“–and every second Thursday, you have four minutes of vacant sex. He indicates this by brushing his teeth seventy-two seconds longer than usual and tactlessly leaving the condom on the bedside table.”
“He sounds dreamy.” I sipped my drink and choked, eyes bulging. “Jesus, Aid. How strong is this? I told you, I can’t get drunk again!”
“Yeah, what’s up with that, anyway?”
“It’s a long story,” I grumbled.
He cocked a coppery eyebrow. “I’m sure I can put up with you long enough to listen. Unless something better comes along, anyway.”
I kicked him under the table. “Arse.”
“You love it! Now spill.”
“The last job I did…it turned out to be for my boss and a guy in my office.”
Aidan’s turn to choke. He grabbed my hands, squeezing them to bruising. “Oh my God. How kinky! What was it like? Were they hot?”
“Keep your voice down!” I hissed. “It’s complicated.”
“They were hot, then.” He drew one hand away and bit his fist. “Man sandwich! How much fun is it?”
I sighed. “That’s half the problem though…it was good. Really good. But my boss wasn’t too pleased about the moonlighting, and he said I had to finish any work I needed with him.”
“Ooh, Daddy.” He released my poor hands, patting them. “He wants control.”
I nodded. “And the other guy–Matt–asked me out on a date.”
“Yikes. He didn’t read the handbook, did he?”
“Oh, it gets better. My boss got me to screw his girlfriend last night, as one of these last jobs. It’s fucked up, Aid. I was jealous. I don’t know why, it’s not like I’m desperately in love with him or anything…but I ended up at Matt’s.”
“And you fucked Matt, pretending he was your boss.”
I laughed incredulously. “No. Well, I did try to fuck him but then my boss rang me and Matt realized I’d been with him. And last night…it seemed a good idea to send Matt some flowers, like some weird gesture of condolence.” I put my head in my hands. “It’s mortifying.”
“Your life is an HBO sitcom.”
“I knew I could count on you for support. Fag.”
“I’m bi, you retard.” He silenced me with a hand. “And don’t call me a ‘bag’ again–it doesn’t work, it’s embarrassing.”
“You know what else is embarrassing? I’m pretty sure I rang Will and begged him to take me on again,” I groaned.
“Desperation is not attractive, Lei-Lei. How will you snare John if you’re languishing in self-pity and vomit?”
“There was no vomit!”
“Yet.” He sighed. “It always comes.”
“I do have some class left, you know.” I hit the bottom of my glass and grimaced. “It’s hard with your hedonistic influence, though.”
Aidan straightened his collar. “Actually, while we’re on the subject of Will–I have something to tell you.”
My eyes widened. “Oh?”
“Nothing dirty, before you say. It’s about his wedding.”
“No!” I squealed. “You’re bailing out, aren’t you? Please tell me you aren’t.”
“I got my first professional video! I’m dancing at a National Trust mansion with Lily Allen–”
“But you promised,” I moaned. “Who am I meant to go with? I can’t take my normal friends to my gay pimp’s wedding!”
“Gay ex pimp.”
“Like that makes it better.”
“Don’t worry, it’s all sorted. I asked Metro Paul.”
“But I don’t want to go with Metro Paul!” I wailed. “He’s thinner than me.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said in that annoying sing-song voice. “Aren’t you happy for me? I’m going to be famous. This could be my big break.”
“I thought you wanted to be infamous.”
“I’m pretty sure once I score Nikolai, I’ll have that one covered. You know who you should ask.”
“Who?”
Oh no. He wore the evil imp smile. “Matt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s weird about the whoring as it is.”
“You keep saying you want normal–that would be what his reaction is.”
“He hates me,” I mumbled.
“Have you looked in the mirror lately, Jessica Rabbit? He doesn’t hate you. He probably wants to,” he laughed, “but I’ll bet you can bring him around–especially with lovely gestures like flowers. What next, a spa day?”
“Fuck off.”
