He willed himself not to be attracted to her, which is difficult if someone has owned you mind, body and soul by virtue of her shocking beauty and her capricious laughter. She sat across the desk from him, temptation itself, clothed in her sharp black suit and skirt, sophisticated fishnet stockings and sharp black heels. Syrupy sunlight flooded through the window and fell over her, sliced into brilliant bars by the venetian blinds, and her tumbledown black hair was so glossy that parts of it glowed gold. Her hard, hot, dark eyes burned through him and terrible, ruby-red lipstick delineated a cruel mouth.
Some people said her chin and nose were a little on the pointy side of perfect classical beauty. But those people, he felt, were idiots. She was gorgeous and he still yearned for her.
She looked around his spacious executive office and said, ‘So— you’ve chosen her?’
‘Yes.’
A dangerous pause.
‘“The plain old mare.”’
‘For Christ sake! She’s the mother of my children, Zara.’
‘That’s fine.’
Her tone was light and sensuous as silk, but she regarded him hatefully. He wondered how she saw him: wondered, against his will, if she had been attracted to him in the first place because of his looks. He doubted it: he was well built, but unremarkable; and he was carrying some extra pounds nowadays; and his hair was greying. But he hoped she had never found him unattractive, per se.
‘You’re sweating, John,’ she observed, coldly.
He tried to joke about it. ‘You make me nervous.’
She laughed a laugh which was harsh on his heart, however nice it sounded. ‘Don’t try to joke, John. No. You aren’t as funny as you think you are.’
‘I’m just trying to keep things on an even keel.’
She was silent for an icy moment. Her arms were crossed, her legs folded; she was locked tight with anger.
‘An even keel? I don’t give a fuck about an even keel. I want you to be sorry.’
‘I am sorry, Zara, I am. I’m desperately sorry. In all honesty, I never meant to—’
‘Never meant to hurt me?’ she anticipated, with towering contempt. ‘Perhaps I loved you, John. Perhaps I was, briefly, genuinely, that stupid. Regardless of that, I genuinely don’t know what I ever saw in you now.’
Contempt seemed to run off and over her provocative body in rivulets, like a mirror of the sweat drenching him.
He tried to look suitably abashed, without pissing her off. He was entirely unsuccessful.
She said, ‘…But you’re sorry for me?’
‘I— yes. Yes, I’m sorry. I feel bad for parting ways like we did… I feel ashamed of how I took advantage of you.’
Her eyebrows proclaimed how unimpressed she was, whilst still inviting further penitence. He went on: ‘I shouldn’t have hurt you. I shouldn’t have said I loved you when I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry for your being…’
‘You’re sorry for me?’
She stood up. She leant across the desk and grabbed his tie and yanked it hard as a leash: it curled in her fist and her fist hit the table. ‘You’re sorry for me?’
He was almost pressed to the desk. He should have had a broader desk, it would have looked better anyway. He took in her furious eyes, her clenched teeth, and her scarlet, shining siren’s lipstick. He was overwhelmed by the gorgeousness of her perfume. Her thick hair hung curling in dark vines and veils around their faces.
‘Zara, I didn’t—’
‘Shut the fuck up, you arsehole!’
‘Look, let go of my—’
She sneered. It was wrong to think someone looked even more beautiful if they were sneering, but John thought that she did. She twisted it tighter.
‘…Oh, but you used to love me to grab your tie, John.’ Her voice was devastating, her tone forceful, and getting loader— what if someone in an outer office overheard?
‘Look! That was then, Zara, this is n—’
‘You used to like me to tug it tight and pin you down, John, as I remember... As I remember, John, you used to beg. John, you’re right to look humiliated. ‘Cos you looked stupid begging for it then and you inevitably look just as stupid now. John—’ She pulled it tighter. Her voice had been so load, but it dropped to her most dangerous whisper.
‘No! Look—’ He put one hand over hers and pulled himself upright, his hand still over hers. He was too strong for her resistance to matter much. He was red faced with fear and fury and embarrassment. ‘This has gone far enough!’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked unsurprised, unafraid; she radiated that arrogant confidence in her own control which he had always found intoxicating.
‘Nothing’s going to happen between us, alright! Nothing? Understand. Now I’m sorry. But I have my marriage to consider. So—’
‘So…’
‘—So get the fuck out of my office before I call security.’
She smiled a tight little smile with all the warmth of liquid nitrogen.
‘Call security?’
