by JD Nixon
Needless to say, Clarrie was ecstatic over my arrival, giving my boobs an especially warm welcoming inspection. I tried not to appear too resentful, but was finding it very difficult to hide my feelings. When it came time for him to leave, Heller asked if he could see me alone in the corridor for a minute.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said to him, my voice colder than a snowman’s snowballs. “We’ve said everything that needs to be said.”
And I turned my back on him and stalked to the suite’s second bedroom without even saying goodbye. I spent the next half an hour pottering around, inspecting my room. Dampness stung my eyes as I looked at the photos of Daniel and Niq and Will I had on my phone, hating my forced separation.
Suddenly teary, I rushed into my luxurious ensuite to splash water on my face. It wasn’t a happy face that stared back at me in the mirror, and I tried out a few different facial expressions to convey false cheeriness. As a former actor, I’d had some practice at faking emotion, no matter how badly I’d done it. I plastered on a pretend smile and went out to the living area.
It was early evening, pre-dinner. Clarrie was sitting at his laptop, typing furiously. I smiled at him when he looked up, and sat down on the lounge.
“Hope you don’t mind. I’m doing a bit of work,” he said, apologetic. “Feel free to watch TV or listen to music. It doesn’t bother me at all. When I work, I’m completely absorbed.”
“Thanks Clarrie. That’s very kind.” I determined to be nice to him. Not because Heller had ordered me too, but because it wasn’t his fault I was unhappy, and he was paying rather a large amount of money for my services during the next fortnight. I switched on the TV and flicked through the channels only to find nothing worth watching. With nothing else to do though, I spent the next hour watching an extremely dull documentary on fire ants. I almost drifted off to sleep before rousing myself when the closing credits rolled across the enormous plasma screen.
“You looked as though you were really enjoying that documentary,” Clarrie commented, shutting his laptop and approaching me on the vast lounge. Just showed how observant he was, I thought.
“Fire ants are fascinating creatures, no doubt about it,” I replied solemnly. “Did you know, for example, that a fire ant nest may contain more than one queen?” That was the one fact I remembered from the five minutes I was actually paying attention to the show.
“I never knew that,” he admitted. He sat down, rather a bit too close to me for my liking. I shifted imperceptibly away from him. He stared at me intently, and reached his arm along the back of the lounge.
“You’re very pretty, Tilly,” he said. “You have lovely . . .” A quick look at my boobs. “. . . eyes.”
“That’s kind of you to say so, Clarrie,” I said, jumping up off the lounge. “Are you hungry? Would you like to go down to the restaurant for dinner, or will I order us some room service?”
“Room service.”
“Okay. Here’s the menu. What do you want?” He chose a double cheeseburger with chips and I ordered baked salmon fillet with roasted baby vegetables for myself. I guess living with Heller was rubbing off on me. Once upon a time I would have ordered the burger too without even thinking about it, but Heller was a health-nut and I had become used to not having any junk food. I went to the suite’s well-stocked maxi-bar (the hotel being far too swank for just a mini-bar) and at Clarrie’s request, retrieved a beer for him and a half bottle of sauvignon blanc for me.
My phone rang. I checked the screen. It was Heller. I let it keep ringing.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Clarrie asked.
“No.”
“It might be important.”
“It’s not.”
I sat on the lounge again, but at a safer distance. There was an awkward silence for a while. God, it’s going to be a long, long two weeks, I thought desperately. I searched around for conversational topics.
“How come you don’t have any personnel, Clarrie? It seems strange that an important businessman like you doesn’t have an entourage.”
He shrugged. “I’m not really a people person, Tilly. I don’t like a lot of people around me. I have a couple of casual staff at my home in LA, to housekeep, do the yard work, clean the pool, things like that, but I do most of my work and business dealings online, so don’t really need a personal assistant.”
“What about when you’re travelling, like now?”
He shook his head. “I order room service and have my laundry done by the hotel. The hotel staff clean my room. I catch taxis everywhere. Why would I need to bring anyone with me?”
“You’re a very unusual man, that’s all.”
He shrugged again. “That’s just how I am. I never really thought about it before.”
Awkward silence again. I could tell he wasn’t a smooth conversational charmer. Unfortunately.
He edged a little closer to me and stared at me with his blue eyes, a not-so-nice smile creeping onto his face. “So, are you and Heller –”
“No! He’s my boss.”
“He’s pretty striking. So good-looking and tall and muscled. He must work out a lot.”
“He does.”
“I bet women love him.” He sounded resentful.
“They do. Believe me.”
“Where’s he from? I can’t place his accent.”
“I don’t know. He won’t tell me. Somewhere in Scandinavia is my guess. He’s a real man of mystery.”
He digested that. “He looks tough.”
“Oh yeah. He’s a real hard-arse.”
“Do you like working for him?”
“Sometimes.”
My phone rang. Heller again. I ignored it again.
“You’re not going to . . .” He waved his fingers in the direction of my phone, and slid even a bit closer.
I shook my head. “It’s not important. No need to disrupt our lovely conversation. Whoever it is can ring back later.”
