The Dollhouse Society: Margo

by Eden Myles

  MARGO

  The Dollhouse Society

  By

  Eden Myles

  Copyright © 2013 Eden Myles

  Published by Courtesan Press

  http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com/

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be distributed, shared, resold, posted online, or reproduced in any electronic or hard copy form.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities between actual persons or events is entirely coincidental. This book contains adult content and is intended for a mature readership. All sexual scenarios depicted in this book occur between consenting adults over 18 years of age.

  Cover art design by Courtesan Press

  ***

  CONTENTS

  The Rules of Conduct Inside the Dollhouse

  Margo by Eden Myles

  Bonus Story: All I Want for Christmas by Jay Ellison

  Previews & Excerpts

  ***

  THE RULES OF CONDUCT INSIDE THE DOLLHOUSE

  (Failure to comply with these rules shall result in immediate expulsion from the Dollhouse.)

  - No gentleman/lady under the age of thirty shall be permitted to enter the Dollhouse. Gentlemen/Ladies desiring permanent membership within the Society shall be subject to a trial period lasting no less than one year, after which he will be reviewed for possible permanent inclusion in the Society.

  - A gentleman/lady and his/her courtesan/courtier may do anything they wish, so long as it is consensual, tasteful and entertaining. Consensual acts of entertainment within the Dollhouse are hitherto referred to as “plays”.

  - “Plays” between a gentleman/lady and his courtesan/courtier may not be interrupted in any way or for any reason by a third party. “Play” can only be begun or ended by the parties involved.

  - “Plays” shall be conducted only in a designated playroom of the Dollhouse. The only time this rule shall not apply is for a new courtesan’s debutante party, in which “play” shall be conducted in the great room.

  - A gentleman/lady is not permitted to touch, address or otherwise acknowledge another gentleman’s or lady’s courtesan or courtier while in the Dollhouse.

  - Proper decorum must be observed at all times.

  - Courtesans/courtiers shall not be allowed to imbibe any kind of alcoholic beverages while in the Dollhouse.

  - Courtesans/courtiers shall be shown the utmost respect while in the Dollhouse.

  - A new safe word shall be issued at each gathering. When a safe word is used by a gentleman/lady or his/her courtesan/courtier, all “play” shall immediately cease between all the parties involved.

  ***

  MARGO

  by Eden Myles

  “You seem a little down this Monday morning, my pet,” my partner Robert Burkett said as he joined me in the employee lounge for a coffee—or, in his case, tea. Even having been in America for the past twenty years, I still couldn’t break him of his English habits.

  “Well, it is Monday,” I argued as I poured a black cup of joe for myself, then added one Earl Grey tea bag and a cream to his mug of hot water before handing it over. The mug was his favorite; I’d given it to him for Christmas the year before and it read Trust Me, I’m a Lawyer and had a great white shark on it, dressed in a necktie and carrying a briefcase. Robert thought it was hilarious, but felt his public image required he keep it in the employee lounge rather than letting our high-profile clients in the entertainment business see it.

  “Monday, bloody Monday,” Robert said as he used a spoon to stir his tea. Every Monday morning I gave him a cup of tea and every Monday morning he stood at the coffee counter and stirred it with great concentration. Sometimes he regaled me with stories of growing up in rural Wales, waiting for the milkman to arrive at the farmhouse where he and his mother, father, and seven siblings lived. After five years of working together, it had become our ritual. He told me detailed stories of his “smallholdings,” the tiny llama ranch his father owned in Snowdonia, and I would tell him what I’d been up to during the weekend.

  “I remember we had this stocking vendor who would come up the hill on Mondays. My mother used to send me down with a few shillings when she had the money…”

  And just like that, he was off with one of his stories. I leaned against the counter, listening to and just admiring the man who had taken me onboard as an equal partner in his firm in what was normally the very competitive and male-oriented field of entertainment law. I wasn’t meeting with my first client of the day until ten o’clock. That gave me an hour to kill, and there was no better way of killing an hour than by listening to one of Robert’s stories in his deep, whispery soft voice and country Wenglish accent.

