by Alexis Hall
“Oh, I can’t remember. Golden butt plugs, diamond-encrusted vibrators, platinum cock rings in the shape of cobras, the usual stuff. I found this spanker that cost, like, three thousand dollars.”
“For that price, I’d expect it to come with a spankee.”
“I know, right?” I sighed. “The thing is, I love Milieu. But I got this job when I was with Caspian and everything felt like this crazy dream. And now he’s gone, I keep wondering what’s still real.”
“You are. So get off your arse and pitch.”
“Pitch?” I squeaked. “Pitch what?”
“Something a teenager with access to Google couldn’t write. Something only you could. That’s what Mara’s looking for.” George’s free hand made a gesture that could have meant anything from “problem solved” to “I’m bored of your insecurities” and was probably a little bit of both. “Now, are you going to try this caviar? It’s getting warm.”
The shiny fish eggs looked no more appealing than they had five minutes ago. “Why would I want to?”
“Arden.” Her expression grew quite severe suddenly. “Why wouldn’t you? Very few adventures begin with a no.”
She was right, of course. And what was the worst that could happen? I would have to swallow a mouthful of salty goo. Been there, done that.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
“Close your eyes.”
I subjected her to my best put-upon look before obeying.
“You’re cute,” she drawled, “when you’re doing what you’re told.”
I opened my mouth to protest, on principle, that I was cute all the damn time, but then I felt the nudge of the spoon against my lips, and the next thing I knew, I had a gob full of fish eggs.
It wasn’t nearly as awful as I’d feared. Far less salty and far less, well, eggy. If anything, it was like popping candy without the candy: little bursts of flavour that crackled on my tongue and vanished, leaving behind the memory of the sea. I mean, I wouldn’t be reaching for a tin of caviar the next time I got the munchies, but at the very least I’d increased my fancy party eligibility.
“Well?” asked George.
I shrugged. “S’okay.”
“Eat your damn Pot Noodle.” But she was laughing as she said it.
Chapter 7
In the end, we shared both the Pot Noodle and the caviar. Of course, they didn’t go at all, but that was part of the fun. And afterwards, she took my hand and led me upstairs again. There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about George’s bedroom, except maybe that it was slightly nicer than average (if by average, you meant “mine,” which was mainly socks and my futon mattress), but I’d forgotten how intimate someone else’s living spaces could be. Caspian’s apartments—including his own—had always been about display: wealth, power, beauty, and all that blah blah blah. But George’s home was just…George. Right down to the pile of velvet jackets flung over a chair back.
Her bed had a touch of the fairy tale about it—all silver leaf and swan-neck posts, with pale grey sheets and dusty purple covers. I’d always imagined that—at the point of being able to afford something nice to sleep in—I’d want one of those ornately carved jobbies, so I could be tied to it in a variety of interesting ways. But honestly, this was super romantic. It looked like the sort of bed Louis XIV’s gay brother would get sucked off in.
George went to lounge, and me being me, I made a beeline for the bookcase. Apparently, my post-Caspian fascination for people who had personal belongings wasn’t going away anytime soon. But also, you could learn so much about someone from their bookshelves, and I’m nosy as fuck. In my experience there were two kinds of people in the world: people who kept books for show and people who kept them for love, and George was definitely in the second category. There wasn’t much order to her books, but they all looked read, and read often.
She seemed to like mysteries, especially classic English ones about dead aristocrats in country houses. But I also recognised the names of a bunch of philosopher-type people I’d diligently avoided while at Oxford, like Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag. Then came lots of scary art books, which all had titles along the lines of The Principles of Art History, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, and Body, Memory and Architecture. And after those, biographies and autobiographies of photographers, a scant handful of which I’d vaguely heard of. Well. It was official: I was a cultureless lout.
“If you move the biography of Diane Arbus to a forty-five-degree angle,” drawled George, “you’ll open the secret passage to my satanic ritual chamber.”
