by Dae, Harlem
“Marginally.” I frowned.
“So what do you think? You want to stay and see the next show? See if we can wake Sid Vicious up again?” She squeezed my cock. “Or shall we go somewhere else?”
“Please, do not start naming my dick. We’re not nearly familiar enough for that kind of crap.” Talk about taking liberties. Even Helen, after four years together, hadn’t baptised my prick.
“Oh, but I beg to differ. You’ve just come down my throat, doesn’t that give me some kind of naming rights?”
I shifted, pushing her off my lap and dislodging her hold on my cock. “No, it doesn’t. I didn’t exactly have much say in the matter, did I?”
“But you didn’t complain.” She licked her lips. “And it didn’t take long, did it?”
I stood, stuffed my cock away and turned from the window, blocking out the view of Julie, shining with sweat and red with lashmarks as she bowed and smiled at her audience. “I’m out of here.”
“Where are we going?” She stood, placed one hand on her hip and straightened out her hair with the other.
“We?”
“Yes, we.’
“We’re not going anywhere. I’m going home.” I needed to chill out, lay the hell down, take one of my pills. It was about due.
She pouted. “But, Victor, I thought we were together now, for the month.”
“What, twenty-four-seven?” She couldn’t be serious. She’d bloody suffocate me. Not to mention I had a shedload of work to be getting on with.
“Well, no, not twenty-four-seven, but at night at least. You know, right up until the witching hour.”
You’re a fucking witch. The words were on my tongue, but I didn’t let them escape, even though they were slippery suckers and desperate to get out. “Witching hour?”
“Yeah, until at least midnight, every night.”
“Every night.” I shook my head and gave a derisive snort. She was off her head. I had a multi-million-pound business to run.
She frowned and narrowed her eyes. “I thought we’d agreed that you, the great Victor…” She drew a circle in the air, as though reeling my surname from my mouth.
“Partridge.” I offered my surname, for the third time, a little grudgingly.
“That you, Victor Partridge, need a teacher?”
“Well, you seemed to decide that I need one and that you were qualified for the job.” I walked to the door and reached for the handle.
Suddenly she was behind me, pushing insistently and moving me forward. Before I could react, I was pressed to the door, pinned in place by her connecting her body with as much of mine as possible. My breath blew out and the tips of my shoes kicked the base with a sharp thud.
“Hey,” I said, shocked at the violent way she’d cornered me and was keeping me prisoner.
The tense peaks of her breasts were slotted against my back, her mound on my right buttock and her knees jutting into mine. If she bent her legs sharply I’d crumble.
A wave of irritation crested then broke through me. The surface of the door was super-cool on my hot cheek. “Hey.”
I went to turn, but she flattened her mouth to my ear, stroked her tongue along the outer crease and then inside the hole. Her breaths were as loud as a storm, and a moist heat filtered down my neck. For a moment the sensation was disorientating and I reached for the doorframe, needing something to hold on to.
“Shh,” she said. “Just give it up, will you? I thought we’d agreed you’d have a go at switching and not always having your finger on the pulse.”
Great analogy.
“Victor, just surrender to me, for the smallest pocket of time. Be mine, be under my command.” Her voice was like that of a siren, all hypnotic and floaty and the only thing my brain could register. “Relax, breathe deep. You have no responsibility but to give up responsibility. I will care for you. I will take all that weight off your shoulders and carry it for you, nothing can hurt you here.”
She rested her hands over mine, interlocking our fingers as she wriggled them and then leaned even closer into me.
I wondered if people in the main room could see us like this. What they’d think of Zara hemming me in. Preventing me from leaving and me letting her have her way. Oh, I knew I was stronger than her, my brawn no match for her petite stature, and I could escape with one lunge if I threw my full body weight into it. No doubt send her sprawling in the process. But I didn’t want that. Because, pressed against the door, bending to her will, I noticed that the fluttering in my chest was easing.