‘Yes…’
‘…John,’ she whispered, in a harsh, intimate voice that made him think of a torturer gloating over an interrogated man, ‘…John, you call them. You dare to do that. You call security…’
Her other hand covered his hand, which covered hers, which held the tie. He was hypnotised: she pried it off as she continued, savouring the delicious possibilities of pain: ‘…Ring security. And I will ring your family. And I will call your precious ugly sweetheart-wife, or your genius-protégé-pigtailed little daughter, and I will tell them… And I will tell them… hmmm…. What shall I say…? I will tell them that you couldn’t take fidelity any longer… and you hankered after sweeter meat and for actual beauty… and I will tell them that you rang me, John. And that you came to me. You, say, came to my flat. And then that you came into me, John… sweating, and squealing, and red in the face whilst you nailed me on my pinewood kitchen table… Screaming my name like an incan-fucking-tation… And I believe that I will tell them that because we did it again…’
She twisted her hand and the tie tightened—
‘… and again,’
His head was on the table, now; he had to half crouch over his chair.
‘And again.’ She lifted his head up a little by its leash and banged it down on the table, for emphasis.
‘…I will say, “Mrs Farrow, I’m so sorry. Mrs Farrow, I felt awful… not just because I couldn’t walk straight the next morning… I felt so guilty, Mrs Farrow… I went in to his Mr Farrow’s workplace, and I meant to confront him, but he told me he loved me and started pawing me, so… I called security…’
She kissed his shit collar tenderly, then his cheek: he groaned in an agony of powerlessness, and in the grip of shuddering guiltiness and dreadful, wicked longing. She met his horrified eyes with her own gorgeous ones, as cruel as black suns.
She smirked. ‘Given your record, who do you think your wife will believe?’
She walked round the desk, using his tie as a pivot, pinned to the desk.
‘John…’ she said dreadfully, relentlessly to the hypnotised man.
She pulled him up as if his tie was a puppet’s string, and sat him back in his executive leather chair. She mounted the seat with one foot, like a conqueror placing her stiletto on the cairn of a conquered mountain. The tie was twisted behind his neck and over the back of the chair. She leered over him, the sable curtain of her hair sweet smelling on his face…
‘Listen,’ he breathed, his eyes brimming, ‘Please don’t. Please don’t.’
She tutted, smirking, ‘Why?’
‘Because you’ll hurt them…’
‘Yes!’ she said brightly.
‘You’ll tear to pieces, but they didn’t do anything!’
‘No, no, they didn’t…’
‘It’s me that owes you…’
‘Yes, yes, John, it is…’
‘So let’s discuss this. Seriously, Zara. I – I have money. You— well, you have money, I know, I know, but you have a taste for the finer things… extravagant tastes… so let’s…’
She shook her head no, her fine jaw clenched: No deal.
‘Please,’ he virtually gibbered, ‘What do you… what do you…?’
‘What I want, John, is to ask you some things…’
‘Yes?’
She placed her free hand on the erection inside his suit trousers and forced it down hard with a smooth, hot hand. She let it spring up again and stroked his arm, instead.
‘John... You still find me quite attractive, don’t you?’
He closed his eyes. He nodded.
‘Tell me, John. It isn’t that I don’t know. That isn’t the case. I know every thought you’ve ever had for a year at least, and you don’t know shit about me. Answer my questions, John, because it’s part of what I want in order not to destroy your shitty, shitty life…’
He looked at her breathlessly: his breath was quick with panic, hers with something else. Her cleavage was so near his face that leant his face into her breast to whisper against it: ‘You know you’re beautiful, you beautiful, beautiful bitch, because I’ve told you. I told you when we first met. I told you whenever I saw you. And so does everyone else you’ve ever met.’
She laughed her cruel laugh again and kicked him slightly in the testicles. He groaned and whimpered in a transport of intense pain as his balls aced around her stiletto toe. ‘Zara, please…’
‘So… Am I… more or less beautiful than your wife?’
He gritted his teeth and glared, furious.
‘Am I more or less beautiful than your wife?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
She gazed at him with her full, red lower lip trapped beneath her front teeth: her look was a tigress’s hunger. And not for something physical, alone. She slipped her free hand into her suit top and opened her shirt and caressed her own breasts, ever so lightly, as though she herself were disinterested. He yearned terribly for that pale, firm flesh…
‘Is she more, or is she less—’
‘You are.’
‘What?’
‘You are more beautiful.’ His voice was broken, and her nipples hardened further at that delicious sound of breaking...
‘Are her breasts beginning to droop, now?’
He breathed, ‘Yes.’
‘Are her thighs as firm as mine? Are her legs as long as War and Peace?’
‘No… No…’
‘Does her hair have the gloss mine does?’ No. ‘Does she like sex as much?’ No. ‘Is she as good as me?’ No. ‘Does she like to play rough?’
Kick. Pain.
‘No…’
‘John, has she ever worn little, sexy garter bells for you…?’
‘No.’ His voice was so small it was inaudible, now.
‘John… John. Hold my leg.’
He held the threatening leg in one hand, and it started caressing the fish-netted calf in helpless adoration, and her strong thigh…
‘John… does she wear stockings like these for you?’
