Breaking Leila (4 page)

We sat back
against the sofa and I pressed my cheek into his chest, his
heartbeat dwindling as he stroked the small of my back. Weird that
he welcomed the intimacy–it wasn’t uncommon, but seemed out of
character for somebody like him.

Adam resisted
the apple, after all.

“I should get
going,” I said reluctantly. “My driver will be waiting.”

Joseph nodded.
“I suppose this will be the last time you see him.”

“I’m
sorry?”

He passed my
glass and I sipped, wide-eyed.

“I want you to
leave your agency. It’s too dangerous for the firm.” He bent his
head to kiss me, tongue still curious. “I’ll fill those last three
slots myself.”

“That’s kind of
you,” I mumbled, almost a bit embarrassed.

“I’m sure I can
tolerate a few more hours of this…but that’s it. I don’t want to
see you on that website again–or any other, for that matter. There
will be no job offer at the end of this seat if you do. Is that
clear?”

“Very,” I
whispered.

“Now. I suppose
you can put some clothes on.”

I smiled as I
rose, rooting around for my underwear.

He disappeared
into the bathroom with the condom, and then hung in the doorway,
watching as I bent to slip on my shoes.

“Do I look
composed?” I asked.

The laughter
fell from him in rough bundles, and those darting octaves were
filthier than half the male escorts I’d worked with. “Not really.”
He pulled on his trousers before walking me to the door. “But I
like that, Leila. Have a safe trip home, okay?”

I stood on
tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Sir.”

“Mmm.” He
pressed his face into my neck before I drew away.

“I’ll see you
at the office,” I murmured.

“At the
office.”

A muffled
 
thud,
 
and then I was alone in the endless hallway of mahogany
doors. Charlotte had emerged in the suite, but now Leila surfaced,
and the sweat clung in pools beneath her clothes. I
trembled.

My first cock
parade.

It wasn’t over.
Not even close.

Chapter 2

The things we
want most might not be things that are best for us.

For example, I
love flapjack. Not jaw-breaking slabs of the stuff, understand, but
the soft, syrupy sludge that melts in the mouth. I like it best
because I don’t actually have to cook anything–just melt, mix and
refrigerate. That kind of gluttony belongs in a Bosch painting, and
that kind of flapjack needs to be afraid of my face. It's good
while I'm eating it; so very bad for me the morning
after. 

I hold flapjack
solely responsible for the cellulite on the backs of my thighs.
Fortunately, if I bend over the right way, it tends to even
out.

In a similar fashion, just because a man is immorally
attractive, it isn’t the best idea to sleep with him–he might be
the boss. Or a co-worker. That could get pretty awkward, couldn’t
it? Especially considering that it’s an even worse idea to sleep
with both
 
at
the same time.

Did I trust
Joseph and Matt? Difficult question. They had taken almost as much
of a risk in hiring me as I had in complying, and they were the
instigators. The villains of the piece. If I’d trusted them before
they put me in such a precarious position, now it melted to a gluey
shadow on my skin, and no matter how much Leila wanted to scrub
herself clean, Charlotte liked to be sticky. To be stuck.

It was never
going to be as simple as that, of course. And no amount of bending
over the right way was going to clear up the mess.

Still. There
was no harm in trying...

* * * *

A clever book once whispered to me that
 
desire fragments the
self
. Charlotte must have been listening
because she knew at once what it meant–to want is never shameless.
Perhaps, too, it hinted at what I have known all along: we never
desire just one thing at once.

I’d never wanted just one person. How could one
be
 
everything
? Tools are made for
varied purpose, and what are human beings if not Swiss army knives?
We hide in pockets–a million cuts swell, awaiting–but it is only
when we lie in the hands of others that we catch the scent of
blood. There, we make our marks. We slice in two.

Selling my body
was one of the sharpest blades of all.

