It was a sweeter than average Saturday night at the office. Georgi Devereux was wrapped around my girth and sucking like a milkshake addict trying to drain the glass, and I was having a grand time. Then France’s finest, Claude Debussy, interrupted us and damn well spoiled the party.

I’ve a rule harder than my dick on a good night–don’t call from a job unless things have gone further south than an Antarctic expedition. Claire never called, so when my phone played her favourite piano tune, I knew it wouldn’t be chit-chat.

Georgi paused her first-rate work, as I answered. “Claire. Talk to me.”

“Boss…” She was swallowing sobs, trying to struggle past them to the words. “F…Fuck.”

“Take your time,” I said, “and tell me you’re okay.” She’d been having no damn Christmas party, that much was clear as daylight.

“I’m… okay,” she replied, just about threading her breath into something comprehensible.

“You still with the mark?”

“Y-Yeah,” she said, gulping on tears. “But… But he’s no danger. Not anymore.”

The way she said it told me a three-volume novel, one without any jokes. “Can you get out of there?” I asked.

“Not like this,” she said, that edge of hers cutting through her grief. I was glad to hear it, though she still had me concerned. I didn’t want to know what ‘this’ was but I sure as Lucifer had to find out. “Where are you?” I asked, packing my goods away, while Georgi wiped her mouth clean.

Claire’s voice was quavering, but she managed to tell me. “The Abercorn, Room 217.” That sounded about right. It was the kind of mid-range hotel we’d agreed on for this kind of operation, and an exercise in slumming for a swanky poser like Rafe Howard.

“Sit tight, hun,” I told her. “I’ll be thirty minutes, tops, and I’ll bring something you can wear.”

I grabbed my raincoat and threw Georgi’s to her, kissing her mouth as I ushered her out the door. “Rain check, sweetness,” I told her. “Charge an Uber to the firm. Go have a bubble bath and a mai tai and save those lips for next time.”

“Maybe, Daddy, maybe not.” She pouted, but seemed to understand that shit was serious. She’d been all ears during the call. “Go save your favourite, then,” she said, like it was a lemon she’d been sucking. “Be her big burly hero.” With that, she vanished into the rain-lashed London night.

I’m no hero, but the pert brunette cocksucker got the other part right. Claire had been my Girl Friday since this craziness started. I always let her take the stickiest jobs, and her tight eager pussy was good for them. But if that son of a bitch had hurt her, it was square on my shoulders.

The rain pounded me and the street like it was trying to wash us both clean. Good luck with that, I thought. I revved my Hyundai i20 and hit the back streets. Less traffic and fewer cameras, speed or closed-circuit. Hell, I’d bought the car to draw attention from no one. Ostentation isn’t an option in a business as shady as the one I’d chosen.

Denmark Hill to the Abercorn was the full half hour I’d promised Claire to beat. My heart pounded out a military tattoo as the tyres screeched around each turn. Every pulse went through my clavicle like the wound there had never healed. Times like this a guy questions every choice he’s made in three godless years. Choices like starting up the project in the first place. Maybe I should have kept things neat, but desperation’s a tough boss, and greed’s a more demanding tyrant still.

Dalgleish and Mulroney Detective Agency–it had a ring to it. Jim Dalgleish had been a PI long before I waded into those murky waters. He’d tossed me some good leads back in my law enforcement days, and after the raid went wrong, the one that retired me from the force nursing a terminally fucked-up shoulder, we pooled our dubious talents. He was a pinch-faced brooding bastard with a bag of wood chips on his shoulder, but he knew a good lead from a bust and had the tenacity of a bloodhound with a grudge. In other words, Jim made a damn good partner.

As an operation we were smart and we were clean, even if the work was dirty. We surveilled small-time guys who tried to play it big. They’d snort cocaine off street girls two at a time in damp-stained hotel rooms and call it the high life, fool enough to think their wives would never know. Fish in a barrel, and we shot enough to pay the office rent arrears, but that was it. All stink and no profit worth a damn. Until the Stoppard case, when it all changed forever.

See, there was just no catching Mr Glenn ‘futures’ Stoppard on camera. This city slicker kept his slickest manoeuvres private, never letting slip the place he’d bang his next premium piece of ass. But Mrs Stoppard had the number of the man she’d hitched her life and fortunes to. She’d got a wife’s nose for betrayal.

“If he's cheating, he’s covering his tracks good,” I told her when she called round for an update.

“He does that,” she said leaned over my desk, her decolletage all jasmine and orange blossom. “But I know my husband’s appetites. And I know his type.” She shot daggers at Claire, who was innocently licking envelopes at her desk, like the girl had ridden Mister Stoppard raw in front of her. “He’d have your little office girl for a mid-morning snack.”

“Maybe he should do,” Claire said, dodging the daggers like a circus pro. “You want him on camera, let’s make it happen.”

Truth is, Claire was a whole other kind of professional. Jodie Marr by day, Claire de Lune was the name by which this twenty-year-old minx shone at night. It suited her. I’d tramped through the virtual streets (with help from a friendly hacker) to the online agency where she was listed and saw her rocking lingerie and PVC with equal self-possession, sleek with modest breasts and an ass that more than compensated. I do my research on potential staff.

“Taking time out from this?” I asked her at the interview, letting her see the screen.

“A girl can change profession,” she told me, her stare cool and level. “And my admin skills are crazy.”

“Not sure I can afford you,” I said to her and meant it. “A private dick can’t pay as well as some well-heeled john.”

“I want a career with longer-term prospects, Mr Mulroney,” she told me, moistening her pretty lips. “You’re the kind of dick I need.”

I hired her on the spot and sank balls-deep inside her minutes later. She folded legs around me like a little mantis and clutched with her heels as I thrust, her rear end cushioning us both against my desk.

“You better be a nice boss,” she groaned in my ear as I shafted. “I don’t give this free to any guy.”

“Noted. You can call me Jack outside of work hours,” I said, making her pussy squelch.

“Treat me nice and I’ll always be Claire for you,” she panted.

