Lucas stands up, puts his glass down on the table. “That you’re sleeping with Blair.”
* * *
I walk across the Millennium Bridge, the Thames dingy in the greyness. I didn’t react to Lucas’ words about Blair. From being twelve I learned to keep my thoughts off my face and in my head, and definitely out of my mouth.
My brother has a property south of the river, one he uses when he doesn’t want the press or the guards to see his more personal business and it’s here I’ve arranged to meet him, to go over the proposed trade agreement from France which has taken five years more than it should to get to this stage.
It’s already been agreed, but my half-brother got less than half of our father’s brains and English needs translating for him, so I’m essentially his private tutor. But my brother gets numbers; there he excels. It’s just complicated language that he can’t wrap his head around.
A concierge lets me in and I head upstairs, hearing familiar noises through the door. There’s a woman’s cry and what sounds like sobs and then the sound of someone I’m related to asking her to call him ‘daddy.’
I stare at my shoes and pray for patience because it’s easier to do my job when I’m not in a jail cell.
I don’t knock. I have a key and I use it, opening the door to find the man I share genes with pinning a woman with tits that look too big for her frame to a wall.
She’s not crying and she doesn’t look like she’s that bothered either way. The money’s on her being a prostitute.
The smile on her face when she sees me tells me my bet would’ve paid up.
“I charge more for two.” Eyes flash.
She stares at my dick.
“Put your clothes on,” I say to her. “And pay her double to keep her mouth shut.”
There’s a clatter as she drops to the floor and then the sound of a zipper.
I pass her a bra. I assume it’s hers, although there’s always a chance William hasn’t cleaned up since the last visitor he had.
She licks her lips and looks at me as she puts her bra on slowly. Her tits are large, natural with dark nipples and had she not been in my half-brother’s flat with her lipstick still smeared from being round his cock, she’d have been my type for a quick release.
Had it not also been for Blair and Ben.
“Not interested.”
She scowls.
William ignores her as she dresses, tucking his shirt into trousers that still aren’t zipped.
I sit down and wait until she’s left the flat, William ushering her out with murmured words that I don’t want to hear.
When he returns, he looks smug.
“She was game for anything. It’s a shame you interrupted.” His accent is different than mine, no matter how much I tried to round my vowels when I was younger, when I thought it would make me fit in. Now the places I tried to fit aren’t where I’d want to be.
He’s Oxbridge and private school and boating trips down rivers. I’ve always been the wild gorse and the untamed sea, soft Cornish vowels and the surf on a Sunday morning.
“I thought you’d agreed to stay away from prostitutes.” It isn’t a question because I know the answer.
“A man has needs.”
“How about Elise? Isn’t she fulfilling them?” They’d been caught together in a restaurant two nights ago and plastered across the news.
“She won’t put out. Says she needs time.”
Sensible girl.
“And I think now Ben Smith’s out of the way, Blair might be more persuadable to having her needs met by a proper Englishman.” He thrusts his hips.