“Good boy,” she said, her lips tracing the shell of my ear, her teeth just grazing the fleshy lobe. “That’s it, relax. I’ve got you. There’s nothing to worry about, you’re safe with me.”
I closed my eyes. It was as though she was melting into me, becoming part of me. Taking over all my senses with her touch and the wind of her breaths. I let myself drift. Tension wept from my body, seemingly soaking backwards, into hers.
Suddenly she stepped away. “You may go.” Her voice was harsh, the sing-song quality gone as quickly as it had arrived.
I balled my fists, and a whoosh of air plundered my lungs. “Yes.” I managed. My back, though previously hot and tacky, felt cold and naked without her, and my fingers were stiff and empty.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Nine p.m. You know where I live. Pick me up in that fancy car of yours you told me about.”
“Tomorrow, I don’t know if…” I hesitated and stared at a knot in the wood of the door that had been painted over but was still faintly visible. Tomorrow was a full day of catching up on some tax returns I’d been putting off for weeks, and there was the Morton project that still needed work. I’d been anticipating a sixteen-hour day at least. “Okay, I’ll see you at nine.”
I opened the door, stepped through it and into the hall. Damn, I’d have to work the weekend now.
“Victor,” she called.
I stopped but didn’t look back. She wanted me to, so I didn’t. She’d caught me in her web, but I didn’t have to do everything she said. Which meant I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of facing her now as well as everything else.
“You’ve made great progress for a first night,” she said with a chuckle in her tone. “I might be able to knock that sweetness out of you after all.”
Chapter Four
“Good morning, Mr Partridge,” Mary, my sixty-something, bespectacled, grey-hair-complete-with-bun receptionist said. “I put the tax papers on your desk that you asked for.”
She hesitated, scanned me up and down. If she’d been anyone else I’d have wiped the floor with her for a look like that. But Mary had been with me from the word go, and I knew damn well without her meticulous ordering of my files and her no-nonsense-but-silver-spoon politeness with clients, Partridge and Partners wouldn’t be where it was today.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
I sighed but kept walking. “I’m fine, just didn’t sleep well. A lot on my mind.”
She shook her head in a motherly way. “Mmm, you really must learn to switch off. Would you like me to bring you some of your coffee?”
“That would be great.” I threw her a smile then shut myself in my office.
The early morning light cast long shadows on the plush silvery-white carpet, and a stream of dust motes danced in the air above my huge, angled steel desk which today, Mary had placed the Morton’s complex designs upon.
Ignoring the large technical scrawl, I walked over to my chocolate-brown leather chair and sat at a squat wooden desk that held a green table lamp. I didn’t have the brainpower to look over the Morton’s elaborate watermill conversion just yet. Maybe midmorning I’d give it a go. Perhaps then my neurons would be firing in a way I was familiar with.
I sat back and spun in my chair. Gazed out of the floor-to-ceiling window at the London rooftops. The sky still held a delicate dawn haze, the day having not yet washed away the night entirely. Chimney pots released curling wisps of black smoke, and in the dist
ance, beyond the tip of the London Eye, two plane trails had crossed in the perfect blue sky, leaving behind a giant white kiss.
I hadn’t even kissed Zara last night. Not to say there hadn’t been plenty of tongue action on her part, but despite everything, I hadn’t kissed her mouth.
Just great, Victor.
But did I want to? If I was honest, I wasn’t sure. She was intriguing, slutty, unusual and tempting all at the same time. A walking contradiction. I wanted to throw her on a bed and fuck her as much as I wanted her to throw me to the floor and fuck me too.
To say my evening hadn’t gone to plan would be an understatement. I’d left work early, for me, and stopped off for a drink. The need to be normal, your average man, and the scent of espresso had lured me off my usual track to the wine bar. I’d seen her the minute I’d walked into the coffee shop. How could I not? She was just my type with her luscious long hair, pouty red lips and coy smile. How little I’d known back then.
She’d given me the eye, let me buy her a fresh coffee after just five minutes talking, and I thought, given that she’d made a point of touching my arm a total of eight times in that hour, a one-night stand was a promise. Zara had given off all the signals of being a sure thing.