“Here’s to a good–working–relationship,” I said, driving home the sentiment. She clamped tight around me in a pink pulsing wet acknowledgement and screamed fit to alert the authorities, her trimmed nails clawing at my shirted back. I pulled out, shoved her to her knees, and finished in her hungry little mouth. She drank it all and cleaned the last of it from her lips like she’d downed peach schnapps. See? Professional.

Dalgleish wasn’t turning cartwheels when he found I’d hired her, but I’d taken to the girl, and figured the problem was his. Claire had smarts and class and a detective’s eye herself. Maybe that’s why he resented her.

Ellen Stoppard knew hard as hell Claire wasn’t joking. “Let’s be clear–you’re kindly offering to fuck my husband?” the betrayed wife asked, in response to Claire’s indecent proposal.

“I am,” Claire said. “So you and your lawyers can fuck him harder afterwards.” Credit where it’s due. This girl never took the scenic route to the main point.

Mrs Stoppard made the trip from scandal to intrigue in a couple of heartbeats. She looked at me. “Mr Mulroney, could we make that work?”

The moment hummed with potential like a power line. Two roads diverging in a wood and all that poetic crap. One of these roads was thick with green, and I don’t mean foliage. That swung it. “Yes,” I told her, “I reckon we could–with a very hidden camera, some nerve, and never forgetting the risks.” The look I gave Claire was weighted with meaning. 

“I can do it, boss,” she said, confident beyond her years. Her raised eyebrow added more, along the lines of “Depending on what it’s worth to me.” I had to love that candour.

“Let’s talk turkey,” I said to Mrs Stoppard. “See what we can do to provide you that extra leverage.”

She gave us the low-down on her husband’s preferences. Every little hottie he’d ever drooled over from coiffure to the colour she painted her toenails. Jim and I had already researched his schedule to the minute and mapped out his favourite haunts like a pair of cartographers. This guy didn’t pick up girls on the fly, that was for sure. But he did do a line in clandestine hotel visits partway through his working day. Different hotel every time, business lunches if you like. How he found his lunch dates stayed a mystery, but the smart money said discreet accounts with high-class escort agencies. Time to break that pattern.

It turned out Stoppard’s firm was hiring. According to his wife he conducted the interviews himself. Claire baited her hook–a resume photo complete with russet lipstick, hair worn down, and a ditzy smile–and this fat-catfish bit like the ocean had been free of food for days.

She went there in a low-cut blouse and tight skirt that clung to her attributes very nicely. The way she told it after, she doubled on the ditz, spilling cooler water down herself before doing the meet. Woops. I doubt the sap even heard her answers as she gabbled and flicked those honey brown locks, other than when he asked, “How about we chat somewhere more relaxing later?”

There was scarcely any chat on the footage I watched with Ellen Stoppard next morning. Not beyond “Give it to me, Glenn, you bastard!” and “God, Mr Stoppard, that cock’s so fucking big…” The usual stuff.

“It’s not so big,” his wife informed me ruefully, as we viewed Claire’s straight-backed cowgirl efforts, courtesy of the mini-cam I’d installed in her bag. She’d angled it to perfection, same way she was playing her mark, on a bed in some standard hotel room.

“Mrs Stoppard, you sure you want to see this now?” I’d asked.

“Got to do it sometime,” she insisted. “Better in company, right?”

We watched Claire suck him hard, then wriggle her body up his like a pale snake climbing an old oak tree. She installed her slender form on his dick and rode him good. He gripped her hips and contributed some upward thrusts, while letting her do all the hard work. “He always was a lazy fuck,” his wife said darkly.

Claire rubbed her breasts and bounced on Stoppard, making like she was powering a thoroughbred down the home strait. She reached down and rubbed herself while talking endless trash to him, making sure she got something from the deal. Her creamy tits shivered as she climaxed, and he sweated through it, eyes fixed on her like he was closing a lifetime kind of deal. She climbed off, reversed her pussy, and dripped like a melting ice-cream all over his face. The guy’s expression, before she buried it with her soaking gash, was priceless.

“You’re the nastiest slut I’ve fucked in months,” he snarled, pushing her onto hands and knees and smacking her impressive rear, finally showing some spirit, “and I’ve fucked some filthy little bitches.” Her initiative had riled him, and he fucked her from behind like he’d as soon have throttled her. It scared me just to see it. I was glad I’d met an upright, breathing Claire that morning.

His elegant wife absorbed it all, not missing a smack or a thrust. Her immaculately made-up features had a fraught look, and her eyes were glistening. I hoped her mascara was the type that didn’t run. I laid a hand on her arm, a gesture of support from the man who’d help confirm her worst suspicions. I’m not immune to people’s suffering.

She rounded on me, silk-clad tits bristling. “I don’t need your pity,” she said, a fever in her voice. “You think I’m grieving because that bastard has his dick inside your slinky little secretary? I’m not sad, I’m fucking jubilant. You and your girl have done me one huge favour.”

“We try to provide a useful service,” I said, looking into her smoky eyes. Her husband’s puffing and Claire’s moans continued from the speaker.

“Well you have done,” she said, her voice ardent and low. She grabbed a handful of my shirt above the beltline. “Your service has been invaluable, and you have my gratitude.”

I grabbed her by both arms and kissed her hard. She was panting when I released her and alive like I’d never witnessed in our brief acquaintance.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she asked. A furnace was raging behind her eyes. I was raging too, only lower down. “I took you PIs for filthy bastards,” she said. “You going to disappoint me, Mister Mulroney?”

I don’t like to disappoint. I lifted Ellen Stoppard by her well-appointed ass and set her square on my desk. I laid her out on the surface and shoved her skirt upwards around her waist. She’d got lace-trimmed stockings, and her suspender straps were tight against her milk-white thighs. Her lavender panties had darkened at the crotch. I made short work of them, taking hold at the waist, and ripping them clean off. Her still married pussy was wet and already parting for me as I freed my cock from my pants. She was propping herself up on her elbows, breasts heaving, her green eyes one big sexy come-on.

