by Grace, KD
Even though it wasn’t a long walk from Shoreditch High Street to her flat, she took a taxi. She was sitting in the back seat, still straightening and buttoning, when her BlackBerry buzzed again with another frantic message from Vivie. She texted back.
No worries, love! Had totally fab time, & the fun is just beginning.
J x
PS
Bought sexy new boots.
She giggled as she remembered she hadn’t paid for them. No probs. It would give her an excuse to see the yummy clerk again. And next time she would fuck him. Hard.
She signed the text E xx
Chapter 2
Jill returned to her flat feeling pretty chuffed with the events of the evening. Nice place, Kinky Boots. Really nice. And the bloke who ran it – hotter than hot. There was something else about him, something strangely familiar, almost like if they sat down together over a cuppa they’d discover that they’d always known each other. She smiled to herself at the thought. She really couldn’t imagine them getting through a whole cuppa together without her ripping his jeans off and shagging him senseless. Even with his clothes on, it hadn’t been hard to tell that he was very nicely equipped for the task. She looked down at her lovely new boots, boots she’d left without paying for. It was the perfect excuse for going back.
* * *
Under the circumstances, she figured she’d be too hyped to sleep, but she did so almost instantly.
And before long the room was awash in mist that floated and swirled around her bed. Had the weather turned while she was sleeping, bringing the fog? Had she forgotten to shut her window? A sudden gust of cool wind cleared the mist just enough for Jill to catch the first glimpse of the woman at the foot of her bed, pale and translucent, lit with way more silver light than even the full moon could provide.
Strange, as she approached the bed, the curvy, feminine shape of her was clear, as though her thin clingy robe were made from the mist itself, but the woman’s face remained out of focus, as though Jill were viewing her from underwater.
She sat down on the bed next to her, and still Jill couldn’t make out the details of her face. But her voice was rich and silky, and Jill had the urge to wrap herself in the caress of it. ‘I’ve waited a long time for you, Jill Hart. Finn is such a spoilsport, not letting me play. But you’re different. He likes you, and he’ll warm to the idea of the two of us. You’ll see.’ She rubbed her hands together in anticipation. ‘Now then, sweetie, let’s have a look. Let’s see our lovely new body.’ As she reached out to smooth Jill’s hair away from her face, Jill was suddenly unable to move.
It was a dream then, surely a dream, Jill thought; one of those where someone important is at the door, but you’re paralysed, lying there in the bed, and, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t move.
The woman leaned down and kissed her on the mouth, and her breath was winter-cold but sweet and hypnotic with its icy in and out, in and out.
With a flick of her wrist she threw back the duvet and sighed her delight. Jill was surprised to find herself naked. ‘Oh, my darling, how I’ve longed to bear the weight of breasts again, to feel the hardening and puckering of their arousal.’ She brushed cold fingertips across Jill’s nipples and they rose to a touch that was irresistible. Jill would have arched up against the cool feathery caress if she’d been able. Instead she lay unmoving, her chest rising and falling faster and faster, her nipples pearled to hard beads begging for the woman’s attention.
The woman continued her explorations. ‘Oh, the delight of belly and hips, and, ah, yes, such softness down there.’ She trailed her fingers down Jill’s tummy and cupped her mons, caressed and fondled her tight curls, and the sound that escaped Jill’s lips was a kittenish mew.
The woman smiled knowingly. ‘The pleasures of the flesh, my lovely, how we shall share them, how we shall revel in them, you and I. It’ll be so delicious for both of us, I promise you.’ Then, with the flat of her hand, she opened Jill’s legs.
Jill was helpless to deny her access, even if she’d wanted to, and she didn’t. It was only a dream, she told herself, and sexy dreams should come as no surprise after her encounter at Kinky Boots. And anyway, it had to be a dream because she was too shy even to undress in front of Vivie, and here she lay practically willing this woman to check out all that she had … down there.
‘Let us see, my darling,’ the woman cooed. ‘Let us see you.’ Jill watched helplessly as the woman forced her knees up and wide until Jill felt herself exposed, butter-cream slick and heavy.
