He laughs. “Sure. She’s not hardcore enough. So you want fresh meat. I got it.” He grabs some papers from his briefcase. “For your perusal, off the books. First choice.”
“Like every single thing you do isn’t off the books.” I take them from him, sit myself on the bed to have a look.
Girls. Five of them. Early twenties, pretty, spread pussies, perfectly filthy smiles. Keen.
Perfect.
All of them perfect.
An array of checked boxes under their pictures. Limits, so many limits.
I drop the pile at my side. “None of them.”
“That little Lulabelle is a real treat. She’ll be right up your alley, I promise. I can do you a deal. I’ll call her in this weekend, on the house, try before you buy.”
But I don’t want Lulabelle, with her pouty lips and her perfectly perky tits. She looks like she’d be a squealer. She’d probably break glass.
“What’s wrong with Lulabelle?” Claude asks again. “She’s perfect.”
Exactly. I don’t say that. I don’t want to share any more of my kinks with Claude than absolutely necessary. The slimy cunt already knows enough to turn my stomach.
“I said none of them.”
Claude looks nonplussed. “Sure, well, your father showed interest. I guess I’ll pass her on to him.”
My finger jabs through the air before I can stop it. “Don’t mention my fucking father, Claude. You know the fucking rules.”
He holds his hands up. “Just saying. I’ll pass them on, if you’re sure.”
“And you also just said this selection was just for me, off the books.”
He shrugs. “Me and your old man go back a long way, as you well know.”
It makes me cringe, the whole fucking lot of it. Pandering to this seedy little back-alley business for safety, because my own tried and tested methods of scoring hook-ups landed me in the jaws of Ronald fucking Robertson and his fucking shit stain of a newspaper.
I grit my jaw. Breathe slowly. Calmly.
“Find me what I’m looking for, Claude. Send the others to whoever you want, I have no interest.”
“You get first refusal, you know that…”
I laugh, because it’s like a black comedy, this whole sordid affair. I’m watching my own train wreck unfold, tumbling down my own perverted rabbit hole. “First refusal in an open auction. Sure I do.”
“You know what I mean, Henley. First refusal over some of my other clients…”
Clients.
He means my disgusting excuse of a father and his vile little network of associates. The man who bailed me out with company cash and insisted I use his more secure outlets for my needs.
The one condition: we never cross purchases.
Quite frankly I have no fucking interest in touching any woman my father has been within a five-mile radius of. I’d rather hack my dick off with a rusty knife.
I’d rather not be in a five-mile radius of him either for that matter, but I have no such joy keeping the old cunt out of my boardroom.
I wish I didn’t know what the grim old bastard gets up to at all, but the memory is emblazoned in my psyche for all time. The wonders of teenage curiosity. I wish I could bleach the knowledge from my brain. Believe me, I’ve tried. My therapists made these pricey little sexcapades look like small change.
“Get me what I’m looking for, Claude. Something real. Someone with no ticks in the boxes. Someone who’ll fucking fit.”
He laughs. “Sounds to me like you want a girlfriend, Henley, not a hooker. That isn’t my game.”
The idea of a girlfriend is laughable. My heart shrivelled up and died a long time ago.
He stands and holds out his hand. “Leave it with me.”
I shake it without smiling, then offer him back his paperwork. He doesn’t take it.
“Think on them, I have other copies.”
I’m sure he fucking does. “I don’t need to think on them.”
“Humour me, then.” His grin is bright and professional, as though he’s trying to sell me a fucking timeshare.
I fold the papers and slip them into my inside pocket, to humour the sonofabitch.
“I’ll be in touch,” he says.
I don’t say goodbye on my way out.Chapter EightAlexanderLife wasn’t always like this for me.
A sugar-coated veneer of normality once held the power to keep my darker impulses at bay.
Once.
Getting married was easy, I just had to pretend to be everything I wasn’t.
Getting divorced was easier, I just had to stop pretending.
I never wanted Claire. I wanted her sister.
We met at a fundraiser for the Para-Olympics. Claire’s sister is a double-amputee swimmer, and one of the most vivacious people I’ve ever met.
She was in an accident. One of those wrong place at the wrong time affairs that dealt her a shitty hand.
She lost both her legs below the knee, chewed up under a Transit van travelling far too fast on a blind bend. People grimace when she tells the story. Give it all the oohs and aahs and you poor, poor soul. But she didn’t want any of that. Didn’t need their sympathy. Just as the pressure in the earth forms mere rock into the most glorious crystals, her accident transformed her into something incredible, someone who came back stronger and all the more beautiful for her adversity.