I took her hard and fast, there on the desk where I’d fucked Claire. She gasped when I gripped her hips and filled her up, her arms flailing and knocking stationary to the walls as I ploughed her. I was still balls deep in my client when Claire peered into the room, her eyes bright with approval. “Give the lady what she needs, boss,” she might as well have said, and her hand went searching southwards as she watched.

Ellen Stoppard realised who was there and slapped the desk’s surface, spitting like a wildcat. “Little bitch–get her out of here!”

“Not happening,” I growled. “She’s done you a solid, and now she gets to watch.” I pinned her wrists with one hand and shafted her good. She moaned like she’d abandoned sanity, clutching at the desktop and her tits. Her pussy sucked on me like it didn’t intend to let go. Then Claire joined the party, unbuttoning Ellen’s silk blouse from behind her and feeling under her flimsy brassiere with both hands.

“Christ, what’s the slut doing now?” Glenn Stoppard’s wife groaned.

“Just enjoy it,” Claire said, kissing the woman’s mouth from her upturned vantage point. “Jack too. He’s a way better fuck than your husband, and we both know it.” She massaged that full rack and then sucked on the nipples like they were garnish on twin ice-cream sundaes. Mrs Stoppard squirmed and moaned, calling Claire a bitch and me a motherfucker, and demanding that we both keep going.

“Sit on my face if you’re staying, you little cunt,” she said to Claire. For a classy lady she had one hell of a filthy mouth. Claire dropped her knickers and obliged. She squelched and I fucked, and we all made an afternoon of it. Claire came all over Ellen’s face around the time the wife came all over my cock, and I was a short stretch behind in emptying both barrels where the contents was welcome.

After that, everyone climbed off the desk and adjusted themselves, shaking hands politely like we hadn’t just fucked till we saw stars. It wasn’t my usual way of doing business, but it worked, and I’d got Claire to thank. I recalled that night in high definition as my tyres screeched around each turn on road for the Abercorn and whatever nightmare had turned real there.

Ellen Stoppard proved generous with more than her pussy. Following the pay-out from her rapidly ex-husband she rewarded the agency handsomely. I gave Claire proper commission for the work she’d put in with Glenn Stoppard, even if Jim frowned fit to bring the rain. He couldn’t deny we were on Easy Street for the first time since our doors had opened.

After that, our name got whispered in the right circles. One of Ellen Stoppard’s lunch companions called, saying she’d heard we had a way with intractable husbands. We investigated, and Claire got to flaunt her formidable talents again, this time with a PVC skirt and matching handcuffs. She wasn’t stupid, she made sure the husband wore the cuffs.

The calls on our time grew. There are a lot of rich husbands clinging like barnacles to their estates, and we were fine-tuning a method of loosening their hold. The sharpest were wise to their wives’ stockpiling of ammunition should legal wars commence, and our job was to lure them away from the path of caution.

Claire was only one girl, though, and men differ in their tastes. With that in mind, we decided to sub-contract. The lovely Miss De Lune called up some friends from her escorting days, girls with the gifts and the imagination to play this kind of game.

The first recruit was Kasey, cute with dyed red hair and tattoos on her tits, like every parent’s nightmare of a daughter gone wrong. Then Paloma climbed on board shaking her ass-length hair like her lithe, bronzed body had glided our way across the Med. Georgi, compact as a diamond and just as up-market, completed the team. I’d research the rich dupes, and they’d pick them up. A fool and his money are soon parted, the saying goes. Throw in some tits and it happens twice as fast.

Meanwhile Jim carried on the agency’s legitimate operations. Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored how side-lined he felt. “What kind of fucked up honey trapper have you turned into?” he grumbled one time. It stuck with me. We halfway made peace when the money rolled in, but it never really sat right with Jim.

It didn’t help that I had good relations with the girls. A lot of good relations. Sometimes I conducted two or more relations at a go. It wasn’t part of the interview process, but these girls wanted to prove their Mata Hari skills, and Claire only encouraged them. I’d have Kasey wriggling her tight little inked-up ass cheeks in my crotch. Or Paloma writhing like a queen cobra over my desk ready to attach her face to mine. Or Georgi on her knees with her eyes wide enough to drown in, her lower lip dripping saliva between her tits.

I was brought up with good manners, so I said thank you every time and gave good in return. Office life is stuffy for an ex-police detective, so why deny myself regular exercise? Plus, we all enjoyed ourselves. I’m firm but fair, as bosses go, and I looked out for the girls. They appreciated that, likewise the boost in their pay checks. So, in office and out, the suck-and-fuck stayed an unwritten part of our deal.

Looking back, we should have been more discreet, but hindsight’s like that. Jim knew it went on and tolerated it right up to the night he didn’t. I walked in on him with his hand on Claire’s throat, shoving her against the office’s clad-wood panelling. She wasn’t acting like she wanted it. “What’s the problem?” he was asking her. “Don’t I get to play too? Or is only Jack gets freebies from the whores?”

I went to shut him down, but Claire’s knee did the job instead. Dalgleish crumpled to the area carpet like a botched meringue in a cheap suit, clutching himself.

I hauled him to his feet by the lapels, while Claire dusted herself down. He stank of bourbon and his bloodshot eyes were full of meanness along with the recently inflicted pain. “So, what–that little bitch is calling the shots now?” he snarled.

“You don’t touch the girls,” I said, ready to punch him clean through the wall. “And you won’t get the chance again. We’re done.”

“We’re what?” Jim croaked. After the time we’d put in together, small wonder he didn’t believe me. But some lines don’t stand crossing.

“Those girls put their asses and everything else they’ve got on the line,” I said, “every goddamn day. They deserve some respect. Now get the fuck out, Jim, ‘cos I don’t want to have to assist you in the matter. It’s been nice, but consider this partnership dissolved.”

