Breaking Leila Read online

  breaking

  LEILA

  book one

  www.lucyvmorgan.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © Lucy V. Morgan 2014

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in 2012 under the title of

  Chairman of the Whored

  Cover art by Kenny Wright

  www.kennywriter.com

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to places, persons or events is entirely coincidental and a product of the writer’s imagination.

  For all the Josephs, the Leilas and the Matts

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Books by Lucy V. Morgan

  About Lucy

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Why would a promising solicitor moonlight as a whore?

  I made up a dozen sob stories. None of them were really true. Suffice it to say, the parents who paid for the education that brought me here–nearing the end of my training at a rather swanky firm, if I say so myself–could never afford it. I could have let the bank take their house and their lives, if I'd been that kind of girl.

  I wasn’t.

  I was, apparently, the kind of girl who could splay herself out for rich strangers and earn a couple of thousand in a few hours. A convenient thing, that. A cursed one too.

  I built my lair in London, where the snakes undulate as the banks close, and every Eve worth her extra rib knows the real temptation beckons when the moon begins to swell. Life happens on both sides of the mirror, but only reflected sunlight splits Leila the lawyer from Charlotte the whore. So it came to be that I was not one girl, but two.

  There was something wickedly thrilling about both of the jobs I did.

  I didn’t know they were about to collide with each other.

  * * * *

  “Is it wrong,” I began, “that I actually find tax law fascinating?”

  Matt glared over the top of his phallic-statement-sized coffee. “I’d need to understand it before I found it fascinating, Leila.”

  “You need to get your nose out of Rock Sound and into the FT.”

  He took the Financial Times and scanned the front page. “Ooh...capital gains amendments...exci–no, it’s really not working for me.” He tossed it back over the desk. “I am so going back into real estate when this seat is over.”

  “Bah. You have no balls.”

  He ran long fingers through the dark hair that constantly attacked his face, and cocked an eyebrow. “I can prove otherwise, you know.”

  “Don’t flash me in the office again.”

  “Flash you? It was only my knee!”

  “A bruised, ugly rugby knee. Highly inappropriate. Put me right off my lunch.”

  He finished his coffee and feigned a wounded pout. “You should have seen the state of my–”

  “La la la! I’m not listening!” I clapped my hands over my ears.

  Matt and I had a playground dynamic going on–easy, just a little bit flirtatious. The firm had paired us up at the beginning of our tax placement, when we were both equally terrified that we’d managed to survive the past twenty-odd months at Bach and Dagier and might actually get real jobs. We were squalling acolytes grown to the cusp of corporate sacrifice, and while we shared no interests besides mocking each other like fifteen-year-olds as soon as the quaint little office emptied, he was fun.

  He also filled his clothes out in a rather pleasing fashion.

  “We have fifteen minutes before we can escape.” He flashed a chunky watch. “What shall we do?”

  “It’s highly unlikely those warranties are going to come back soon...”

  “They’ll probably be wrong, anyway,” he grumbled. “We did them.”

  I kicked him under the table. “I resent that.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  I wound an auburn curl around my finger and tried not to blush. “Busy. Going for drinks. You?”

  “Out with some clients and the boss, so preferably many drinks.” He leaned in. “Don’t you find Merchant a bit intimidating?”

  Intimidating wasn't the half of it. He came somewhere between aloof and ideal height for desk sex. “Joseph? He’s meant to be, isn’t he? He’s paid to scare us into not fucking up.”

  “He doesn’t drag you along to whinge about the recession though, eh?”

  “You don’t whinge. You talk about football and other games involving balls...and cars...”

  “Yep, it’s all a big cock parade,” he said. “Sometimes I get offered pills by the gay ones, too.”

  “I bet you don’t flash your knees at them, hmm?”

  “Depends on how strong the pills are.”

  I pulled a face. “I want to get invited on cock parades, damn it.”

  “If you phrase it like that to him, you just might.” He laughed. “In all seriousness, you aren’t missing anything. And it’s not like you need to look for another job–they’ve made it clear they like you here.”

  “Still, I’d pay to watch the insolvency queens coming on to you.” I finished my Coke and tossed the can toward the waste basket. “You’d make a good gay man, Matt. You’ve got that healthy flush about you.” He looked half embarrassed and half horrified. Baha. Burn.

  “I’m going to pretend you never said that.” He tapped his watch again. “Look, it’s nearly five. Let’s escape before they try to make us do something.”

  * * * *

  I met Clemmie at Starbucks and we strode out into the five PM massacre, lattes thrust aloft for protection.

  “Oh gosh,” she said as Matt waved us off. “Is that Mr Shares-Your-Desk?”

  “Yep.”

  “You won’t tell James I’ve been perving, will you?”

  “Clem, you could mount him right here and I would keep a dignified silence.”

  She arched a sleek black eyebrow.

  “Okay.” I grinned. “Perhaps not dignified.”

  “Why haven’t you turned him into a raging conquest yet?”

  “Erm.” I dived between two random pedestrians to keep up with her. “Work is busy. I’m all conquested out.” That was half true, and not that she’d know. Clemmie, my best friend in the world, would not have laughed if I slipped oh, and I’m whoring now into a conversation. “How’s the studio, anyway?”

  “Diederick caused all this hoo-ha in the Guardian with his farmyard spread, and we’re trying to think of a sequel.”

