Authors: Justine Elyot
“Laura, I’m sorry,” he said. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and sing
Lalala
.
Don’t be sorry. Be horny. Be hot for me
. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“What do you mean? Why the hell not?”
He took a deep breath, looked out to sea for a minute, then looked back at Laura. She had never seen him with a grave expression before. She didn’t like it.
“Because I think we should be free to meet people who are better for us.”
“Oh. You’ve met someone. You’re fucking someone else.”
“Laura, I’ve been fucking other people all along. And so have you, I’m sure. But yes. I’ve met someone I’d like to…really try and…Fuck it, everything sounds like a cliché in these situations, doesn’t it? What if I say it isn’t you, it’s me. That’s not true, though. It
is
you. And me.” Rocky twisted his hands helplessly, obviously desperate to get away.
“Who is she?” she demanded, tossing her head. “What has she got that I haven’t?”
His eyes hardened and his lip curled. “I like her,” he said, seeming to enjoy the cruelty of it.
“Oh, a
nice
girl,” she parried, spoiling for the fight now. “Not really your type, is it? You’ll be bored rigid, and she’ll see through you. Does she know what you do for a living?”
“
You
don’t know what I do for a living,” he pointed out.
“I know you’re Cordwainer’s hired goon—and everyone knows Cordwainer’s as dodgy as hell.”
He failed to take the bait, tossing out a bitter laugh. “There’s so much I’d love to tell you, Laura. But I won’t. I’ll leave it for now—let you have your illusions a little while longer.”
“I’ll tell Dad about us.”
“Go ahead.” He shrugged, palms up, like a character in a gangster movie.
He had drawn the poison from her fangs; she had no other bargaining chips for the table. Unless…
“A kiss, then? Or a final…y’know…for the road?”
His eyes narrowed; he suspected a ruse of some kind. He knew her too well.
“Didn’t you understand me, Laura? I’ve met somebody. I don’t want to fuck anyone else anymore.”
“Oh, what a good boy you are,” she sniped. “Okay, you pass the fidelity test. You can polish up your Boy Scout monogamy badge.”
He grinned. “Thanks. Listen, I didn’t mean to be hard on you. There are things I like about you. You can make me laugh. You’re gorgeous. You’re one of the best fucks I’ve ever had. You’ll make someone very happy, especially if that someone also fits into Councillor Trewin’s business plans. It’s been…an experience. Memorable.”
“An affair to remember.”
“Yeah.”
“So a kiss goodbye is too much to ask, is it?” She stepped closer to him, running a finger down the V-neck of her blouse, slipping the top button undone. “After ten months…Some marriages don’t last that long. Come on, Rocky. I’m going to miss you.”
He baulked for a moment, then shook his head, as if shaking his conscience clear, and moved towards her.
“Goodbye, Laura,” he said softly, leaning down to facilitate the meeting of their lips. She slipped an arm around his neck, hooking him close, snatching a handful of his hair while their teeth bumped at the unexpected speed of their coupling. Into her mouth, a cough of surprise, an impulse to recoil, which she thwarted by crushing him harder against her. She used her other hand to grab and squeeze his leathered groin, seeking out the buttons, wanting them undone and him hard for her again, so that he knew she had won.
But he slapped her hand away, hard, but not hard enough to stop her wrenching his wrist down under her skirt and into the waistband of her knickers. He wanted to voice protest, but she began biting down on his lip again, just like that first kiss of theirs. He gave in to her and let her hold his hand inside, wiggling his fingers obediently against her clit. She lifted her feet off the floor and wrapped them around his legs so that she hung off him and he was forced to cradle her buttocks while he delved inside her sex. She circled her hips and slip-slid against his hand, pulling his hair, tasting his tongue and teeth, having no care at all who might stumble into this dark recess of the pier and find them at it like primitive monkeys.
She came on his hand, moaning into his mouth, but it was a disappointing orgasm, and the accompanying sense of victory dulled almost as soon as it passed through her consciousness. He dropped her down on the boards, extricated himself from her swampy knickers and sharp teeth and stepped back, looking down at her as if she were some kind of vermin.
“It’s over, Laura.”
“Just one more thing.” she whispered. She darted forward and slashed his cheek with her Poison Plum nails.
