Joseph nodded. “I suppose this will be the last time you see him.”
“I’m sorry?”
He passed my glass and I sipped, wide-eyed.
“I want you to leave your agency. It’s too dangerous for the firm.” He bent his head to kiss me, tongue still curious. “I’ll fill those last three slots myself.”
“That’s kind of you,” I mumbled, almost a bit embarrassed.
“I’m sure I can tolerate a few more hours of this…but that’s it. I don’t want to see you on that website again–or any other, for that matter. There will be no job offer at the end of this seat if you do. Is that clear?”
“Very,” I whispered.
“Now. I suppose you can put some clothes on.”
I smiled as I rose, rooting around for my underwear.
He disappeared into the bathroom with the condom, and then hung in the doorway, watching as I bent to slip on my shoes.
“Do I look composed?” I asked.
The laughter fell from him in rough bundles, and those darting octaves were filthier than half the male escorts I’d worked with. “Not really.” He pulled on his trousers before walking me to the door. “But I like that, Leila. Have a safe trip home, okay?”
I stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Sir.”
“Mmm.” He pressed his face into my neck before I drew away.
“I’ll see you at the office,” I murmured.
“At the office.”
A muffled thud, and then I was alone in the endless hallway of mahogany doors. Charlotte had emerged in the suite, but now Leila surfaced, and the sweat clung in pools beneath her clothes. I trembled.
My first cock parade.
It wasn’t over. Not even close.
Chapter 2
The things we want most might not be things that are best for us.
For example, I love flapjack. Not jaw-breaking slabs of the stuff, understand, but the soft, syrupy sludge that melts in the mouth. I like it best because I don’t actually have to cook anything–just melt, mix and refrigerate. That kind of gluttony belongs in a Bosch painting, and that kind of flapjack needs to be afraid of my face. It's good while I'm eating it; so very bad for me the morning after.
I hold flapjack solely responsible for the cellulite on the backs of my thighs. Fortunately, if I bend over the right way, it tends to even out.
In a similar fashion, just because a man is immorally attractive, it isn’t the best idea to sleep with him–he might be the boss. Or a co-worker. That could get pretty awkward, couldn’t it? Especially considering that it’s an even worse idea to sleep with both at the same time.
Did I trust Joseph and Matt? Difficult question. They had taken almost as much of a risk in hiring me as I had in complying, and they were the instigators. The villains of the piece. If I’d trusted them before they put me in such a precarious position, now it melted to a gluey shadow on my skin, and no matter how much Leila wanted to scrub herself clean, Charlotte liked to be sticky. To be stuck.
It was never going to be as simple as that, of course. And no amount of bending over the right way was going to clear up the mess.
Still. There was no harm in trying...
* * * *
A clever book once whispered to me that desire fragments the self. Charlotte must have been listening because she knew at once what it meant–to want is never shameless. Perhaps, too, it hinted at what I have known all along: we never desire just one thing at once.
I’d never wanted just one person. How could one be everything? Tools are made for varied purpose, and what are human beings if not Swiss army knives? We hide in pockets–a million cuts swell, awaiting–but it is only when we lie in the hands of others that we catch the scent of blood. There, we make our marks. We slice in two.
Selling my body was one of the sharpest blades of all.
He–for it was always a he, though he might bring a she–wanted to be slaughtered and severed from his daylight self. Oh, I could lie and say it was about the fuck, that seeds needed spreading, the beast wanted to hunt. Desire wasn’t about that, not half the time. Sometimes it was the very thing that kept him separate from me, and while it never stopped me cutting, it anesthetized him first. I was the one that got split and skewered, but they were the ones turned inside out so they bled into themselves. Eve’s curse spat into Adam. I should have found it funny, perhaps, but I never hated one of them. Why would I? They were selfish, cheating, hungry, just plain lonely. Not always gentle or dying because of it.
They were like me.