And bloody hell, that was what I’d wanted. An evening of no-strings, uncomplicated sex. Fast and horny would have suited me, so would a slow and gentle meeting of strangers, ships passing in the night. I’d simply had a perfectly natural urge for sex, nothing fancy, just two consenting adults, in bed, enjoying a bit of rumpy-pumpy. How hard was that to organise?
With Zara, however, average sex wasn’t going to wash. Despite the fact in jeans and a pale pink jumper she’d looked every bit an average girl, complete with just-visible white shirt, upturned collar, and a short string of pearls peeking over the top. But that had been a ruse, an underhand trick, bait for the unsuspecting. Visually she appeared a good girl when she was, in fact, disgustingly bad. It had been clever camouflage, not dissimilar to the evil deception a Venus flytrap employs.
Jesus, what was it she’d said back at her place?
Lick my cunt.
No woman had ever said that to me. I wasn’t a prude, a bit of dirty talk in bed suited me fine. But she’d just stripped, laid down, spread her legs and her pussy then given me the order like she’d been asking for sugar in her tea.
I’d been shocked to tell the truth, and hardly able to stop staring at her brazenly exposed pussy. The image was still with me now. Dusky rose flesh, creases and folds sparkling with moisture, and her sweet hole, just about on show by her position, a shadowed gulley that I’d wanted to touch so badly.
I salivated, as I’d done last night, then swallowed and watched two feral pigeons fighting over a greasy bit of paper on the rooftop opposite. I’d wanted to do as she’d asked. Wanted desperately to. But how could I? She’d ordered me to do it. No niceties about the event at all, just lick my cunt.
No one ordered me around like that. I was my own boss, had been for nearly eight years now. She had absolutely no idea who she was dealing with.
But the look on her face when she’d realised I wasn’t about to drop and start lapping like a dog… Instead of being indignant it was as though she’d enjoyed the fact she’d surprised me with her crudeness. Because that’s all it had been, a surprise. I would never have taken her for someone so forward. In the coffee shop she’d been like all the other girls I’d been with since Helen. Pretty, chatty, fun, nothing to write home about.
Jesus, what the hell would you put in a letter about Zara? That she was someone who could shake a person’s soul with one evening’s entertainment. By the time we’d been leaving her apartment, and I’d somehow, stupidly, lent her the idea that I might allow her teach me things, I really had believed that my ability to judge someone had taken a drastic slide. That fucking dress she’d worn. It was sexy, yes, but I could see the gusset of her knickers, for crying out loud. What kind of person wore shit like that and looked so bloody comfortable?
Zara, apparently.
Sitting with my so-called teacher and watching Julie came to my mind. The way Julie had marked herself with absolute passion behind every strike of her whip. Of course, I knew some people got off on pain. But that, it had taken the bloody biscuit, really it had. It was something else entirely. That had been like a form of torture. How could it be pleasurable?
I pressed my thumb and index finger to the bridge of my nose and my cock stirred. Damn it. Watching Julie had made me so hard just the memory was having an effect on me. But it wasn’t witnessing a naked woman masturbating that had tweaked my arousal—and this was what I’d been up figuring out half the night—it was the way she’d folded in on herself. No one else had existed, just her and the pain. She’d floated off into another dimension, gone somewhere else entirely.
What must that feel like? I couldn’t imagine.
The office door opened with a loud click and Mary strode in.
“Lovely, thank you,” I said as she put a red mug on my desk, full to the brim with black coffee.
“I’ll hold your calls for half an hour, shall I?” She smiled and patted the greying bun at the nape of her neck. “While you perk up a bit.”
“Mmm, yes, thanks.” As she left the room, I stared unseeing down at my diary. I didn’t need perking up, Sid Vicious was already awake.
Sid Vicious. Seriously?
I shifted on the chair, glanced at the shut door and shoved my right hand down my suit pants to adjust myself. Space was becoming an issue.