I spun round, blushing. “Sorry, I was just looking.”
“See anything you like?”
“I don’t”—I scuffed sheepishly—“actually know much about art.”
“There’s someone you might recognise on the top shelf.”
I had to go up on my tiptoes. But then I gasped. “Oh, they’re your books. Can I look?”
“Certainly not. My retiring disposition could never allow it.”
Laughing, I reached up and tugged one down. George was best known for her fashion photography and the occasional Royal Wedding, but she also did these portrait collections. Photographs of a single subject that…well, I only knew what Tabs had told me, which was that the exhibitions were always one-night-only, and what I’d discovered for myself after hours of Googling, which was that the books were nearly impossible to get.
Right now I was holding Sylvia: She was a wisp of a woman and eighty if she was a day. Though mostly she was covered in bees. Or surrounded by them, anyway, and looking way happier about it than I would have expected from someone covered in bees. It was kind of amazing, actually—the way the images captured both her stillness and the ceaseless motion around her. I put my fingers to one of the pages, half expecting to feel the stickiness of honey. The hesitant warmth of an English spring. Maybe if I closed my eyes, I’d smell meadow flowers.
“You are wonderful,” I whispered.
George huffed out a pleased sound. “I’ve been doing this for over thirty years. One would hope to be quite accomplished.”
“That’s a bit modest for someone who once told me her talents were sex and art.”
“My talents are sex and art. But I leave taking their measure to others.”
“Well, I think you rock at both.”
“Thank you, poppet.” She tucked a hand behind her head, the other wandering blatantly to her erection—which, framed as it was in black silk, was quite a sight. “But do feel free to keep praising me. I’m rather enjoying myself.”
I replaced Sylvia and picked up Jules, a study of cool androgyny, as exquisitely remote as a classical study. Then Luis. Who was, um, naked. Unless you counted the tattoos. Before reaching curiously for the very first book on the shelf. Probably, I should have checked the name before opening it, but I didn’t. And so I got to see my boss naked. She was probably about twenty in the photograph—which had a stylised, grainy quality like an old black-and-white glamour shot—and reclining on a bearskin. I was pretty sure those sorts of pictures were meant to be a juxtaposition of vulnerability and savagery, but honestly, the way Mara was staring down the camera, if it came to a fight between her and the bear, I’d have picked her every time.
Annnnnnyway.
I stuffed Mara back where I’d found her and retreated to the bed. George grinned at me lazily, still stroking.
“I really love your work,” I told her. And then, before I even quite knew what I was going to say next, I blurted out, “What’s it like?”
“What’s what like? My work?”
“No. Like…always, knowing who you are and what you want to be.”
She paused, propping herself up on an elbow. “Arden, nobody really knows what they want to be. It’s just that for some people—by pure chance—the thing it turns out they actually want to be happens to have the same name as the thing they thought they wanted to be.”
“Um. You’ve lost me.”
“The first time I picked up a camera, I felt this tremendous sense of completion. Like I’d found some lost jigsaw piece of my soul. And that made me want to be a photographer, but I didn’t really know what being a photographer meant or what it was like. And now I’ve been a photographer for most of my life, and I’ve loved every minute of it, but it has almost nothing to do with that feeling I had when I was a child.”
“But,” I protested, “what if your jigsaw is all over the floor and you’ve lost the box?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure plenty of people pick up a camera and feel exactly the way I felt, but then discover that they don’t actually enjoy taking pictures for a living. And some people probably stumble into it blindly and never look back. It’s not the rush that’s real. It’s the follow-through. Find out what something is and then you’ll find out if you love it.”
Now there was a statement with broad applicability if ever I heard one. I sighed.
“Stop worrying, poppet. Your face will get stuck like that.”
I plonked my chin into my hand. “I’ve always thought it’d be kind of cool to write for Milieu.”
“It will never be anything like you thought it would. But that’s okay. And it’s also okay if you decide it’s not what you want.”