Now I had one client left, and my strawberry-smattered shoulders were courtesy of his teeth. I fingered them, loving the way the engorged little welts sat against white skin. In the mirror, he stood behind Charlotte and bestowed them all over again, his cock pressed firmly into the base of her spine. His mouth had been so warm.
Matt’s mouth had been warmer.
It was going to be one of those days when desire sniggered over every sensible thought I had.
* * * *
When I fell, rain-bludgeoned, into the office, the completed warranties lay on my desk.
“They’re really good,” said Poppy, already nosing through them. “Was this you and Matt?”
“Yes, indeed.” I prized the folder from her hands to replace it with a soggy coffee.
“Ooh, Leila. You spoil me.” Poppy walked to the bin and proceeded to pour the rain water off the lid.
“Sorry. I left my umbrella in Starbucks.”
She adjusted her square-framed glasses. Poppy had the sexy geek thing going on: pixie hair and sixties shift dresses. She would never have been without an umbrella–or a Blackberry, a tub of crudités, needle and thread, blah smug blah. “That would explain your lovely Princess Di eyes, then. You might want to pop to the bathroom.”
I dropped my satchel and glanced about. “Isn’t Matt in yet? It’s half eight.”
“Nope.”
“He’s probably hung over.” I prayed the rain-flush hid the colour in my cheeks.
In the bathroom, I sponged away grey eyes and re-applied mascara. It had crept in already, the sudden urge to look good at work, being painfully aware of the way I held myself. The shadow’s voice. In one night, I had regressed almost ten years and I was back in school the morning after I’d slept with my first boyfriend. The absurdity of my actions hung around my neck like a rope.
Matt was at his desk when I returned. He didn’t look hungover, just fresh faced as ever, his black hair glossy and damp from the rain.
We exchanged nervous smiles as we filed into Joseph’s office.
“Mr Gordon. Miss Vaughn.” Joseph gestured to the couches in the corner without looking up. Poppy sat poised with a notepad and an impossibly shiny pen. Bhan, the fourth trainee, made a hurried entrance, and his briefcase slapped against his legs as he dropped it.
“Late again.” Joseph shuffled through papers on his desk.
“I’m sorry, Mr Merchant. It won’t happen again–”
“No.” Joseph looked up. “It won’t.” He strode over to the couches and slipped a brown envelope into Bhan’s lap.
Bhan gulped and hung his head.
“Now then, children.” Joseph perched on the coffee table, his knee just a breath’s distance from mine.
Heat swept down and crushed me in its fist.
“We have some congratulations to make, first off. Matt did some excellent networking last night. I think Sole and Pierce may just have come round to the idea of using us.” He shot Matt a very knowing smile. “Good job.”
Matt shrugged, his lips twitching upward.
“Now...with the paperwork mostly wrapped up, I’m going to take Poppy and Bhan down to Inland Revenue today for a meeting. Matt, Leila–your drafts have been excellent lately.” Joseph held up a folder. “There are two left. That’s one each. Time to go it alone, I think.”
I watched Poppy’s lips part as he spoke. Had she slept with Joseph, too? She was often in his office, far more
than the rest of us. We joked about her arse-licking, but after last night, all sorts of scenarios leaped to life in my head.
Then I remembered her complaints about the many errands she’d run for him–picking up stationery and dry cleaning, ordering flowers for his girlfriend–and pushed the thought from my mind.
“Any questions?”
I blinked.
“Leila? Do you have something to add?” Joseph looked amused. The sadist.
“No.” Though adrenaline made a carousel of his office.
“Well then. Off you go.” He stood up. “Bhan, you can stay for a minute.”
I shot a sympathetic look at poor Bhan–the guy had about three different school drop-offs to make and was forever late. The dreaded brown envelope twisted in his hands. I followed Matt and Poppy as they rose.
Bhan skulked out of the office moments later.
“Is it bad?” asked Matt.
“First and final warning.” He sighed. “And a no to the flexible working hours request.”