As I gripped my semi, a flashback of Zara doing the same thing last night, just after I’d come, flooded my mind. She’d held me almost soothingly, adoringly, like my cock was her little pet that she’d wanted to take care of and nurture.
Another rush of blood to my dick hardened it further. I groaned softly then took a sip of coffee. I really shouldn’t be doing this sitting in my office. Getting hard and thinking of the woman who treated oral sex like small change in her pocket, easy come, easy go. She was infuriating, she was enticing. She’d made me feel something I’d never felt before.
Out of control.
Ready to give up control.
A heavy ache of need settled in my belly and tugged at my bollocks. Irritably, I put my coffee down, yanked my hand from my trousers and reached for my pen. Began to write a list of to-do’s for the day.
Sid would just have to wait until tonight for some action. If I decided to go and pick her up, that was.
Because I might not. Victor Partridge didn’t like to be given instructions. By anyone.
“You can’t just barge in there!” Mary said, her voice strident yet muffled by the wall and closed door between us. “You need an appointment, one made through me, and if you don’t have one, which is what I suspect, at the very least I need to check Mr Partridge has time to accommodate you.”
Whoever had the rude intent to see me didn’t reply. I moved to stand, ready to greet my visitor and placate Mary, but the door swung open before I had time to become fully standing.
Zara breezed through from the hallway and stared at me, an infuriating smile lifting one corner of her beautiful, scarlet mouth. Too shocked for a moment to say anything, I plunked back down in my seat, forcing myself to avert my gaze from her to Mary, who was still stalking down the hallway, left far behind by my unexpected guest. High spots of colour had sprung up on her cheeks and would verge on purple if I didn’t calm the poor woman soon.
I regained my usual demeanour, which had threatened to desert me the moment I’d set my sights on Zara, and plastered a normal, if a little tight, smile on my face. I’d stupidly bragged the previous night that I owned this business, and the little minx hadn’t forgotten and was no doubt going to use that fact to her advantage.
“Ah, this is my fault entirely, Mary, I do apologise.” I cleared my throat as I attempted to recall Zara’s surname, realising I didn’t even know it. “This young lady is a client. I was supposed to have let you know she’d be ar
riving this morning, but it totally slipped my mind.”
Mary reached my doorway and frowned, gripping the jamb with gnarled fingers. Her stare was an admonishment that had me feeling young and awkward, told off without her even having to say a word.
She pursed her lips and turned her attention to Zara. “Well then, I apologise, Miss…?”
“Watson,” Zara said. “And it’s quite all right, although I did tell you he was expecting me.”
She gave my receptionist the same look Mary had given me, and I shrivelled on Mary’s behalf. God, she had a way about her, this Zara Watson, of reducing me to what would look, to anyone watching, an uneducated, dithering mess. I had to regain some control. This was my domain, the place where I called the shots, and I wouldn’t allow Zara to take over. To do her thing, I was quickly learning, was something she was an expert at.
“You may leave us, Mary, thank you,” I said, rising and gesturing to Zara that she take the seat opposite my desk. “No coffee. Miss Watson won’t be staying long.” I studied Zara, daring her to say otherwise.
Zara remained where she was, a cantankerous expression on her face. I’d got myself into hot water meeting her, no mistake about that, and I wasn’t sure how to extricate myself from her stupid bet and her clutches. And that’s what they were, those words of hers, clutches that had wound their way into my brain, convincing me that I ought to be shown a thing or two.
Mary backed out, mouth a cat’s arsehole, and closed the door quietly.
“What the bloody hell!” I said, glaring at Zara.
God damn her. I couldn’t allow my simmering anger to come even close to boiling. She licked her red lips, taking two steps towards me, hands on black mini-skirted hips. I made to round my desk, stopped by the narrowing of her eyes. She jutted out her chest, the swells of her tits all too enticing beneath a thin white linen blouse, her black bra visible through the fabric. What was she, some kind of temptress?
“Oh, sit down, you,” she said with a casual wave of one hand. “We have some business that won’t take long, I assure you.”
