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And exactly what Alexander Henley likes.
Those videos showed me three constants:
The first being that these women get fucked until they are utterly exhausted. Until they’re nothing but a broken, sweaty, whimpering, cum-splattered mess at the end.
The second being that these women are always like puppets, doing exactly as they’re told without hesitation. There’s this obedience to them that I can’t really put into words, I just felt it. I felt it everywhere.
And lastly, on every single video without fail, these women get… strangled. Hands-around-the-throat until they choke. Like properly choke. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have these glassy eyes without any fight in them at all, and sometimes they cry. Sometimes they even smile. Sometimes they cry as they smile.
It made me hurt inside. A weird, tender kind of hurt.
The kind of hurt I’ve tried to close away since the night my life was taken away from me. But this time it was different, this time it was… beautiful…
Peaceful.
I can’t even begin to explain how fucked up I must be to feel like this. You can’t understand until you’re in these shoes. Not unless you’ve lost everything. Not unless every day is a fight you’re not sure you want to be fighting.
Not unless there is one single dream in life you’re grasping onto with every tiny part of your broken soul, not unless laying yourself before him and offering up your everything is the only destination at the end of a really painful road.
Cindy told me she’s pretty sure Mr Henley is into it in real life, asphyxiation. She told me this shit is dangerous and fucked up, and if there was any truth in the things his wife told her that I’d be crazy to risk finding out.
I’m crazy, alright.
I didn’t tell Cindy that Mr Henley’s browsing history made me burn up. Made me flush hot and cold and shiver all over. I didn’t tell her that I had to clench my thighs all the way through, unsure whether I wanted to faint or play with myself right then and there.
I didn’t tell her he is my final destination.
The thing that keeps my soul alive enough to care for Joseph and keep on breathing.
My breaths are borrowed. Loving him gives them to me. Loving him keeps me hoping.
He can take them away.
Literally if he wants.
I guess I passed her craziness test anyway, because Cindy put the TV back to standby and carried on with the rest of her tour. A tour which ended in Mr Henley’s actual bedroom, and Mr Henley’s cases full of sex toys.
She wasn’t lying about those either. Some of those toys could never be used, at least I don’t think so, you’d have to be… loose… to take some of them. Like real loose.
Maybe I’m not the best judge since I’ve never done any of it before, but I know enough to know what might fit and what might not.
I told Cindy that and she laughed and said I should scroll further back through his browser history and I might change my mind on that.
We’d cleaned the whole house before she finally beckoned me over to Mr Henley’s bedside table. I held my breath as she eased open the top drawer, peeking inside as she so carefully flipped through some paperwork and pulled out a business card.
“This is your gateway to Harley’s Tavern,” she told me.
The card looked innocent enough. I turned it over in shaky fingers, looking for more, but if there was any meaning it was lost on me.
Claude Finch, senior auctioneer. Finch Hamilton.
The address listed one of those posh auction houses in Chelsea.
“That’s who hooks him up,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“He has a private email address, some random account under the name Ted Brown. It was open on his screen one day, there were loads of emails there from CF. Emails showing women with all the usual tick-boxes underneath.”
“So you don’t know it’s definitely this Claude guy?”
She rolled her eyes. “CF. In the bedside drawer with all the dodgy paperwork. He’s an auctioneer.”
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts,” she said. “It’s him.”
“And if it’s not?”
She shrugs. “Pretend you dialled the wrong number.”
The idea of actually calling this guy launched my heart into my throat. I wrote his number in my little notepad and slipped that business card straight back into the drawer, exactly as it had been.
“I’m glad I’m not going to be around to see what a whirlwind of shit you get yourself into,” she said.
And so am I.
For all the insight and tips I got from Cindy during our handover, I’ve never been as excited as the moment she hands me her work mobile, loaded up with Mr Henley’s real-time schedule, and finally says her goodbyes.
I feel the craziest rush of freedom, this weird naughtiness at the thought that it’s just me in his space now, me on my own, free to rummage and root through his life as much as I like.
It takes me two days without her to pluck up the courage to strip naked in his bedroom and slip between his bedsheets. My heart is thumping, right between my legs, my thighs all clammy and jittery as the cotton brushes my skin. I press my nose into his pillow and breathe him in, and I can smell him there, that same deep scent, gorgeous enough that I never want to breathe normal air ever again.
I play with myself in his bed on my third day alone. And again on my fourth.
I drink out of his whisky tumbler and put my lips around the cigarette butt in the inkwell.
I run my fingers around his toilet seat, knowing his bare ass has been right there.
I put on his worn shirt from the laundry hamper, wrap his tie around my neck and imagine him choking me with it as he takes my virginity.
I smell his boxers. I smell his bedsheets where his cock must’ve been.
I put his toothbrush in my mouth, and my reflection in his bathroom cabinet makes me feel so sick, so out of control that it takes my breath.
So I stop. Stop doing this crazy shit and focus on something more practical – on finding out everything I need to know to be close to him for real.
I clean and snoop in tandem, working so hard I get blisters on my fingers. I buy some big white orchids for the empty vases in his living room just because it looks so cold and bare, and just hope my streak of initiative doesn’t get me fired. I gain the confidence of Brutus as best I can, and by the end of the week I’m sure I see him wag his tail when I open the door, just one sweep, but it’s enough to give me hope that we really can be friends.
Friday evening comes around so ridiculously quickly. I turn down his bed, just so, and take a lingering look at the room before I leave.
I say goodbye to Brutus on my way out and check the orchids have enough water to survive until Monday.
And then I wait.
I linger just down the street, pressed in the shadow of an ornamental hedgerow with a decent view of his front door, the work handset in my hand as his schedule switches from court to clear and the sky turns dark overhead.
I wait for almost an hour until he shows, and it’s worth every second to see his car pull onto the driveway. I’d have waited an hour all over again just to watch him climb his front steps and unlock the door I cleaned so thoroughly this afternoon.
I watch the lights come on, imagine him walking from room to room. Imagine the pad of paws as Brutus follows his master around the place.
Imagine the scent of orchids in the air.
Imagine the scent of Alexander Henley with my nose nuzzled into his neck.
I’m about to leave for home, really I am. I’m tired and sated and ready for real life. Ready to cuddle with Joseph on the sofa and get him bathed for bed. Ready to drink coffee with Dean and tell him all about my latest adventures at Henley’s palace.
I’ve turned on my heel and taken a step in the direction of the underground when I hear the familiar thud of that heavy front door closing.
I hold my breath as he locks up behind him, and my eyes are wide, because I can’t believe it. It can’t be.
But it is.
Alexander Henley, whose dressing room consists almost entirely of tailored black suits and ties, is wearing a baseball cap, jeans and a scuffed old coat that’s seen better days. I dip behind a parked car, crouching in the darkness as he passes.
My skin prickles.
All of me prickles.
And I follow him.
Because wherever he’s going, I’m now on a mission to get there too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ALEXANDER
I HATE TAKING THE UNDERGROUND. It reminds me exactly why I have a driver.
It’s a strange phenomenon that when I’m dressed to be incognito I feel more noticeable than ever. The discomfort is palpable this evening. I feel observed. As though every pair of eyes on this carriage are boring into me. Staring.
They aren’t, of course.