He–for it was always a
 
he
,
though he might bring a
 
she
–wanted to be slaughtered and severed from his daylight self.
Oh, I could lie and say it was about the fuck, that seeds needed
spreading, the beast wanted to hunt. Desire wasn’t about that, not
half the time. Sometimes it was the very thing that kept him
separate from me, and while it never stopped me cutting, it
anesthetized him first. I was the one that got split and skewered,
but they were the ones turned inside out so they bled into
themselves. Eve’s curse spat into Adam. I should have found it
funny, perhaps, but I never hated one of them. Why would I? They
were selfish, cheating, hungry, just plain lonely. Not always
gentle or dying because of it.

They were like
me.

Now I had one
client left, and my strawberry-smattered shoulders were courtesy of
his teeth. I fingered them, loving the way the engorged little
welts sat against white skin. In the mirror, he stood behind
Charlotte and bestowed them all over again, his cock pressed firmly
into the base of her spine. His mouth had been so warm.

Matt’s mouth
had been warmer.

It was going to
be one of those days when desire sniggered over every sensible
thought I had.

* * * *

When I fell,
rain-bludgeoned, into the office, the completed warranties lay on
my desk.

“They’re really
good,” said Poppy, already nosing through them. “Was this you and
Matt?”

“Yes, indeed.”
I prized the folder from her hands to replace it with a soggy
coffee.

“Ooh, Leila.
You spoil me.” Poppy walked to the bin and proceeded to pour the
rain water off the lid.

“Sorry. I left
my umbrella in Starbucks.”

She adjusted
her square-framed glasses. Poppy had the sexy geek thing going on:
pixie hair and sixties shift dresses. She would never have been
without an umbrella–or a Blackberry, a tub of crudités, needle and
thread, blah smug blah. “That would explain your lovely Princess Di
eyes, then. You might want to pop to the bathroom.”

I dropped my
satchel and glanced about. “Isn’t Matt in yet? It’s half
eight.”

“Nope.”

“He’s probably
hung over.” I prayed the rain-flush hid the colour in my
cheeks.

In the
bathroom, I sponged away grey eyes and re-applied mascara. It had
crept in already, the sudden urge to look good at work, being
painfully aware of the way I held myself. The shadow’s voice. In
one night, I had regressed almost ten years and I was back in
school the morning after I’d slept with my first boyfriend. The
absurdity of my actions hung around my neck like a rope.

Matt was at his
desk when I returned. He didn’t look hungover, just fresh faced as
ever, his black hair glossy and damp from the rain.

We exchanged
nervous smiles as we filed into Joseph’s office.

“Mr Gordon.
Miss Vaughn.” Joseph gestured to the couches in the corner without
looking up. Poppy sat poised with a notepad and an impossibly shiny
pen. Bhan, the fourth trainee, made a hurried entrance, and his
briefcase slapped against his legs as he dropped it.

“Late again.”
Joseph shuffled through papers on his desk.

“I’m sorry, Mr
Merchant. It won’t happen again–”

“No.” Joseph
looked up. “It won’t.” He strode over to the couches and slipped a
brown envelope into Bhan’s lap.

Bhan gulped and
hung his head.

“Now then,
children.” Joseph perched on the coffee table, his knee just a
breath’s distance from mine.

Heat swept down
and crushed me in its fist.

“We have some
congratulations to make, first off. Matt did some excellent
networking last night. I think Sole and Pierce may just have come
round to the idea of using us.” He shot Matt a very knowing smile.
“Good job.”

Matt shrugged,
his lips twitching upward.

“Now...with the
paperwork mostly wrapped up, I’m going to take Poppy and Bhan down
to Inland Revenue today for a meeting. Matt, Leila–your drafts have
been excellent lately.” Joseph held up a folder. “There are two
left. That’s one each. Time to go it alone, I think.”

I watched
Poppy’s lips part as he spoke. Had she slept with Joseph, too? She
was often in his office, far more than the rest of us. We joked
about her arse-licking, but after last night, all sorts of
scenarios leaped to life in my head.

Then I
remembered her complaints about the many errands she’d run for
him–picking up stationery and dry cleaning, ordering flowers for
his girlfriend–and pushed the thought from my mind.