‘No.’
‘John, are you weeping, John?’
‘Yes…’
‘How old are you, John?’
‘Fifty…’
‘How old is she, John?’
‘Fifty…’
How old am I, John?’
‘Thirty…’
‘John… John, does she have an arse like a bubble?’
‘No…’
She was breathing her torture softly: ‘John… has she ever turned you on like I have?’
‘…No.’
He was pawing at her breasts, now, caressing them, kneading them like he used to with his thick fingers. She had let go of his tie ages ago, but he was less free than he had ever been.
‘Do I outclass her in every – single – way?’
‘Yes…’
‘Do you love her, John?’
He wished he could break eye contact. Sweat stood on his face, even lightly on hers.
‘Yes, yes… I love her…’
‘Do you love me, John?’
She kicked him slightly in the balls again.
‘John?’
‘… No… no, I don’t love you…’
‘Exactly. And that’s good… John, tell me if you fantasise about me…’
‘I do… all the time… your eyes… your stockings… I think about us on the beach in Costa Rica… I think about your dirty laugh…’
‘Do you think about me when you fuck her?’
‘Yes… god help me… yes, I do… you’re so much sexier… but I hate you, Zara…’
‘Would you like to have me again, John…? Shall I let you take me, hard, on your desk? … Would you like that, John… are you sick for me…?’
‘Yes… Oh, God, Zara… yes, yes, I am, let me…’
‘Tell me what you’re thinking now John? Are you thinking about high art or international politics or the balance of trade…?’
She kissed his mouth lightly, as if with tenderness.
‘I think you’re a nasty little bitch, Zara...’
‘Yes?’
‘You smell amazing… your hair… your body… God, I want you…’
‘Why are you crying, then… lover?’
‘Nothing….’
She ran her hand once over his groin as smoothly a plane, maliciously.
‘What was that, John? What are you?’
‘Nothing...’
‘That’s right, John. You’re nothing to me.’
She lunged on top of him with such violence that the back of the leather chair held them horizontal, and she breathed in his face: ‘You are nothing to me,’ as she groined deliberately against him: ‘Do you think you are a particularly attractive man, or a decent man?’ He confessed he was not to her face, her breath hot in his. ‘Do you think you are smarter than me, fitter than me?’ He denied it. She twisted his short hair in her fingers and she kissed him.
She kissed him— a long, leisurely kiss, which lingered with the expertise of a torturer, passionately, but coldly. Her passion was not for him, but for her own arousal.
‘John, you don’t need to feel sorry for me. Because I am utterly out of your league, in every single way.’ She twisted so that the chair fell over and they lay behind the desk on the floor. He rolled her over and lay heavily on her, pinning her to the ground and gazing at her with an expression eloquent of his hate and his lust and his pathetic, pathetic need. He couldn’t have broken eye contact with her if his life depended on it, but it was probably the other way round.
‘I just wanted you to know that,’ she whispered huskily, maliciously. ‘I wanted you to know that I used you; you could never have used me. I picked you on a whim, because you were pathetic and rich and vain. And I had fun. I wanted you to know what you were missing out on. Now, John. Fuck me.’
Clothes came off, were torn off, and he grappled with her body’s perfection and caressed her like an idolater. And she kept on talking all the way through: ‘Worship me, John. Fuck me. Fuck me like you’ve never fucked your ugly, ugly wife… John, do you know that I’ve faked orgasm underneath you? I have. You’re crap in bed, especially when you’re drunk… Oh… you’re nobody, John… you are never, ever going to fuck anybody as fine as me again. You are going to wank yourself raw and guilty fantasising about me for every – single – day – for – the –rest – of – your – life... Stop.’
He froze, trembling on top of her. Panting. Wild-eyed. Sticky. Demented with denial and arousal. Weeping, Gibbering. Paralysed by her will.
She pushed him off and stood over him and prodded him with her toe, as if checking a road kill. She sat on the edge of his desk, thrusting out her gleaming abdomen.
‘Lick me.’
He buried his face. She locked her fingers in his mussed hair again: she pulled some hair out of his temples.
‘Worship me… make me come… or it will go badly for you… I want you to know that I am going to laugh at you, every day, injuring yourself fantasising about this… yes, yes, I will… I want you to know, I was unfaithful – don’t stop! — I was unfaithful to you. Twice, because you were nothing… I… good… Well done, John… keep going…’
She had been so turned on that orgasm had been close for a long time. She pulled him up from a kneeling position into an awkward crouch; she turned around and pushed him around, too, so that his head was on the edge of the desk, and she rode his tongue, groining his face. He suffocated and moaned as he worked desperately…
Finally, she came:
‘…Good…Good-Good! – yes! …YES!’
She seemed to growl it.
