The Business of Pleasure (19 page)

‘Why …’ Charlotte tried to phrase it delicately, then gave up. ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Have you all to himself? Is that what you want? Do you want a lovely little romance with our Mr Bryant? Hand-in-hand down the Strand? Flowers and dinners and visits to galleries? A little house in Barnes or Putney? Marriage, children, pensions?’

‘You talk as if all of these are bad things. They aren’t. Why do you think they are?’

‘They aren’t meant for you, or me. They probably are for Bryant though. He’s so dreadfully suburban at heart.’

Charlotte was shocked at the naked animosity in Collins’s words, and yet she was excited by it too. Excited by the clear signs of jealousy it displayed.

‘You think he’s your … rival?’

‘He is my rival.’

‘I thought you had a partnership.’

‘We did. And now he is my rival. He has made himself so, by bringing you here, in secret, without my knowledge.’

‘But you came here in secret without his knowledge too.’

‘With Lady Markham.’ Collins’s waved a hand in disgusted dismissal. ‘She is getting rogered by some person done up as the Marquis de Sade. She is quite happy. Bryant would neither care, nor want to know about that.’

‘Whereas you do care, and you do want to know, about him coming here with me?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘I think you should tell me.’

‘I think we should go.’

‘I don’t want to. I want to find Bryant.’

‘Then it is him that you want?’

‘No, I didn’t say that! I just think … can’t I want you both?’

‘Not any more.’

Collins turned to leave. Charlotte leapt up behind him, pulling on her heels, reluctant to let him leave thinking that she had somehow rejected him.

‘Please! I don’t want to … split you up.’

Collins turned to her, and his eyes behind the mask glittered venomously.

‘We aren’t lovers,’ he said.

‘I don’t want this! I don’t want … what we have … to be disturbed. I don’t want you two at each other’s throats.’

‘So what
do
you want, Charlotte? Or, more to the point,
who
do you want?’

‘I want what I’ve got! What I had! I think.’

She stopped abruptly. Was that true? Wasn’t it the case that a seed of resentment had been creeping into flower inside her – nagging worries about her lovers’ near-anonymity, about their intentions, about never knowing where they lived or with whom. She did want more, if she was honest. But how much more? And with both of them, or just one? The questions tangled in her head like thorns, and she could not say any more.

‘You think? Better be sure, Charlotte. Because nothing stays the same, you know. Change is part of life. Are you coming with me?’

‘I can’t leave without … wait. Let me just tell Bryant I’m leaving.’

‘No. Come with me now, or don’t.’

The split second of hesitation was enough to give Collins his chance to turn on his heel and disappear through the bead curtain, towards the Exit.

The distorted music was too loud now, and the club smelled of sweat and rancid perfume. Everywhere people gyrated, whether in dance or sex, in a manner that seemed to Charlotte now ludicrously overwrought. Nothing of intimacy or affection existed here, and she had lost the taste for it as quickly as a piece of gum has its flavour chewed out. She would find Bryant and tell him what had happened.

When she found him, he was sitting on a divan with a rather glum expression, being desultorily sucked off by an eighteenth century courtesan.

‘Ah, Charlotte,’ he said, seemingly able to converse effortlessly mid-fellatio. ‘I thought you’d gone for second helpings with that pirate.’

‘I, um, no. That pirate,’ she said, unsure how to broach the subject, especially with a man who had his cock in some woman’s mouth. ‘Sorry, sir, but I think we should talk. It’s important.’

‘Important, eh? Sorry, dear.’ He tugged his cock out of the woman’s mouth, leaving her to splutter indignantly. ‘Thank you so very much, but something’s come up. Please don’t take it personally. You’re, ah, a highly accomplished woman. Good evening.’

Outside, in the cool fresh air, Charlotte walked with Bryant over to the neighbouring park, finding a secluded bench in the thick of the bushes, which rustled with nocturnal activity.

‘Why have you brought me to the local cottage, Charlotte?’ asked Bryant, bemused. ‘If you wanted to watch me with another man, there was provision for that in the club.’

‘Would you have done it?’ asked Charlotte, momentarily intrigued by the scenario to the extent of forgetting why she was there.

‘Would I have? I have done. Not with Collins. His tastes are too close to mine. But certainly with other men, particularly when I was younger – mostly letting submissive young men suck my cock, though I have gone … further. On occasion.’

‘I didn’t realise.’ Charlotte put a hand on Bryant’s thigh, expecting him to cover it with one of his own, but he was unusually unresponsive. ‘Did you … enjoy your evening?’

