Page 21 of Duplicity

His voice is a gruff whisper, his breath hot against my jaw. The foreignness of it, the heady uncertainty, makes me shiver. I can’t yet tell if tonight will be one giant out-of-body experience or a giant in-my-body experience. Maybe it’ll be a bit of both.

‘Thank you.’

His hand slides upwards, cupping my waist. It feels both reassuring and ominous.

‘So you want to do this.’

‘I do,’ I say with a certainty I don’t feel.

‘What’s your safeword?’

‘I—uh—is it okay if I just saystopif I need you to?’

‘Of course it is. I’m not a monster. A woman says stop, I stop.’ He turns his lips and whispers into my ear. ‘She screamsdon’t stop, I keep going. Okay?’

I nod fervently, even if the mere concept of screaming at a man not to stop is downright surreal. I am not that woman.

Never have been.

‘Good.’ He slides his cold, condensation-laced highball down my upper arm, and I shiver. ‘Now, what do you like?’

I suppose this is part of histonight is for youpitch. But honestly, it’s the least helpful question he could have asked me. I could give him a comprehensive list of my favourite tropes, microtropes, and bookish kinks, but he’s askingwhat I likein my real, honest-to-God sex life, and that’s a problem.

I can get myself from nought to sixty like nobody’s business, but I’ve never come with another person in the room. My first boyfriend, who I met when working in a restaurant after I finished Sixth Form, had no clue what he was doing, bless him. And with Joe, it was—I don’t know. It felt good—I had certain sensations as well as a whole lot of emotions—but it was usually just blow jobs or straight sex, and I just can’t come like that.What Ilikedwith him was the intimacy. The attention. The praise. The experience of being worshipped, and the look on his face as he fell apart. I particularly enjoyed it when he got stern and professorial with me—after all, that was what had attracted me to him in the first place—but it didn’t culminate in any actual orgasms for me.

I can’t exactly tell a man who’s already forked out twenty-five grand for the privilege of fucking me tonight that I like intimacy, can I?

So I tell him the truth.

‘I don’t know, really.’

He laughs softly and drags his beard across my jaw. It’s a soft rasp, and it feels good. ‘Going to make me work for it, I see. I can respect that. Well, I’ll tell you what I like.Ilike good girls who do what I say and stand nice and still while they let me play with them. Can you do that?’

God,why is that so menacingly, astoundingly attractive?

‘Yes,’ I stammer. ‘Of course.’

‘Excellent. I think we’re going to get along just fine, Marlowe.’

He straightens up, inhaling my hair in a way that’s not remotely tender but rather proprietary. Assessing. Then he’s taking my drink and setting both glasses down somewhere while I stay good-girl still, watching the beautiful people laughing and flirting beneath us, and feeling the bass of the music downstairs thump through my body, and wondering what Brendan’s next move will be.

He slides both hands around my waist, then down, skimming my hips, smoothing over my bottom, my dress a flimsy barrier between us.

‘You know,’ he says from behind me, his hands moving over me, ‘when I was working my way up the ranks at the company, my dad made me do six months in each division. Sales was where I smashed it. I’m an excellent salesman, love, and I’m particularlygood at closing deals. Butyoumight be the most fun I’ve had closing a deal in a very long time.’

That makes me laugh. He’s a charming fucker; I’ll give him that. ‘Knock yourself out.’

‘The plan is to knockyouout and have a ball doing it. Put your hands on the glass.’

Oh God.

I do, and he drags his palms up my sides and over my rib cage. Then he slides them over my breasts, cupping hard, and I gasp at the fierce physicality of his big hands on my body like this. I may be horrifyingly rusty, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a mobile phone pressing against the base of my spine. He’s crowding me, and it’s not awful.

I’ve come here tonight with one objective: to put on a good enough performance that I land this job. Contrary to what Brendan said, I am most certainly the one auditioning here. My goal is survival, not pleasure. But if I can relax into this sufficiently, it’ll be far less of a challenge to pull off my performance. So I force myself to lay my demons, my insecurities, my nerves aside and focus on the reality of the present moment.

And that reality is this: a very hot man is pressing his dick against me and fondling my boobs.

‘Given you won’t tell me what you like, I’ll have to pay close attention, won’t I?’ he murmurs. ‘That sounded like a good gasp. How about this?’

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