“Unlucky. Oh, well.” Poppy closed her laptop. “Yay for Inland Revenue, though! More arguing.”
“You like arguing way too much, Pops.” I grinned.
The corners of her eyes crinkled behind the glasses. “I don’t think it’s in me to agree with anyone.”
They left for their visit and Matt and I were alone in the office, save for Sadie, Joseph’s seen-and-not-heard assistant, at her desk near the door. We worked in loaded silence; every time I looked, he pretended to be immersed in files and folders. Either he’d hidden Rock Sound behind the covers or he felt as weird about all this as I did.
I was about ready to break when an email landed in my inbox:
Lunch? M
I looked up and he shot me a grin. I typed:
Tseki?
A moment later:
Chervil. Quieter. Will get Sadie to ring for a table x
The chair creaked as he sat back, hands folded behind his head. He bit his lip. My stomach flipped. I’d been in his lap just hours ago.
“Well?” he said.
“Around one?”
“Sounds good to me.” He wandered over to Sadie’s desk and bent to talk to her, his hair falling into his eyes.
Ah. With Matt and Joseph in such close proximity, a net hung between them and I sagged as I stuck to it, exhausted by lust. There was something about the way these two men whom I knew–one fairly well, the other only in office hours–had breached the walls of the citadel and last night, paid me for…well. A fuck. Agitated and restless, I re-started the new deed about five times.
One o’clock rolled around, and I slipped off to check that my damp hair hadn’t exploded into something from an early Bon Jovi video. Matt waited at the door with my coat, and relief brewed. I could talk to him.
I grimaced at the downpour through the glass doors. “Have you got an umbrella?”
“I grew up on a farm, Leila. A bit of rain doesn’t scare me.” He pulled a Financial Times from under his jacket. “But this thing has its uses, eh?”
I arranged it over my head and we hurried around the corner to the restaurant.
The hostess showed us to a quiet table. As she poured water into goblets, we looked out to a window alive with boxes of swaying flowers and the shining colours of drenched cars. Matt requested a bottle of English wine.
“This isn’t like you.” I gestured to the crisp table covers and myriad of cutlery. “Is there a reason we’re here?”
He gazed at me from across the table. “You know there is.”
“Do we really have to talk about this? I mean, it hasn’t changed anything. It’s not like we’re about to do it again. It was fun, right? Just a bit of fun.”
The plum velvet menu fanned before his face, his fingers braced across it like fireworks. “You’re right. It was fun.” He looked me sharply in the eye. “But it has changed things, hasn’t it?”
The wine arrived, our orders were taken–we both went for a tart with asparagus–and then we were alone with only awkwardness for company.
“See?” he said. “It shouldn’t be like this between us. We need to clear the air.”
“And we couldn’t have done that at the sushi place?”
“No. Not there.”
“So what’s to say, then?” Denial was prickly, the sting awkwardly familiar.
“Actually, I wanted to ask.” He smiled shyly. “How would I go about hiring you again?”
Oh, fuck. He wasn’t really going down this road, was he?
“I’m kind of not available anymore,” I mumbled.
“Since last night?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Oh.” He took a huge gulp of wine. “Is it me?”
“No, no. It’s not like that. Um.” Why had I agreed to even have this conversation? “I don’t need to do the job anymore.”
“That’s convenient,” he muttered.
“No, really. The only reason I was ever doing it–”
“I honestly don’t want to know why you were doing it, Leila. Knowing that you were doing it was bad enough.”
The meals arrived and I pushed salad leaves around my plate. Shame made the cutlery sticky in my fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I phrased that badly.” He sighed. “I just…I mean, before last night, I never would have thought I could have liked something like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Having somebody watch. Sharing.” He lowered his voice. “Paying. I expected to think differently of you afterward–well, I do–but it’s like I’m more shocked at myself. Which is…uh. Well.”
