38. Marlowe
CHAPTER 38
Marlowe
O ur bags stand packed and ready in the living room of our flat.
I’ve dotted every i and crossed every t of the endless paperwork I’ve had to complete for this journey Tabs and I are about to undertake.
Apparently, what we’re doing is known as “medical tourism”.
I’m pretty sure that term is better suited to jetting off to Turkey for some cheap boobs than travelling across the Atlantic to give my daughter her best chance of survival, but whatever.
And today is my last day of work before my so-called jury duty.
We fly tomorrow, and Elaine, who is now fully briefed on my darkest secrets, has vowed to hold the fort for Brendan.
If I’m honest, I’m looking forward to putting some distance between me and him.
The vibe’s been weird this week, to say the least. I was so, so mortified when I woke up in his arms the other day.
He had to wake me—we’d been lying there for an hour, apparently.
He forked out all that money on a suite and it was wasted because I was too busy being unconscious to do my job properly.
The job he pays me very well to do.
I will say it was the best (and most badly needed) nap of my life, and waking up in the warm, hairy, muscular cradle of Brendan’s body was fairly spectacular, too.
As soon as I had my wits about me, I started apologising profusely and kind of grabbed his dick, but he just laughed very sweetly and said he considered napping an even better use of time and money than sex.
He was definitely only saying it to be nice, but he did prise my fingers off his dick before he pulled me back into his arms and cuddled me some more.
I’m pretty sure he sniffed my hair, too.
If napping with my boss-with-benefits is a red flag on every level, then his behaviour since then has been even more of a red flag.
Once we left that suite behind us, the caring, cuddly Brendan I’d woken up with disappeared.
In his place, I’ve had to deal with childish, cocky, mercurial, alpha-hole Brendan, who’s more interested in throwing his weight around and getting quick fucks than anything approaching the intimacy we’ve enjoyed in recent weeks.
Yesterday morning he called me into his office, told me to lock the door, pushed his chair away from his desk and pulled out his dick.
As soon as I’d made him come with my mouth, he uttered the immortal words, Go on.
Clear off now. The day before that, he fucked me wordlessly over his desk while he was muted on a conference call, something that was indescribably hot and yet left me feeling grimy.
Especially because he pulled out, wandered off to deal with the condom, and then threw himself on the sofa to continue the call, leaving me bent over and exposed.
While this kind of treatment is nothing worse than I expected when I took this job, it’s a far cry from the treatment he gave me in his bed and in that hotel suite, and that makes it a million times worse.
Maybe he’s pissed off that I’m leaving him in the lurch and he’s taking it out on me.
Maybe he’s freaking out that his solidly transactional no-strings-attached office sex is turning into piano duets and daytime naps.
I don’t know, and to be honest it doesn’t matter.
Because you know what?
He’s right. He may not be communicating his emotions in the most evolved way, and his entitled, dismissive behaviour may be hurting me more than I care to let on, but the guy is right to pull back, to redraw his boundaries.
God knows, one of us has to.
So yes. I’m determined to view this trip as a forced reset, a chance for us both to regroup.
When I return, my daughter will be in possession of a shiny new, fully functioning pulmonary valve and I’ll be in a position of greater strength.
Once I have a better idea of the cost of her ongoing medical needs over the next few years, I can set myself an end date for this job and stick to it.
And I vow to myself that I’ll exercise more agency next time.
I’ll choose a position that doesn’t involve me selling my soul.
I won’t even tolerate dickheads like my previous boss, Dean.
I’m done with being at the mercy of power-hungry guys at every level of management.
There’s only today to get through.
I dress carefully. I’m sure Brendan will want his fill of me before I go off on leave, and why shouldn’t he?
I wear a flirty little pale blue fit-and-flare dress and some of his favourite white lace underwear, and I go to work prepared to service my boss in whatever way he requires today.
In my mind, his treating me like a whore this week is my penance for lying to him.
For using him to secure my daughter’s future.
It’s just one day. I can handle whatever he gives me.
‘ I ’ll miss this while you’re gone,’ Brendan comments, but his tone is idle, borderline disinterested.
Which would be fine if we weren’t in the position that we’re in right now.
As it is, I’m lying in my underwear on the carpet in his office as he straddles me, his huge body braced above me, his thick thighs in their fine wool trousers bracketing my head.
With one hand he pins my wrists above my head, while he uses the other to feed me his dick.