She disentangled her fingers from his hair and shoved him roughly away, collapsing into sitting on the cold surface of the desk. Her breathing was ragged, her gooseflesh breasts rising and falling rapidly. Her hair was wild, and when her eyes opened again, they were afire with triumph and malice. She shuddered with continuing arousal.
He was now kissing and stroking every inch of her body, dreading the moment when it would disappear from his life forever. Zara was content, more than content. She watched him, smiling, while he continued his ministrations sweetly to her trembling, perfect body, kissed it franticly. At last, he looked up and said, ‘Oh my God, Zara…’
‘I’m a Goddess,’ She corrected wryly.
‘Oh, Zara… please… please…’
He held it in his hand.
‘You want rid of that, do you, John?’ She breathed huskily.
‘Yes— yes—’
She slid off the table and reversed their positions, so that he was sitting on the edge, with his dick projecting out like a plank.
She slid her hands down from his shoulders across his chest as she sank slowly, tortuously, to her knees, grinning wickedly, like she used to…
‘Oh!... Zara… Thank you…’
She smiled a twisted smile, and took him in her hands.
He groaned with the ecstasy of anticipation.
She said, wryly, ‘For old time’s sake?’
He laughed hoarsely through his panting:
‘Zara-Zara, thankyou-thankyou, Zara… please, please…’
She mimicked him. ‘Pathetic,’ she added.
She rose to her full height and looked him in the eyes. Horror was expressed in his, and smugness in her own.
‘You don’t really think that you were going to get that, do you? From me, your fantasy?’
‘I — no. Yes. Please— please—’
‘Oh no, no. Nuh-uh.’
He grasped her biceps with his hands, caressing her arms as if this might persuade her. She smiled and said, gleefully, ‘Not a chance.’
He sank to his knees before her and begged.
‘No. No way, John. I’ve got what I wanted— nearly. Now, before we finish off, aren’t you going to thank me?’
He looked up at her. His expression was broken and blank. Then he looked furious, homicidal. But broken. Every line of his face contorted with bitterness.
‘Thank-you, Zara… for… not … for not… telling my wife anything…’
‘Your ugly wife,’ she agreed happily, ruffling his hair as he embraced one of her legs and pressed his face against it, as if wishing to disappear through her net stockings and into the joys of her flesh forever.
‘Are you still turned on, John?’
He was in a state of famine and fever and fervour all at once, and he snivelled into her thigh, ‘Zara, babe, I’m dying, I’m about to explode… I’ve got to… please, let me… please… let us?’
‘Do you still want me, John? Do you still want me after all you’ve decided? You aren’t pitying me now, are you, Mr Farrow? Are you still hot as a cat in heat, Mr Farrow?’
He was inarticulate with longing. He shook against her long, firm, divine thigh.
Then, suddenly, she said, ‘I feel like I’m being fucked by some kind of a pathetic little lapdog, John. Get off my leg— now.’
He unhanded her as fearfully as if she had turned into molten metal.
He sat there in a pile on the floor, semi-naked, his shirt rumpled, his tie a stupid silk hoop around his neck. She looked down on him and met the resentful eyes of the powerfully built, once respectable man.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘You can come. Now. In front of me. At my feet.’
He gritted his teeth and swore violently. Her eyes held him in chains, and so did his need.
‘I feel I have broken you in your pride, by now. But I want to be sure.’
His body craved release, however humiliating; the sensation of his arousal was infinitely bigger than his sense of self had ever been. Yet he stared at her defiantly until she said, ‘You will do it. Or I will ruin your life. It’s your choice.’ Pause. ‘…But you have fifteen seconds to come on my shoes or lose your wife.’ She spat on him.
Helpless, horrified, grateful, and overwhelmed in shame, John masturbated before her, pounded on his swollen member with a desperation that was unnecessary. His orgasm came on just the tenth stroke, and he coated the shiny black shoes of his onetime mistress and knelt there, broken and trembling delightedly in the aftermath and choking on his shame, weeping.
She laughed a loud, clear laugh.
‘And this is how I’ll always remember you, John Farrow… now… Lick off your filth, these boots are new. I bought them specially. You’re a lucky guy, John,’ she added in a purr. ‘Lots of people would pay well for the honour…’
‘You’re a bitch!’ he muttered, and obeyed (part of him loved it, though).
‘You’re a wanker,’ she returned sweetly, with a serene smile at the degraded John.
When he had finished, she said, ‘Get my clothes, John…’ and made him dress her; then she strode to the door of his office. At the door, she turned and he regarded her with a stony expression as she announced, ‘I lied about the money, by the way. I want a token of apology. I want £30,000 in my account by next Friday, pretty please. Now I’m going to walk out of this door and out of your life, which I bequeath to you gladly as it ain’t that great, really. And you will never see me again, although you will often wish to. Goodbye.’
