My cheeks burn at the memory. “Gory details?”
“Hell yeah.” He grins. “Gory details.”
I give him gory details. I give him every detail. Every single little squirmy one of them.
He hardly looks away as I recount the whole lot of it, and he’s shifting in his seat, clearing his throat when I talk about how rough he was, how hard he fucked me.
How he took my asshole and made it feel so good.
“Shit,” he says finally. “You really earned your fucking money.”
“I’d do it for free.” I smile. “And you would, too.”
He shrugs. “Don’t know about that,” he says.
But I do.
I’m absolutely positive.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alexander
I keep that tumbled stone in my pocket right through my Sunday afternoon with the boys. I roll it in my fingers while they eat their shitty burgers. I grip it tight in my palm as I hug them goodbye. And I grip it tight all the way home.
I tell myself I’ll put the stone in the cabinet with the rest of my collection, but it’s on my nightstand when I slip into bed, and back in my pocket in time to leave for work in the morning.
Amy Leigh Randall. Brooklyn Road, EC1.
I have a good memory for detail.
I hold it up to the window in my office. Examine every little inclusion. Angel hair. Blonde strands, like hers.
I remember how she smelled. How her eyelashes fluttered. How her tight little pussy gripped me so perfectly and sucked me dry.
And then I talk some sense into myself.
I shove it away in my desk drawer amongst my gifted fountain pens, just another useless gift that means nothing whatsoever.
So she likes crystals? Big fucking deal. A lot of people like crystals.
She probably thinks they transmit some ethereal energy from Heaven above. She probably rests a piece of malachite on her forehead and chants some zen bullshit to ward of headaches, leaving her little bag of stones under the light of the full moon to charge up their juju.
I don’t have time for mumbo fucking jumbo.
I take my meetings. I scan through reams of court paperwork. I threaten people with the full weight of the legal power invested in me, calling in shitty back-hand favours behind the scenes to ensure a favourable outcome for my asshole clients. Just another week of the same old grind with the same old people lying through their teeth about the same old things, as though I haven’t heard every excuse for piss poor behaviour a thousand times before.
Sweet little Amy should sit in my seat for a week – that would be ample enough opportunity to rethink her career goals.
Maybe a week in my shoes would make the prospect of selling me her pussy on an ongoing basis a more preferable option.
I’ve been thinking about it, of course – contemplating the likelihood of a repeat performance.
I’m not one for holding my breath, having paid her enough money to set her up for the long haul, and I’m certainly not one to expose myself to the embarrassment of a thanks but no thanks.
No. If she wants to barter a deal then Claude will be in touch. That’s his job – just a standard middle-man peddling pussy for sale.
But when he calls me from his off the record mobile on Friday evening, catching me on my way across town to cook up soup with that pissing gemstone of hers right back in my pocket, the rush in my chest is anything but fucking standard.
Melissa
Almost a week, that’s how long it took for me to hear a peep from Claude Finch.
I figured I’d been substandard, that maybe Mr Henley had reported back I really wasn’t as good as the other women on offer.
I’d told myself that was okay, that at least I’d had him, even just once, but I’d been fooling myself.
Being back in his house Monday morning was nothing but beautiful torture, deep breaths against his pillow nothing but fuel to my despair.
The notes stopped. The gifts stopped.
Everything stopped.
I smiled thinly as I dished up meals for the homeless on Wednesday evening, and faked my laughter while I played with Joseph at dinner time.
I even tried my best to hide my despair from Dean, settling down for coffee and TV at night with a shrug of the shoulders in answer to every question he asked about my day.
And then it had come – a call from number unknown on Dean’s phone on Thursday evening. Someone asking for Amy, and there he was, Claude Finch, his voice clipped and professional, asking whether I’d be interested in relisting my item for general sale.
My reply was instant enough that Dean raised his eyebrows across the room. Yes, please. Yes!
And so I’d trekked across the city on Friday lunchtime to renegotiate the small print. I used the main entrance this time, and there was no lamplight in his back office, no video cameras demanding a performance, just Claude in his pinstripe suit, asking me to sign more paperwork.