I don’t answer him because I can’t.
My mouth is too full of his dick, my focus entirely on not suffocating and not choking.
From here, he looks evil and powerful and foolhardy: a dangerous combination.
‘You’re very good at it, you know,’ he continues, his tone callous.
‘If you do a truly excellent job of making me come then I promise I’ll fantasise about it when I’ve got another woman in this exact position next week.
’
It’s the most backhanded of compliments, and it stings, humiliates, just as much as he intends it to do.
I hope he considers himself lucky that my mouth is too full to answer him.
He pulls out slowly and groans before jamming his dick so far down my throat that I audibly gag.
Even through my blind, teary panic, I register how gorgeous he is.
He’s right, of course.
He can have as many women as he wants lying here for him next week, sucking his dick when I’m not here to entertain him.
But with the jealousy comes disgust that he would be as tasteless as to ram that point home right as he’s ramming his dick home inside my body.
He’s lashing out, going on the attack like a hurt little boy, and it makes me despise him.
God knows, it’s occasions like this that underscore just how fully we seraphs earn every penny of our money.
‘Don’t think I’m going to make you come,’ he’s saying now, seemingly fascinated with the sight of his dick disappearing past my lips.
‘I have a plan for you later. If you want that orgasm, you can have it. Just remember, love, beggars can’t be choosers.
’
Ain’t that the truth, mister.
A head of the International Green Building Summit, Brendan has organised a Friday afternoon working lunch at the office for some of his bros (his word) at competing firms. The theory is that, every now and then, they get together to shoot the breeze, bitch about some of the biggest contractors, and share trade secrets which I imagine include which government officials have palms they can grease and other equally shady topics.
I just hope his bro-lunch improves his personality.
While his aggressive blow job earlier seems to have taken the edge off his foul mood, it could use more help.
I really don’t like this churlish, sulky side of him.
He meant what he said about bros.
When his business associates file into the large meeting room down the corridor from his offices, there is not a single female-identifying professional among them.
Sullivan Construction may talk the talk on diversity and equality, but it seems that at the upper echelons of this industry, the old boys’ network still runs like clockwork.
I leave them to their silver buckets full of champagne and endless platters of Nobu sushi—no coffee and dried-out sandwiches for these big hitters—and settle at my desk.
I’m intent on ensuring that I’ve done everything possible to make this handover as smooth as possible for Elaine.
The strategy team is still putting the finishing touches to the high-tech slideshow that will accompany Brendan’s speech, but I’ve been working with them on compiling a briefing document for Brendan with answers to the most likely questions he’ll field.
I’ve also spent a large chunk of my time liaising with our in-house PR team to fill his schedule of press interviews and with our Commercial Director and her team on prepping him for meetings with various European governments who may be keen to commission Sullivan for overseas projects.
It’s a lot, and it doesn’t assuage my guilt about leaving Brendan in the lurch for the biggest event of his year, even if I tell myself that the majority of the work—and skill—lies in the pre-event organisation.
By the time he rocks up at the conference, he should be fully prepped and ready to smash it.
After a couple of hours, I take a call from the console in the meeting room.
It’s Brendan. ‘Come through for a sec, will you, love?’
‘Sure.’ He shouldn’t really be calling me love in front of his mates, but it’s not an uncommon term of endearment, so hopefully it’ll slide.
I stand and grab my notepad and pen, heading down the corridor to the meeting room.
I hear them before I see them—a rowdy, unintelligible jumble of male voices.
And when I open the door, the odour of booze hits me.
It smells like a brewery in here.
The table is littered with empty champagne bottles and remnants of food, and most of the men have ditched their jackets and rolled their shirt sleeves up.
‘Here she is!’ Brendan shouts.
‘The woman of the hour.’ He leans back in his chair at the head of the table and grins at me.
He looks gorgeous, if pretty dishevelled, and I smile back at him.
‘Come here, come here!’ He beckons me over in an exaggerated manner and I go to him.
‘Guys. Guys. This is Marlowe, my very beautiful assistant, who’s also incredibly competent at everything she does.
Isn’t that right, baby?
’ He clamps a hand to my bottom, and I freeze.
What the hell is he doing?
There are disorderly catcalls at Brendan’s crude words.
I feel like a stripper who’s been booked for a stag party.
I stare down at him, willing him with my eyes to rein it in or let me go, but his grin has turned dark, and there’s a callous expression on his handsome face now.