Just then the room service arrived. Thank God! I thought gratefully, jumping up to answer the door. I fussed over the plates, setting them out on the dining table, fetching a glass for Clarrie’s beer and one for my wine. I set out the cutlery, the napkins and the condiments.
“I would have just eaten here on the lounge off the tray,” he confessed, watching my frenzy of activity.
“Well, you’re going to eat up at the table tonight,” I declared firmly, sounding like his mother, and I ushered him to his seat. He didn’t complain. The food was delicious, even if the conversation flagged at times. I concentrated on savouring every bite and every sip of wine, and chatted mindlessly, trying to ignore his awful table manners. He guzzled and slurped, speaking with his mouth full, particles of half-chewed food flying across the table every time he spoke. I fervently hoped that none of it had landed in my dinner. He was obviously not used to eating in company. Finally the horror ended and I cleaned up the mess, leaving the trays outside the door to be collected later. I poured the rest of the wine into my glass.
“Do you mind if I do some more work for a while?” he asked.
“Of course not!” I replied immediately, not too enthusiastically I hoped. “I’ll make some phone calls and check my email.”
I took the glass of wine into my bedroom, plugged in my laptop at the desk provided and loaded up my email. The hotel offered wireless internet access, which I was happy to let Clarrie pay for. As usual, my family had clogged my inbox with spam and I deleted them all without even reading them. I forwarded on a few work emails to the general Heller’s email address for Daniel to deal with, signing off with a sad smiley face. As I was typing, an email from Heller arrived: M, ring me RIGHT NOW! I know you’re online. You just sent Daniel an email. H.
I deleted his email without responding to it and shut my computer down. I sent Niq and Daniel a goodnight text, and received replies back almost immediately.
heller wants 2 talk 2 u, Daniel texted.
have good sleep & lovely day tomorrow :-(, I
texted back.
thks! u2! heller wants 2 know if u r ignoring him? Daniel responded.
ignoring who?
:-) lol
I gave Will a quick phone call to let him know that I was going to be busy for the next fortnight. He was gratifyingly disappointed, and I reminded him that I was contactable via phone and email, and that we could try some phone sex one night if he was really lonely. I hung up with his laughter in my ear and a sad smile on my face.
Chapter 8
Clarrie was still furiously typing when I wandered back out to the living area. I should have brought a book to read, I thought, because I was going to be bored shitless during my stay. I was twitchy and paced around restlessly. I didn’t feel like watching TV. I looked out of the window for a while from our great height, down into a main thoroughfare, mesmerised by the lights of the traffic still clogging the street even hours after peak time had passed. I watched an ambulance, its lights flashing urgently, struggling to find a path through the congestion and hoped it reached its destination in time. Pacing again, I walked behind Clarrie and peered over his shoulder at his laptop.
He was playing a game – Synonymy by the looks of it.
“Hey! I thought you said you were working, and now I find you playing instead,” I teased.
“I am working, Tilly,” he explained, eyes fixed on the screen. “I spend time every day in the game, making sure that everything is okay. I have a couple of incognito characters I play as. I need to experience the game just like any other normal gamer would. It’s the best way for me to keep in touch with what the gamers want and keep Synonymy fresh.” He looked up briefly. “Gotta make sure that people keep paying me that monthly fee to play.”
I leaned on the desk. “I used to play a few years ago, but I was too poor to keep paying, so had to give it up. It was fun. I enjoyed it, but it’s very addictive. I remember playing for six hours straight one night. I could barely move, I was so stiff afterwards.”
“Oh, that’s nice that you played and enjoyed it,” he said to my boobs in a touched voice. “I never get tired of hearing people tell me that. Makes me feel good.” Still spoken to my boobs. Served me right for standing while he was sitting, I supposed. I only hoped that he didn’t expect my boobs to hold up the other end of the chinwag though – they weren’t known for their conversational skills. “The game has changed a bit since you played it, Tilly. Do you want me to show you?”
“Sure,” I said, and pulled up a dining chair next to him. I had nothing better to do.
“There’s now a much bigger range of character attributes you can manipulate. It lets you build a more personalised and individual character. The graphics have also been improved . . .” and he spoke for the next few minutes in detailed geek-speak about exactly how they had progressed. I didn’t understand a word he said, but nodded intelligently throughout. By the end of his discourse, I was thoroughly geeked out.
“But best of all,” he continued, “I introduced an adults-only section two years ago. It’s like a little world separate to the Synonymy main world and people pay extra per month to have access. It’s strictly for the eighteen-plus age group. I call it Synful Synonymy.”
Whoa! That certainly hadn’t been an option when I played. “Is there much demand for that?” I asked doubtfully.
“Shit yeah! I’ve never made so much money. You would be surprised how many people subscribe to it.”
“What can you do in there that’s different to the normal Synonymy world?”
“Tilly!” he looked at me in startled disbelief, as if I was incredibly naive. “You know – adult stuff! You can have sex with other characters, get a lap dance, get pissed, do drugs, whatever adult thing you want to do in real life. Do you want to see?”