“Any
questions?”

I blinked.

“Leila? Do you
have something to add?” Joseph looked amused. The sadist.

“No.” Though
adrenaline made a carousel of his office.

“Well then. Off
you go.” He stood up. “Bhan, you can stay for a minute.”

I shot a
sympathetic look at poor Bhan–the guy had about three different
school drop-offs to make and was forever late. The dreaded brown
envelope twisted in his hands. I followed Matt and Poppy as they
rose.

Bhan skulked
out of the office moments later.

“Is it bad?”
asked Matt.

“First and
final warning.” He sighed. “And a no to the flexible working hours
request.”

“Unlucky. Oh,
well.” Poppy closed her laptop. “Yay for Inland Revenue, though!
More arguing.”

“You like
arguing way too much, Pops.” I grinned.

The corners of
her eyes crinkled behind the glasses. “I don’t think it’s in me to
agree with anyone.”

They left for their visit and Matt and I were alone in the
office, save for Sadie, Joseph’s seen-and-not-heard assistant, at
her desk near the door. We worked in loaded silence; every time I
looked, he pretended to be immersed in files and folders. Either
he’d hidden
 
Rock Sound
 
behind the covers or he felt as weird about all this as I
did.

I was about
ready to break when an email landed in my inbox:

Lunch? M

I looked up and
he shot me a grin. I typed:

Tseki?

A moment
later:

Chervil.
Quieter. Will get Sadie to ring for a table x

The chair
creaked as he sat back, hands folded behind his head. He bit his
lip. My stomach flipped. I’d been in his lap just hours ago.

“Well?” he
said.

“Around
one?”

“Sounds good to
me.” He wandered over to Sadie’s desk and bent to talk to her, his
hair falling into his eyes.

Ah. With Matt
and Joseph in such close proximity, a net hung between them and I
sagged as I stuck to it, exhausted by lust. There was something
about the way these two men whom I knew–one fairly well, the other
only in office hours–had breached the walls of the citadel and last
night, paid me for…well. A fuck. Agitated and restless, I
re-started the new deed about five times.

One o’clock rolled around, and I slipped off to check that my
damp hair hadn’t exploded into something from an early Bon Jovi
video. Matt waited at the door with my coat, and relief brewed. I
could
 
talk
 
to him.

I grimaced at
the downpour through the glass doors. “Have you got an
umbrella?”

“I grew up on a farm, Leila. A bit of rain doesn’t scare me.”
He pulled a
 
Financial Times
 
from under his jacket. “But
this thing has its uses, eh?”

I arranged it
over my head and we hurried around the corner to the
restaurant.

The hostess
showed us to a quiet table. As she poured water into goblets, we
looked out to a window alive with boxes of swaying flowers and the
shining colours of drenched cars. Matt requested a bottle of
English wine.

“This isn’t
like you.” I gestured to the crisp table covers and myriad of
cutlery. “Is there a reason we’re here?”

He gazed at me
from across the table. “You know there is.”

“Do we really
have to talk about this? I mean, it hasn’t changed anything. It’s
not like we’re about to do it again. It was fun, right? Just a bit
of fun.”

The plum velvet menu fanned before his face, his fingers
braced across it like fireworks. “You’re right. It was fun.” He
looked me sharply in the eye. “But it
 
has
 
changed things, hasn’t
it?”

The wine
arrived, our orders were taken–we both went for a tart with
asparagus–and then we were alone with only awkwardness for
company.

“See?” he said.
“It shouldn’t be like this between us. We need to clear the
air.”

“And we
couldn’t have done that at the sushi place?”

“No. Not
there.”

“So what’s to
say, then?” Denial was prickly, the sting awkwardly familiar.

“Actually, I
wanted to ask.” He smiled shyly. “How would I go about hiring you
again?”

Oh, fuck
.
 
He wasn’t really going down
this road, was he?

“I’m kind of
not available anymore,” I mumbled.