by Nigel May
Sheridan had been the man to take her away from Dirty Dick’s, away from rent worries and endless back-to-back jobs. He was the man who had shown her riches that she had only ever dreamt of. He had shown her the world and allowed her to see his. At first it had seemed a magical place where nothing could go wrong, but Sutton’s rose-coloured spectacles soon went out of focus. And thirty years later she wasn’t sure whether Sheridan might be thinking his had de-focussed for good.
Not that she had to worry about her husband for the next few hours. No, she had something else to concentrate on. Or someone. Hatton Eden had just walked into the Velvet London restaurant and was looking divine in a tight grey Tom Ford suit and a deep teal tie. He spotted her and sauntered over to the table.
‘Evening, Mrs Rivers, nice to see you again. Fidge tells me we have a dinner reservation and things to discuss.’
Sutton gazed into Hatton’s eyes just as she had Sheridan’s all those years earlier. His accent was also one that she adored, his Eastern European intonation a million time zones from either hers or that of her husband.
‘Oh we do, honey. We do. Now please sit down and do call me Sutton.’
Sutton put her finger to her lips and teasingly ran it from her mouth, down her chin and onto her décolleté. It was pure suggestion. She wanted to make sure that the boxer knew that everything, including her, was on the menu.
11
Julian Bailey stared out from the open-air front room of his Brighton Beach, Barbados home and gazed across the stretch of powder-fine sand that was beautifully distributed in front of his three-storey abode. He loved his Bajan home, one of the three he had bought during his time as Sheridan’s trusted right-hand man, accountant and friend. It was a job that had always paid well and allowed him beautiful homes in Toronto, London and here at this beachside paradise on Barbados’s southwest coast.
Of all of his homes though, it was the Barbados one that gave him the most pleasure. The large front room had no windows; it didn’t need them. Instead it just had open sides that allowed Julian to sit on his sofa or swing on his hammock and watch cruise ships coming into dock in Bridgetown port. Or he’d look out at the beach parties that often spontaneously exploded on the sands in the middle of the night, or the locals and adventurous tourists who used the Hot Pot, the inlet of sea heated by underground pipes from a nearby drinks factory that made the water bathtub-warm and turned the air fifty per cent proof. Julian would often find himself venturing to the pool, his white UK face a rarity among the mass of Bajans gathered there.
Brighton Beach was one of the most magical spots on earth and a haven not just for him but also for the turtles that came there to lay their eggs at night. Often in the first breakings of the day Julian would watch as the tiny, newly hatched creatures scurried for their lives towards the crystal-clear waters of the ocean, leaving flipper tracks in the sand, their race to beat predators and the already climbing temperatures of the air putting their lives in danger from the initial moment that creation was theirs.
Julian may have secured money and property through his relationship with Sheridan but the one thing he had never really found was true love. His frisson with Nikki over the last six months was the closest he had ever known. He idolised her. As a man of fifty, the joy of having a twenty-seven-year-old satisfy his sexual lusts was evident, especially one who allowed Julian to enjoy his kinks.
He’d always been kinky, into things that others might have considered a little out of the ordinary. Maybe that was why he had never been able to hold down a long-term partner. Maybe his tastes were a little too ‘out there’. Julian had always liked to live dangerously in all areas of his life. Not so much just walking on a knife-edge as actually straddling his legs either side of it and seeing if he managed to avoid the deepest of cuts. The thought of danger thrilled him – which was why he’d been so brave about breaking into Nikki’s room and raiding her linen bin. It wasn’t that he wanted to get caught, far from it, but the thought of getting away with something that could potentially ruin him was the thrill he loved to take. And that thrill seeking was certainly something that had dominated the moves he had made in his sex life.
