‘“Perhaps one day, if you’re a very, very good girl, I will.”
‘I moan. You aren’t going to touch me! I can hardly bear it. “Not today?”
‘“No, not today, Sophie.”
‘You can see how wet I am and you comment on it, in detail, at length, then you speculate about how tight I would be, how hard I would grip your cock. You make sneery remarks about how many other men have had me, but I feel too wildly turned on to be hurt by it.
‘You make me lift my hips so you can get a good look at my bum. You make me spread the cheeks and you home in close, checking my tight hole, asking me how often I’ve had anal sex and whether I enjoy it.
‘I have to confess that I do, and you aren’t surprised. You make me describe in detail all the things different men have done to my arse until I can barely get the words out any more because I’m so desperate for you to fuck me.
‘But you don’t have any pity and you make me tell you my favourite positions, my best sexual encounters, whether I like thick cocks or long ones, whether I like to be held down, whether I like it from behind, whether I’ve ever been double-penetrated, what’s my record for the number of men who’ve fucked me in one day.
‘Question after question rains down on me in your unholy aphrodisiac of a voice until I’m squirming on the desk.
‘Then you command me to touch myself, to make myself come, so you can see how I do it.
‘I’m massively relieved, but at the same time disappointed, because I want your fingers all over me, so much, so very much. But I lick my fingertips and reach down, getting to it as quickly as I can, rubbing my clit, pushing the fingers of my other hand up inside my slick cunt.
‘You keep up a running commentary all the time, telling me how wet I am, how fat my clit is, how much I need it, how you aren’t surprised I need all those men because I have the hungriest cunt you’ve ever seen.
‘When I come, you touch me, finally – putting your hands on my ankles to stop me kicking. I feel completely under your control and I say your name, over and over.
‘You tell me I’m a good girl.’
Throughout this monologue I have deliberately avoided Chase’s eye, going into a kind of trance to overcome the inherent difficulty of narrating a fantasy to its object.
I turn to him once I have finished speaking. He has one hand on his crotch and there is sweat on his upper lip.
‘Strange, I suppose, that you never touched me in that one,’ I say. ‘But it was an early version.’
‘I want to ask you those questions,’ he says, in a low, intent rasp. ‘I want you to answer them.’
‘But it’s your turn now. Your turn to tell me a story of what you would have liked to do to me, if you only you weren’t so bloody self-controlled.’
He shuts his eyes and screws up his face for a moment, regaining some of that aforementioned self-control, which seems to be on sabbatical tonight.
‘I hired you because you brought men to the hotel. I knew what you were and, at first, I must admit, I feared for you. I thought you’d get into some dangerous predicament or other. Occasionally, I’d fantasise about rescuing you. Sometimes I’d fantasise about being the person who put you in the dangerous predicament. So you see, my feelings for you weren’t straightforward. Sometimes I liked you for your fearless sexual adventuring, and sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I thought that somebody ought to stop you, and that somebody ought to be me. But it couldn’t be me. I was in no position to offer you what you sought.’
‘But you thought about it?’
‘Often. You troubled me.’
‘Troubled you?’
‘Yes. I wanted to be impervious to your brazen charms, but I found I couldn’t be. I considered it a personal failing. I try not to get emotionally involved with people.’
‘Especially when you know you’re going to rip them off and ruin their lives.’
‘Especially then.’
‘So, you had fantasies? What were they?’
‘I’ll give you an example. I catch you up to no good when you should be at work – though, to the best of my knowledge, you always kept your extracurricular activities out of working hours.’
‘Yeah, uh, mostly,’ I mumble, recalling a few incidents when that might not have been the case.
‘You don’t know I’ve seen you, so I call you into my office as soon as you’ve finished and tell you I want to do a spot check. You don’t know what I mean, but once I’ve ordered you to pull down your knickers and bend over, you start to get the picture.