For a few seconds, his stunned inaction made her want to laugh. Then, as if in slo-mo, he put a hand to the bleeding lacerations beneath his right eye and exclaimed in disbelief, “You fucking bitch.”
“Wonder if she’ll like you so much now? Do you think she wants you for your
personality
, Rocky? Come on, then. Take your revenge. Give me what’s coming to me.”
She felt alight with life, her chest heaving, blood singing. She wanted him to crush her against the pier railings and have her in every way possible.
But he shook his head again and turned away.
Laura Trewin wouldn’t run after a man. That was one thing she would never do. So she went back down to the pier steps and sat there until the tide ruined her shoes and her mascara tears added to the salt damage. He would be sorry.
Ugh
. Michelle didn’t know what that was that she had just stepped on, but she thought it might be ancient chewing gum, matting the carpet and causing her to trip over the toe of her mule.
Never mind. The carpets were going to go anyway. She was going to have them ripped out and replaced with…wood laminate flooring perhaps. Or terra-cotta tiles, give the place a Spanish feel. She had been planning a little refurb ever since Charles told her she could take this place over. She was going to get Sky TV for the lounge bar, maybe rip out the skittle alley and have one of those soft-play areas for kids—this was a family resort, after all, and it’d bring them in in droves on rainy days.
It was going to be a big job, though. Michelle thought she could do with one of those makeover shows to come and lend a hand…but then again, knowing Charles, that wouldn’t be a good idea. She knew he had some interesting design plans of his own for the basement…
It was May already—only eight weeks till the school summer holidays and peak season. Could they do it in eight weeks? If anyone could, Charles could.
Stationing herself behind the reception desk, she opened the massive ledger that was all the Fairview had in the way of a bookings record. No computers here, just a dusty answerphone and a doorbell Sellotaped to the Formica top of the desk. They would soon change that. Charles would bring spreadsheets and Web sites to her fingertips.
Ah, speak of the devil. Here he was now, with his pet biker boy.
“So what do you think, Michelle? Will it do?”
He leaned his charcoal-suited elbow on the reception desk and questioned her with his eyebrows.
“It’s nice…Charles.” Michelle always got a kick out of saying his name. Charles in public. Sir in private. “Or at least, it will be, once we’ve made a few changes.”
“Yes, it’s seen better days, I agree.” He straightened up and subjected the lobby to an intense examination. “I’ll contract some decorators. Just tell me what you want doing and we’ll do it. I suppose we’d better move quickly, given the time of year. Do you think you can have your list with me by the end of the week?”
“Oh, I’m sure I can, Charles.” She fingered the little silver dog tag at her throat. His initials were on the back. The thought of it, as ever, dried her mouth and dampened her knickers. He had not failed to observe the gesture, for he turned to his sidekick.
“Rocky, I’m still waiting for my back rent from the Fishy Plaice and the Goldsands Tandoori. Can you give them a nudge, please?”
Without saying a word, the man put on his helmet and headed out through the door. Charles and Michelle were still looking at each other, smiling faintly, when they heard the roar of the motorbike engine outside.
“Have I told you my plans for the basement?” he asked, his voice now much lower and less formal than it was in Rocky’s presence.
“I knew you…had plans…but I don’t know what they are,” she admitted, twisting the dog tag so it almost cut off her air supply.
Charles Cordwainer, so angular and severe-looking, folded his arms and glowered darkly at her.
He has plans. He knows I will like them, but he also likes me to pretend that I won’t
.
“Why don’t we go down there and I’ll outline them for you.”
“O-kay,” she said, excitement coming out as quite acceptable nervousness. She smoothed down her skirt and followed him to the gated-off section of staircase that led to the unused half of the cellar.
Now she really was nervous. The stairs creaked and at least a couple were rotten. As they descended, the cobwebs thickened and the darkness loomed. The musty, fusty smell of dust annexed her nostrils so that she had to take shallow breaths.
Charles unlocked a scratched door and flicked on a switch. The light fixture was just a bare bulb that cast little more than a pale wash of light into the room, leaving its corners and niches in obscurity. The beer cellar was bricked off on the other side of the building, through a locked steel door. This room contained pile after pile of junk. Broken chairs and bedsteads, bundles of faded magazines, two dead refrigerators, some lampshades, all of it thickly coated with dust.