Julian had tried it all. At kinky London sex parties he could play dress up and live out his fantasies of dungeons and drag queens, burlesque and bondage, roaring twenties and roaring beasts. He’d indulged in orgies with both sexes, tasted the hidden glory-holed delights of gay saunas and been tempted into the midnight madness of alfresco dogging. As far as he was concerned nothing was off limits so long as consent and consideration were the lube of his sexual unions. Julian thought that everybody could enjoy sex and it didn’t matter where it came from. But maybe it was his freedom in the ways of carnality that had become his downfall in the ways of love. No wife, no children, and at fifty that was unlikely to change, unless Nikki chose to make that a reality. And despite his adoration of her, he suspected she never would.
Nikki excited him like no other woman ever had. If he’d known how things were set to turn out Julian would have broken into her hotel suite and started sniffing her gussets months before he’d actually plucked up the courage. Sex with her was electric. The danger of screwing his friend’s daughter gave him a boner like he’d never experienced. It was some woman who could make him put his friendship with Sheridan aside and readily deceive him, stealing money from under his nose. And the fact that it was Sheridan’s daughter made his cock twitch even more.
No, Nikki was sensational, but sadly she couldn’t always be there. Where was she right now? New York, wasn’t it? Somewhere spreading the word of the good ship Velvet and hopefully buying some underwear that he would be putting to very good use soon.
Julian loved underwear: the feel of it, the look of it and indeed the heavenly, womanly smell of it. It had been a kink of his ever since he was a young man in his mid-teens. He could remember his first experience, how his love of it had first started. As a lad he had been working out in his family home garage, where they housed a small selection of gym equipment. Nothing much, just a few free weights and a bench press machine. He had been enjoying a workout when his sister, three years older, came to join him. She had been out for a run and her tight Lycra gym pants were already damp with sweat. His sister possessed a great body with full, firm breasts and smooth, shapely legs and a young Julian, like many lads his own age, couldn’t help but admire it.
He’d marvelled at her as she took some of the free weights and lifted them above her head, appreciating the smoothness of her underarms and the tautness of her belly as the young flesh there stretched, a hint of muscle gloriously shining through.
As he watched her, Julian had lost concentration and a slight wobble from the weights he was attempting to bench-press caused his arms to almost buckle, bringing the bar back down to his chest. His sister noticed and offered to spot him. Without hesitation he accepted.
As she stood over him, her legs mere inches from his face, Julian stared up into her crotch. It was clear from the outline of what lay beneath that she had nothing on underneath the Lycra pants. The outline of drying sweat was painted across the material and the mound caused by her naked sex underneath automatically caused a stirring in Julian’s gym shorts, bringing his cock to erection. He tried to blank the fact that the object of his lust belonged to his sister and hoped his hard-on would disappear. It didn’t, only growing stronger as his sister shifted her position slightly to help him lift the weights and in doing so accidentally brought herself closer to his face. His nostrils filled with the aroma coming from her sex, a honey-like, womanly scent that was pure pleasure to him. His cock grew stiffer. Luckily it was contained inside the strong mesh within his gym shorts and she had no idea.
Julian had finished his workout as quickly as possible and while his sister was showering made his way to her bedroom, where he picked up her discarded pants from the floor. He took them to his room, locked the door, placed them over his face and released his already rigid cock from his shorts. It was the
most satisfying wank he had ever experienced.
From that day on, he knew that he had found a kink that blanketed his hormones with a horniness he’d never known before. In his twenties and thirties he’d found clubs that provided an outlet for his love of underwear. He’d stolen from lovers, delving into their dirty laundry as soon as their backs were turned. Who missed the odd pair of panties? No one, it seemed. And the thrill of beating his meat with the sweet odour of a woman coated across his nostrils was a blood-filled thrill he never tired of.
He’d even worn them at times, the feeling of them against his manly skin a sexual one. He had no desire to be a woman, but something about the laciness of the material as it cupped his cock was definitely bringing out his inner Frank-N-Furter. And when, in his forties, he’d discovered websites and apps that catered for his needs, a whole new world of hosiery hedonism was able to come to his door. No matter where in the world he was.
