Hard Bargains

‘Not that that should be any bar to your conquest,’ she says, breezily. ‘Although didn’t you once tell me that any woman who targeted a married man must be some kind of destructive bitch who can only validate her own worth by stealing the prize from the arms of a defeated wife?’

‘Something like that,’ I concede. ‘Married couples do seem like very soft targets. And it can’t say much for your self-worth if you are so scared of finding someone who will commit to you that you choose someone who has already committed elsewhere.’

It does sound a bit lame when said out loud. We two trample over all-comers for a living. We have frantic lives unsuited to steady, stable relationships – here one minute, there the next, away often. We work hard, so when we get to play we do it hard, fast and loose. Most of my pleasure comes from people I will not know for very long, maybe only for one night or two, so it can seem a touch foolish to avoid husbands just because I am not the one they choose to go home to. But I have my principles. I want to be first best, not second best. Always. He is gorgeous though, I cannot deny it. Just my type – a type so very rare to find, one my instincts tell me I must not let go a-begging.

‘Yet still you are sizing him up,’ Meredith says, archly.

He is looking at me now, holding my gaze shyly but for longer. And it is me he is looking at, not her. He doesn’t even cast the most fleeting of glances her way. That has my blood fizzing with triumph. I could almost cast aside my rules about husbands just to seduce him in front of my rival and shove it down her throat.

‘It’s the eyes,’ I say. ‘Or maybe the shoulders.’

‘He is certainly a prize. Have you thought about what kind of a cock he has?’

In the few conversations I’ve had with her it is clear that neither of us ever has any intention of mincing our words. It’s just not our style and it would be a pointless façade. I think there is an unsaid competition to try to shock each other, to be more blatant and worldly-wise than the other. Being the coolest chick of the bunch gets people jumping for you and has the clients eating out of your hand. So I don’t want her to think she can faze me by so openly discussing the private parts of our fellow guests. I’ve got to be all over this cock-thinking situation. One-upmanship is always the name of the game between cheetahs. It’s how we survive.

‘Of course I have,’ I reply, with little batting of eyelids. ‘Long and smooth and with a nice gentle upward curve to it. Uncircumcised. Iron-hard and hot against the palm. Delicious to suck upon and not too fat, either – I do love to take them all.’

I thought to stun her with the depth of my description but her eyes just glaze slightly and her smile spreads wider.

‘The perfect cock, perhaps?’ she says, as much to herself as to me. ‘I wonder what you would give for it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

I’m momentarily thrown again and she seizes upon it, fixing me with one of those confident looks that sees clients caving. She spells it out slowly and coolly, making each word count.

‘I said I wonder what you would give to have his cock inside you.’

The words hit me both in the mind and in the puss, scoring heavily. I can’t help the images or the pleasurable, needy twinge it produces between my thighs. My face probably gives me away but I need to fight back.

‘Give?’ I say, trying my best to scoff. ‘I never have to give anything for my pleasure. That must just be you.’

She doesn’t bite.

‘Then you will take him?’ she says, still as cool as a befridged cucumber.

As well as the extra rude images she knows this will give me, I can see the challenge in her eyes. It’s all about competition between the two of us: who is seen to come out on top; who can nail the biggest contracts in the quickest time with the lowest overheads. We are the two biggest guns – in my estimation, at least.

‘He is married,’ I say, not to fall into any trap she might be laying.

‘But what if that didn’t matter?’ she replies, and I can see the cogs of that swift predator brain whirring. ‘What if his wife wanted you to have him? What if I knew, in fact, that this was precisely the case?’

Now she has got me a little stunned, and she’s sticking out that sumptuous cleavage of hers even more towards me, as if to hit me from all angles.

‘And how the fuck would you know something like that?’

‘Oh, I know his wife very well indeed – very well. You know her too, as it happens. In fact, you are looking at her right now.’

The triumphant smile spreads to its widest. She’s got me more than a little stumped. She looks deadly serious too.

‘What? But you can’t be. You’re a …’

‘I’m a what? A free-thinker who finds beauty in all forms irresistible? A hedonist who believes that pleasure and jealousy are the worst kind of bedfellows? Is that what you were going to say?’

Well, it’s not like it couldn’t be true. I don’t really know her at all. She is certainly capable of ensnaring someone like him. Once she had her claws in there’d be no hope for him. I just didn’t have him down as her type. Or any him for that matter.

‘Strange that there is no ring on your finger,’ I remark, ‘since you are married.’

‘Only an amateur would go into the negotiations we do with a ring on. I want those fuckers wrapped around my finger, not some gold band. I want them thinking I am a prize they can win. I’m hardly going to do that by advertising that I am already taken, am I? So I wear my ring on a neck chain. I can’t be giving you the upper hand over me, can I?’