‘Did you need something?’ I ask, hoping the stiffness of my tone tells him how low my tolerance level for this shit is.
He pretends to consider.
‘I don’t know. Do we need something?
I know I need something.
I always need something from you, but you don’t care, do you?
You’re buggering off for two weeks.
’ He squeezes my bottom before sliding his hand down the back of my thigh.
When he finds the hem of my dress, he burrows underneath it and moves his hand upwards.
My entire body goes still, and there’s a flash of heat across my face and neck.
‘Brendan,’ I hiss.
‘What? Like I said, you’re fucking off for a fortnight.
I think you owe me. Who here thinks this pretty little lady owes me?
’
There’s another rowdy chorus that apparently sounds to Brendan’s drunken ears like assent, because his hand moves even higher.
I clench my thighs together, trapping it.
I want to reach down and slap his hand away.
I want to run for that door, but I’m frozen to the spot.
All I can focus on is the smoothness of the fancy Sullivan pen in my hand and on the ruddy cheeks of the guy sitting closest to Brendan.
I wonder if he knows champagne makes him go red?
Or maybe it’s having his host try to finger his assistant in plain sight that has his colour heightened.
These men are all strangers.
All people who have actual business dealings with Brendan.
People with whose assistants I’ve probably had email contact.
Phone contact. Outside of my specific arrangement with Brendan, I’ve conducted myself with perfect professionalism these past few weeks.
I’m representing both him and his firm at the highest level, after all.
And here he is treating me like a two-bit whore in front of his drunken cronies.
‘Open up, baby,’ he stage-whispers now.
His voice sounds so nasty.
‘No.’ Every muscle in my body is tensed so hard that I’ll probably pull them all.
I glare down at him, because I cannot look at anyone.
‘Aww, come on, darling,’ someone jeers from the other end of the table.
Brendan edges his fingers further up, working against my locked thighs.
‘Look, there’s no reason to be shy.
They all signed NDAs before they got here—they know the score.
I’ve told them all about you.
We’ve had lunch, but I’ve promised them a little show for dessert.
They want to see your tits, and they want to taste your sweet, sweet cunt, and Anthony over there was hoping you’d blow him because it’s his birthday this weekend.
So why don’t you do us both a favour and remind yourself exactly what I’m paying you for?
’
Every single disgusting word crawls over my skin like a cockroach.
I have never in my life felt simultaneously so invisible and so splayed open.
I usually love him touching me, but every second that his hands are on my skin feels like a violation of the highest order.
His touch has nothing on his words, though.
It’s obvious he’s drunk, but NDAs ?
He cooked up this entire plan, and I’d bet every fucking pound he’s paid me that it’s because he’s pissed off with me for taking leave.
He’s admitted as much.
So he’s expecting me to strip off and put out and behave like some party piece, to tolerate a mauling from him and his revolting, drunken, chauvinistic friends?
He expects me to get on my knees and put on a show?
I’ve done a lot to save my daughter’s life.
I’ve sold myself body and soul, to this man, I’ve jumped so far into the deep end I don’t know if I’ll ever find land again, and I’ve momentarily feared that I was gaining feelings.
I’ve sunk to lows I could never have imagined, but these are depths I cannot plumb.
He’s paying me to fuck him.
He’s paying me to relieve his stress and his boredom, to fulfil his fantasies.
And I know he said he liked to watch, so maybe I should have seen it coming.
But nothing is worth this level of shame and humiliation and invasion.
Nothing.
I think about my tiny, sick daughter.
About our bags packed and ready.
About the operation she’s going to endure.
I think about the money, Brendan’s money, sitting in our bank account.
We’re good to go for now.
I don’t need to endure this.
He may, in this moment, be trying to make me feel like I have no agency, but I do.
I fucking do. I’ve done enough to save Tabs, but I bloody well won’t do this.
I summon every ounce of that fierce mama bear energy that I can draw on so readily when it’s Tabs I need to advocate for.
I throw my notepad and pen on the table and reach behind myself, digging my nails into his wrist and pulling his hand out from between my legs.
‘Stop,’ I spit at him.
My safeword. The word I haven’t even had in reserve for the past few weeks, except for one brief moment with Ethan Kingsley.
I look down at his brattish, entitled face and feel only contempt.
Disgust. ‘Stop, stop, stop. You can blow the birthday boy yourself for all I care, you sick fuck. I’m out. ’