That was why he loved his Bajan home. It was private and could cater for Julian’s every kink. And right now, with Nikki time zones away, he was keen to satisfy his love of underwear with a session of panty face sitting. It was another joy that he had first experienced years ago at a London club. Why hold a pair of worn panties to your face when somebody could be wearing them and sit on your face? And lately he had discovered the joy of big ladies: supersize females with junk in their trunks. Women who would sit on his face and jiggle their curves to a point where he could scarcely breathe had become his latest euphoric edgeplay.
Julian stared at his phone as the house intercom sounded. Right on time. He’d been on an app and advertised his needs and now here was the woman to take him to sexual heaven. He descended the steps to the front door and opened it to let her in. She was big, black and beautiful. Every curve of her body rounded to perfection. Julian could feel his member stiffen straight away.
‘You must be Jonny?’
Julian nodded; he never used his real name on the app. Why should he? His cock grew even harder as the woman smiled and swayed her body slightly, her flesh undulating as she did so.
She was something that Nikki could never be. He knew she was going to be perfect.
Ten minutes later as she worked her lacy pink panties across the stubble on Julian’s face, her legs clamped around his ears, he could feel his seed rising within his rock-hard shaft: he was ready to explode. He removed his hands from where he had been pumping his cock and let it bounce up and down in a prelude to the explosion that he knew was about to burst forth. He let his arms fall to the bed, on either side of his body, and arced his arms up and down the sheets in delight. The line he left looked like those left by children making snow angels.
The woman writhing atop his face squealed as she saw the lines, still gyrating her lace-decorated sex as she did so. ‘Oh, you’re leaving marks like the turtle flipper tracks on the beach!’
Julian never heard her – he was eyebrow deep in heaven.
12
Nikki’s cab pulled up outside the address she had been given on the phone. She’d been there before, on one of the previous times she had been called upon to deliver a bag full of cash. It was sadly becoming all too regular an occurrence but until the coil of despair she was experiencing managed to bounce its way out of sight for good, it was something she would have to put up with.
The air on the New York backstreet was cold against her skin and as she paid the taxi driver through the window, she asked him to wait until she had finished what she had come to do. She suspected she wouldn’t be long and this was not exactly the nicest area of New York. But then she wasn’t exactly meeting the sweetest of people, was she? Finding a cab to take her back to Velvet New York might not be that easy and she didn’t want to roam the streets any more than was necessary.
Nikki pulled her coat around her, a chill from the freshness of the air sending a shiver across her features. Another inner chill, caused by a nervous expectation and fear, gripped her too.
She pressed the intercom button, attempting to stare through the dirty glass and meshed wirework window that made up most of the door. The frame hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the last time she had been there. It hadn’t seen a lick of paint since heaven knows when. The only change was a postcard tacked onto the window advertising the services of a ‘busty blonde with magic hands’ on the second floor.
‘Hello,’ a gruff voice sounded.
‘It’s me,’ said Nikki.
‘You know where we are. Top floor.’ He buzzed her in.
Nikki said nothing, pulled the door and let herself in.
The walk up the stairs never became any easier. She’d been here, what, four or five times now? It wasn’t the four flights of stairs to the top floor that bothered her. And it wasn’t the smell of filth that filled the air or the broken glass, ciggie butts and odd syringe peppering the floor: it was knowing who she would see at her destination that filled her with dread.
Having reached the apartment door on the fourth floor, she pushed against it, seeing that it was already ajar. The smell of weed in the air hit her immediately. Nikki was a girl who liked to party but even for her the strength of the smell was too much. The owner of the gruff voice on the intercom was sitting behind a desk in the corner of the room. Fair-skinned, dark circles under his eyes, about Julian or her father’s age, Nikki guessed – she’d never cared to ask. Two younger men, one black, one Latino, one of whom she recognised, sat on a sofa that looked like it should belong at the nearest tip. Both men were smoking, the source of the pungent aroma in the air clear.