  Robert was well into his fifties now, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. I’d seen pictures of him in college, back in his early twenties, a muscular giant of a man who’d been big on rugby but still graceful enough for cricket. He hadn’t changed much over the years. He was still big, well-chiseled but elegant, and his bright grey eyes had never lost their gleam. But the years and the loss of his wife of twenty-six years had left their mark on him as well. I saw it in the lines in his face and the way his thick dark hair had turned all silver almost overnight. He was still handsome as hell, and his mind was sharper than all the young, ambitious sharks at Burkett Associates combined, but sometimes I wondered what he’d been like in those younger years, if he’d always been this confident, wise and cynical, or if that was something he’d had to work up to.

  I’d always gotten along better with men than with women, and I liked joking that we were soul mates. We were both very much at ease with one other, and more than one junior associate at the firm thought we were romantically involved, but that was marginalizing what we had between us. In many ways, Robert and I were best friend. I was there for him when Joanne had her stroke and slowly went downhill from there, and he’d taken me out drinking when my marriage to Brent fell apart.

  “Did you see your friends this weekend?” Robert finally asked when he’d finished his childhood story.

  “You mean Malcolm and his friends? No, I stayed in to work on the accounts.”

  Robert sipped his tea and raised an eyebrow at that. “Is there a problem?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. I’d like to do a bit more work before I bring anything to you.”

  Robert didn’t push. He knew that if it was important enough, I would tell him. “Very well. Lunch at one?” he said, consulting his watch. He and I usually enjoyed a long lunch on Monday to discuss our clients and our goals for the week.

  “One sounds good,” I told him. “How does the Sakura sound?”

  The Sakura was one of the more elegant Japanese restaurants in Lower Manhattan, but it sold food you could actually eat.

  “It sounds like you, my pet,” Robert told me, setting his mug down to take my hand and brush a brief kiss just below my knuckles. “Down to earth and elegant.” He gave me a very Japanese bow before skirting off to his office.

  ***

  Around the time I split from Brent, our firm took on a new client—Harper House, one of the “big seven,” in New York publishing. The VP, Malcolm Sloan, was an amazing businessman who’d been featured in Businessweek and the WSJ many times over. I’d considered it an honor to take him on. Not long after, he’d admitted to feeling the same way about his association with me, even going so far as to foolishly call me a phenom in the law industry. Were it anyone else, I would have said he was hitting on me, but Malcolm was gayer than Elton John.

  Not long after, he’d invited me to join his little society of gentlemen at their exclusive sex club. I’d been lonely and horny at the time, and I’d never really been the quiet, shy type,
so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Three years later, I was still attending Dollhouse meetings semi-regularly. It had felt odd at first, being the only female there, but I was Malcolm’s boon, and Malcolm was powerful, both in the business world as well as the Society. He felt it was time the gentlemen accepted a woman among their ranks.

  In the beginning, I’d been happy to use and be used. The meetings were held once a month, the sex tasteful, yet decadent, and the gentleman pleasant, for the most part. But I quickly learned how incredibly depressing the meet-ups could be—at least for those among us without courtesans or courtiers. It was a little bit like window-shopping when you were more than capable of affording the merchandise.

  “We missed you over the weekend,” Malcolm said, lounging in the leather wing chair that sat cattycorner to my vast oak desk, one leg crossed over the other. He was shorter than me, round and completely unremarkable—and yet his presence filled my office to overflowing. He was one of the most powerful men I had ever met, but he wore his power well, like a Roman emperor with nothing to prove. How did that saying go? An iron hand in a silk glove? He sipped the tea I’d poured for him, pinning me with eyes that I swore had the laser power to burn holes through steel walls. “You should have popped round. Christian debuted his new courtier. It was a lovely performance. Very inspiring.”