The door had almost closed, when she reappeared and added, ‘I left flowers and chocolate with your secretary, by the way. They’re for your wife. You’re going to be late home, now, especially as I would advise you shower. Try not to let them down again, you don’t deserve them as it is.’
And she was gone.
Some people said her chin and nose were a little on the pointy side of perfect classical beauty. But those people, he felt, were idiots. She was gorgeous and he still yearned for her.
She looked around his spacious executive office and said, ‘So— you’ve chosen her?’
‘Yes.’
A dangerous pause.
‘“The plain old mare.”’
‘For Christ sake! She’s the mother of my children, Zara.’
‘That’s fine.’
Her tone was light and sensuous as silk, but she regarded him hatefully. He wondered how she saw him: wondered, against his will, if she had been attracted to him in the first place because of his looks. He doubted it: he was well built, but unremarkable; and he was carrying some extra pounds nowadays; and his hair was greying. But he hoped she had never found him unattractive, per se.
‘You’re sweating, John,’ she observed, coldly.
He tried to joke about it. ‘You make me nervous.’
She laughed a laugh which was harsh on his heart, however nice it sounded. ‘Don’t try to joke, John. No. You aren’t as funny as you think you are.’
‘I’m just trying to keep things on an even keel.’
She was silent for an icy moment. Her arms were crossed, her legs folded; she was locked tight with anger.
‘An even keel? I don’t give a fuck about an even keel. I want you to be sorry.’
‘I am sorry, Zara, I am. I’m desperately sorry. In all honesty, I never meant to—’
‘Never meant to hurt me?’ she anticipated, with towering contempt. ‘Perhaps I loved you, John. Perhaps I was, briefly, genuinely, that stupid. Regardless of that, I genuinely don’t know what I ever saw in you now.’
Contempt seemed to run off and over her provocative body in rivulets, like a mirror of the sweat drenching him.
He tried to look suitably abashed, without pissing her off. He was entirely unsuccessful.
She said, ‘…But you’re sorry for me?’
‘I— yes. Yes, I’m sorry. I feel bad for parting ways like we did… I feel ashamed of how I took advantage of you.’
Her eyebrows proclaimed how unimpressed she was, whilst still inviting further penitence. He went on: ‘I shouldn’t have hurt you. I shouldn’t have said I loved you when I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry for your being…’
‘You’re sorry for me?’
She stood up. She leant across the desk and grabbed his tie and yanked it hard as a leash: it curled in her fist and her fist hit the table. ‘You’re sorry for me?’
He was almost pressed to the desk. He should have had a broader desk, it would have looked better anyway. He took in her furious eyes, her clenched teeth, and her scarlet, shining siren’s lipstick. He was overwhelmed by the gorgeousness of her perfume. Her thick hair hung curling in dark vines and veils around their faces.
‘Zara, I didn’t—’
‘Shut the fuck up, you arsehole!’
‘Look, let go of my—’
She sneered. It was wrong to think someone looked even more beautiful if they were sneering, but John thought that she did. She twisted it tighter.
‘…Oh, but you used to love me to grab your tie, John.’ Her voice was devastating, her tone forceful, and getting loader— what if someone in an outer office overheard?
‘Look! That was then, Zara, this is n—’
‘You used to like me to tug it tight and pin you down, John, as I remember... As I remember, John, you used to beg. John, you’re right to look humiliated. ‘Cos you looked stupid begging for it then and you inevitably look just as stupid now. John—’ She pulled it tighter. Her voice had been so load, but it dropped to her most dangerous whisper.
‘No! Look—’ He put one hand over hers and pulled himself upright, his hand still over hers. He was too strong for her resistance to matter much. He was red faced with fear and fury and embarrassment. ‘This has gone far enough!’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked unsurprised, unafraid; she radiated that arrogant confidence in her own control which he had always found intoxicating.
‘Nothing’s going to happen between us, alright! Nothing? Understand. Now I’m sorry. But I have my marriage to consider. So—’
‘So…’
‘—So get the fuck out of my office before I call security.’
She smiled a tight little smile with all the warmth of liquid nitrogen.
‘Call security?’
‘Yes…’
‘…John,’ she whispered, in a harsh, intimate voice that made him think of a torturer gloating over an interrogated man, ‘…John, you call them. You dare to do that. You call security…’
Her other hand covered his hand, which covered hers, which held the tie. He was hypnotised: she pried it off as she continued, savouring the delicious possibilities of pain: ‘…Ring security. And I will ring your family. And I will call your precious ugly sweetheart-wife, or your genius-protégé-pigtailed little daughter, and I will tell them… And I will tell them… hmmm…. What shall I say…? I will tell them that you couldn’t take fidelity any longer… and you hankered after sweeter meat and for actual beauty… and I will tell them that you rang me, John. And that you came to me. You, say, came to my flat. And then that you came into me, John… sweating, and squealing, and red in the face whilst you nailed me on my pinewood kitchen table… Screaming my name like an incan-fucking-tation… And I believe that I will tell them that because we did it again…’
She twisted her hand and the tie tightened—
‘… and again,’
His head was on the table, now; he had to half crouch over his chair.