Charles put a protective arm around her shoulder, which, for some absurd reason, was shaking.
“It’s probably hard to imagine, but this place will look completely different when the work is finished. I’m going to dedicate it to you, Michelle.”
His voice was soft, almost caressing. “Oh, Charles,” she murmured back in kind. He was not a romantic man, but there was a side to him that nobody saw, that nobody understood.
“Well, you and I,” he amended. “And our friends, and our guests.”
Oh yes. Our friends and guests. Mustn’t forget about them
.
“How much better this will suit us than that dreary room above the amusement arcade,” he continued, his fingers pressing down lightly against the side of her neck. “I will have all the junk removed, the space cleaned and then it will be a blank slate on which to build a perfect palace of decadence and desire.”
She wriggled against him. “What will you put in here?”
“On the ceiling, a chandelier. And some eyebolts. Maybe a hook. Maybe more than one.” He was massaging her neck between finger and thumb now, hooking his fingertips underneath the leather thong that encircled it. “A long central table, dark wood, with matching chairs. Against the wall, a variety of custom-made benches and frames. And hanging from the wall, every single thing I could ever imagine using on your bottom, Michelle. Every single thing. How would you like that?”
“It sounds…a little scary,” she murmured, and licked her lips.
“Just a little. Erotic paintings on the wall, and a display cabinet for all the plugs and dildos. And nipple clamps. And cuffs and chains.”
“And the oils and lubricants,” she reminded him hopefully.
“Oh, those are for good girls. This room won’t have any good girls in it. They are strictly forbidden.”
Michelle’s laugh was genuinely nervous now. Charles had this way of exuding menace without even knowing it; it was one of the reasons he was such a successful businessman. His hand closed around the back of her neck, exerting pressure on her shoulder blades.
“Down on your knees,” he said suddenly, pushing her into a stumble before releasing his grip. She was reluctant—the floor was filthy, uneven concrete. However, she knew better than to disobey a direct order, so she dropped down as instructed, grimacing when her stockinged knees met the dust and grime. She watched his fingers unbuckle and unbutton, always deft over the bulge in his trousers. She was never allowed to touch his prick without permission, and hardly ever during fellatio, so she kept her hands down by her sides and waited for him to remove it from his boxers and rub its juice-tipped bulb over her lips.
“I think I’ll start as I mean to go on,” he said. “Let’s make this the first of many. Open and suck. Use that mouth.”
Performing oral sex without being able to hold on to the root of the shaft had taken Michelle a lot of getting used to. It was so much more difficult to manipulate the man you were servicing. You cannot speed up his orgasm with a timely squeeze or a quick burst of up-and-down. It was a long and painful learning curve—Michelle was paddled every time she took longer than ten minutes to bring Charles to his climax—but she prided herself on her technique now.
She slid the tip of her tongue delicately in a circular motion around his stalk, pausing for an extended flicker around his sensitive underside. He tugged the foreskin back for her and she opened her mouth wide, accepting him inch by inch into the tight space.
“Work it, girl,” he murmured. “Nice and slow now.” He allowed her a minute or so to get into her stride, to accustom herself to the largeness and thickness of him in her mouth, to find a way of sucking that wouldn’t make her cheeks ache too badly. Then, when he had tired of her fluttering and licking and experimenting, he took a handful of her hair and pulled it hard. “Suck,” he commanded. “Suck it well, or my belt comes off. And I don’t suppose you want to spend all afternoon behind the desk with a sore arse, do you?”
Of course, she could not answer. Actually she wouldn’t have minded the sore arse so much, except there was an event planned for that evening, and she didn’t want to turn up with an already tender bum. Her response, therefore, was to step up the enthusiasm of her suction, rolling his length around between her cheeks and pushing at it with all the force of her tongue, speeding up very gradually until her head was bobbing back and forth, each backwards motion pulling at her scalp.
“Good, this is good,” he crooned. “What a good little cocksucker you are…Oh yes…” And with that he linked his hands firmly behind Michelle’s head and held it still, thrusting into her face. This bit always seemed to last much longer than it really did, the repeated back-of-the-throat battering with his cock, threatening to make her gag or choke, but rationally she knew this meant he was close, and just as the tears sprang to her eyes and her nose started to run, he released the salty gush, roaring and pulling hard at her hair, keeping her mouth full of cock until she had swallowed, with some difficulty, the last drop.