“I guess.” I was fascinated and repelled at the same time by the whole concept. He pulled up an icon from the sidebar menu and tapped in a password. A door appeared in the forest his character (who incidentally didn’t look anything like him, being tall and lean with flowing dark hair and strong chiselled features) had been standing in. His little character opened the door and stepped into a very different world. It was like a miniature red-light district, with bars, dark alleys and parks and a mass of little characters walking around strutting their stuff.
“It’s set permanently to night time in this world. People seem to prefer it that way. It gives the world more authenticity.”
As his character walked up the street, a female character with big red hair, wearing a tiny bikini top barely holding in her enormous boobs, a micro-mini with garish fishnets and towering high heels, approached him.
Hey cutie, do you want a blowjob? appeared in writing at the bottom of the screen.
He tapped quickly on the keyboard and the words: Sure. What do you want in return? appeared above the other writing.
Got any jewellery?
How about this gold bracelet? He pulled a virtual gold bracelet out of a rucksack icon on the sidebar menu and it flashed up on the screen.
Beautiful. Let’s do it!
And Clarrie made his character follow the woman to a nearby park where they found a private spot underneath a broad-spread tree. He made his character pull down his pants, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw on the screen in graphic detail his character’s tiny penis fully erect. The female character knelt down in front of him and took it in her mouth, moving her head back and forth in simulation.
“Clarrie, that’s so rude!” I yelped in shock, slapping him on the arm, my eyes glued to the screen.
His little character shut his eyes in virtual pleasure, until his eyes and mouth opened wide in synchronisation with his virtual climax. His penis drooped and he did up his pants. The female character wiped her mouth, stood up and gladly took the promised gold bracelet for the transaction, before walking away and approaching another of the tiny characters, obviously with the same proposition.
“I can’t believe I just saw that!” I exclaimed. “What on earth do people get out of that?”
Clarrie flushed and crossed his legs self-consciously, his hands on his lap.
Oh God, please no! I thought, not daring to look down. I kept my eyes fastened on his face.
“That was pretty mild really,” he commented, once the danger for him had evidently passed. “A lot of people prefer their characters to have full-on sex. The characters come with all the male and female parts, as you just saw. Do you want to see more? I can go into voyeur mode, which is one of my god-powers, being the creator of the game. That means I can watch what anyone is doing, without them knowing.”
I was torn. “I do and I don’t,” I confessed.
He tapped on the keyboard again and was able to toggle the walls of the buildings on and off, so that we could see into every room. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah in miniature. There were copulating characters everywhere, doing everything you could possibly imagine real humans doing, and maybe even some extra things that weren’t physically possible for us to do. The graphics were extraordinary. When Clarrie zoomed in on the action, the first thing I noticed was that whoever had developed the characters had certainly done their research. Especially on the female anatomy, which was accurate in disturbingly gynaecological detail.
After a while, I held my hand up in defeat. “Enough! Really! Wow, I’m stunned, frankly.”
He shut the Synful Synonymy world down, his character exiting back into the main world of the game. “Some people just play in Synful Synonymy for fun and a bit of a thrill, but a lot offer services in return for virtual goods, like that lady and the gold bracelet. It’s like real life, I guess.”
I stood up and put the dining chair back in its place. All that depravity made me feel unclean. “I need a shower after that. Will you be all right for a while?”
He stared at me and suddenly smiled. “Sure. I’ll just keep working for a bit longer.”
I left him and went to my ensuite, stripped off and hopped under a steaming jet of hot water. It was wonderful
and my anger towards Heller finally started melting away as I washed my hair. Maybe I should give him a ring when I finished in the shower? Nah, screw him! I decided, lathering up. I still felt partially angry and that was reason enough for me not to contact him just yet. I hummed as I rinsed off the shampoo.
I dried myself, gently combed my hair, applied moisturiser liberally and wrapped myself in a wonderfully soft and fluffy bathrobe, relishing the luxury of the hotel. I kicked my dirty clothes to one corner of the bathroom, a bad habit I hadn’t succeeded in conquering. I’d worry about them later. I opened the adjoining door to my bedroom, and the first thing I noticed was Clarrie lying on my bed, completely naked.
“Clarrie, what the hell are you doing?” I screeched in alarm. “Get off of my bed and put some clothes on right now!”
“Oh, come on, Tilly. I read between the lines when you said you needed a shower. It got you all turned on, all hot and bothered, didn’t it, looking at all that cybersex? Come on, don’t be shy. I’m a man and you’re a woman. We both know what we want.”
I marched over and grabbed him by his arm, dragging him violently off my bed. He scrabbled to maintain his balance.
“Ooh, like it a bit rough, eh? That really turns me on too, baby. Let’s not hold back tonight. I’m ready for it. I’m up for anything.”
And to my incredible disgust, I could see that he meant that literally as well, his wanger waving in the air like a tiny light sabre. While I grappled with him to eject him from my room, my arms firmly around one of his, he twisted and slid his other hand inside my bathrobe. He clutched my breast, squeezing it like he was testing an avocado for ripeness.