He went easily enough, both that night and afterwards. Sure he haggled over his share when I bought him out, but nothing that rocked our boat too much. The business was sailing way too smoothly. So it went on, right up to Rafe Howard and the night Claire made her call. Even as my wipers cut through sheets of water on that fateful Abercorn trek, the old ache in my collarbone boded nothing good. I think I knew the H.M.S. Honey had hit one big fucking iceberg.

I was lucky to get parked on an alley backing onto the hotel. The less attention I drew, the better. My phone rang as I tramped to the main entrance, but it wasn’t Claude this time. Rain splashed off the faceplate as I clocked the caller. Aveline Howard, wife of Claire’s date in Room 217. I let voicemail deal with it. Right now, the provision of operation updates wasn’t an option.

I wondered, in the hotel elevator, how far off road that operation had skidded. A quickly fired warning message tipped off Claire to my approach. She cracked the door and I slid in discreetly. The scene in the room was nothing short of Gothic.

Straight off I felt the grind of broken glass underfoot. This suite had seen serious action, more than the standard bedroom kind. The bedsheets were the expected kind of crumpled, but an occasional table was on its side, its glass top in a hundred splinters. A bedside lamp had been knocked clean to the floor, and Claire’s bag had hit the carpet too, one of its straps ripped loose.

Claire, normally all catlike poise, looked more street fighter than seductress. Her metallic gold mini-dress was split down more than one seam, and her hair needed a serious re-do. Her lipstick was smeared, and mascara drips had been racing each other from her eyes to her chin. Her lower lip was still bloody, and there was bruising on her neck. Worse than that, the skin of her upper chest was bloodstained, blotches of red soaking into her dress’s fabric. She could just about stand up in her heels, she was trembling so much. I’d sworn after Dalgleish that if shit like this happened, to Claire or anyone, I’d swing for the bastard who did it. One more time, however, the estimable Miss De Lune had beaten me to the punch.

Rafe Howard was down, and he wasn’t getting up again, not even for a gourmet breakfast. The crystal whiskey decanter that Claire had wielded against his head while he grappled her had seen to that. The CEO was laid out on the carpet. His athlete’s body was still shirted and trousered, though his thick slug of a dick was flopping sideways out of his flies like it was gasping for breath. His head wound was still leaking crimson over the patterned carpet, the red mingling with amber from the shattered decanter. Housekeeping would have one hell of a job. That’s if the crime scene guys didn’t get there first.

Claire flung herself onto me. I held her shivering body tight to mine while taking in the fucked up view. I gave her what comfort I could, while making sure neither her make-up nor her dress stains transferred to me. One of us needed to stay clean. At least, I realised, her blood smears belonged to someone else.

“Tell me what happened,” I said to her.

“I’ll do better,” she replied, shoring up her spirits like a fighter for the next round. “I’ll show you.” She fished the minicam from where it was still clipped inside her ruined bag and connected it to her phone so she could play back the footage. It was almost too tough to relive, and she kept looking away. I made myself watch it all.

Claire had entered the room first as usual, scoping it three-sixty along with the secret camera. She was giggling, making comment about her date’s hands on her ass, then there was the wet and breathy sound of prolonged kissing. She set the bag on the dresser providing a clear view of the double bed, while glasses clinked at the minibar.

Her body curled into mine, Claire fast-forwarded to the crucial part.

She was leading him to the bed now, playing with his shirt buttons and laughing, when the massive guy gripped both her shoulders and shoved her to her knees so that her head was level in the frame with his bursting trouser crotch. “We both know why we’re here, right?” he said, unbuckling himself and freeing up his sizeable and angry cock.

“Sure we do,” Claire muttered, playing game, but visibly rattled by how the situation was developing.

“Then let’s not fuck around,” he said, fitting himself to her mouth and seizing her hair in his fist where it was knotted at the crown. “Let’s see what you’re good for.”

He rammed Claire the full distance onto his erection so that her throat visibly bulged. “That’s it,” he said, his voice guttural. Then he shunted her back and forth on his girthy shaft while she gurgled, slapping her hand away when she tried to control the pace. “This is what a classy girl like you is all about,” he told her. “Underneath it all. A little slut who needs fucking properly, right? We both know it.”

He pulled her off and grabbed her throat while she was still drooling, hoisting her one-handed onto her feet. “There. You enjoy that?”

“Sure,” she panted. “Bring it, you big bastard.” In other circumstances the same girl might have enjoyed it just fine, but the concern in her voice was unmistakeable. It was there in her face too, when he flipped her around and shoved her down onto the dresser, so that she loomed in close-up, face almost pressed to the bag she’d positioned.

“You can bet I’ll bring it,” he snarled. He wrenched her dress up and her panties down and inserted himself. “Don’t want to show myself up, now do I?” He plunged into her forcefully, so that her nose impacted against the bag. I stared at Claire’s screen reactions, as Rafe Howard claimed her ass two-handed and shafted the fuck out of her. “Don’t want to miss out on my big moment, know what I mean?” he was saying.

I already knew Claire’s sex face, intimately so. All I got looking at the screen was her dawning realisation mid-fuck that the moneyed bastard thrusting in and out of her knew everything.

“Not–Not really,” she stammered, as his muscular bulk slammed against her slender body. “Care to–to enlighten a girl?”

“You don’t need enlightening,” he said, his voice like hot gravel. “Cunning little cunt like you. We both know the score, so smile for the fucking camera.” He clamped one hand to her shoulder and hammered her to hell, bracing her shuddering body till he peaked.

He kept a firm hold right till his climax subsided. Claire picked that moment, smart girl, to grab the bag and wriggle free of his clutch. The camera’s picture went ass over tit as she made her bid for freedom, panties probably still around her knees. Howard swore and caught her up along, and next thing the bag hit the floor, so that the remaining visual was an expanse of carpet. From the sound of it, he flung her onto the bed.

“You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart,” he was saying, “not until I get some fucking answers.” What he got instead was either nails or stiletto heels. He roared in pain and renewed pursuit yelling, “Bitch!”

My gut was knotted as I listened. Claire’s defiant protests, Howard’s profanity, and the crash of furniture as he struggled to maintain a clean hold. “I’m going to fucking rip you apart,” he raged. He might have done too, had she not brought that cut crystal down hard on his skull. That’s my girl. Resourceful as ever.