‘Honestly, Charlotte? Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not as much as you did, at any rate. You and that highwayman …’

‘Are you jealous?’ Charlotte could suddenly see the truth in all that Collins had said; it was like sands shifting. Everything was different. How had she not seen this from the start? ‘You are, aren’t you?’

‘You’re precious to me, Charlotte.’

‘So why … don’t you show it? Or tell me? Or something?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Collins.’

‘Yes. Got it in one. Collins.’

‘You know … he was there tonight. He was the pirate.’

Even in the darkness, Charlotte could see that Bryant paled.

‘Are you joking? Please don’t joke about Collins.’

‘I’m serious. He was the pirate. And … he’s quite angry. That you took me there, without letting him know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what it is that makes it such a big deal but … I don’t think things are going to be the same any more.’

‘No,’ whispered Bryant, staring straight ahead. ‘Things can’t be the same any more.’

I
T HAPPENS EVERY TIME
I smell engine oil, which makes taking the car for its MOT more hazardous than you might think. I have to inhale it deeply, and the corrosive petrochemical tang makes my heart sing and my clit grow fat. Everything in the garage makes me think of sex, from the jacks to the girlie calendars to the filthy rags, and once we come to the man in dirty overalls … well. Strong stubby fingers coated with black, greasy oil; biceps taut and gleaming underneath the heavy-duty material; big clumpy work boots; hair greased back out of the way; smudges on his honest, sweaty face. There is only one thing better than that for me, and that is a man in motorcycle leathers. Both would be ideal, but either would do. Either type of rough and ready, no-nonsense, straight on the level shag partner would fit my bill. But I seem to attract rich, ambitious men. Men in suits. Men who buy flowers and dinner. Never a man who flips me over the bonnet and ploughs right in, knowing what I need, knowing the shortcut that leads to split thighs and grunting, melting orgasms. I have tried to broach the subject of purchasing a motorcycle with a couple of past boyfriends, but both blanched and wittered about the danger and the expense. When I tried to set them on the path to discovering their inner macho brute, they were diverted by theatre tickets and champagne picnics.

What can a girl do? I’ve tried fabricating ridiculous problems with my car – but the mechanics at my local garage are such gents, and the one I usually deal with is older than my father. I’ve tried hanging out at the local bikers pub, but my friend said the smell of rancid scrumpy made her feel sick, and I did see her point. She thinks I should get a bike of my own and join some chapter of something – but I don’t want to be some Hell’s Angel’s ‘old lady’. I don’t want a ‘scene’ to join. It would be ruinous for my future career, for one thing! I just want an honest, hard shag from a hot man in leather. What on earth is so strange in that?

I suppose The Honourable Lucinda Ffolkes-Worthington is not supposed to have such appetites. But let me tell you now, no Eton boy in a Gieves & Hawkes suit is going to hit that sweet, secret spot at the core of me. I am out for a rough man or two, and I mean to get them.

So thank heavens for cousin Drusilla! She has saved the day by introducing me to two fellows that she supposes can help. And Mr Collins and Mr Bryant do seem to understand what it is that I propose. Dru swears that they are the very souls of discretion and nothing will ever get out – and I certainly don’t need a scandal, in advance of my possible selection for Great Gatherington at the next election.

So here I am. Primed and ready. I have driven to a remote and obscure town where nobody could possibly know or recognise me, and now I am in the car park toilets, dressing for the downest and dirtiest day of my life. Discarded on the floor lie my Jack Wills striped shirt and sensible pencil skirt, my tan tights and ballet flats. And, if I’m going to carry out this brief to the letter, I really need to take off my bra and pants set too. God, can I really go through with it? The garage is only a short walk down the main street of this one-horse town, but all the same …
people
will see me. Daytime people, I remind myself, seeking courage. Not working, city people who matter. Just old men and young mums and people on benefits in a distant town I’ll never revisit. Nobody, really. Besides, I’m not going to look like myself. Even if they do see me on
Question Time
one day, they won’t recognise the soignée, elegant woman on screen – what they will see today is a trampy piece of trash, signalling the generally available state of her genitals no less blatantly than if she wore nothing at all.

