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Heidi scraped off a chipping triangle of her nail polish. It was a bad color anyway. She shouldn’t have let the manicurist pick, but she sometimes liked to give people chances to disappoint her.
“You know the truth, Clay. I prefer to work smart, not hard.”
She’d had her mouth on Carine’s tender places a time or two, but Heidi had infinitely more interesting ways to amuse herself in that locked playroom. She enjoyed watching Carine squirm.
Carine barged into the office, still fastening the upper buttons of her shirt. “Clay, it’d serve you right if I went up to that place in Fairfax once or twice to weigh my options. They’ve got more bodies in there and more—oh. Hey, Heidi.”
“Hello.” Heidi took a sip of wine and hoped it’d settle her fraying nerves. Usually, she wasn’t so easy to agitate, but the last thing she needed was another Xuan on her hands. She couldn’t afford to complicate things with Carine. They had a routine, the two of them. Of course, Carine didn’t know that Heidi was the other person in theirthey, but that didn’t matter. On the nights they were scheduled to play, Carine waited outside the smallest bedroom in the anteroom. When Heidi arrived, Clay informed Carine over the intercom to get ready. She’d undress and put on her blindfold. Heidi would make the rounds downstairs, saying hello to folks she hadn’t seen in a while. Then, when no one was paying attention, she headed upstairs and guided Carine into the bedroom. She never spoke, and made sure her touches were careful, so Carine couldn’t tell what sort of person was handling her.
Carine had been begging Clay for months for something new, likely expecting she’d be introduced to an experienced dominant like Tim had been. Clay had asked Heidi if she were game for the challenge, and she’d agreed, hardly finding the inconvenience in the affair. She’d always been attracted to redheads, and when Carine got frustrated in play, she talked shit. That only added to Heidi’s arousal. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d silently come while Carine lay bound to the headboard, speaking queries such as, “Are you still here or did you tie me up to offer me as a sacrifice? I’m not a virgin, as you know. The sacrifice won’t be good for anything except to annoy the spirits. Bet that’ll keep you up late at night, huh? Angry haints throwing shit around?”
Carine’s skin mottled when she was pissed. Heidi liked to stand at the bedside and trace the pink shapes with her eyes. Only eyes, because she knew that eventually, Carine would figure out she’d been treated to a woman’s touch the whole time. The distance between Point A and Point B was a straight line, and there weren’t many women around who did what Heidi did.
Carine plopped her hands onto her hips in a collegial way, which, given the surroundings, tickled Heidi’s funnybone. “See Naomi today?”
Heidi took a breath and looked away, putting the glass back to her lips. Carine had missed a button, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Mm-hmm. Tim brought her by Wave Cruisers this morning, and everyone got to meet her from a distance.”
“Oh, that’s cute. I know Valerie said he’d take the baby into work with him when her maternity leave is up, but they grow so fast at that stage.”
“Yep. She’ll either be in Tim’s office or mine. Probably mine, most days. Quieter in there since my space is soundproofed. I don’t have to leave my desk much, so everything works out.”
“You are a saint,” Clay said. “I’m afraid to even hold her. She’s a tablespoon of skin and a sprinkling of bone, and I don’t remember Kevin ever being that tiny.”
“Well, you were on designer drugs twenty years ago, so I reckon that would taint your memory.”
Clay rolled his eyes. “We all come out in our own ways, huh? You had Timmy running interference for you, and I got the people I thought were my friends shouting scriptures at me.”
Reflexively, Heidi ground her teeth. Clay had been dealt a shitty hand of cards. He hid his disquietude well most of the time, but he had moments of outward melancholy. It’d taken him decades not to give a shit what people thought, but all over again, the hornet’s nest was kicked over and buzzing. He’d had a fling with Valerie’s sister that she’d left on a cliffhanger. Those people who’d given him a hard time about sleeping with men had gone out of their way to find his number to call and text him.“See, you got that shit out of your system, huh? I hope you’ve figured out what’s important now.”
He still liked men. In fact, he preferred men most of the time. Leah somehow had managed to push a few hard-to-reach buttons of his. Clay hadn’t seen her for months and still hadn’t recovered from her ghosting. He barely left his office on Friday play nights and didn’t even ask Valerie if he’d heard from her anymore, even if he had good reason to suspect that she had.
Clay emitted a disgruntled growl and stood. “Take some of these bottles of wine home with you, Carine. Do eenie-meenie-miney-moe. I don’t care. Maybe you’ll get lucky and grab a good one. Heidi says they’ve all sucked so far.”
Heidi clucked her tongue. “Just the white ones. The reds are fine.”
“Well, that’s what I get for having a sugar daddy that only took half the sommelier course. God, I was such a ho back in the day.”
Carine bent over the crate, finally noticing her mis-buttoned shirt and fixing it. “Well, everyone out there in the front misses Bimbo Clay. You should at least get back out there and heckle them for cash. Some of them would consider that foreplay.”
He grunted and handed her one of the better bottles of red. “There’s an upcharge for heckling, and it comes with helpful feedback like ‘The clit’s above that,’ and ‘What are you doing? You can’t put that there’.”
“Just ensure you charge ’em the proper sales tax and keep everything aboveboard.” Carine pressed three bottles against her chest and wriggled her car keys out of her purse. “If y’all don’t hear from me in the few days, assume the wine did me in.”
“Maybe don’t drink them all at once,” Heidi suggested.
“Aw. Someone does care about me. I was starting to wonder if anyone did. Bye, Heidi.”
“Bye, hon.”
Carine padded out, calling her usual aspersion to Clay as she departed.
When the door shut, Heidi resumed her study of her nails before Clay could resume his study ofher.
“How long are you gonna keep dragging this thing out?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Heidi was being honest. She could undoubtedly guess what point Clay was trying to make but had learned from experience that sometimes he phrased his questions with intentional vagueness. Often, he gleaned information above and beyond what he’d hoped. For her to answer, he would have to sharpen the point of his query a bit more.
“How long are you gonna keep messing with Carine?”
