by Aubrey Irons
I bite my lip and smile coyly, savoring this moment before I drop my bomb. And then, ever so slowly, I crane my head up and let my lips trail across his ear.
“Too bad,” I whisper, “Because you’re not going to, and I’m never going to ‘beg’ you for a single thing.”
I would give almost anything for a camera at that exact moment, just to capture the look on his face as I push him back from me and start to step away, “Oh, and Oliver?” I smile sweetly at him as I start to step away before pointedly dropping my eyes to the huge bulge in jeans, “Good luck with that.”
11
Oliver
Jesus I need a drink.
Well, no, what I really need is something young, willing, and strange that I can sink my cock into until I forget all about Chloe Caulfield. I need a distraction; a drug, a drink, a lay I can forget about five minutes after like usual. I need anything to get my mind back in focus instead of this lingering obsession I have on the last girl in fucking Britain I need to obsess over.
Then of course there’s the raging case of blue balls I’m gritting my teeth at as I shove my way to front of the line outside the trendy club in Hoxton.
“Oy, chill there little lord.” A huge guy with dreads and a suit holding a clipboard steps between me and the door, “Feeling like a special fuckin’ snowflake tonight are we?” He narrows his eyes at me and nods his chin at the hundred or so people glaring at me from the line that runs down the length of the block.
“I’m meeting someone.”
He laughs, “I bet you are, son, I bet you are.” His arms fold over his chest and the smile drops in an instant, “Back of the line, and don’t make me do it for you.”
The funny thing here is that I was raised amongst tough guys like this. Wannabe gangsters and villains like this taught me how to lift a wallet from tourists in Leicester Square, or flip stolen handbags alongside Camden when other kids were learning to ride bikes and do their homework.
Needless to say, I’m not intimidated by thugs in suits working nightclub front doors. Not to mention, I need a drink fuckin’ ten minutes ago, and I’m on the list.
I’m about to say something about the man’s mum that’ll most likely make things wild real fast, when the door behind him bangs open and a man in a top suit with a bird on both arms stumbles out, laughing. He stops suddenly, and his mouth spreads into a grin as he sees me, “Ollie! Oy you little shit, c’mere!”
He pushes past the scowling door man, shrugging off the two tarted-up girls on his arms as he grabs me into a big bear hug.
Danny Cole; the Danny Cole, as in one of the most recognized chefs on the planet. As in, three fucking stars in Michelin, Danny Cole. I get blog posts, Danny gets the New York Times.
“The young prince deigns us with his presence after all, eh?” He pulls back, grinning at me, “Didn’t think important chefs like you could make it out to social functions like these.”
He’s yanking my chain; purposely being a dick to rattle my cage. Anyone else in the world would get popped in the mouth right quick for that type of shit, but then again, anyone else in the world isn’t the man who taught me how to cook and got my ass off the street.
If you believe in them, you might say Danny Cole is a sort of guardian angel. That is, if you also believe guardian angels drink like Irish dock workers and fuck anything with a pair of tits that moves.
“Sorry, late night at Jolie, and-” I shoot the bouncer a withering look, “Had a bit of a problem with the list it seems.”
Danny shakes his head, “Oy, well, get your ass in there son; you’re gonna love it in here.” He turns and pats the bouncer on the shoulder. “Easy there boy-o, he’s with me,” Danny says as he passes him a wad of notes. He grabs the two girls he walked out with and drags them back inside, jerking his head at me to follow.
“Yeah, boy-o,” I say with the fakest smile I can come up with as I clap the big bouncer on the shoulder too, “Down boy.” His eyes narrow at me, but he doesn’t say shit as I follow Danny inside the club.
It’s fuckin mad inside; and that’s even before Danny leads us through the crowd back to the VIP area he’s commandeered. The VIP area full of champagne, booze, and fuckin’ gorgeous girls just gaggling to hang out with him.
Jesus, celebrité suits Danny well.
