Chapter 92: Contract Cleaner
The black Mercedes purred to a stop. Rupert peered through the window, expecting the familiar sight of the village hall, or perhaps the pub. Instead, he saw the low, modern silhouette of Dolores’s dance studio, its large windows dark except for a single, soft light glowing above the door. Fairy lights twinkled in the potted shrubs.
“This isn’t the WI hall,” he said, more to himself than to the driver.
The partition slid down with a soft whisper. The woman behind the wheel turned. It wasn’t Julia’s usual driver. This was a younger woman, severe and beautiful, with dark hair pulled into a tight knot. He’d seen her before, hovering at the edges of the Halloween party. Julia’s apprentice.
“It’s the clean-up location,” she said, her voice cool and factual. “Instructions have changed. Your wife and the other committee members require specific assistance.”
Rupert felt a familiar, sinking flutter in his stomach. The same feeling he’d had when presented with the calendar, when led into Agnes’s greenhouse, when the cage had been lowered over him at Julia’s. It was the feeling of the ground shifting beneath his feet, of rules being rewritten in a language he didn’t quite grasp.
“What sort of assistance?”
The apprentice got out, opened his door. The cold night air bit through his jumper. She walked to the boot, retrieved a small black duffel bag. “You are to service the party guests. As you did at Agnes’s. With your tongue. Your only directive is to listen for the sound of a bell. When you hear it, you go to it. You serve until the bell moves away. Do you understand?”
Rupert’s mouth went dry. Agnes’s party. The memory was a haze of female musk and strained muscles, of being guided from one soft, wet expanse to another, a tool for their pleasure. He’d been blindfolded then, too. It had been easier in the dark.
“I… suppose so. Are they in there?”
“They are.” She unzipped the bag. “You will strip here. Everything. Place your clothes in the boot.”
The command was delivered without room for debate. Rupert hesitated for only a second. The thought of Margot waiting, of disappointing her, of being the dull accountant who couldn’t play along, was worse than the chill. He pulled his jumper over his head, toeing off his shoes, shucking off his trousers and pants in the stark privacy of the open car door. The air raised gooseflesh all over his body.
“Turn around.”
He turned, facing the studio. He heard the rustle of leather, then a soft hood was drawn over his head. It was padded, sealing out all light, and fastened snugly around his neck with a series of buckles he felt but couldn’t see. The world vanished into close, dark silence, filled with the sound of his own breathing and the thump of his heart. A collar was fixed over the hood’s neck. A metallic click. A leash.
He flinched as the leash went taut.
“Follow. Mind the step.”
He was led, naked and blind, across gravel, then onto a smooth path. A door opened, warmth washing over him. The scent hit him immediately—not oil paint or turpentine, but the dense, intimate aftermath of a party. Champagne, perfume, sweat, and beneath it all, the unmistakable, tangy scent of sex. It was profound, layered, hanging in the heated air.
The door closed behind him. The leash was unhooked from his collar.
“Kneel,” the apprentice whispered, close to his ear. “Wait for the bell.”
He knelt on a hard, wooden floor. The warmth from a nearby heater bathed his side. He was utterly adrift, a castaway on an island of sensation. He heard the quiet rustle of clothing, the clink of a glass being set down. A suppressed giggle—Henrietta’s, he was sure—from somewhere to his left. A deep, satisfied sigh. The crackle of a fire.
Then, silence. A waiting, watchful silence. He could feel eyes on him. Many eyes. The two-way mirror. Paolo. The women. His skin prickled with exposure.
A soft, silvery ting.
It came from directly in front of him, about ten feet away. A delicate chime, like a tiny sleigh bell.
He crawled forward, his hands encountering polished floorboards. The scent intensified, becoming personal, musky. He felt the warmth of a body before he touched it. His outstretched hands found bare knees, parted. He felt the soft, inner skin of thighs. He inhaled, his nose brushing coarse curls.
He lowered his head and began.
It was Elizabeth. He knew it from the particular, floral sharpness of her, from the controlled stillness of her posture, from the way her hand came down and rested, not in his hair, but lightly on the hood, a silent, regal acknowledgment. He worked diligently, the technique remembered from his previous service. Licking, swirling, gentle suction. Her breathing deepened. After a few minutes, her thighs tensed slightly, and a short, sharp exhale escaped her. A finish. The bell tinged once, softly.
He stopped, remained kneeling.
The bell chimed again, this time from his right. He crawled toward it, his knee brushing something soft—a discarded silk cushion. This one was wetter, more abandoned. Henrietta. She sighed deeply as he found his rhythm, her thigh nudging his ear encouragingly. “There’s a good lad,” she murmured, her voice thick. Her climax was a series of low, rolling shudders, and she gave his hood a pat, like rewarding a diligent dog.
The bell moved.
Charlie was next. Shyer, tighter, with a faint tremor in her legs. She made almost no sound, but her fingers briefly tangled in the hair at the back of his hood, a fleeting, desperate gesture. When she finished, it was with a small, gasped “oh” that sounded almost like surprise.
A pause. He knelt, breathing hard, his mouth aching. The studio was utterly silent now, the tension woven thick as rope.
A new bell rang. Different. A lower, fuller tink. It came from farther away.
He crawled. The floor gave way to something plush—a rug. Then his hands met rumpled, damp silk sheets. The scent here was overwhelming, a complex tapestry of all the women, and something else… something familiar that made his heart clutch.
He moved up the bed. His face met the soft, heavy curve of a stomach, the intoxicating perfume of skin and sex and… her. Margot’s scent, but magnified, layered with the sweat of others, with exertion. His mind, sluggish with shock and arousal, stuttered. She was here. She had been part of this.
The bell, he realized, was not being held. As he nuzzled closer, his nose brushed against metal. A delicate piercing. The bell was attached to her.
A wave of vertigo swept him. This was his wife. His Margot. Fresh from an event he could now only imagine in terrifying, vivid detail. And she was offering herself to his tongue, a final course.
A soft hand—her hand—guided his head down. He could smell the evidence of others on her. It was the most devastating, arousing thing he had ever encountered.
He served her with a focus that blurred everything else. This was his penance, his communion, his strange and twisted reclaiming. He laved her with a fervor that came from a deep, unlocked place, drinking in the salt and the slick and the story it told. She was not still like the others. She moved against him, her hips rising, a low moan building in her throat. It was raw, unguarded. It was a sound he hadn’t heard from her in years.
Her hands fisted in the leather of his hood. Her thighs clamped around his ears, shutting out the world. She cried out, a sharp, beautiful sound that echoed in the tiled studio, and shuddered against his mouth for a long, trembling time.
Slowly, she released him. He rested his forehead against her thigh, spent.
The bell did not move away.
Instead, he felt the bed shift. Other bodies were moving around them, settling onto the silk. He felt a warm weight against his back—Henrietta, leaning into him. A hand—Elizabeth’s—traced the line of his spine. Charlie’s fingers lightly touched his ankle. Dolores’s perfume settled near his head.
They were all around him. A silent, satiated circle.
The apprentice’s hands were on his collar again. The leash clicked back into place.
“Come,” she said.
He was led, naked and hooded, away from the bed, away from the warmth of his wife and the tangled knot of women. Back across the floor, through the door, into the shocking cold of the night. The chapter of the evening was closing, but the story, he understood with a clarity that froze him more than the air, was only just beginning.