  He’d visited me this afternoon because of a Copyright concern he had with one of his better known authors, but that was business we could have taken care of on the phone. I knew he’d come to sniff out why I, his personal weapon in the war to liberate the Society from its more old fashioned mores, was in hiding.

  “It was work,” I said, cutting him off before he could speculate me into the ground. I loved Malcolm, but he was like a terrier when he got his teeth into something. “We’re having accounting issues, Malc. I promise it was nothing personal.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  I slid off my glasses and gave him a surly look. He was wearing one of those I-know-what-you’re-up-to-and-I’m-trying-to-be-polite-about-it expressions that Malcolm was famous for. He shrugged innocently. “I was afraid you might be in a bit of a fugue.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Leave it to Malcolm Sloan to use a word like fugue.

  He gestured toward me with his cup and saucer. “Sometimes, if a gentleman—or a lady, in your case—remains…unattached at the Dollhouse over an extended amount of time, it can cause some unwanted anxiety.”

  “You can’t be serious?” I complained, folding my glass and running a hand over my long blond corporate topknot and ponytail.

  “I’ve seen it happen, Margo. When I invited my best friend Ian Sterling to join the Society, it was right after his wife died. He was with us three years and I saw the toll it took on him. Thankfully, he found a wonderful young woman to play with. It can be quite emotionally draining, watching the gentleman and their trained courtesans play, but having no partner of your own.”

  I wasn’t about to admit to that. “I assure you, I’m in complete control of my emotions.”

  Malcolm sighed. “May I speak plainly, Margo Faulkner?”

  That teased a grin out of me. “Don’t you always, Malcolm Sloan?”

  He took a sip of tea and said, “My dear, I have complete confidence in you. If I had not, I never would have extended an invitation to the Dollhouse to you.”

  “But…”

  “But,” he continued, raising his cup in a salute, “we gentleman are, after all, only human. And vulnerable. In fact, we are most vulnerable when we lay our hearts down at the feet of a courtesan or courtier. They see us as the strong one, Margo, the one in charge. But in reality it’s they that hold all the keys to the kingdom.”

  I sighed internally, realizing his reasoning was probably right. In the beginning, I’d looked forward to Society meetings. Now I sought ways of filling my calendar up so I wouldn’t have to attend every meeting. I didn’t like the sadness—the “fugue,” as he called it—that infused me while I was there. Watching the gentlemen and their partners play only seemed to remind me that my time might never come around—and that if it did, I would be the vulnerable one. Malcolm’s observation annoyed me.

  I’d grown up in the Bronx, a poor girl. When I was thirteen years old, a boy I knew from an upscale school in Chelsea asked me out on my first date. I never even stopped to question why he would be interested in a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, but after a short trip downtown in his convertible, I quickly learned. While down in the warehouse district, he and several of his rich playboy friends jumped me. They took turns raping and beating me until I was unconscious. One of the boys tried to cut my throat but either lost his nerve or had poor aim, and he’d wound up cutting my cheek instead. All of the boys had rich fathers, so none of them had ever gone to prison for their crime.

  I’d kept the scar as a token of my own stupidity, and as a reminder to not give away my trust so easily. These days, I kept my relationships clean and simple, sex with no attachments. I’d given myself—really given myself—to only one man, and he had divorced me, betrayed me, and tried to take everything I owned. All I had to do was touch the scar on my cheek to remind myself not to let my own vulnerability get the better of me.

  I hadn’t been the type of gal to lie down and die in that alley all those years ago, or in the courtroom when Brent tried to strip me of all I owned. I wouldn’t do it now.

  I made my decision in that moment. “You know, Malcolm, you’re right. It’s time I get a courtier,” I told him. I slid my glasses back on and gave him a determined, sharklike smile. “Next month will be my debut. That I promise you.”