“You did good, kid,” I said, kissing her messy hair. “How the bastard found out is another story.” I let her go and reached down to lay fingers on Howard’s neck. There was a thread of a pulse. He was barely hanging on. With everything he knew by now, I thought, his survival would fuck us more assuredly than his passing.

I froze, bent over the guy. I could feel the twitch of my fingers, like they were keen to grab hold of anything to stop his air supply and finish what Claire in her desperation had begun. Self-defence was one thing, though. What I momentarily contemplated was a country mile from that. Sure I’d ended another human being in the line of duty and would have done it again, but not like this. Those pesky lines again, the ones that defied stepping over. No - nature could do the work for me.

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” I said.

We picked through the room’s wreckage for Claire’s personal items, and I wiped down everywhere she remembered touching with a cloth from the bathroom. It was the best I could do. Then I wrapped my coat around her to conceal the worst signs of her struggle, checked the corridor, and made for the service elevator I’d mentally noted on the way up. I could figure out how Howard had got the jump on us once we made it back to mine.

Claire’s face was bruised and blotchy with mascara, and she was gripping me like we’d made up after one hell of a vicious argument. We kept our heads down to frustrate recognition via CCTV and got lucky elsewhere too. None of the night-time skeleton staff observed us, as we exited via a storage room next to the kitchen.

Outside, the rain was pouring fit to sluice every rat from London’s sewers. Claire huddled in my coat, pulling the collar around her face. I was drenched by the time we made it to the car. Mine was one of only two vehicles now in the dimly lit street. The nearby light couldn’t cut through the wet gloom as I fumbled for my keys. Neither of us saw danger creeping through the darkness, but we should have done. I’d just found the lock when I felt the tap on my shoulder.

I half turned, and cold metal cracked down hard against my temple. It was enough to fold me onto the wet roadway, my whole body protesting at the shock. Another blow caught me–a foot this time–viciously in the gut. Even through searing flashes of pain, I could hear Claire yelling. Her fear cut through whatever injuries I’d sustained and pulled me gasping from my slump like a puppet. Staring upwards I had a hazy vision of Jim Dalgleish with his arm locked around Claire’s neck and what looked like a Glock 17 pressed to the side of her head. He’d felled me with the weapon’s blunt end and now he was one finger twitch from using it to snuff my Girl Friday clean out of existence.

Claire’s look to me was frantic. Always the steeliest of the bunch, her face now showed abject terror. Every part of me ran cold. All the doubts I’d had over sending her and her friends on their honey dripping missions crowded back on me. Her helplessness made me sicker than the head and stomach blows combined, but there was damn all I do, even if I hadn’t been seeing double.

“What the fuck happened to Rafe Howard?” Jim demanded. His eyes in the semi-darkness were black pits of malice.

I stared up at him, rain spattering on my face as I tried to wrangle the situation under mental control. So my ex-partner had tipped off the mark, and now that he’d failed to wreak whatever damage he’d hoped for with his sabotage, he was improvising some plan B on the spot. One that threatened to finish Claire on any given heartbeat.

“Let her go, Jim,” I managed to say. “This is about you and me. It shouldn’t involve her.”

“She’s involved,” he spat, tightening his strangle-hold till Claire’s eyes bulged, “her and those other fucking slags. And you, letting them lead you by the dick. We had a business, you and me, a good one, and you turned it into a fucking joke.” He’d been drinking. Well of course he had. Only alcohol produced this kind of deranged bravado in Jim Dalgleish. “Now where’s Howard?” he repeated. “He never came out of that room, did he? So, what–is he dead?”

“No,” I said, brutally aware of the gun muzzle hovering at Claire’s ear. My mind cast around desperately for some gambit that would keep her breathing. “Alive. And he’ll likely stay that way providing he gets medical attention fast. Look, Jim, this doesn’t need to get any more out of hand than it already is. Let her go, and I can…”

“Call them,” he said, pressing the gun snug to Claire’s head. “Call the emergency services now. Direct them to the room and give names. Yours and hers.” His arm snaked tighter around Claire’s neck. “Her real name. Not the fake prostitute one. I want both of you connected to this shit.”

“Okay,” I said. I leaned against the car and reached out a placating hand as I prised myself to standing. “Phone’s in the coat pocket,” I said, indicating Claire’s borrowed garment. “Right side.”

Dalgleish registered that the coat was mine. He clearly didn’t trust Claire to retrieve the pocket’s contents and reached for it himself. As his fingers dipped, his hold on her loosened, and the pressure of the gun eased. Whatever part of Claire wasn’t lost in fear took advantage. She raised her leg and stamped her stiletto heel hard onto Dalgleish’s right ankle.

He let out a rasping scream, as the steel-tipped spike splintered its way between the bones of his foot. The gun muzzle closed again on Claire, its owner’s rodent face contorted with rage. Shocked into action, I propelled myself from the side of the car and into Dalgleish. My hand locked on his wrist and shoved the gun upwards. I heard it discharge as we all went over, me on top of Dalgleish, and Claire tumbling to the side. I didn’t even know whether the shot had missed.

Dalgleish and I hit the ground and the gun clattered across the broken tarmac beyond us. I made to retrieve it, but Jim knew my weakness and exploited it. He punched upwards, his fist connecting with my collarbone right on the point of my old injury. The pain screamed white-hot like I’d been shot all over again. I plunged my fist down into his stomach as he scrambled for the gun, but it didn’t do enough to slow his momentum. His hand closed on the Glock, and he swung his arm around, so that the muzzle was almost clean in my face. I grabbed hold of his wrist and prised it away, punching his chin hard enough to smack his head off the ground. His knee jerked upwards and caught me in the balls, winding me again, enough that I lost my grip on his wrist, freeing him to line up his shot. Right between my eyes.