When we sit, we’re instantly surrounded by girls with bedroom eyes; girls who drape themselves over the two of us, girls who laugh at everything Danny says, and girls who trace fingers over my arms with stars in their eyes.
Kitchen groupies.
The fucked up thing is, this actually exists. With chefs being the new celebrity rock stars they are these days, the rock-star lifestyle naturally follows. Model-slash-hostesses and actress-slash-waitresses, food bloggers, restaurant reviewers, or just star-fuckers who see your name in the paper next to a picture of success and see it as their best shot of touching greatness.
Okay, given, these girls are all here for Danny, but cool by association is never really a bad thing now is it?
I mean the man only has one dick.
“Oy, so how’s it being the top-dog, Beckett?” Danny says, running a hand through his silver-tipped hair as a young blonde thing on his lap tries to kiss his neck. “Feel like murdering your whole staff yet?”
I laugh. “Naw, mate; it’s-” I shrug, “It’s exciting.”
Danny grins, the lines around his eyes crinkling. He’s one of those pricks that just gets more handsome with age; one of those guys that makes me hope I age more like my mother’s side than my pudgy, balding father’s.
“So thats a yes on murdering the lot of them?” He says.
“Shit yes,” I say, raising a glass of champagne to him as he laughs.
“Fun being at the top, eh?”
I snort, “We calling Jolie the top now?”
Danny rolls his eyes as the girl on his lap starts to suck on his earlobe. “I can get you a job at fuckin Burger King if you like, boy-o. You got a packed house over there every night at your father’s place and you’ve got a kitchen they sunk, what, like a million quid into?” He snorts again before tossing back the rest of his champagne. “Don’t be one of those twenty-three year old jaded twats, Ollie.”
I shrug, nodding at him as the girl next to me on the couches slides up closer to me, as if her interest in me is directly tied to how much attention I get from Danny.
It probably is, and I probably don’t give a fuck.
“So, Marco giving you any shit over there?”
“Nah,” I say, “I’m running it real proper.”
Danny smirks past the girl in his lap, “Yeah I bet. Little hothead like you trying to make everyone scared of him, right?” He shrugs, “It ain’t easy at the top mate. You’re isolated up there.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Aw, now what’s the matter, lad, run out of waitresses and hostesses to fuck over there?” Danny grins at me while a second girl comes up behind the first attached to his neck and starts kissing her neck. “C’mon mate, what’d I teach you about fishing off the company pier?”
“Probably something like, ‘they’ve got the best fish’?”
Danny roars out a laugh before raising a hand to our personal cocktail waitress and gesturing for another bottle of bubbly.
Run out of waitresses and hostesses to fuck over there? Yeah, right. Except I’m not sure how to tell a guy like Danny that it’s the opposite. How do you tell a perpetual bachelor like the man sitting next to me, the man who taught me everything I know about getting pussy, and the man with three girls now literally crawling all over him that it’s actually one girl that’s got me twisted up in this vice I can’t seem to break out of? How the fuck do I even begin to explain that I’m actually annoyed by the girl running her hands over my thighs because all I can think about is Chloe and her outright denying me?
“Listen, Ollie; stick it out with Jolie,” Danny says, looking me in the eye. “I know working for your pops ain’t ideal, but that’s a good
place to earn your wings, mate.” He sighs and then reaches over to clap me on the shoulder, “Now buck up and cheer up, and go take this pretty young thing-” he grins at the girl climbing into my lap, “into the bathroom or something. You’re making me nervous over there, lad.”
He’s right, really. The whole Chloe thing is fucking with my head in ways my head never get’s fucked with by a girl. I need to forget the whole thing and just move on to things I know, like fucking models in club bathrooms. The Chloe thing? Fuck that. That’s a tree I need to stop barking up anyways. Time to drink up and forget.
A few drinks later, and that plan is just not fuckin’ working; the whole “getting Chloe out of my mind” bit. The girl on my lap is running her hands over my chest, leaning into my neck as if to kiss me there even though I keep absently pulling away every time she does. I’m just not fucking feeling it; at all.