“Maybe just a facial, then…”
“I offered as much last night, and he said no.” I sloshed my straw about in melted ice.
“Shall we get more drinks?”
“Hell yes. But maybe no more booze pour vous–you’re awfully sweary already.” His eyes lit up. “Or we could go dancing.”
“I’m not sure I’m feeling that sorry for myself.”
He grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the door. “I’ll show you a few moves. I’m a professional now, remember?”
When I laid eyes on the heaving mass of bodies in the club, I remembered why whoring had seemed so attractive. The dance floor writhed like a pit of snakes: girls regarding each other with green-eyed glares and men with necks stiff as cobras, surveying the perimeter for flesh. In the humid weight of their sweat, I longed for the concrete transaction of my old job.
Frankly, it had been far more glamorous than this.
“Stop sticking your nose up.” Aidan pushed a bottle of water into my hand.
“They look like they’re all on E,” I complained.
“Not me. My cock is a temple.”
“What?”
“Impotence. That’s all you get out of drugs in the end.” He led me out to the edge of the floor, jerking his neck in an embarrassingly Thriller-esque manner.
“Talking from experience?”
“Not for a very long time.” He pulled me toward him by the hips.
“Christ, that makes me feel old.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, the water bottle dangling in my fingers. “I’m twenty-four. Have I peaked already, do you think?”
“Shut up,” he laughed, spinning me about.
“I’ll bring that iced tea up all over your shoes!”
“If that occurs, there will be spanking of the nude and public variety. You’ve been warned…”
Aidan shoved me back into the hoard, his hips rocking against mine. We rolled our shoulders alternately, laughing. Sweat oozed beneath our clothes. He kept accidentally backing into men, grinding against them before they realized his intentions and sprang away with horrified faces. Then he urged me into others he saw watching, rolling his eyes as I swatted their hands away.
I didn’t want to admit it, but...were we having fun? Ooh la la.
At one point, a rather hairy old guy made to grab me and Aidan swung me away. Pressed right into him, I was very aware of the bulge in his trousers.
“Aid!” I giggled. “And I’m still dressed, too…”
“What?” He dropped his head to whisper in my ear. “Don’t tell me you aren’t flattered.”
“It’s you.”
“I have standards!” He brushed pouty lips against my neck. “What do you say?”
I winced. “I’m not in need of a pity fuck.”
He drew back, smiling at me. “Lei-Lei. It is never a pity fuck.”
“Yeah, well…not in the mood.”
He pressed his palm to my forehead. “Excuse me? Are you ill?”
“Ha ha. Very funny.” I shoved him back toward the floor. “Now dance for the puppet master!”
“Aren’t we bossy?”
We spent another hour dancing and teasing before collapsing into a booth, me complaining about my ridiculous shoes, Aidan grumbling about how he’d failed to pull.
“It’d be rude of you to leave me, anyway,” I said.
“I am rude, Lei-Lei. Besides…I thought you’d want to watch.”
Outside, the
cool breeze was like rain in the desert and the club had left sand in my mouth. I clutched his arm as we began the walk home.
“How do you still have so much energy?” I asked.
“I train for three hours a day.” He paused. “Oh, and then there’s all the shagging.”
“Which do you think works you harder?”
“Look at this body.” He dragged up his shirt to flash a slither of honed belly. “Do you think men last long on this?”
“I know that feeling.” I giggled.
“Women quite like it, too.”
“Oh, stop hinting!” I poked him in the ribs. “You’re not having my sofa if you’re going to attempt to rape me at three in the morning.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
“Ooh.” Above us, trailing purple blossom cascaded over someone’s garden fence. “Can you smell that? I love lilacs.”
“Pwetty flowers,” he cooed.
Lilacs reminded me of home. Every spring, I would sit beneath the trees in my parents’ garden, having tea parties with my dolls and teddies. A bunch of the sweet-scented flowers always sat in the middle of the blanket amid the mud pies and daisy chains.
“Can you reach them, Aid?”
