'Get your people to call his people!' suggested Jade desperately.
'Nah. It's no big deal. You girls can sell your stories, right? You'll make enough to live on while you look for another job. You might get lucky, get some offers. Way I see it, I've just done you a favour.'
This was not the way Maria and Jade were seeing it, though.
Still beached on her beer keg, Maria speculated on the effect the Sunday splash might have on her poor old Colombian mother, while Jade worried that she might never get to realise her dream of working with children.
'We really have to tell Chase,' I decided.
'He'll kill us!'
'He'll kill you anyway, once the story breaks. And if I've kept it from him, he'll kill me too. Two deaths are better than three.'
'Fuck you, Sophie!' exclaimed Jade.
'Yeah, well, a little less fucking and we wouldn't be in this mess. I really don't see another way. At least Chase might know some people; perhaps he can do something to stop the story coming out. Don't you think he's a man with connections?'
'I suppose,' said Maria doubtfully.
'It won't save your jobs, but he'll do whatever it takes to avoid bad publicity for the hotel. At least your mother might avoid a heart attack.'
'Yeah. I guess you're right,' sighed Jade.
'You know it,' I soothed. 'Come on. Let's break the news.'
I led the disgraced maids out through the bar, avoiding Lloyd's eye. His voice arrested our progress.
'Are you going to talk to Dr Rock?'
'No, we're going to talk to Chase.'
'Seriously?' I looked at him. He was wiping a glass with a tea-towel. He managed to make wiping a glass with a tea-towel look sexy. In a hateful way.
'No, I'm joking. This is all just a massive piss-take, after all.'
'I mean, Chase will sack the lot of you. I really do advise you to try and get Dr Rock's people to lean on the papers first.'
'Chase,' I said glacially, pushing my shoulders back, 'would never sack me.'
Lloyd didn't move a muscle, the tea-towel and glass held in suspended animation for the longest seconds on record. 'Oh, Sophie,' was all he said, and the affectionate sorrow of it almost made me leap over the bar and push him over.
'Merry Christmas.'
The words came from the region of my thighs, and in my half-awakened state I wondered if I was still dreaming. But when I looked down, there was a messed-up head beneath the sheet, tired eyes still capable of mischief. He smiled, then I felt a whiskery prickle on the lips of my sex, and then I had the longest, lushest morning licking of my life. He was note-perfect, seeming to know my secret buttons as well as I did myself, pushing every one in series, at just the right moment.
Once my orgasm had washed over me, he flipped me over on to my stomach and pushed at me from behind. I was quite chafed from my previous exertions, but he was careful, keeping the movements small, harvesting my juices with fingers and cockhead and using them to lubricate my well-used opening.
'Mmm, I bet this is sore,' he said, gaining an inch of ground, his bulbous head now through the portal.
'A bit,' I hissed, screwing up my eyes. But once he was a little further down, the sting became sweet and I opened for him despite myself.
'How about here?' His thumb against my puckered anus; I whimpered as he broke the ring.
'Yes, that's sore,' I confirmed.
'You can't say you haven't been thoroughly seen to, can you, Sophie?'
'No. Oh.'