‘You bring the money?’ It was the man behind the desk who spoke.
‘Of course.’ Nikki lifted the bag aloft.
‘It’s all there, yes?’
‘Every last nickel and dime.’
He signalled to the Latino man with a flick of his hand, who then stood up, moved to Nikki and grabbed the bag.
‘Count it,’ said the older man.
Nikki watched, as she had to every time, as the Latino counted out the bank notes from the bag, making sure that every cent was there. When he was satisfied with his calculations, he nodded to the man behind the desk. ‘All there, boss.’ It seemed the hazy drug in his system had no effect on his ability to count cold, hard cash when required.
He sat himself back down on the sofa alongside the black guy and continued to smoke as the two of them watched a TV in the corner of the room. Nikki recognised the show as Devious Maids.
But she was in no mood to watch anything. ‘Can I go?’ Just the mere sight of the man behind the desk needled her very soul. He had one of those faces that had obviously never been attractive: skinny as a shrew, his nose pointed and beak-like, his eyes too close together. He hadn’t been at the front of the queue when any of the handsome male attributes of physicality had been given out. But then he was never destined for the catwalk, was he? The catwalk… God, that was how this had all begun – it was high fashion that had led to the lowest point of Nikki’s life.
New York Fashion Week, three months earlier…
The models strutted down the catwalk at the end of the Bobby Abley fashion show, applauding as they went. It had been a powerhouse of art, glamour, style and historical pomp and decadence and it wasn’t just the models who were clapping as the infectious electropop tune of Hi-Fashion’s ‘Amazing’ boomed from the speakers either side of the runway in the converted warehouse on the outskirts of New York’s Harlem.
‘That was just totally unique,’ said Nikki, turning to Nush Silvers, the UK gossip columnist who had been sitting alongside her in the front row. Nush had flown out to New York to interview Nikki about her own innate sense of style and the blossoming Velvet empire and also to report on the latest fashions that would doubtless soon be hitting the UK style blogs.
‘Totally agree with that, girl. I’m not sure I could be wearing some of those more flamboyant outfits at a family gathering, but that was out of this world. And the Free Soul jewellery was insane. It seems like everyone loved i
t,’ said Nush. It was true, a standing ovation of adoration was tying itself, bow-like, around the warehouse, with stars from TV, film, music and the critical world of fashion all on their feet.
‘Now,’ said Nikki. ‘Seeing as only a bang-on designer like this would think of starting a fashion show at gone 10 p.m. and it’s already past midnight so the free bar here will have run totally dry, how about you and I find the nearest watering hole and we can talk some more about all things fashion?’
Nikki’s suggestion was met with approval from the UK columnist. ‘Sure, I’d love to. I’ve not got anything booked until an interview with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley tomorrow afternoon so I’m all yours. Let’s find a cab.’
‘My car’s outside. I had the valet guys park it as I was running late. We can take it to the bar and I’ll have one of the Velvet drivers pick it up later. It’s been hours since I touched a drop so we’ll be fine.’
‘If you’re sure, let’s go. I wouldn’t leave my car around here though. It’s not exactly the friendliest of areas, is it?’ said Nush.
‘Like I can’t afford a new one if it goes AWOL! It’s only a Lexus LFA, darling,’ laughed Nikki.
‘Well, that’s okay then,’ smiled Nush, already totting up in her head the price tag attached to that impressive set of wheels.
Half an hour later the two women were taking their seats in a seedy, dimly lit bar in a Harlem backstreet. A jukebox in the corner was playing a track so heavily smothered in a bass beat that it was almost indistinguishable as a tune. The floor was stickier than a jam sandwich and the customers propping up the bar were sinister, to say the least. It was scarier than Halloween season and had it been a scream queen flick neither women would have placed their bets on surviving past the opening credits.