“But if it’s not,” I absolutely did not whine, “what do I do then?”
Her brows lifted in mock exasperation, but her voice was still surprisingly gentle. “Haven’t you listened to a damn word I said? Do you want another flogging?”
“No, I mean, yes, I mean I was listening.” I drew a deep breath. “I keep trying. Until I find what I love.”
As soon as I spoke, I realised I’d heard those words before. How the fuck had I forgotten them? I guess all my mental energy had been focused on surviving. Which was probably fair enough. It was hard to be a carpe-seizing go-getter when your skin felt like a bag full of broken pieces. But my time with a billionaire who believed in me should have taught me better than this. I was better than this. So what if Nathaniel had taken Caspian? He didn’t get to take me.
“Are you all right?” George asked. “Your nose is all wrinkled up.”
“Yeah, I’m good. Just wondering why you’re always so nice to me.”
She subjected me to her most sardonic look. “Because I want to fuck you. Obviously.”
“Works for me.” Riding a rush of confidence that was at least sixty percent determination, I knelt up and pulled off my Jedi dressing gown. “Though it’s probably about time I was nice to you back.”
Her eyes gleamed, gold-sheened by the softer light. “Works for me.”
I leaned down and kissed her. First on the mouth and then along her jaw and down her throat, catching against my lips the vibration of her contented sigh. It was actually a little disorientating to have such freedom. I’d never minded that Caspian preferred me helpless and at his mercy. As a matter of fact, I’d loved it. But I’d also been desperate to touch him, believing—like an insecure, oblivious idiot—the fact he wouldn’t let me was about me, instead of about him. Looking back, I understood exactly how much of himself he’d given me, when, at the time, I’d seen nothing but barriers. It made me sad in a way: all his unrecognised trust. Sometimes it even kept me up at night, thinking of everything I would have done differently if only I’d known. What did it matter what we got up to in bed? It was him I wanted. His passion, his laughter, his cruelty, his kindness. And his hurt, because that was part of him as well.
I was hesitant with her at first, but grew less so as it turned out my getting-people-off skill set hadn’t irredeemably declined. As for George, she came to pleasure like an old friend, neither at war with it as Caspian was, nor submitting to it like me. I almost envied her in a way—I’d been trying to show myself a good time since I first figured out my penis liked me moving my hand up and down it, but George had an ease in her body that you probably only got from a lot more living than I’d managed so far. Mind you, if I looked like her, I’d probably be easy too.
Don’t get me wrong, I was fine in cute-at-best kind of way and my arse was at least moderately epic. And while she wasn’t a perfect physical specimen like Caspian, George had this rangy sexiness to her, all long, lean limbs and subtle curves. Also I was always up for getting my hands on boobs and George’s were lovely. The silken weight of them pressed against my palms. The rough-smooth texture of her nipples as they tightened against my tongue. She was pretty sensitive there too, her fingers curling in my hair to keep my attention where she wanted it—a hint of control that turned me on even more.
I didn’t worship George the way I would Caspian, but it was still…service, I guess? She could have used me, or bossed me around, and I would probably have enjoyed it just as much, but she didn’t. Just accepted my attentions as her due with the indulgence of a decadent empress. Which I, of course, found wildly hot. And made me feel submissive in a whole new way. A supplicant to someone else’s desires.
Thank God I’d got off earlier. I was already hot and bothered at the point of kneeling between her thighs, pushing into her, but the hard, lube-slick clench of her body would have finished me off. And I still had to grit my teeth a moment because it had been a while for me this way round and I’d half forgotten how intense it could be. The strength and intimacy of that interior heat.
Her hand came up and closed around my throat. Gently, but yikes. “Don’t you dare, poppet.”
“I…I…” I sucked in a rough breath. “You feel amazing.”
“Yes, I know. But if you even think of coming before I do—”
“I’m not. I won’t. I promise.”