He clapped a hand over his mouth in mock horror. “Are you suggesting we steal?”
“Technically, these are on the other side of the fence. I’m sure they won’t notice...”
He snapped off three fat stems, depositing them in my open hands. A bouquet of knives. I closed my eyes for a moment and immersed myself in the mellow perfume and rough glass edges, and there in the near-dark, I felt better than I had all week. Worlds should be made of flowers–I could throw myself upon them in decadent, heady suicide and lie that the blood stains were roses.
Perhaps I’d already done that.
I looped my arm back through his and we finished the walk to my flat in comfortable silence.
In the end, Aidan’s libido gave out before it got the better of him. He collapsed on the sofa and passed out cold in five minutes. He looked comical in my small lounge, his legs dangling over the side and arms thrown above his head like an infant.
The lilacs were strangely at home in a glass jug on my bedside table. The smell soaked the room, thick and sweet. It was near enough one in the morning but I wasn’t ready for sleep, so I fixed myself a drink and got out my laptop–credit card safely elsewhere, of course.
My homepage was still the Ladarna website. That needed to change, but I couldn’t resist flicking through. The pit of my stomach lurched–my details had already been taken down. Charlotte has moved on sat in a small, loopy font at the top of my page. The words looked awfully lonely, and gone were the photographs of the naked nymph bound in silky black scarves that covered the necessary–breasts, mound, eyes. I imagined Joseph staring at them, the look on his face the moment he realized that the tied girl was me. Maybe his brow furrowed just a touch. Maybe he squinted in the dim light. And maybe my red hair had given me away? Who knew.
Despite it all, Charlotte loved that he’d noticed.
Chapter 5
Sunday afternoons, like hangovers, stretched the dregs of the weekend into dithering instalments of blah. When I finally peeled Aidan off the sofa, it was past noon and time to sink my teeth into the weekly heap of paperwork. Joy.
My mother rang at four, as she did every week. I listened quietly to her strained tone, answered the questions she always asked. Had I had a job offer? Yes, as good as. Was I sure I wanted to stay in London, wasn’t it awfully lonely? I liked it there. Yes, my rape alarm still worked–Charlotte sniggered. Would I be visiting soon? Hopefully on the way back from Stockbridge next weekend.
I did not mention that I would be returning from my ex pimp’s wedding.
I asked how the business was doing and she skimmed the question, changing the subject to something about Dad’s wine-making. Since I’d started to pay off the debt for them, there had been an air of awkwardness to all of our conversations as if I now wielded some invisible power. If only they knew how frightening it had been to realize how they’d fucked up because of me. I had cried harder every time I saw a transfer to my own account on their bank statements.
It would all be paid off in a few weeks. Perhaps then, we could pretend it had never happened.
I had a nutritious supper–Cornflakes–and stripped off for the shower. Barely a hand slid into the hot mist before the doorbell rang.
Cursing, I threw on an oversized, satin pyjama shirt and pulled open the front door.
Joseph stood in the hallway, hands in his neatly tailored pockets. He raised an eyebrow at my state of undress.
“We have unfinished business,” he said, nudging me aside as he strode in. The door closed behind him with a click.
I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling unkempt and modest. “We do?”
“You were meant to wait to finish the job.” He glanced around the flat. “It’s nice in here. Smells like flowers.”
“I was, um…” I blushed. “I was about to get in the shower.”
“I’ll join you.”
“I won’t be long–”
“Leila.” He reached out and pulled me against him. “I have precisely forty-five minutes before I have to be elsewhere.” He nuzzled into my throat, kneaded my buttocks. The satin burned against my bare skin. “I’m coming in with you.”
I stood on tiptoe and caught his mouth with mine. After aching for the feel of his tongue in my mouth for days, I kissed a bag of razors–thinly sheathed violence that beckoned a wet release.
“I would’ve had longer,” he breathed, “but it took me God knows how long to find your address at the office.”
I broke into a smile. “You couldn’t have waited?”