‘And again.’ She lifted his head up a little by its leash and banged it down on the table, for emphasis.
‘…I will say, “Mrs Farrow, I’m so sorry. Mrs Farrow, I felt awful… not just because I couldn’t walk straight the next morning… I felt so guilty, Mrs Farrow… I went in to his Mr Farrow’s workplace, and I meant to confront him, but he told me he loved me and started pawing me, so… I called security…’
She kissed his shit collar tenderly, then his cheek: he groaned in an agony of powerlessness, and in the grip of shuddering guiltiness and dreadful, wicked longing. She met his horrified eyes with her own gorgeous ones, as cruel as black suns.
She smirked. ‘Given your record, who do you think your wife will believe?’
She walked round the desk, using his tie as a pivot, pinned to the desk.
‘John…’ she said dreadfully, relentlessly to the hypnotised man.
She pulled him up as if his tie was a puppet’s string, and sat him back in his executive leather chair. She mounted the seat with one foot, like a conqueror placing her stiletto on the cairn of a conquered mountain. The tie was twisted behind his neck and over the back of the chair. She leered over him, the sable curtain of her hair sweet smelling on his face…
‘Listen,’ he breathed, his eyes brimming, ‘Please don’t. Please don’t.’
She tutted, smirking, ‘Why?’
‘Because you’ll hurt them…’
‘Yes!’ she said brightly.
‘You’ll tear to pieces, but they didn’t do anything!’
‘No, no, they didn’t…’
‘It’s me that owes you…’
‘Yes, yes, John, it is…’
‘So let’s discuss this. Seriously, Zara. I – I have money. You— well, you have money, I know, I know, but you have a taste for the finer things… extravagant tastes… so let’s…’
She shook her head no, her fine jaw clenched: No deal.
‘Please,’ he virtually gibbered, ‘What do you… what do you…?’
‘What I want, John, is to ask you some things…’
‘Yes?’
She placed her free hand on the erection inside his suit trousers and forced it down hard with a smooth, hot hand. She let it spring up again and stroked his arm, instead.
‘John... You still find me quite attractive, don’t you?’
He closed his eyes. He nodded.
‘Tell me, John. It isn’t that I don’t know. That isn’t the case. I know every thought you’ve ever had for a year at least, and you don’t know shit about me. Answer my questions, John, because it’s part of what I want in order not to destroy your shitty, shitty life…’
He looked at her breathlessly: his breath was quick with panic, hers with something else. Her cleavage was so near his face that leant his face into her breast to whisper against it: ‘You know you’re beautiful, you beautiful, beautiful bitch, because I’ve told you. I told you when we first met. I told you whenever I saw you. And so does everyone else you’ve ever met.’
She laughed her cruel laugh again and kicked him slightly in the testicles. He groaned and whimpered in a transport of intense pain as his balls aced around her stiletto toe. ‘Zara, please…’
‘So… Am I… more or less beautiful than your wife?’
He gritted his teeth and glared, furious.
‘Am I more or less beautiful than your wife?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
She gazed at him with her full, red lower lip trapped beneath her front teeth: her look was a tigress’s hunger. And not for something physical, alone. She slipped her free hand into her suit top and opened her shirt and caressed her own breasts, ever so lightly, as though she herself were disinterested. He yearned terribly for that pale, firm flesh…
‘Is she more, or is she less—’
‘You are.’
‘What?’
‘You are more beautiful.’ His voice was broken, and her nipples hardened further at that delicious sound of breaking...
‘Are her breasts beginning to droop, now?’
He breathed, ‘Yes.’
‘Are her thighs as firm as mine? Are her legs as long as War and Peace?’
‘No… No…’
‘Does her hair have the gloss mine does?’ No. ‘Does she like sex as much?’ No. ‘Is she as good as me?’ No. ‘Does she like to play rough?’
Kick. Pain.
‘No…’
‘John, has she ever worn little, sexy garter bells for you…?’
‘No.’ His voice was so small it was inaudible, now.
‘John… John. Hold my leg.’
He held the threatening leg in one hand, and it started caressing the fish-netted calf in helpless adoration, and her strong thigh…
‘John… does she wear stockings like these for you?’
‘No.’
‘John, are you weeping, John?’
‘Yes…’
‘How old are you, John?’
‘Fifty…’
‘How old is she, John?’
‘Fifty…’
How old am I, John?’
‘Thirty…’
‘John… John, does she have an arse like a bubble?’