She slid her thumb caressingly over my pulse, which didn’t exactly help with the whole controlling myself deal. “Good boy.”
I knew it was a total cliché of me to like being called that. But I did. It was the teeniest bit demeaning, except in a…nice way? Like a full-body toe curl.
Grinning, I nestled my hips against hers. “I’m better than good.”
“That, my dear, remains to be seen.”
Okay, so, look. I don’t want to boast. But I was actually pretty fucking amazing. I mean, I thought my balls were going to explode for most of it, but they didn’t, and in a twisted sort of way, I almost enjoyed it. I mean, not the ball-exploding specifically. Just the gentle, and increasingly ungentle, ache of self-denial. And knowing I was pleasing George.
Because, for the record, I was. I so was.
And she was gorgeous like that, her eyes heavy-lidded with bliss and the sardonic twist of her mouth softened in passion. Oh my God, and the sounds she made. These deep purring groans, like a tiger in the sun. We ran through the ol’ reliables—missionary, and variations, from behind, with us both kneeling, and then George braced on her forearms, missionary again because I was nothing if not ambitious when it came to putting my dick in people—and finally on our sides, while I kissed the sweat from her shoulder and she worked her cock with long, deft strokes. It was vindication and mercy both when she came, and almost enough to send me over too. I clung on nobly, though, and once I’d eased out of her, she flopped onto her back and regarded me with an air of sated amusement.
I, err, I whined.
Her lips twitched. “Something you want, poppet?”
Since my mouth was dry, and my tongue about six sizes too big for it, I gave an emphatic nod.
“Then you’d better ask nicely, hadn’t you?”
Fuck. Squirmy-making. But I was also about to lose my mind. “Can,” I mumbled, “can I come. Please?”
“Is that really the best you can manage?” George dabbed her fingers into the shiny puddles she’d left across her stomach and chest. Then slipped them between my lips. Which did absolutely nothing for my self-control. She tasted tangy-sweet, and of everything I couldn’t have.
I’d always been taught not to talk with my mouth full. But this was an emergency. “Please. I need to. I—”
She stroked my tongue, turning my words into a needy gabble.
/> “I was good,” I managed, part plea, part protest.
That made her smile, with a degree of affection I would have appreciated more if not for the whole about-to-die-of-lack-of-orgasm thing. “You were. You were very good.”
I gazed at her with my biggest eyes.
“Well, all right. But give me a good show.”
My hand had jumped to my cock like it was on a string, but now I hesitated. “A…a…what?”
“I like watching.”
“You’re such a pervert,” I wailed, need and denial and the good sort of embarrassment all knotted up inside me.
“I’m not asking for Les Misérables at the West End.”
“Right now, Breath would be pushing it.”
She laughed, but without the usual trace of mockery. “Oh, stop dithering and come. You know you deserve to.”
I think it hit me about halfway through the sentence: one of those ripped-out-of-you orgasms that give you no time for dignity. Just this razor-edge of ecstasy where it doesn’t matter what goofy face you’re pulling or what stupid sounds you’re making. I heard a wild howl that must have been me. Felt the tightness of my helplessly arching spine. But everything else was drowned in the darkness and brightness of pleasure.
“H-how was it?” I asked, when I’d got my breath back.
“Four stars. Four and a half if I’m feeling generous.”
“I’ll take it.”
I flopped down next to George, awkward in a different way to when I’d been begging and moaning and coming in her face. I mean, not literally in her face—that wasn’t something you did without direct invitation—but at the very least near her face. Anyway, maybe I was just being weird. I’d shared a bed, both sexually and otherwise, with loads of people at university, and Caspian had found it difficult to sleep with me at all. So I shouldn’t have been conscious of his absence. Of the fact me and George smelled different to me and Caspian. I shouldn’t have felt lonely.
Except, y’know, I did.
Rolling onto my side, I gazed at George. Possibly a bit too intently, because one of her eyes popped open. “What are you searching for, poppet? The Amber Room?”