This girl is fake; in every sense of it. This girl is a shadow following the light of the fame. She doesn’t want me, she wants what I am. She wants what I represent, and the idea of that has me gritting my teeth.
But I know what I need, regardless of her intentions. What I need is to fuck Chloe Caulfield right out of my system. What I need is what I knew I needed when I walked in here. I need to bury my cock balls deep in something strange and something that’ll hopefully scream loud enough to get Chloe’s name out of my head.
So when the girl who’s name I honestly don’t even know asks me if I “want to get out of here”, I say “fuck yeah,” even if just on instinct.
And when we’re in the cab, and she’s all over me, I’m still trying to make myself get into it, even if I’m still not.
“Oy, c’mon baby, I want to feel you fuck me right here in the cab.” A girl this forward would normally have me hard a steel, but for some reason it’s sort of just turning me off this time. And I’m trying to muster myself up to get into this and just do what I know I need to do to get Chloe out of my damn system, when the girl starts to pull her skirt up, flashing her panties at me in the back of the taxi. “C’mon, fuck me chef,” she says.
Fuck.
It’s the words I was dying to hear from Chloe earlier. The words I’d give a fucking leg to hear out of her mouth. But hearing it from this girl’s overly-made-up lips is just the final breaking point of the whole night for me, and I’m just done.
“Oy, where do you live luv?”
She grins at me, like this is me finally saying yes to her invitation, “Hackney,” she says, batting her eyes and licking her lips.
“Fantastic.” I knock on the driver’s glass, “Oy, pull over here, mate.”
She suddenly looks at me like I’m crazy. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry darling, gotta work in the morning.” I pass a bundle of notes to the driver, “Make sure she’s in first, yeah?”
“Are you fucking serious?” She’s glaring at me now, as if me not wanting to fuck her in the back of a taxi makes me some sort of reprehensible asshole.
“Nice meeting you,” I say, shutting the door behind me and knocking on the roof to signal the driver.
“Fag!” She screams out the window as the taxi pulls away into the night.
Classy ladies you hang out with, Danny, I grumble to myself, clenching my jaw.
I’m not far from home, so I walk, ignoring my raging case of blue balls and still trying to figure out how to get Chloe fucking Caulfield out of my Goddamn head.
12
Chloe
I turn over for the fifteenth time, tangling myself up more in the sheets as I glare at the clock on the bedside table. Wonderful, four o’clock in the morning and I still can’t find sleep.
And I know why I can’t, even if I don’t want to admit that to myself. I don’t - can’t - admit to myself that the reason I can’t get my brain to turn off is the same reason I can’t seem to get my libido to shut the hell up either.
This is withdrawal, that’s all, I grumble to myself as I roll over and stare up at the ceiling. I just need to stop thinking about that asshole.
The term “easier said than done” comes to mind. Because trying to stop thinking about Oliver Beckett is like trying to stop tonguing the cut in your mouth, or ignoring that mosquito that just won’t stop buzzing around your ear.
On the one hand, I took the tube home grinning from the restaurant, gleeful, bursting with pride for leaving him in the lurch like that. There’s something empowering in saying no to a man like Oliver, and leaving him with that look on his face was a like a rush of adrenaline right to the heart.
Except there’s the other side of that. The side where walking away from and saying no to a man like that - a man that entwines himself into your psyche like that and a man that has you literally whimpering at his touch - leaves you just as wound up and just as frustrated as you left him.
Hours later, hours after I walked away feeling so smug and self-assured, I’m still fighting to say no to him - this time, in my head. Hours later, I’m still trying to ignore the touch of his hands on me, the feel of his lips grazing my neck, and the tickling tease of his words, deep and dark in my ear.
Hours later, my body is still keyed up and on fire for him, my blood pumping a little faster, my cheeks still a little hotter.
My panties still a little wetter.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying once again to just will sleep to come to me, and once again to no avail.