  ***

  At half past noon, I carried the elegant little tray of California roll sushi in its basket into Robert’s office, kicked his door closed, and set it down on his desk, along with the bottle of sauvignon blanc I’d brought. Robert looked up from the contract he was poring over and said, “I thought we were going out to lunch?”

  “I’ve decided to eat in.” I popped the cork and poured him a glass of wine, being sure to lean forward just a little so my cleavage was on display. “Join me.”

  Robert sat back in his seat, observing me through his glasses. “You fascinate me, Margo,” he said as I laid out a tablecloth across his cluttered desktop and set our wine glasses down, along with the tray of sushi, making a kind of improvised picnic on top of his workspace.

  “Oh?”

  “Never asking me, only telling me.”

  “You like that about me,” I reminded him, handing him his glass of wine. “What did you call it once? My man’s mind? Besides, I want to discuss something with you in private.”

  He looked me over like he was appreciating something other than my man’s mind. “The accounting issue.”

  “No, I’m still working on that.” I sat down on the edge of his desk and crossed my legs. My pinstriped business suit fit me exactly, tailored to my tall, curvy form, and I wore my jacket exactly one size too small. It pushed my heavy breasts up so they peeked out the top of my open-throated dress shirt. He noticed, but he wouldn’t comment or stare too long. The thing about Robert was, he was always a gentleman.

  I had never been the type to beat around the proverbial bush about anything, so I took a deep breath and said, “Robert, I want to tell you about my weekend. All my weekends. At least, the ones I’ve spent at the Dollhouse.”

  For almost five minutes after I explained about the Society, and what I wanted from him, Robert Burkett sat staring at me. I thought it was possible he was waiting for a punch line, or for me to tell him I was pulling his leg. As the silence stretched out uncomfortably between us, I felt my heart beating thickly against the wall of my chest. I was surprised to find my hands sweating around the stem of my wine glass. I was frightened that he would turn me down.

  Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I said, “If you need a few days to think about it, that’s fine. You don’t need to give me an answer right away.”

  Robert finally blinke
d and said, “You’re perfectly serious about this…proposal. About being your…what is it called? A courtier?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “May I ask a personal question, Margo?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Why me?”

  I hadn’t expected that he would ask that particular question. “You’re my…Robert.” I’d almost said soul mate. “Why wouldn’t I choose you?”

  “All those young studs in the office walking about, and you choose an old horse?”

  I hoped that was the beginnings of a yes. I leaned forward so I was stretched catlike atop his desk and did something I had never done with Robert before. I leaned forward and touched his cheek. I thought how it was funny that we had never touched until this moment. Not really. Not in any friendly or intimate sense. Even at Joanne’s funeral, I had held Robert’s hand briefly, but we hadn’t hugged. He hadn’t cried in front of me, though I knew he’d wanted to. “Robert, you’re a beautiful man, and you’re my best friend. I want you. I want you to be my courtier.”

  I looked into Robert’s eyes and recognized the sincerity of his lust. That was good. It was almost enough to make him mine. He lifted his hand and brushed his thumb softly against the scar on my cheek, a feathery touch that sent pulses of desire throbbing through me.

  I closed my eyes and clutched his hand against my face. “Sit and think on it. Tell me at the end of this week if you wish to go into this with me.” I took his hand and kissed it. Then I leaned forward and kissed his lips, sweetened with wine. “I promise there is no one else I want more than you.”

  ***

  On Friday afternoon, at six o’clock, Robert stepped into my office and closed the door. “If we decide to do this, Margo, I’ll need to be made aware of the rules.”

  I turned from my filing cabinet, caught off guard by his statement. It had been a rough week at the office. Besides the barrage of high-profile clients we’d entertained, we’d also made the uncomfortable discovery that a quarter of a million dollars of company money had gone missing. In the ensuing chaos, my proposal to Robert over lunch on Monday had been nearly forgotten—well, not forgotten, exactly. I’d spent quite a few nights with my vibrator this week, dreaming of the things I could do to him. But the crisis here at the office had been a definite buzz killer.