‘Yes, my love. That’s it. Let me see what we shall have such delight in sharing. Oh, yes, lovely. So lovely.’ With one hand still resting in Jill’s pubic curls the woman lowered her face for a closer look. Then with a scoop and a twist she trailed fingers up between Jill’s cleft and brought them to her lips as though she were tasting her favourite dish. ‘Mmm,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Finn’s going to love you.’ She lowered a tongue-flick of a kiss onto Jill’s hard clit, and Jill came. The electrifying power of her orgasm raged through her paralysed body to every nerve ending, every blood cell, every synapse, raging out in all directions, then returning in a hot rush of energy to the hardened node of her clit before settling deep inside her. She could neither writhe nor buck. All she could do was moan and quiver.
‘Oh, yes, my darling, you are delightful, the way your lovely pussy muscles tighten and convulse when you come. How wonderful it will be to have a body with such libido, such hunger. Oh, how Finn will ride you. I think that –’
The woman was interrupted by the call of a man. ‘Eleanor? Eleanor, are you there?’
She put a finger to her lips. ‘He’ll find out eventually, dear Jill, but when he does it’ll no longer matter.’ She brushed a kiss across Jill’s lips, and for the first time Jill got a clear view of the woman’s face. She recognised it well because it was her face. Before she could dwell on the strangeness of such a revelation, the woman lay down in her arms, nuzzled in tight against Jill’s breasts and pulled the duvet up over both of them. From a distance Jill could still hear the man calling for Eleanor, but that was the last thing she remembered until morning.
* * *
Finn scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling poorly slept with. He hadn’t been slept with at all, actually. He gulped back the bitter taste of coffee, which was about the only thing keeping him awake at the moment. In truth, it was the woman he’d been with last night who was keeping him awake, and not in a good way. She was nowhere to be found, and she could very well be in a great deal of danger. ‘I’ve never seen her before,’ Finn said. ‘She stumbled into the shop, bought a pair of boots and left.’
‘Did you fuck her?’ Meinrad asked.
Finn tried to work up the energy to be offended by Meinrad’s bluntness, but he knew better. Meinrad was right to want to know. ‘If I had fucked her then I’d be certain, wouldn’t I? We’d know, wouldn’t we?’
Meinrad’s pale-blue gaze was a study in Teutonic seriousness. ‘You must have done something or you wouldn’t suspect that Eleanor’s with her.’
Meinrad was so damn smug at times, and Finn really didn’t need smug right now. ‘I … we had a good grope.’
‘How much of a grope?’ Meinrad asked. ‘Did she come? Did you come?’
‘Yes, she came, and so did I, all right? And I shouldn’t have. I mean I knew what day it was, but I thought you and Chelsea had Eleanor under control. How was I supposed to know she was out and about?’
Meinrad stopped sipping his coffee and blinked. ‘She wasn’t exactly out and about, mate. Besides, it was you who had the desire to grope a total stranger enough to jizz your jeans. That wasn’t a clue?’
Finn stood and paced, then poured them both another cup of corrosive coffee. ‘I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that the woman was really hot and that she might actually fancy me?’ He dropped back into the chair slopping coffee, remembering the woman whose glorious dark hair looked like she’d just gotten out of bed after a sexy rom
p, and wouldn’t he love to be on the receiving end of that romp? Then he added, ‘Honestly, I wanted her from the moment she walked through the door, all barefoot with that pouty-lipped smile I could have eaten off her face.’
Meinrad gave him an unimpressed look. ‘Sometimes it’s best to keep your cock in your pants, Finn. If Eleanor’s with this woman and her pouty lips, then you know the kind of trouble she can cause. The woman could be in real danger.’
‘I know this, Meinrad. Don’t you think I know this?’ The thought had knotted his stomach since the moment the phone rang last night, and she sauntered out the door, disappearing into a birthday party stumbling drunkenly down the street from Juno. By the time he’d managed to push his way into the party, she was nowhere to be found. ‘I’ve been using every means I can think of to find her.’
