He had underestimated Kat, he realised now. This was, just as she had said, the simple use of his body for their pleasure. He was their fucktoy, nothing more than that. His needs came a very poor third in the pecking order.
Kat continued to manipulate the head of his cock until she climaxed again, rubbing the purple tip against her clit to prolong the sensation. Kitty came moments later, bouncing up and down on his aching, overworked jaw, smearing her essences all over his face.
'Mmm, thanks very much, Lincoln,' purred Kitty and Kat, taking a breather on the exercise mats, sated and satisfied in every possible way.
'Please!' he wailed, trying to direct their eyes to his poor untended cock while he lay in bondage on the weight bench. 'You can't leave me like this. I need to come so bad, babes.'
'Put him out of his misery, Kitty,' said Kat. Kitty looked a little stunned for a second, then she giggled when Kat handed her the crumpled sweatband. She hopped up and stuffed it back in Lincoln's dry, pussy-flavoured mouth. 'Shower?'
The two women headed for Lincoln's former favourite seduction bunker, laughing all the way.
Apparently, it was Chase who found him there. Kat messaged him, so Lincoln faced the unutterable nightmare of being found, ankles and wrists bound, mouth gagged and redolent of cunnilingus, cock at full mast, by the hotel manager. I thought Kat went a little too far there, but it certainly seemed to have an effect. For about half a day, he raged about going to the tabloids, but they made it up to him that evening with champagne, muffins and the kind of threesome he had had in mind, and eventually he conceded that he ought to start treating women with a bit more respect.
So it's a new improved Lincoln we lust after in the gym these days. A humble and mannerly Lincoln, a considerate and gracious Lincoln. He still seduces girls, but he's nice to them the next day too. And until he settles down – which is more of a possibility than it ever was before – he has a guaranteed ménage-à-trois every time Kitty and Kat are in town.
The Manager #3 (Chasing Chase)
There are no photographs on his desk.
I never have to transfer non-business calls to him.
He has never asked me to pop out in my lunch hour and buy flowers or chocolates. He has never asked me to cover for him in any way.
To all intents and purposes, Chase appears to be a man with no private life. His public persona is who he is - the urbane, efficient, diplomatic and charismatic manager of the Hotel Luxe Noir. Sometimes I try a bit of fishing. I might ask him about his annual week of holiday - the only leave he takes. He will tell me where he is going, but never with whom, if anyone. I offer to book flights, but he always has everything in hand. He is a man who has everything in hand; that is who he is. That is what I like about him.
When he works late, late hours, I sometimes wonder aloud if his dinner will be burnt. He smiles politely and doubts it.
Further canvassing of staff opinion confirms that not one of us knows a thing about him beyond his managerial capabilities. We know he has rooms in the hotel, but we don't know where they are - any crisis is referred to him via the Reception Desk, and he arrives at the scene minutes later, as elegantly groomed as ever regardless of the hour. I have tried to locate his suite, but it is difficult to follow Chase without him realising it. He has a sixth sense and eyes in the back of his head. He is a phenomenon. He is the sexiest phenomenon in the world.
I wrestle with his utter enigma until I can no longer stand it. I have to know something about this man who pays me and directs me and engages me and obsesses me, beyond what brand of suit he favours and whether he prefers sushi to sashimi for a working lunch. I decide that a touch of espionage is in order. And when better to start than the mysterious monthly Wednesday assignation he never fails to attend.
Is it a dangerous liaison? A twelve-step programme of some kind? Access visits to a child? My brain works double-overtime; it is clear that, unless I find out, I will end up in some obscure retreat for the terminally lovelorn. Half of me is hoping I will uncover something that will prove his inaccessibility to me – a gay lover, a crack habit, membership of a terrorist cell. The other half rather fervently hopes not. I want it to end, but I never want it to end. Oh, my head hurts.
Jade is already at my station behind the desk when he leaves the building. He gives us a glance of reproof, assuming that we are wasting time with idle gossip, then his tall, impeccably dressed frame disappears through the revolving glass.
'OK then,' whispers Jade complicitly. I have told her that I am going to a secret audition for The X Factor. That girl will believe any old rhubarb. I wink at her and race across the shining tiles in my only pair of flat-soled shoes, primed for pursuit. Through the glass I can see him on the pavement, frowning at an iron-grey sky before putting up an umbrella. Oh! He means to walk. I banish exciting 'follow that cab' scenarios from my disappointed imagination and wait until he has set off towards the park gates at the end of the street before slipping out in his wake.
The pavement is helpfully crowded, although it is still easy to make out the back of Chase's perfectly groomed head as he cuts a swathe through the masses. His stride is swift and long-legged, and I have to half-jog to keep him in sight, weaving between charity muggers and school groups until I make it to the park.
Will he meet someone here? Is it that simple? Will he take a girl out on the lake in a pedalo? Or is it more of a behind-the-bushes affair?
Neither, it seems, for he skirts the neat flowerbeds and fountains until he has reached the opposite side, whose exit feeds directly into the seedy fleshpots of town.
It is raining steadily by the time I leave the innocent freshness of the park and head into the narrow neon-lit streets. The lowering sky makes the green and red fluoresce all the brighter, reflected in the puddles on the uneven tarmac. I splash a foot in a backwards-flickering 'GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!', wishing I had a little leisure time to inspect more thoroughly the dark doorways and blanked-out shop windows of this district.
Chase seems, for a panicky moment, to have disappeared, before I too happen on the tiny alleyway he has turned into. On the corner, a loud and bustling café in the style of a 1950s American diner stands invitingly, but beyond it things get substantially murkier. The first doorway leads into a tiny, cobwebby shop packed with dog-eared paperbacks. The display in the grimy window is of titles like Lord Fotherington's Folly and Lashes for Lucinda. The kind of thing I would read myself, lent a sinister air by the setting. The second doorway frames a surly-looking girl in fishnets and some kind of dress made from shiny plasticky stuff. She snaps her chewing gum as I go past and prods the door jamb with one enormous platform sole. The buzzing sign above the third doorway promises a burlesque show. Or rather, a buleque shw, since three of the letters fail to light.
None of these doorways are Chase's final destination. No, he leaves the alleyway, passes the back of a terrace of buildings, finally finding the one he wants, and ascends a rickety fire escape to the top floor. I stand in the shadows, watch him knock, watch him being admitted – without seeing who did it – and watch the door close behind him. The prospect of climbing the fire escape myself and possibly being caught peeking on it and thence tossed to my death does not really appeal. Instead, I try to find a way to the front of the building, to see if there is an alternative entrance.
It takes a while, but I soon find myself staring up at the façades of the line of long, lean five-storey buildings. A hostel, a sex shop, a jazz bar, another hostel and . . . this was the one. A peep show. Oh, God, I can't go in there. Can I?
Presumably Chase is not actually here for the peep show, but it seems a fairly safe bet that the rest of the building is in use as a brothel. I feel a little sick. My antics in the hotel bar are one thing, but who knows whether the girls walled up inside this gloomy tenement have any say in who they fuck or how they do it. Do they cater to a specialist taste? I do not want to even think about this.
Can I just turn and leave and never know? Can I sit at the Reception Desk every fourth Wednesday afternoon for evermore, wondering where he is, what or whom he is doing? No. I can't. There is nothing for it.
A narrow corridor, fustily decorated in ancient textured wallpaper, leads to a blank-eyed tattooed man, sitting at a table with a cash register on it.
'You here about the job, love?' he asks, obviously thinking I'm a little smartly dressed for a peep show.