Then Claire fell on him alongside me out of nowhere, her arm swinging in a great descending arc. She was holding one of her own stiletto shoes, the only weapon she’d been able to lay a hand to after she fell. As I stared, most of the heel’s five inches plunged through Dalgleish’s eye socket, the squelch sickening. For a split second his body went taut, then his raised arm fell slack as the rest of him, the gun clacking onto the road. He went the kind of still that lasts, with Claire and me sprawled barely less motionless either side of him.

We breathed out shock and exhaustion in the rain. Only seconds I’m guessing, but it seemed like whole spinning eternities. “Fuck,” was Claire’s eventual response to her own action. Fuck captured it. It’s a messed-up business drawing the final line under someone’s time on Earth. I knew it from my worst days on the force, and she was struggling to get a grip on it now.

As for me, all I knew as I picked myself from the ground was how far off the tracks our lives had just careered. The gunshot had alerted no obvious attention, a minor London miracle, and but for us the backstreet remained deserted. There were no obvious CCTV cameras, but my vision was impaired by rainfall and a throbbing head wound. I helped Claire to her feet. She was trembling again but had the presence of mind to pluck her stiletto free of its gruesome resting place.

“Louboutin,” she muttered with venom. “I’m fucked if he’s keeping it.” 

Mentally I scanned our options. There weren’t many going. I rummaged through my ex-partner’s coat pockets and found his phone and car keys. His car… Looking around, I realised the other vehicle on the street was Jim’s second-hand Toyota Prius. It figured. He’d come to check how his plan was progressing, seen my car, and waited. If we were driving away, it’d be in Jim’s ride, and he was joining us for the trip. I could pick up the Hyundai another time.

“Wait here,” I said, like Claire was going anywhere. She stood soaked and desolate beside the man she’d killed, clutching the murder weapon and its innocent partner, while I ran back and fetched the Prius. Then we both set about helping Dalgleish into his own trunk. Claire was slight of build and reeling from renewed shock. I was bruised and bloody to match. Necessity was cranking her whip, though, and together we managed to haul Jim’s lifeless form inside.

A thought occurred, a useful one as it turned out. Jim’s phone security had fingerprint recognition. His finger, you might say, was at hand, so I used it to unlock the device. Then I shut the trunk and helped Claire to the passenger seat, taking my own place at the dead man’s steering wheel.

“We’re taking him back to his place?” Claire asked me, stonily.

“Yes,” I said. “Maybe we can set the cops a puzzle that’ll take some solving. There’s something else we need to know, though… You okay to check his messages?”

“Yep, I’m good,” she said, even if it wasn’t true. She took the phone and thumbed her way through its contents as I steered a grim path through the unrelenting rain. “Your own phone’s vibrating,” she informed me, her voice still dull.

“That’ll be Aveline Howard,” I said. Goddamn. Rafe’s wife, I figured, mightn’t mind a funeral, depending on the outcome of her husband’s will. But the investigation triggered by the circumstances of his death might tie up his money for a geological age, while threatening to tangle her, me, and Claire in its knots. Another situation to kick down the line.

“What’s on Jim’s phone?” I asked.

“No recent voicemail,” she told me. “But… Shit. Shit.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Guess who he’s been in contact with.” I made the leap before she told me.

“Georgi.” Nothing else made sense. Only she and Claire had been available for the Howard job, and so Georgi had learned all the details.

“Mmhmm,” Claire confirmed, continuing to scroll. “She’s kept him informed about everything. From weeks ago. It’s all cryptic, but she gave him tonight’s hotel and room number. Fuck. Bitch!”

I wasn’t arguing. Georgi had overheard the details with her mouth still salivating from my length. The night the Howard trap was being sprung, she’d lured me square into hers. Guess she knew a man’s weakness as well as any girl. This man’s, at any rate. I had to deal with this straight off.

“She say anything else?” I inquired.

“She’s texted wanting to know how tonight worked out,” Claire said, bristling with fury. “And she’s made a bunch of missed calls.”

“Feeling the pressure,” I mused, gripping the steering wheel fit to leave imprints. “Message her. As Jim.”

“And say what?”

“Complications have arisen. You need to see her now.”

“On it,” she said.

It was thirty long minutes in traffic to Georgi’s Islington pad. By the time we’d got there, our lifeless cargo stowed in the back, Claire had upped the ante.

What’s happened??? the traitor had texted. Trouble, the fake Jim had replied. Better we talk in person. This is no phone conversation, it’s serious. That would have her properly panicked. By the time I was parking Jim’s car around the corner from the apartment complex, Claire had even managed to find out the gate code via text. The door number I already knew from friendlier late-night liaisons in the past. That was lucky. Georgi’s texts had made it clear Jim knew the number too. She buzzed us in without questioning who was coming to visit. Was this girl in for a surprise.

“I can’t believe she’s done this,” Claire muttered as we took our battered selves up the stairs to Georgi’s door. Her shock was making room for anger at the girl she’d personally recruited. I knew exactly how she felt. Betrayal stings the fiercer when it’s been masked by a cute smile.

“Live a few more years, sweetheart, and you’ll believe it,” I said, right before I knocked. “The rarest commodity in this god-forsaken world is trust. Georgi needs to learn that commodity’s value.”

“No shit, boss,” Claire said, like her bitterness had taken full possession. “Make sure you teach her.”

Georgi opened to us wearing a t-shirt and jogging pants for nightwear instead of her usual babydoll chemise. She swapped her bewildered concern for sheer terror, when I shoved the door wide and strode in. Claire was at my shoulder as I shut us both inside. Damn, we must have looked one blood-caked vision from hell. Our reluctant hostess acted like the Devil himself had tricked her on Halloween.

“Oh God!” she cried, ironically. “Jack, what…”

“I’ll ask the fucking questions,” I said, seizing her chin and planting her firmly against the passage wall. “Now take a good look at me and a better one at your friend there, and tell me… Why do you think we’re not looking like a couple of West End socialites tonight?”

“I… I don’t know…” she squeaked, locks of hair tumbling over her anxious face.

