Buy Me, Sir

I don’t say a word all the way home, just stare out of the window, unsure whether I want to laugh or cry.

He was everything I dreamed and more, and then he was gone.

My heart breaks at the thought I’ll never see him again, yet it soars at the knowledge I had him.

I can still feel him, everywhere. My body is fucked raw, battered and bruised, but I feel amazing. I’d do it all over again right now.

Dean looks out through the window as I step out of the taxi. He’s already in the doorway when I climb the communal stairs to the landing.

He lets me through the door before he speaks, but as soon as I’m inside he’s one long stream of questions.

Am I okay? Did he hurt me? Did he pay me? What was he like?

I pour myself a glass of water and drink it down in one before I answer, and then I take the huge stuffed envelope from my handbag. His eyes are like dinner plates.

“No fucking way.”

I nod. “Yes way.”

“Have you counted it?”

I shake my head. “You can.”

He takes it from me and I smile as he dashes through to the living room. He clears the coffee table and tips out the notes. Jesus Christ, no wonder my handbag was so heavy on my lap in the taxi.

He flicks through one bundle. “These are thousands.” I watch as he stacks them up. “Twenty-five. Shit, Lissa, he’s given you twenty-five fucking grand.”

My heart pounds. “But that’s too much.”

“There’s twenty-five here,” he says. “Count for yourself. Fuck.”

But I don’t want to. I don’t want this to be about the money, even though it is. I’m going to treat Joseph to a brand new trainset, and maybe a nice meal or two for the three of us, clear my credit card of the excess, and then I’m going to deposit the rest in Joe’s trust fund.

“What is it?” Dean asks, and I shrug. “Did he hurt you?”

I wince as I take a seat beside him, but it’s not that. I tell him I’m fine.

“Then what?” He holds up a bundle of notes. “Lissa, you just earned twenty-five fucking grand.”

“I would’ve done it for free.”

He squeezes my elbow. “But you didn’t. You got so much money. You could quit the cleaning, go back to college…”

I smile. “I’m not going to give up the cleaning. This is all for Joe.”

He nods. “Sure. So it’s for Joe’s trust fund, that’s still good, right?”

It is good. It’s really good. I force this silly mood away. I’m pining before the night’s even over, and it’s stupid, it’s really stupid.

Dean clocks the change in me. He turns to face me and his eyes are wide and curious. “So what’s he like?”

The grin comes from nowhere. “He’s amazing.”

“No danger of going off the guy then.” He pauses. “Spill. What did he do?”

My cheeks burn at the memory. “Gory details?”

“Hell yeah.” He grins. “Gory details.”

I give him gory details. I give him every detail. Every single little squirmy one of them.

He hardly looks away as I recount the whole lot of it, and he’s shifting in his seat, clearing his throat when I talk about how rough he was, how hard he fucked me.

How he took my asshole and made it feel so good.

“Shit,” he says finally. “You really earned your fucking money.”

“I’d do it for free.” I smile. “And you would, too.”

He shrugs. “Don’t know about that,” he says.

But I do.

I’m absolutely positive.Chapter Twenty-ThreeAlexanderI keep that tumbled stone in my pocket right through my Sunday afternoon with the boys. I roll it in my fingers while they eat their shitty burgers. I grip it tight in my palm as I hug them goodbye. And I grip it tight all the way home.

I tell myself I’ll put the stone in the cabinet with the rest of my collection, but it’s on my nightstand when I slip into bed, and back in my pocket in time to leave for work in the morning.

Amy Leigh Randall. Brooklyn Road, EC1.

I have a good memory for detail.

I hold it up to the window in my office. Examine every little inclusion. Angel hair. Blonde strands, like hers.

I remember how she smelled. How her eyelashes fluttered. How her tight little pussy gripped me so perfectly and sucked me dry.

And then I talk some sense into myself.

I shove it away in my desk drawer amongst my gifted fountain pens, just another useless gift that means nothing whatsoever.

So she likes crystals? Big fucking deal. A lot of people like crystals.

She probably thinks they transmit some ethereal energy from Heaven above. She probably rests a piece of malachite on her forehead and chants some zen bullshit to ward of headaches, leaving her little bag of stones under the light of the full moon to charge up their juju.