Forget Oliver. I mean honestly, he’s probably out with some skank at this very moment. Oh, what, I “left him high and dry”? A man like that? I almost want to laugh. A man like that probably had some other girl screaming his name barely an hour after I left him.
The thought makes me sick, and that makes it even worse.
But then, I keep thinking about how it felt when he almost kissed me; how he felt pressed against me. How the softness of his lips and the scratch of his stubble across the curve of my neck sent shivers down my back and sent shockwaves through my core that I’m still reeling from, here in my bed.
“You want it, don’t you? You want me to bend you over this table right here and fill you up with every inch of this cock don’t you, luv?”
I bite my lip and close my eyes as his words come flooding back to me, feeling the creeping flood of heat rush through my body.
“Or maybe; maybe you’d want my tongue.”
God. And as much as I want to deny it, as much as I want to pretend it’s not from him, I’m suddenly dripping wet and burning up between my legs. I squeeze my thighs together, moaning softly at the feel of the heat there before I let my traitorous thoughts take over. My hands slide down my stomach to the waist of my panties, hooking my thumbs in and slowly peeling them down my thighs.
“I’ve got a wicked tongue, darling.”
And just like that, I’m caving. Hours later, I’m finally giving in to Oliver Beckett, finally surrendering my body to him, even if it is only inside my head.
I gasp as my fingers slide against my pussy, finding my center and pushing inside. Oliver might be in my head right now, but the effect he has on me is quite real, here in the shadows of my bedroom.
In my head, I’m imagining that tongue of his. I’m imagining that dirty, cockney-accented mouth of his whispering all sorts of crude things to me as he bends me over the table and trails kisses down my back. My other hand strokes my thigh, imagining his lips teasing the skin there, before moving up and kissing me where I truly want him to.
I moan as I sink my fingers deep, curling them against that spot just inside as my thumb teases over the aching nub of my clit. In my dreams, it’s his fingers, and his tongue on my pussy though. My pulse races and my breath catches in my throat as I rock myself higher.
I’m biting my lip, trying to hold in the moan, when I hear the front door slam shut downstairs. I freeze. There are footsteps on the stairs, and thank God I only hear one set of footsteps instead of the click of heels from some girl he’s bringing home. The thought of him playing porn again all night enters m
y head then, and I groan, sliding my finger out of my wetness and shoving a pillow over my head.
He’s at the top of the stairs then, and I’m silent as I wait for him to go into his room and shut the door. But then without warning, it’s my door that’s suddenly opening as Oliver steps into my bedroom.
I gasp and rip the pillow away from my face as I yank the covers up tight to my neck, “What the fuck are you doing?” I hiss, glaring at him and hating that it was that face I was just imaging between my legs at the height of my denied release.
“Look, I just wanted to, uh...” His jaw tightens, like he doesn't know what comes next in this conversation past barging into my personal space.
I glare at him, “You just wanted to barge into my room?”
“Hey, who came barging in on who, sweetheart,” he growls. “You know I never asked for a new pastry cook, let alone a fucking flatmate.”
“Oh please, like I had a choice!” I throw back, hugging the blankets up tight to my chin and praying to God that he thinks the flush and the guilty look on my face is from the yelling, not the fact that I was...well, you know.
“Listen luv, what you and I-”
“There’s no ‘you and I’ here, Oliver.”
“You know what I fucking mean,” he narrows his eyes at me, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans against my doorframe. “Before, back on that fucking exchange trip.”
“We do not need to go there,” I shake my head, souring my face like I’ve just bit into a lemon. As if somehow, physically reacting to the idea of bringing up the past drives it home.
“Yes, we do,” he growls, taking a step towards my bed, his eyes locked onto mine.
I instinctively grab the sheets a little tighter and he smirks; he fucking smirks, like he totally knows.
He arches a brow at me, “I don’t suppose you want to show me what’s under that sheet.” And then he fucking winks at me.