“Wrong answer, gorgeous,” I snarled, squeezing her jaw. “We’ve got your texts all over Jim Dalgleish’s phone, and you’re damn well staring at their consequences.” I twisted her head so that she was looking directly at Claire. “Oh,” I said, “and we had a very illuminating chat with your unlikely pal.”

“Where is Jim?” she moaned, her rose complexion paling visibly as she stared back into my eyes.

“Not coming to any rescue,” I assured her. “Not his style. Now tell me why you’d sell us out to him.”

“I’m sorry,” Georgi whimpered. She’d realised abject apology was all she’d got left. “I didn’t mean you to get hurt.”

“Not me, maybe,” I snarled, gripping her hard. “You didn’t care what happened to Claire, though, when you got recruited. You weren’t just trying to sabotage the business, were you?”

“I was… I… Okay, it was her,” she blurted out, her eyes welling. “It was always all her. You treated her like a partner. More than you did Jim. He said so.”

The notion of Jim and Georgi in cahoots felt ludicrous, but Jim’s hatred of me must have trumped his natural contempt of her. “You and he got all buddy-buddy?” I asked her, not relinquishing my grip.

“It wasn’t about him,” Georgi said, her voice trembling. “He… He just sensed what I felt, that’s all.”

“And what did you feel?”

“That I could have helped you with the business like she does,” she said, her voice growing more desperate. “Better than her.”

“Like hell you could,” I told her.

“I could,” she said, with a hint of defiance amid her sorrow. “Jim knew it.”

“Is that right,” I said. “And he was going to reward you for throwing a wrench in the works, putting the agency and Claire at risk. Give you a job in a rival agency, is that what he promised?” Their text communications had hinted as much.

“Y-es,” she admitted, “but I didn’t want it. Not really. I wanted to work with you, Jack. You and me.” She grabbed hold of my shirt front. “I would have been better at everything, and you know it. You do, Jack.” There was a new plea in her voice, one that provoked a snort of derision from Claire. I was worn out from the girl and let her go, ready to leave her to her delusions. But she wasn’t done. “You know what I can do for you,” she said, dropping to her knees and scrabbling at my pants front. She stared right up at me as her fingers worked. “Please… Please, boss, let me show you again. I’ll do anything.” Disgusted, I moved to throw her off me.

“Let her,” Claire hissed, laying her hand on my arm. “She owes you.” It was the malevolence in her voice that redirected my blood southwards, rather than anything Georgi was doing.

“She owes us both,” I muttered. My cock responded rapidly as Georgi freed it, wrapping her mouth around the head. She gobbled me with a fervour equal to her prior exertions, sucking my length properly hard. The situation’s urgency was pushing her further. She wrapped her hand around the base and sucked in more of me, her eyes gazing into mine as her head bobbed. By the time she took a breather, her mouth was dripping like a faucet.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said, like she was mourning her own foolishness. “See how sorry I am?” She set to work again, inhaling my cock, and vacuuming it rhythmically.

“Make her sorry,” Claire urged, her fingers digging into my arm.

“Uh-uh,” I said to Georgi. “I don’t see it yet.” She lavished her mouth on me, eyes big and pleading. “Nope,” I said, “still not enough.”

“Keep going, bitch,” Claire added, her gaze fixed like a rifle’s sites on her former friend.

Georgi increased her suction, blanketing her tongue all around my shaft as she took more of me in. “I’m just not feeling that remorse,” I said, my hands closing on her head. Claire’s grip on me tightened. Her expression was suffused with dark encouragement. “Okay,” I said, staring down at the kneeling brunette. “Let’s see what a penitent girl really looks like.”

My fingers curled into Georgi’s hair, and I pushed her down to the base of my cock, holding her fast while she gurgled around me. “It’s been one fuck of a bad night,” I said, “and you’re damn well going to make it better.” Then I pumped her up and down on my shaft till she frothed, hitting the back of her throat every time she bottomed out. When I pulled her off, she was one spluttering teary mess. “Feeling sorry now?”

“Yes, boss,” she said, the words thick with saliva. “I’m sorry.”

I plunged her again, leaning in with both my hands clutching her head, my balls squeezed against her chin as my cock thrust deep. “You should be,” I growled, “and not just for me.” Claire added her double grip to mine on Georgi’s head, and together we held her fast. “You owe someone else an apology.”

I let Georgi go and Claire pulled her off coughing and spitting off my throat-slimed, bulging cock.

“What do you say?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Georgi managed, eyes streaming and drool dangling from her chin.

“Sorry to who?”

“I’m… sorry, Claire.”

I looked up at the girl who’d been forced into double homicide by Georgi’s duplicity. “Do you accept?”

Claire strengthened her hold on the brunette’s head, her eyes blazing. “Fuck ‘sorry’,” she said. “She can choke on it.” She rammed Georgi’s gaping mouth back down and fucked her on my shaft without a shred of mercy. “Swallow him, bitch,” she rasped, as the tight sleeve of Georgi’s throat contracted on me. “Fuck that face, boss.”

I did exactly that, gripping hard and driving into Georgi every time she dived until my swollen balls couldn’t take it. Claire read the moment and dragged her nemesis off me, holding the girl tight in place. I wrapped my fist around my cock and jacked like it would save the both of us. Images of that night’s carnage swirled in my head, mixing with the hot scene before me. “Paint her lying whore face, Jack!” Claire yelled, her face savage with lustful wrath. “Fucking drown her!”

My balls squeezed tight, triggering everything I'd got. I shot all over Georgi’s crying face, submerging her tears with the pent-up molten rage of one bitter evening. By the time I was done, the agency’s most high-end honey was a trashed mess panting through a faceful of spunk. We left her on her knees, musing on the wages of sin, and her texts on Jim's phone. I took her spikiest heels as well, the ones she’d worn in online escort pics, telling her, “Keep your trap shut, and I’ll never need to bring these into play.” She just blinked at me through her clinging mask of cum. I can be cryptic too.