‘No…’
She was breathing her torture softly: ‘John… has she ever turned you on like I have?’
‘…No.’
He was pawing at her breasts, now, caressing them, kneading them like he used to with his thick fingers. She had let go of his tie ages ago, but he was less free than he had ever been.
‘Do I outclass her in every – single – way?’
‘Yes…’
‘Do you love her, John?’
He wished he could break eye contact. Sweat stood on his face, even lightly on hers.
‘Yes, yes… I love her…’
‘Do you love me, John?’
She kicked him slightly in the balls again.
‘John?’
‘… No… no, I don’t love you…’
‘Exactly. And that’s good… John, tell me if you fantasise about me…’
‘I do… all the time… your eyes… your stockings… I think about us on the beach in Costa Rica… I think about your dirty laugh…’
‘Do you think about me when you fuck her?’
‘Yes… god help me… yes, I do… you’re so much sexier… but I hate you, Zara…’
‘Would you like to have me again, John…? Shall I let you take me, hard, on your desk? … Would you like that, John… are you sick for me…?’
‘Yes… Oh, God, Zara… yes, yes, I am, let me…’
‘Tell me what you’re thinking now John? Are you thinking about high art or international politics or the balance of trade…?’
She kissed his mouth lightly, as if with tenderness.
‘I think you’re a nasty little bitch, Zara...’
‘Yes?’
‘You smell amazing… your hair… your body… God, I want you…’
‘Why are you crying, then… lover?’
‘Nothing….’
She ran her hand once over his groin as smoothly a plane, maliciously.
‘What was that, John? What are you?’
‘Nothing...’
‘That’s right, John. You’re nothing to me.’
She lunged on top of him with such violence that the back of the leather chair held them horizontal, and she breathed in his face: ‘You are nothing to me,’ as she groined deliberately against him: ‘Do you think you are a particularly attractive man, or a decent man?’ He confessed he was not to her face, her breath hot in his. ‘Do you think you are smarter than me, fitter than me?’ He denied it. She twisted his short hair in her fingers and she kissed him.
She kissed him— a long, leisurely kiss, which lingered with the expertise of a torturer, passionately, but coldly. Her passion was not for him, but for her own arousal.
‘John, you don’t need to feel sorry for me. Because I am utterly out of your league, in every single way.’ She twisted so that the chair fell over and they lay behind the desk on the floor. He rolled her over and lay heavily on her, pinning her to the ground and gazing at her with an expression eloquent of his hate and his lust and his pathetic, pathetic need. He couldn’t have broken eye contact with her if his life depended on it, but it was probably the other way round.
‘I just wanted you to know that,’ she whispered huskily, maliciously. ‘I wanted you to know that I used you; you could never have used me. I picked you on a whim, because you were pathetic and rich and vain. And I had fun. I wanted you to know what you were missing out on. Now, John. Fuck me.’
Clothes came off, were torn off, and he grappled with her body’s perfection and caressed her like an idolater. And she kept on talking all the way through: ‘Worship me, John. Fuck me. Fuck me like you’ve never fucked your ugly, ugly wife… John, do you know that I’ve faked orgasm underneath you? I have. You’re crap in bed, especially when you’re drunk… Oh… you’re nobody, John… you are never, ever going to fuck anybody as fine as me again. You are going to wank yourself raw and guilty fantasising about me for every – single – day – for – the –rest – of – your – life... Stop.’
He froze, trembling on top of her. Panting. Wild-eyed. Sticky. Demented with denial and arousal. Weeping, Gibbering. Paralysed by her will.
She pushed him off and stood over him and prodded him with her toe, as if checking a road kill. She sat on the edge of his desk, thrusting out her gleaming abdomen.
‘Lick me.’
He buried his face. She locked her fingers in his mussed hair again: she pulled some hair out of his temples.
‘Worship me… make me come… or it will go badly for you… I want you to know that I am going to laugh at you, every day, injuring yourself fantasising about this… yes, yes, I will… I want you to know, I was unfaithful – don’t stop! — I was unfaithful to you. Twice, because you were nothing… I… good… Well done, John… keep going…’
She had been so turned on that orgasm had been close for a long time. She pulled him up from a kneeling position into an awkward crouch; she turned around and pushed him around, too, so that his head was on the edge of the desk, and she rode his tongue, groining his face. He suffocated and moaned as he worked desperately…
Finally, she came:
‘…Good…Good-Good! – yes! …YES!’
She seemed to growl it.
She disentangled her fingers from his hair and shoved him roughly away, collapsing into sitting on the cold surface of the desk. Her breathing was ragged, her gooseflesh breasts rising and falling rapidly. Her hair was wild, and when her eyes opened again, they were afire with triumph and malice. She shuddered with continuing arousal.