So off comes the underwear, and on slides the tight white lycra bandeau that calls itself a skirt until it stretches so perilously across my rump that the crack of my arse is almost visible beneath the thin second skin. There is no question of bending over in this thing without flashing my lady parts to all and sundry; I am going to have to watch how I walk. Over my bare breasts, I put a wholly inadequate thin white vest top with spaghetti straps. It outlines my tits with unforgiving accuracy, and the slightest chill leads to nipple-shaped dents in the well-worn fabric. I buckle a hideous purple vinyl belt, almost wider than the skirt, around my waist to make it clear that, just because I’m wearing white there is no need to associate me with anything pure or virginal. I cinch it in tightly, then I go for the finishing touches. It took me ages to decide which looked cheaper – stilettos or white gogo boots – but in the end I had to go for the boots, since the combination of white boots and pale bare legs is such a classic of tramp style. Now I need to brush out and back comb my hair from polished blonde chignon to wild porn-star shagginess, apply buckets of red lipstick, blusher and nail varnish, and I’m all set for my promenade.

I poke my head out of the door – the toilet block is a dismal cement bunker at the back of a cinder car park. Nobody else is around, so I begin to crunch my way across the expanse, over to the misleadingly-named High Street – at this point, I realise the wisdom of rejecting the stilettos, for the ground is rough and bumpy and would have made the walk tricky. All the same, I rather dawdle across, dreading the moment I might meet another face, wondering what its reaction will be to this human version of a blow-up doll in clothes that make the word skimpy look like an understatement.

I don’t have to wait long to find out. Two teenage girls, playing hooky in their vamped-up school uniforms, stare at me unabashedly, forgetting to swallow their mouthfuls of Diet Coke in the stunned moment.

‘Who the fook does she think she is? Lady Gaga?’ I hear one of them say before they both burst into wild giggling fits behind me. I have no time to process my slightly flattered reaction to this – Lady Gaga is rather
popular
, isn’t she? – before I am caught in a hard rain of wolf whistles, coming from the workmen digging up the other side of the road.

Oh. I stop and smile back at them, noting their dirty hands and their brawny forearms. Shame those high visibility jackets are so very anti-sexy. All the same, I feel now that I have got the look right and, where The Hon Lucinda might have marched over and castigated their shameful objectification of women, Tart Lucinda puts a hand on a hip and tries to perfect her bottom-wiggle as she moves away from them. Only three hundred yards to the garage. Nearly there.

I pass only an elderly gentleman on a mobility scooter and a pair of pushchair-pushers on the remaining leg of my walk of shame. I worry about the elderly gentleman’s cardio-vascular health, though he seems to take me in his stride; indeed, it is the young mums who seem affected the most, pursing lips and clicking tongues. I want to defend myself. It’s just sex, darlings, the very same thing that filled those pushchairs for you.

‘It’s eleven o’clock in the morning!’ one of them exclaims in my wake.
Much too early to be on the prowl. Only the lowest whore would be walking the streets at this time.
The thought pleases me. I am the lowest whore. And here is the garage.

A sign, rotating in the wind, declares that the place is closed, but I know better. I knock on the side door, breathing in the acrid fumes, already feeling that tingling below. My nipples harden beneath the thin vest and I fluff up my hair, probably more nervous than I planned to be, but determined to carry this off like a pro. Lucinda Ffolkes- Worthington does not let silly things like nerves stand in her way. Not at the party conference, not in a garage full of sex maniacs. Nerves are for little people.

The door is opened and a tall, bronzed man in a stained white overall towers in its frame. I think I actually lick my lips. Just what I ordered: a strapping lad with the shoulders of Atlas and the face of a Michelangelo sculpture, in dirty work gear. I bow to the genius of Collins and Bryant, and simper up into the man’s handsome face.

He raises an eyebrow and his smile is distinctly salacious.

‘Hello,’ he says, looking me up and down. That is what they call a frank gaze, I suspect. He addresses my nipples, asking them, ‘How can I help you?’

‘I’m afraid my car has broken down,’ I lie, leaning a hip on the door jamb, suggestively I hope. ‘I’m all alone in a strange town and I’ve no money and no idea what to do to fix it. Please, I’ll do anything if you’ll help me out.’

And I will. Anything at all! It’s all I can do not to lay my hands on him then and there. Behind him, lurking behind various broken vehicles and pieces of machinery, I spy two more mechanics, both looking on with lustful curiosity.

‘Come in,’ says Mr Handsome. ‘We’ll talk terms.’

He ushers me in and I cross the concrete floor to a doorless car one of the mechanics has been spray painting. ‘Mind that, the paint’s wet,’ he cautions.

‘I bet that’s not the only thing that is,’ says his friend slyly and they chuckle, making no attempt to be polite. Instead of leading me to a chair, Mr Handsome makes me stop dead in the centre of the floor while he leans back on a plywood desk at the side of the room, checking me out from head to toe.

‘So you want us to help you, but you can’t pay us?’ he says eventually, once I feel that I’ve been comprehensively pawed and felt up by their three pairs of eyes.

‘I haven’t got any money,’ I reiterate.