“Well done,” he said gently, dropping down and kissing the tears from her cheeks. “I want you to taste me for the rest of the afternoon. I want you, today of all days, to remember how completely you are mine, Michelle. You know that, don’t you?” He cradled her face against his shirt, which he rarely did, for fear of staining the expensive fabric. “Mine.” His hands were in her hair. It was unlike him to be so affectionate, so tender, but she was grateful for it. These moments were precious, to be clung on to and milked.
“Yours,” she whispered.
“That’s right.” He stood up again, pulling her to her feet by the elbow. The knees of her stockings had worn through and her pale flesh spilled out in a lewd ellipse. “You’d better get back to work.”
They returned upstairs. Michelle felt as if she was coated in dust and sweat and the tang of semen haunted the back of her throat, but Charles did not allow her to wash or tidy up until he had left, an hour later, after taking various measurements and checking over the bookings ledger and the accounts.
“Don’t be late tonight,” were his parting words. As if she’d dare.
Michelle always had to prepare carefully for these events. She had to be clean, pristine, a blank canvas. She took a long bath, but she didn’t use any salts or foaming cleansers because Charles always wanted her to smell of nothing. He liked her to be layered with different scents over the course of the evening, all within his control. And, he said, he wanted to be able to tell when she was aroused, rather than fighting his way through a cloud of perfume for the signs. So she scrubbed at her skin, exfoliated using a mitten and, when she was all pink and the barriers between her skin and the world had fallen away, she towelled herself dry. She blow-dried and straightened her hair, which must be loose and flowing for ease of pulling, applied a scentless body lotion, then dressed. Dressing involved extensive consultation of the list he had left her.
The pale pink silk knickers with the black ribbon lacing up the back.
The white antique lace basque with the pink embroidered flowers.
White stockings with lace tops.
Tiny white stretchy miniskirt that barely covered her behind.
The miniskirt didn’t seem to go with the rest of the ensemble. All this virginal pink and white frilliness, and then a whore’s pelmet on top. Michelle wondered what mood Charles was striving to create tonight—a wedding night with raunch, perhaps? Perhaps it would be just the two of them…a thrilling thought. But she had to admit, it was unlikely.
She buckled on sparkly strappy heels and threw on a long white plastic raincoat—somehow this was the trashiest-looking thing of all—then dashed downstairs to the waiting taxi.
I wonder what the night holds in store for me. Who will be there? How many? What will the order of play be? How long will I have to perform before I am allowed to sink into Charles’ comforting arms?
The answers to all these questions lay at the top of the stairs in Charles’ seedy amusement arcade, the current headquarters of his empire. She would not miss this place when the basement was finally ready for use. Disreputable-looking characters skulked alongside the flashing machines, sniffing a lot and grunting at each other. The little blonde piece in the cash booth was yawning, engrossed in a magazine, sweetly oblivious, poor little tramp, that Charles had not employed her for her arithmetical prowess.
Oh, she has it all to come. I almost envy her
.
Michelle ignored her, walking past the booth to the “Staff Only” door. The blonde started and looked up from her magazine when she heard the handle turn, but she must have been briefed to expect Michelle, for she simply watched the white plastic-clad visitor for a second, then went back to her article about sixty-nine ways to enhance the sixty-nine position, or whatever.
Michelle’s heels were deafening on the uncarpeted stairs and she supposed whoever might be in the room upstairs must know she was approaching. The nerves kicked in and she experienced the familiar urge to turn back and run away that always seized her at this point. But she no longer had that option; the Fairview Hotel was more than her reward for services rendered—it was the security on those services continuing. This was how she paid her rent.
The office was empty. She took off her plastic mac and checked her face one last time. The next time she would see it, her hair would be mussed and there would be mascara trails down her cheeks, but for now she was immaculate.
She paused before knocking on the door that led out beyond the office and tried to listen for a minute—any voices or other sounds? Nothing. So she knocked, and the door was opened to her.
As ever, blackout blinds were drawn against the window that ran the room’s length and width. Only the central striplight was switched on, creating a harsh white rectangle in the centre of the floor. The whipping bench was out tonight, and so was the medical examination table, but there was no bondage chair, no cross-shaped flogging post, no chains dangling from the ceiling.