My next priority should have been the contents of the car trunk, but Claire and I just wanted to slump into oblivion and forget what lay ahead. We took a deserted Tube to Acton Town and trudged the remaining distance to her place. There we salved each other’s injuries with iodine and each other's weary body in the shower.

"Fuck me, Jack," she said, her grip insistent, and her wet mouth grazing my neck. "Hard against the wall." With her ass soapy and taut beneath my hands I discovered I had the means to do it. Aching though I was, I entered her with her thighs trapping my waist, and gave it to her like she needed, like we both did, up against the tiles.

My strokes were hard and urgent, my girl's cunt clamping at my shaft as I fucked into her wanton core. Murder and betrayal ceased to matter in that moment. We were closeted away, hot rivulets of water embalming our rough, pounding union. The rotten world could go to hell as she gushed all over me, and I emptied deep inside of her.

She and I slept deep and together. We could do that for one more night at any rate.

~~~~

I woke mid-morning with my phone under one-woman siege from Aveline Howard. What had happened? How come her husband sustained so much damage from a honey trap? Sure, she'd no love for the man, but she hadn't wished him dead. Not quite. Turned out Rafe had been rushed to Accident and Emergency when hotel staff found him. He was hanging on by a stubborn thread.

She went silent when I gave her the wretched saga's highlights. A spouse dead in suspicious circumstances might be a headache, but a live one who knows the score is a fucking migraine.

Me, I'd got other fish to gut. I trekked across town and retrieved my car from the Abercorn before it landed itself a parking ticket. All day I checked the news feeds till I was sure no CCTV cam had picked up our altercation with my ex-partner. There at least we'd stayed lucky.

Around midnight I picked up Jim and chauffeured him on his final journey, an hour's trip to Epping Forest. The spade and grade A cleaning agent I’d bought that afternoon came with us. I'd steeled myself through some grim shit but dragging Jim's still rigored body from that trunk and laying him to final rest in a none too shallow grave fucked me up in a whole new way. Sticking the snapped-off heel of Georgi’s shoe where Claire’s had gone was the cherry on the whole stinking shit-cake. Sure, we'd not parted on the friendliest of terms, but I never would have wished him such indignity in his passing.

I scrubbed the car interior till my hands chafed, erasing signs of Jim dead in the trunk, and Claire and me riding live up front. I made it back to his apartment close to dawn and parked in his car’s usual roadside spot. I left the vehicle locked, ditched the prophylactic fashion items I’d been wearing, and hailed a taxi several streets away. One more job done. Jim had a sister in Scotland who’d maybe wonder where he’d got to when no Christmas card arrived. Aside from that, the guy had been a loner. It’d be New Year before anyone kicked up a fuss. That caused me pause more than relief.

Three days ticked excruciatingly by. A contact of an acquaintance in the police informed me there were no leads on Rafe Howard’s attacker. He’d entered the hotel alone, it was confirmed, and whoever he’d met had joined him in the room discreetly. The honey project’s MO was paying dividends there. Skies were clear, but for one storm cloud fucking up the view.

Rafe Howard’s ‘thread’ has held. In the ICU, he’d clawed his way to consciousness, if not quite yet to clarity. The guy had met with Jim Dalgleish, and that would link back to me. He knew his wife had paid to set him up. He could identify Claire. All of her. Her bruises were healing fast, while the cops had his on file. Things were close to critical.

There are times a man’s got to act, that much I knew.

I met with Aveline Howard and kept it brief. “Don’t call again,” I told her. “You’ll find the number defunct anyway. You and I have never met. Oh, and don’t go near the hospital tonight. Get with your bridge-playing friends. Be seen.”

She said she’d do it. Fear and avarice made sure she didn’t ask too many questions.

I’d other loose ends to tie. Two ongoing honey plots got cancelled, but I compensated Kasey and Paloma properly, in cash, triple the usual rate. Paloma stuck her ass in my face while Kasey sucked me off, as a sentimental goodbye gesture. They were two good girls and they’d deserved their final payday like Georgi had warranted my jizz in her face.

I scrubbed the office down like I’d done Jim’s car and took my work computer with me when I left. Successive blows with a lump hammer ended the hard drive conclusively, like Claire had ended Jim. On it had been the only solid evidence connecting the girls to the business. Thank Christ we’d never been audited.

Then I called Claire one final time before the phone went the same way as the hard drive. I checked she’d got the remains of Georgi’s shoes, saying I hoped she’d never need to use them.

“After today, you don’t know me,” I warned her. “I won’t be naming any other names. One thing I’m good for is keeping my council. Keep your head down, stay away, and with any luck this will blow over without stirring a hair on your sweet head.”

“Wait, what are you planning?” she protested, but I stopped her. “Let me in on it at least,” she pleaded.

That wasn’t going to happen. She’d got an ailing mother and a kid sister who adored her, and she needed severing from my shit once and for all.

“You’re the best of them, kid,” I told her. “I brought that whole night on you. Everything you had to do is square on me, and this is how I pay it back. You’re strong and you’ll get by. Just let me do this.”

Eventually, she let me.

I slipped into the unit no problem with the brim of my cap pulled down. The bottle had arrived via Amazon, same day delivery. The insulin I bought over the counter. Rafe Howard was halfway awake, his muscularity somehow diminished on the adjustable ICU bed. I sat down in a plastic chair midway between his and the next station and peered over my phone, eyeing the various drips that were feeding him. My hand rested in my pocket, the filled-up bottle rotating gently within my fingers.

I paused, wondered when some distraction would draw away the nurse supplying Howard with medical assistance. I thought of Claire, and of the good times, and of how other people’s bitterness and envy had fucked the whole thing up. Or maybe that was me, letting myself off the hook for my own sins. The worst of which was yet to be committed.

I wondered if I’d make it from the hospital, never mind the distance to the airport with my one-way electronic ticket. And I mused how leaving a man for dead in a hotel room was one thing, ending him coldly in his sick bed quite another. The kind of thing that kills a guy inside, wherever he decides to run to, his conscience doubling the baggage weight.

But hey, that’s the kind of thing we do for love. Right?

The End