to Zandvoort. We could go to my house, and then we could spend all day and all night and all the next day making love."

"I'm not sure that I can manage two days."

"Call your office. Tell them you may be able to sell the good burghers of Amsterdam a few more of your buses. A day and a night and a day. You can go home on Sunday night. The plane won't be so crowded then."

Gil hesitated, and then kissed her. "All right, then. What the hell. I'll call the airline after breakfast."

"And your wife? You have to call your wife."

"I'll call her."

Anna stretched out like a beautiful sleek animal. "You are a very special gentleman, Mr. Gil Batchelor," she told him.

"Well, you're a very special lady."

Margaret had sniffled: that had made him feel so guilty that he had nearly agreed to come back to England straight away. She missed him, everything was ready for him at home, Alan kept saying, "Where's daddy?" And why did he have to stay in Holland for another two days? Surely the Dutch people could telephone him, or send him a telex? And why him ? George Kendall should have been selling those extra buses, not him.

In the end, it was her whining that gave him the strength to say, "I have to, that's all. I don't like it any more than you do, darling, believe me. I miss you, too, and Alan. But it's only two more days. And then we'll all go to Brighton for the day, what about that? We'll have lunch at Wheeler's."

He put down the phone. Anna was watching him from across the room. She was sitting on a large white leather sofa, wearing only thin pajama trousers of crepe silk. Between her bare breasts she held a heavy crystal glass of Bacardi. The coldness of the glass had made her nipples tighten. She was smiling at him in a way that he found oddly disturbing. She looked almost triumphant, as if by persuading him to lie to Margaret, she had somehow captured a little part of his soul.