I pushed my foot against his. “You know, it’s actually quite normal to like those things. I’ve seen worse.”
“I bet you have.” Now he blushed, too. We were like a pair of Cripps apples. “I don’t know. Joseph told me about what happened after I’d left and I could tell you wanted him more than me anyway–”
“That’s not true,” I insisted.
“I...I never expected to be jealous.”
“It was going to be just a bit of fun, huh?”
“No. Well.” He paused. “He was going to hire you anyway. I don’t know, it was all very weird. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it...and I could think of nothing worse than watching the two of you today, wondering what had gone on. Besides.” His upper lip twitched. “Didn’t trust him entirely.”
We rolled those thoughts into balls, decided where to throw them. Cutlery rang against plates as we ate.
“You could have warned me,” I said. Charlotte shrieked it in my head: could have fucking warned me!
He winced. “I thought about it, Leila. But he only told me a little while before, and we weren’t a hundred percent certain it was you… I mean, Christ. How would that conversation have gone?”
“You were worried I’d know you looked at those sites.”
“No. Maybe. But I’m not.” He gave me big, dark eyes. “I’m still not that guy.”
“You know it was just sex, right? I know we said we liked each other, but–”
“Just sex was when I got drunk at Christmas and tried to screw Poppy,” he grumbled.
Choking is unladylike. That did not stop me. “I knew something like that went on! Did you...?”
“The clue is in tried. Glad I didn’t, though. She had that waxy taste like too much lipstick.” He sat back and his brows darted together. “Seriously, would you think about having dinner with me?”
“Why did you never ask me before?” The notion played on my conscience, always. He wants a freebie. He thinks you’re fair game. Was he really that type? And was it a freebie anyway if I’d give it willingly?
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Figured you’d probably say no. And you would have, wouldn’t you? Being…you know.”
“A whore.”
Matt winced. “A call girl.”
“I’m surprised you’re so okay with that.”
“I don’t know that I
am.” He leaned forward to brush his fingers against mine. “Will you?”
“I’d like to.” I drew my hand away reluctantly. “I can’t, though. Not now.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Yes. No. Ugh.” Wine licked the rim of my glass as I tilted it.
“Are you and Joseph involved?”
“No,” I lied, lowering my eyes. “I told you, it’s complicated.”
“You’re not doing much to ease the jealousy, you know.” He tugged at his collar as if it might pull him elsewhere.
“Look. We’ve still got two months of working together, and it’s important that we stay focused. It’d probably be a bad idea anyway. But I…I don’t regret what we did.”
“No?”
Matt’s eyes were so big, searching, I wanted to take him somewhere quiet and knead the torment away. I fantasized very briefly about creeping under the table and sucking him off– anything to detract from the fact that I’d rejected him and I didn’t entirely know why.
Charlotte did, but she whistled absently.
“What are you smiling for?” he demanded.
I peered up through my eyelashes. “It’s naughty.”
“Don’t tease me, okay? It’s bad enough just looking at you.”
We sat in silence as he paid. His fingers smacked off the buttons on the card machine and it hissed as it spewed a receipt.
“So...friends, then?” I asked.
“Friends,” he said reluctantly, “if that’s what you want.”
“It makes the most sense, you know.”
“I liked absence of sense.” He sulked. “It was fun.”
* * * *
I got home late that evening. Matt and I had been stuck in a conference call with some French accountants–it was no more fun than it sounded, and the translator kept wandering off for cigarette breaks.
I didn’t share my flat. I’d have saved a pile of money, but I didn’t want anyone to know about my extra-curricular activities. I only took a few jobs a week but I kept some strange hours, and there were only so many times I could fall back in at two AM with stockings tied around my wrists in makeshift handcuffs without someone getting suspicious.
The first thing I did was switch on my agency phone. As expected, I had a passive aggressive voicemail from William, my other boss. I slid out of my wet coat and dialled his number.
Breaking Leila Page 3
