Page 108 of Audacity

CHAPTER 55

Athena

Rock bottom isn’t just freaking out over a kiss. Nor is it telling the man who takes your breath away that you’re working from home today andnottelling him that it’s because you can’t bear to see his gorgeous, hurt, concerned face.

It’s finding yourself singing along toI Don’t Know How to Love Himon a loop with far too much feeling than is decent.

Fuck Marlowe and her obsession with musical theatre. She and Soph thought it was hilarious to put theJesus Christ Superstaralbum on after a couple of bottles of wine. And when the line about Mary Magdalene claiming she wouldn’t be able to cope if Jesus declared his love, they actually fell about laughing all the while mutteringMinerva.

Heartless bitches.

Still, the poignancy of her lament has hung over me since the weekend. Andrew Lloyd Webber may have taken some liberties with the plot, but damn that song hits hard. The only part I don’t relate to is that I know exactly why he moves me.

He’s not just a man.

He’s the best man I know.

Which is why I, like Mary, find him fucking terrifying.

He messaged me back with an invitation that scares and intrigues me in equal measure.

GABE:

I know you needed space this weekend, but I’m desperate to see you.

Please come to Alchemy this evening.

There’s something I think could help us both xx

Ifsomethingis hot, dirty sex in an actual sex club, then perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it would help, if only to give us both closure.

I couldn’t handle him kissing me in the unflinching daylight of his office, so maybe the answer is letting him fuck me in a corner of Alchemy so dark that the shadows hide the emotions on our faces.

There’s something almost fitting about it.

He hired me on a purely transactional basis, so ending it in a place that literally exists to facilitate transactional sex feels depressingly apt.

Ipull out all the stops in my preparations. If I’m back to being the whore, I’ll damn well be at my most intoxicating. What’s left of my pride demands nothing less.

I sign in as Gabe’s guest, leaving my coat with the receptionist and sauntering down the elegant lobby of the Alchemy townhouse in Mayfair. My hair is tonged perfectly,my heels are vertiginous, and almost everything is on display, thanks to a sheer black lace maxi dress that’s little more than a body stocking, clinging to absolutely everything.

Beneath it?

Nothing but a nude lace thong.

This may be my first time here, but this is squarely my sphere. Not tonight the humiliation of walking into a gala feeling like a million dollars and leaving feeling like dirt. Here I can own my power, my sexuality.

I push open the double doors and take in the stunning bar area: expensive crystal chandeliers and polished floor and a back-lit pink onyx bar that takes up the entire far wall.

And leaning against it, his face grave, his eyes fixed only on me?

My priest.

In full clerical attire, he’s the man from the photo, and he’s every bit as arresting, as solemn, as he was then. Only now, I know what lies beneath. Now, he’s a million times more handsome than the holy man I drooled over on my laptop.

I walk towards him, suddenly conscious of my near-nakedness in the face of his austere all-black outfit and white dog collar, no bigger than a postage stamp but significant in the extreme.

Is this the first time he’s donned it since he left the priesthood?

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