Chapter 52: The Tally
The leather of his sofa was cool against his cheek. Paul lay on his side, fully dressed, his suit trousers still faintly damp at the knees from the changing room floor. His whole body hummed with a spent, hollow energy. Behind his closed eyelids, he saw a kaleidoscope: the stark white of Holly’s bathroom, the vibrant floral print of Sue’s swimsuit, the muscular V of Astrid’s spread thighs. The tastes layered in his memory—metallic, chlorinated, musky-sweet.
His phone, facedown on the coffee table, buzzed.
A convulsive twitch went through him. He let it ring, once, twice. On the third buzz, he rolled over and snatched it up.
Odette’s name glowed on the screen. Not a call. A message.
He opened it.
‘How many cunts did you serve today, mon amour?’
The casual vulgarity in her perfect French accent, imagined in his head, was a lance of heat and shame straight to his groin. His thumbs hovered over the screen. He typed, erased, typed again. The truth was the only currency she accepted.
‘Four.’
The reply was almost instantaneous. A laughing emoji. Then another message. A simple, pulsing ellipsis. He watched it, breath held. She was typing something longer. He imagined her curled on her own expensive sofa, a sly smile playing on her lips as she crafted her next move.
‘Hayley sent me the video,’ her message finally appeared. His breath stopped. The air in his quiet flat turned to lead. ‘We need to talk about it. When I get back.”
Four words. We need to talk. The universal preface to a terminal verdict. His vision tunnelled. His thumbs were blocks of ice on the screen.
His thumbs were blocks of ice on the screen. The three dots pulsed again, a malevolent heartbeat. Then they vanished, replaced by her next message, which arrived not as a judgment but as a demand for inventory.
‘Hayley is one,’ she wrote. ‘So tell me about the other three. Names. Descriptions. Details. I want to know who tasted my property today.’
Paul swallowed, his throat dry. The order was clinical, a queen reviewing reports from a conquered province. He began to type, his movements slow and precise.
‘The first was Holly. From my chambers.’ He sent it, then forced himself to continue, the memory sharp and coppery. ‘She was on her period. She made me change her tampon. With my teeth.’
He hit send and stared at the words, their brutality laid bare in stark text. The silence from her end felt heavier, expectant.
Her reply was swift. ‘Describe her cunt. While you did it.’
A vivid, blood-rich image flashed behind his eyes. ‘Swollen,’ he typed, his fingers moving faster now, compelled by her command. ‘Very red. Slick with blood. The string was soaked. I had to pull the soaked tampon out with my teeth and put a fresh one in, deep.’
‘Good,’ Odette responded. A simple word that sent a perverse thrill through his shame. ‘Who was number two?’
‘Astrid. At the municipal pool.’ He could still feel the chill of the tiles, hear the echo of children’s laughter. ‘In the women’s changing room. She had just finished swimming. She peeled her suit down and sat on a bench.’
‘And you knelt,’ Odette stated, knowing.
‘Yes. On the wet floor. She came in my mouth. It was powerful. She tasted like chlorine and salt.’
This time, the three dots pulsed for a long moment. He could almost see her considering this, her head tilted. ‘And the third? You said four today. Hayley, the bleeding one, the swimmer. Who else?’
This was the one she would like most. He knew it. A strange, sick pride twisted in his gut as he composed the message. ‘A stranger. A woman at the pool. Maybe late forties. She heard me with Astrid. She asked for me next.’
The reaction was immediate. A string of emojis: a crying-laughing face, a fire, a clapping hands. ‘A STRANGER!’ she wrote, the capitals vibrating with her delight. ‘Tell me everything. What was her name? What did she look like?’
‘She said her name was Sue. She had curly, auburn hair. Damp from the pool. She wore a floral swimsuit. A mum.’ He paused, then added the crucial detail. ‘She wanted me to fuck her after. I told her I wasn’t allowed.’
‘Good boy’ Odette’s reply was possessive, affirming.
‘She sucked me instead. Just for a moment. I didn’t cum. Then she left.’
The silence that followed was different. It felt charged, thick with her focused attention. He could picture her breathing, the slight part of her lips. When her next message came, the tone had shifted from inquisitor to something more intimately possessive.
‘My good boy,’ she wrote. ‘My perfect, useful thing. Serving lawyers and secretaries and random mothers. Getting hard from it in a public changing room.’ A pause. ‘Are you hard now?’
He was. Painfully so, trapped within his damp trousers. ‘Yes.’
‘Show me.’
He fumbled with his phone, switching to the camera. He angled it down, pushing his trousers and briefs past his hips. His cock jutted out, flushed and rigid against his stomach. He took the picture, the clinical flash illuminating the weary leather of his sofa. He sent it.