Page 8 of Audacity

‘Hang on.’ I stare at the unsmiling eyes of the man in the photo. ‘Are you honestly suggesting you want me to fuck a guy who used to be apriest?’

‘Used to bebeing the operative words. He’s a layman now, and you’d better believe he needs some stress relief. We signed him up to Alchemy, but the poor fucker’s too exhausted for all those late nights. One of the cleaners stumbled across him at four in the morning the other day—he was out cold in one ofthe private rooms. I don’t know who was more traumatised. Anyway, he needs more of a full-service solution.’

I’m silent, weighing my options. On the one hand, I don’t like to turn over my employers too often. It doesn’t look good on one’s CV. On the other, my agency Seraph, a discreet outfit owned by Anton and specialising in employees like me, could place me at a dozen different places tomorrow if I wanted to. CV optics aren’t really a priority.

‘Come on,’ he says in a wheedling tone. ‘Just meet with him. If you’re happy with Woodall, then fine, but I’d like to see you have your cakeandeat it. You’re my OG Seraph girl, you know you are.’

‘I’m youronlySeraph girl,’ I point out. Anton may have founded Seraph, but he didn’t make his first hire—me—until after he’d extricated himself from Marriage Number Three, and he met his wife only a few weeks after I started. ‘And don’t try to use words likeOG. You’re far too old. It doesn’t work.’

‘I’ve got teenage kids,’ he retorts good-naturedly. ‘I’m cool.’

‘You’re really not.’

He really is. For his age, anyway.

‘What do you say?’ he persists. ‘If the tall, dark and handsome billionaire doesn’t float your boat, you can scurry back to Steve and his godforsaken offices in—where is it? Swindon?’

‘Reading.’ In a retail park, no less. It’s godawful.

He guffaws. ‘You don’t belong in fucking Reading, sweetheart. Say the word and you could be back in Mayfair where you belong, with a disgustingly handsome man fucking you senseless every day of the week. The guy was celibate for a decade, God love him. Imagine how much lost time he’s got to make up for.’

I chew the inside of my cheek.

Imagine, indeed.

CHAPTER 3

Gabe

The process of laicisation, whereby a priest becomes a layperson again, can be painfully protracted. The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly at the Vatican.

That is, of course, unless you have something with which to grease them.

Happily for impatient bastards like me, hard cash is as much of a lubricant to the machinations of the Church today as it was five centuries ago, when reformers such as Luther grew pissed off with the practice of indulgences—in that case, greasing the wheels of the journey to heaven for you or your loved ones.

Heaven is, I assume, no longer an option for me, but in the end I was laicised relatively quickly: six months, to be exact. In fact, the most excruciating part of the entire process was having to write a letter to my boss’s boss’s boss—His Holiness the Pope—requesting that I be released from my ecclesiastical duties for good.

As far as resignation letters go, it was a brutal one to pen.

With wheels and palms greased accordingly, I was free relatively soon to sink my selfish bones deep into the swamp of moral corruption, and, appropriately enough, I celebrated the news that I was a layperson with my first fuck in a decade,finding some beautiful woman in a bar in Mayfair when I was out with my reprobate brother.

I didnotacquit myself with honours that night. I barely had enough time to wedge myself inside her before I was filling my condom like a spotty teenager. The past few months, I’ve honed my craft—stamina, precision, kinkiness—refining it principally at Alchemy, restoring the lustre after my years-long dry spell had rusted it. My then-new mate, Anton Wolff, whom I’d met at a high-level mixer held by one of the big consultancy firms, told me about this club his wife ran, a club I’d been meaning to try.

A club that could solve all my problems.

It solved most of my problems, except for the obvious one. Complete fucking exhaustion.

So here I am, making my way to the eighth floor of a discreet modern building near the Bank of England to see if I can’t shoehorn my personal needs into my working day and procure for myself the layperson’s Holy Trinity of sleep, sex and sanity.

Seraph’s offices are heavy on excellent views and premium square footage and light on actual personnel. I imagine their commissions are chunky as hell and that little manpower is needed at the management level. The space is almost entirely creamy white marble and glass, and when the unthreateningly attractive receptionist shows me into a meeting room, the vista of the City of London on this cold, crisp morning is simply breathtaking.

There’s nowhere like the City, with its heady mix of history and architecture and power and wealth, and to be back in its beating heart awakens something in me. It’s so gloriously, unapologetically secular. This most ancient part of London was built on the greed and ambition of centuries of men—and I do meanmen.

It’s probably intentional on Seraph’s part, but simply being here has me morphing into an entirely different type of manfrom the type I purported to be in my shabby parish in Willesden, North West London. As I stand with my hands in my pockets, gazing out at the very top of the Royal Exchange’s famous facade, I observe that this lofty position serves to make one feel entitled.

And if there’s anything more entitled than using one’s grotesque wealth to purchase the sexual services of a beautiful woman, I don’t know what it is.

There’s a voice behind me, saying my name in an assured tone, and I turn.

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