‘You’ve got something else you can use as payment though,’ says Mr Handsome, brutally honest, making me gush between my thighs. ‘You aren’t some vestal virgin, are you, dressed like that?’

‘Do you mean …?’ I stage-gasp.

‘You know what I mean.’ He beckons me with a finger. ‘Come here. Let me have a proper look at the goods.’

‘You want me to …?’ I do as he says, standing close to him, my bare knees brushing his rough serge-clad ones.

‘Come and take a look, lads.’ He calls his minions over and they crowd me, three hungry men slavering over their lunch. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t want it,’ he scoffs, and his hand, big and meaty, cups a breast, squeezing it, getting a smudge of oil on my white top. ‘You’d love it, wouldn’t you? Three big men at once. You look like the type.’

‘What do you say, luv?’ breaks in one of the others, a curly-haired gypsyish-looking man with a silver crucifix in one ear. Mr Handsome is stroking my stiff nipples with his thumbs and my knees are beginning to give. The gipsy-man puts a hand on my bottom and rubs it. ‘You want to swap parts and labour for your pussy? It’s wet already, I can smell it. It needs a cock, doesn’t it?’ He holds me against him with a sinewy forearm pressing into that ugly purple belt. I feel how hard he is beneath the uniform. There is going to be no dainty foreplay or delicate courtship here. I am revved up, almost ready to go already. It has taken so little! I feel I ought to slow it down a little, but how?

‘It needs three cocks,’ says the third man, a pretty blond thing who seems to model his look on David Beckham. ‘Don’t you reckon?’ He joins his friend at my rear and puts his mouth on my bare shoulder, sucking and nipping at it, moving up to my neck. Slowing this down won’t be an option. I see that now.

‘It’s a deal,’ I say faintly, and the three pairs of hands set to work on me, pulling down my vest front, letting my tits loose in the petrol-laden air. My skirt – such as it is – is harshly yanked up over my knickerless bottom and pussy, so that hands can forage and fumble and explore to their heart’s content. I am able to stand only because I am surrounded and propped up by three overalled bodies, pressing into me, three hard cocks denting my nude flesh, six hands plucking and probing, three mouths biting and marking me. I know my legs are split wide, held apart while some of thirty fingers take a slide up inside, adding my juices to the grease. My nipples are sore now, pinched and licked and cold and throbbing and my backside is being pummelled by great fists and hands, used as a kind of stress ball, helplessly mauled this way and that with strength much greater than I would ever be able to resist. I am helpless, completely helpless, yet wanting no help, just losing myself in this enormity.

‘She’s ready,’ says Mr Handsome, who seems to be in charge. ‘I’ll go first. Bend her over the bonnet of the Honda and spread her legs for me, Sean.’

Sean, the blond, supports me over to a bright yellow car – not the recently painted one – and lets me fall gratefully over its bonnet, my breasts squashed into the cold shiny surface. He nudges my feet apart with his, taking the opportunity to run his hands up my damp thighs and give my clit a little tweak. ‘She sure is ready,’ he confirms with a laugh. ‘Horny fucking slut. Go to work on her, boss.’

Sean and the gipsyish man gather round to watch while Mr Handsome appears behind me, unzipping his overall and letting it drop around his ankles, then adjusting whatever clothing he was wearing underneath before I feel his legs, hard and hairy, take their position between mine. His hands alight on my arse, kneading it, spreading the cheeks, giving him the optimum view of what is waiting for him in payment. ‘You’re going to get it hard,’ he warns me. ‘Brace yourself.’

He is in me before I can count to three, his hot length filling me to the hilt in a single stroke. Now I am here, in the heart of my fantasy, bent over and fucked in a garage while hot men in overalls look on and clap and shout encouragement.

I do my best to savour the moment, but Mr Handsome is intent on putting me through my paces, thrusting with sharp, swift urgency, as far and as fast as he can. He grunts with each thrust and his broad hands fall on my rump, hard, causing it to warm up and glow along with my well-worked pussy.

‘This what you wanted, hmm? Coming to my garage looking like a two-bit whore? This must be what you wanted?’

‘Yes, yes,’ I confess, each ‘yes’ a puff of winded breath as I bump and grind on the car.

‘Getting fucked now, good and proper. And my mates are waiting their turn. You’ll be walking like John Wayne when you leave here, babe.’

He grasps the inside of my thighs and pulls them upward, finding an angle that hits the g-spot with frictive precision. One hand finds my clit, strumming in time with each hard hump. ‘Watch her, boys, she’ll be coming any minute now. Watch the dirty slut come for me.’