‘If you haven’t found her by now then it’s already too late.’
‘We don’t know that, do we? It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet.’
Just then Meinrad’s iPhone rang. He answered it with a grunt, then a nod, as though whoever was on the other end should be able to see. ‘Right. Well, that’s a start, isn’t it?’
He hung up and offered Finn what could have been a smile or could just as easily have been a grimace. With Meinrad, it was difficult to tell. ‘Chelsea found out who this Vivie is that your girl was talking about last night. You know, the one who lent her the killer shoes? Seems she was frantically looking for her friend Jill about the same time you were giving her the full frontal rub-up. Some bloke Chelsea knows, a banker she’s fuck buddies with, was apparently doing the nasty with this Vivie in Hoxton Square and, after they’d done the deed, Jill was nowhere to be found. He happened to let it slip.’
Jill. Nice name, Finn thought. But what he felt was a sense of relief. If they had even a little bit of information about Jill, even her first name, if there were ways of finding her, then they could call in the rest of the Sole Alliance. If anybody could find Eleanor, they could. Of course once Eleanor had what she wanted, she wouldn’t be hard to find. He shivered at the thought. He wished desperately he’d been more careful, that he’d just asked the woman out for coffee like a normal bloke would have. But then she did practically attack him, didn’t she? Not that he wasn’t willing. God, he had been willing.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Call everyone together. Let’s find Jill, and hopefully Eleanor.’ He left Meinrad sitting at the table calling in the members of Sole Alliance. He shoved open the door that separated his flat from Kinky Boots, made his way around the counter and through the racks of shoes and boots to the front of the store. For a second he stood looking out onto Shoreditch High Street. It was already heaving with traffic, but it was still too early for many shoppers to be out and about. With a sigh, he pulled down the steel shutters over the storefront that he’d only opened a few minutes ago. Eleanor always was the queen of poor timing. Missing Saturday market business wasn’t great, but there wasn’t much choice under the circumstances. Jill had to be found for her own protection.
Chapter 3
Jill woke up before the alarm went off. Thoughts of her encounter at Kinky Boots set off an eruption of butterflies in her stomach, and she couldn’t keep from smiling as she saw the lovely pair of mauve boots sat neatly at the foot of her bed. Still unpaid for too.
The steamy shower felt like a million tiny massages all over her body and the loofah stimulated every pore of her pinkened skin to tingle with delight. It didn’t even matter that, if it weren’t for her boss, she’d still be enjoying a lie-in all snuggled under the crisp, clean duvet. In fact the morning seemed entirely too amazing to waste sleeping. Though the sleep last night had been particularly satisfying, and she seemed to recall very arousing dreams. Not too surprising under the circumstances, she thought. And as soon as she could placate her boss and get free, she hoped for a helluva lot more than just dreams.
Breakfast never tasted so good, even if it was only toast with marmalade. She made the coffee stronger than usual and delighted in the bite of it against the back of her tongue, balanced by the velvet smoothness of the cream. In spite of her lack of interest in fashion, today it seemed a delicious chore to pick out just the perfect clothing. She chose a black pencil skirt, a soft silk blouse that was a riot of rich summer hues, and her lovely new boots. There was a bit more cleavage showing than usual, a bit more colour in the make-up. And the skirt, well, the skirt fitted like a glove. Though it came several inches below her knees, there was a long slit high up the right thigh. Under normal circumstances she would never have worn it to work, but she planned to pop by Kinky Boots afterward and pay her debt. With interest. Before she stepped out of the door into the early-morning chill, she pulled on the matching summer jacket and slipped her BlackBerry into the pocket.
To her surprise, when she arrived at the office, she found no one there but herself and her boss. It felt chilled and overly air conditioned without the complement of warm bodies crowded into the open-plan working space. She shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around her. The situation was almost enough to trash her post-coital morning. Being alone with the tosser always made her skin crawl, but the fact that she really was alone with him this time caused a cold clench in her stomach. She wondered what the hell was going on.
