Page 18 of Audacity

Challenging her.

Commanding her.

Conquering her.

My tone has her huge eyes widening. It’s almost as if she needed to hear that a man she must be thinking of as too virtuous for his own good is capable of speaking to her like that.

A server materialises with our Achill oysters and places the platter deferentially on the stand between us. When he’s left us, I nod at her to continue.

‘I like being your… property, I suppose,’ she says more quietly. ‘I love putting my business brain to good use while all the time knowing that I’m at your beck and call, that you’ll treatme like nothing more than a set of warm, tight holes when I least expect it.’

I swallow at her debasing, hypnotic words. ‘Go on.’

‘I love that you can just shove me to my knees whenever you like, or prop me up on your desk and play with my pussy for hours while you make calls, teasing me and teasing me, but I can’t make a sound. Or that you can lock your office door and get me on my hands and knees and fuck me, literally whenever you want. And my absolute favourite thing would be being your trophy.’

I shut my eyes for a moment, steeling myself to make it through at least the starter of this meal before shooting my load. I’m rock hard now. She mentioned the termtrophyearlier, and I have a horrible feeling I know just where she’s going with it.

‘Tell me more about that,’ I say, my throat tight with desire.

She pauses and picks up an oyster, adorning it with vinaigrette and lemon juice before raising her chin and tipping one down her throat. She swallows it whole—shocker—and I watch like a filthy pervert as the pale column of her throat contracts around it.

She licks her lips. ‘Those are truly excellent. As I was saying, the trophy thing really gets me off. Think about it—what’s the point of spending a million pounds a year on me if you don’t get to have a little flex to your friends? I’m your biggest status symbol and your most lethal secret weapon.’

Under the table, I wipe my palm down my wool-covered thigh. I’m sweating. ‘Go on.’

‘If you want to show me off, you can. Play with me in front of your investors. Get me to strip. Lay me down in the middle of the fucking boardroom table and use me as a sushi platter for a lunch meeting—I’m down with it all. Think of how jealous they’d be that you have a fuck toy like me and they don’t. Think of the bragging rights. Let them get stuck in, if you’re feeling kind.’She lowers her voice until it’s barely more than the most filthy, suggestive whisper. ‘Or if a counterpart isn’t playing ball, that’s when you wheel me in. You can use me as a carrot, if you like. Get me on my knees in front of them and they’ll sign whatever building permit or God knows what else you want.’

My mind is reeling. A woman more intelligent, more highly educated than the vast majority of the people I’ve interacted with—both within the Church and outside it—is hitting me with shot after depraved shot of sin and corruption and deviance and exploitation. The part of me that has always taken the pastoral needs of his flock to heart is horrified, but there’s a darker, baser, part that’s downright desperate for a better glimpse of this twisted dynamic she’s describing.

I couldn’t give a fuck about bragging rights—exploiting a woman likethatto “flex”, as she puts it, is anathema to me.

But the rest of it is hot as fuck.

Why is that?

Why is the picture she paints of me using her and enjoying her publicly and passing her around my friends so intoxicating? It’s the power dynamic, I suppose. It’s far less about establishing superiority over any business associates than it is about establishing power over her. Of being her master, of having such a spellbinding, impressive woman willing to do all of those things at a single command from me.

The realisation disgusts me, even while it has me hardening, impossibly, all the more. But what she’s saying shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to me, given that anonymous review that still burns my retinas.

THIS WOMAN LOVES DICK.

She wants it from you.

She wants it from your clients.

She wants it from you IN FRONT OF your clients.

Ask her yourself.

The shock, therefore, lies in hearing it from her own pretty little mouth.This is what she wants.

I asked her to tell me, and she’s telling me. And I’m judging her, probably because of some antiquated, misogynistic assumption that women can’t have obscenely high IQsandadore getting dicked down and probably also because I’m so terrified of how muchIwant everything she’s just described that I daren’t allow myself to believe that she might want it too, just as badly.

If Athena is telling the truth, then it seems like I may have to get used to her taking me to places I didn’t even know to conceive of before.

As problems go, that’s a high quality one.

CHAPTER 8

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