“I’m fucked if I’ll spend another day at work with an excruciating hard-on.”
I near enough dragged him into the bathroom, where the shower had swelled to a frothy cascade. It was hard work not to rip the buttons from his shirt and he took over in the end, his fingers more deft than mine. We fell into the glass cubicle with his boxers still on and the pyjama shirt hanging off my shoulders.
So little room to move–delicious, delicious. Muscles sprang beneath his wet skin as he crushed me against him. He dropped his head, sucking and nipping hard enough to leave red ribbons on my white breasts, and I cried out as he administered each strawberry smudge–I wanted to tell him to bite harder. Bruise me. It felt dirty and disloyal and achingly right at the same time.
We peeled the wet clothes from each other and they fell on the tiles in sodden heaps. My soapy hands found their way to his cock, and his hand split the lips of my pussy, his thumb planted perfectly for rocking against.
Joseph tried to lift my legs around him but there wasn’t room. Then he turned me and shoved me against the wall, but I couldn’t bend far enough for him to enter. He swore, slapped my ass hard enough to leave a mark and smacked the shower off with his other hand.
The air was comparatively freezing as he tugged me into the bedroom, and crisp sheets stuck to us as he pinned me on the bed. I’d never been able to look him in the eye while we fucked. Between his shocking green gaze and the perfume of the lilacs, I was sucked behind the looking glass. I loved the way he watched me.
His wet hair sprinkled over the pillow, over my forehead, and the noise of us roared into me–moans and sighs, the knock-shudder-shudder of the headboard against the wall. My hips felt bruised from the battery, but it was luscious and indulgent, like I was built to yield. When his back arched, his shoulders tensed, pupils dilated…I knew. I wrapped my legs around him as he slowed, and kissed him, and he laughed into my wet hair as I squeezed.
Then he drifted down, pushed my thighs back with splayed palms and drenched my sticky flesh in his breath. I rocked against him as he rolled my clit between his lips, as he dragged his tongue like it weighed enough to graze me. Every few minutes, he broke off to lick me clean, gruff mumbles absorbed by the fluid that pooled between
my buttocks. Forceful, thorough...he was every bit as firm as I’d hoped he would be, and when the orgasm he coaxed lapped the base of my spine, I could’ve passed out on the sodden sheets and languished in dreams until morning.
Already, he emerged from the bathroom with a towel in hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I have to run.”
I stood to pat him down. “It’s a shame.” I still trembled and my voice was not exempt. “I’m very good at post-shower massages.”
He spanked me lightly. “I’ll bet you are.”
I retrieved his clothes from their heap on the floor. As he dressed, I zipped his trousers, buttoned his shirt. Forced him back into the shell. “Wherever you’re going, I hope they don’t mind you commando.”
“Dinner with Isobel’s parents.” His eyes narrowed in a sardonic wince. “I hadn’t planned on flashing them, but I suppose it’d be a good distraction when they ask why I’m late.”
I straightened his collar. “There. All done.”
“How do I look?” He glanced around, searching for a mirror. Funny–in that instant, I felt like one. Shiny, shiny me.
Shiny Joseph.
“Honestly? Freshly fucked.”
“Leila…not everyone knows what that looks like.”
I brushed a red curl from his shirt. “Isobel will know.” The room went tight like a closed fist. I shouldn’t have said that–wouldn’t have, if he was just a client.
The indecent gleam of his eyes turned lucid. Already, the meander of welts across my breasts swelled toward the teeth that had bestowed them. The marks he’d left upon me were corporeal, but I’d left him with only an impression, and Charlotte pawed at the air before it melted to a mere memory. This butterfly wouldn’t die in a day.
He ran his fingers through his damp hair as he headed for the door. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer. I want to.”
“Another time.”
He went to leave and then spun on his heel, gathering me against him for a tongue-laced kiss. For a man meant to be somewhere else, he didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he mumbled, “when I’ve regained some self-restraint.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
Breaking Leila Page 7