He was now kissing and stroking every inch of her body, dreading the moment when it would disappear from his life forever. Zara was content, more than content. She watched him, smiling, while he continued his ministrations sweetly to her trembling, perfect body, kissed it franticly. At last, he looked up and said, ‘Oh my God, Zara…’
‘I’m a Goddess,’ She corrected wryly.
‘Oh, Zara… please… please…’
He held it in his hand.
‘You want rid of that, do you, John?’ She breathed huskily.
‘Yes— yes—’
She slid off the table and reversed their positions, so that he was sitting on the edge, with his dick projecting out like a plank.
She slid her hands down from his shoulders across his chest as she sank slowly, tortuously, to her knees, grinning wickedly, like she used to…
‘Oh!... Zara… Thank you…’
She smiled a twisted smile, and took him in her hands.
He groaned with the ecstasy of anticipation.
She said, wryly, ‘For old time’s sake?’
He laughed hoarsely through his panting:
‘Zara-Zara, thankyou-thankyou, Zara… please, please…’
She mimicked him. ‘Pathetic,’ she added.
She rose to her full height and looked him in the eyes. Horror was expressed in his, and smugness in her own.
‘You don’t really think that you were going to get that, do you? From me, your fantasy?’
‘I — no. Yes. Please— please—’
‘Oh no, no. Nuh-uh.’
He grasped her biceps with his hands, caressing her arms as if this might persuade her. She smiled and said, gleefully, ‘Not a chance.’
He sank to his knees before her and begged.
‘No. No way, John. I’ve got what I wanted— nearly. Now, before we finish off, aren’t you going to thank me?’
He looked up at her. His expression was broken and blank. Then he looked furious, homicidal. But broken. Every line of his face contorted with bitterness.
‘Thank-you, Zara… for… not … for not… telling my wife anything…’
‘Your ugly wife,’ she agreed happily, ruffling his hair as he embraced one of her legs and pressed his face against it, as if wishing to disappear through her net stockings and into the joys of her flesh forever.
‘Are you still turned on, John?’
He was in a state of famine and fever and fervour all at once, and he snivelled into her thigh, ‘Zara, babe, I’m dying, I’m about to explode… I’ve got to… please, let me… please… let us?’
‘Do you still want me, John? Do you still want me after all you’ve decided? You aren’t pitying me now, are you, Mr Farrow? Are you still hot as a cat in heat, Mr Farrow?’
He was inarticulate with longing. He shook against her long, firm, divine thigh.
Then, suddenly, she said, ‘I feel like I’m being fucked by some kind of a pathetic little lapdog, John. Get off my leg— now.’
He unhanded her as fearfully as if she had turned into molten metal.
He sat there in a pile on the floor, semi-naked, his shirt rumpled, his tie a stupid silk hoop around his neck. She looked down on him and met the resentful eyes of the powerfully built, once respectable man.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘You can come. Now. In front of me. At my feet.’
He gritted his teeth and swore violently. Her eyes held him in chains, and so did his need.
‘I feel I have broken you in your pride, by now. But I want to be sure.’
His body craved release, however humiliating; the sensation of his arousal was infinitely bigger than his sense of self had ever been. Yet he stared at her defiantly until she said, ‘You will do it. Or I will ruin your life. It’s your choice.’ Pause. ‘…But you have fifteen seconds to come on my shoes or lose your wife.’ She spat on him.
Helpless, horrified, grateful, and overwhelmed in shame, John masturbated before her, pounded on his swollen member with a desperation that was unnecessary. His orgasm came on just the tenth stroke, and he coated the shiny black shoes of his onetime mistress and knelt there, broken and trembling delightedly in the aftermath and choking on his shame, weeping.
She laughed a loud, clear laugh.
‘And this is how I’ll always remember you, John Farrow… now… Lick off your filth, these boots are new. I bought them specially. You’re a lucky guy, John,’ she added in a purr. ‘Lots of people would pay well for the honour…’
‘You’re a bitch!’ he muttered, and obeyed (part of him loved it, though).
‘You’re a wanker,’ she returned sweetly, with a serene smile at the degraded John.
When he had finished, she said, ‘Get my clothes, John…’ and made him dress her; then she strode to the door of his office. At the door, she turned and he regarded her with a stony expression as she announced, ‘I lied about the money, by the way. I want a token of apology. I want £30,000 in my account by next Friday, pretty please. Now I’m going to walk out of this door and out of your life, which I bequeath to you gladly as it ain’t that great, really. And you will never see me again, although you will often wish to. Goodbye.’
The door had almost closed, when she reappeared and added, ‘I left flowers and chocolate with your secretary, by the way. They’re for your wife. You’re going to be late home, now, especially as I would advise you shower. Try not to let them down again, you don’t deserve them as it is.’
And she was gone.