She went quietly to her desk, not wanting to draw his attention. With any luck he’d be too hungover to care what she did, then she could get her work done and leave. She spent an hour tweaking and cleaning up other people’s articles and finalising the layout for that week’s Full On webzine, tasks that he should have done. She was beginning to think she might get by unnoticed when she realised the article on street buskers she’d spent nearly a month researching had been pulled completely. It had been replaced as the lead story by an article on discount holidays lifted straight from an affiliate newsfeed. It wasn’t the first time her boss had promised that her article would be the lead story, then pulled it at the last minute for no good reason. It would bloody well be the last, she decided. Breathing fire, she slammed her laptop shut, crossed the maze of cubicles to her boss’s door and knocked before she had time for second thoughts.
He spoke to her without looking up from his laptop. ‘You’re upset about your busker story.’ He didn’t wait for her to respond, but continued. ‘I made an executive decision, hon.’ He took off his glasses and finally looked up at her. ‘It just wasn’t the kind of professional quality I’d hoped for, and when there was nothing else, I had to make a choice, didn’t I?’
Her body stiffened. She stroked and clutched the BlackBerry in her pocket like it was a talisman. ‘There was nothing wrong with that article,’ a voice whispered in her ear. ‘It was a good article, a damn sight better than what’s up there now.’ It was only the sour look of surprise on her boss’s face that made her realise there had been no voice whispering in her ear. She had spoken the whole thing out loud, and she certainly wasn’t sorry she’d done it!
‘I believe the choice of what’s good and what’s not is mine to make, honey. The name on the door of this office is still H. Devlin, isn’t it? Last time I looked it hadn’t been changed to Jill Hart.’ He pushed his chair back and came around the desk to stand in front of her, giving her a once-over that made her shiver. ‘Nice outfit, by the way. I always suspected there was a nice figure under all that frump.’ He moved closer, breathing stale coffee in her face, then he lowered his eyes to the buttons of her blouse and smiled conciliatorily into her cleavage. She pulled her jacket protectively around her.
‘The wonderful thing about the web,’ he said, ‘is that we can change it, hon. Online publication is so much more forgiving than print. And one of the reasons I had you come in this morning is that I thought we might be able to get your article up as the lead story, if you’re willing to work with me on it.’ He straightened the collar of her jacket, pushed it back slightly and ran a finger along the open lapel of the blouse. ‘You know, tweak it a bit here and there.’
‘All right,’ she
said, tugging at her jacket and stepping out of his breathing space until she could feel the wall against her spine. ‘I’ll go get my laptop, and we can work on it, though wouldn’t it have been easier for you just to email me the changes you wanted? I could have done them from home.’
He stepped into her space again. ‘I’m a hands-on sort of bloke, honey, and if you want your story to lead, then we’ll have to work on it together.’
She stood very still, amazingly calm under the circumstances. He placed one hand on the wall just above her shoulder and the other pushed the jacket down over one arm and skimmed the open neckline of her blouse again.
‘Is this what you had me come in for?’ she asked.
He offered her a twitch of a smile. ‘Oh, don’t tell me you weren’t anticipating it, honey. I mean, look how you’re dressed.’ Then his business voice returned. ‘You’re talented and enthusiastic, Jill. I can make sure that you go far in your career.’ He leaned forward and his wet lips brushed her ear. ‘Or not.’
She couldn’t believe how calm she was. It was strange. There was no panic, no fear, no real rage even, just an icy distancing she never remembered feeling before. ‘What do you want me to do, Mr Devlin?’ she said above the strange buzzing in her ear, a sound not unlike the buzz of insects in a field on a hot summer day.
He chuckled, and his breath was heavy and damp against her face. ‘There, that’s better now, isn’t it? I love a cooperative employee.’ He slid a pudgy thumb across the outline of one nipple and sighed. ‘First, I want you to lose the jacket, unbutton that lovely silk top of yours and give me a good look at those tits you’re always pointing at me. And when I’ve had enough time to examine them thoroughly, I want you over my desk, skirt up, arse cheeks parted so I can have my choice of what you’ve got down there. Are we clear, honey?’