  “That thing with the photo of the nude teenager draped over the pig?”

  “Fresh Meat? Yep.” She rolled her eyes. “He did ask if I wanted to do a kind of Alice in Wonderland piece…pose all cramped in a doll house, that kind of thing…”

  “But?”

  She sighed. “He wanted to call it Chink Big.”

  I swallowed too quickly as I tried not to snort.

  “It’s all right, Leila. I already know you’re a racist. You just laugh away.”

  “Clem. I am only racist when you get drunk and beg me, and if I remember correctly, we resolved never to tell another soul about it.”

  She linked her arm through mine. “Ah. Boarding school memories.”

  “Good times. Vodka bottles stuffed in Pringles tubes.”

 
“Pringles tubes stuffed into Caroline Fawcett.”

  “Allegedly! She said she always walked that way after horse riding, remember?”

  “I suppose one of those tubes is about the same size as a horse.” She guffawed.

  I’d thought about horses more than once. Couldn’t really talk. “Did you see the thing in the Old Girls’ newsletter a while ago? She’s on some weird tropical island, studying sperm whales.”

  “I would study marmots.”

  “What about the humble marmoset?” The last mouthful of coffee was strong enough to make my eyes bulge. “Marmosets get a bad deal.”

  “But they get Um Bongo,” she said, “that funky juice stuff everyone had at school. Marmosets were on the adverts and they had jazz...paws?”

  “I forgot about that. Marmots it is.” We reached the crossroads and stopped to hug. “Sorry to rush off–work stuff tonight.”

  She gave me a knowing look. “Shares-Your-Desk?”

  “Sadly not.” I squeezed her and tapped my cup to hers. “See you later, slutface.”

  * * * *

  I had been working for the agency for almost a year. In that time, a dream had begun to stalk me.

  It visited randomly–no warning, no cursory act. One moment, I slept against cold pillowcases and the next, I stood in a dark room where the dregs of a spluttering candle hung in the air.

  I wore nothing. My hands were secured firmly behind my back. In the corner, a man’s silhouette blurred at the edges as he moved, and though moonlight poured through the slip of a window, it rushed from him. He was a hollow shadow. The anti-mirror. Nothing to see here.

  “Tell me what you are.” The voice was familiar, but my ears burst with blood rush and I couldn’t match a face.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “This thing you do.” He cocked his head. “The thing that you were so sure you’d lose sleep over…yet here we are, hmm?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said.

  “Are you really?”

  “Well.” I stepped from one foot to the other. “There’s the other thing.”

  “You take their money. You’re a whore. I like the way it sits on my tongue, you know.” He leaned forward, and the shadows stretched with him like the Emperor’s conjured clothes. “Biblical. Honest. Luscious, I think.”

  I nodded. “The best of the bunch, I suppose.”

  “Oh, you suppose.” The curve of his mouth shaped his words, and while I never saw him smile, I heard his amusement. “Do you know when it’s time to worry, Charlotte?”

  It was important that he called me by my call girl name, but I never remembered that long enough to analyse. “No,” I said. “When?”

  His laugh, dark and unsettling, clawed its way from the depths of his throat. “When you value something enough to give it a name, you should worry. You think it makes it separate from you. You think it happens to somebody else.”

  I was suddenly aware of a bruise that marbled my left knee, and a scratch that meandered up my inner thigh. “I know it happens to me.”

  “It happens to Leila. Charlotte is the one who likes it,” he said, watching me. “But then, Charlotte isn’t the one who’s being punished.”

  I opened my mouth. Ah–

  Nothing.

  “Because the thing is,” said the shadow, “even if Charlotte was punished, I think she’d rather like that, too…wouldn’t she?”

  * * * *

  Three more jobs. Then you can call it quits. In the beginning, I couldn’t wait for my year at the agency to end. Now, I felt numb about it. Made up little songs in my head on the way. Selling my girl-parts, tra la la la la...

  John, my driver, pulled the car around to the back of the hotel. I still had to remind myself not to wave to him–I was never an entirely professional whore. Fortunately, my outfit said otherwise.

  The client had asked that I dress for “work.” I wore the same smart dresses in my office, the heels made of leather like cake frosting and the jackets cut for wandering eyes. The red curls that tumbled down my back were all that was wanton about me–for now.

  I’d led a privileged life, but I’d never stayed anywhere like the Trafalgar Met, with its dusty stone exterior and stern doormen in charcoal suits. Tonight, the penthouse which stretched across the top floor would host my clients. The Ladarna Agency never offered me less, and when I’d first started, the plush couches, hot tubs and the good Champagne had all made my predicament a little easier, as if sinking to one level made me entitled to more on another. As if staying in the shadows balanced the light and the dark.

  Three more jobs. It seemed like such a forlorn, odd little number. It all came so easily now–what had happened to me? Or what had happened to Charlotte? I could call myself by a hundred names but the adrenaline still sang in veins that were Leila’s, and no matter how many childish songs she hummed in the back seat of the car, this was not a playground for little girls.

  I sucked composure from the air at the door of the penthouse, adjusting my jacket so my breasts swelled over just a little. My lips were glossed, cheeks warm. This was always the worst bit–waiting to see who stood on the other side of the door. Two knocks, and then the unlocked door swung back into the suite where my gaze stretched to accommodate high ceilings, birch panelling and antique lamps. A grandfather clock tick-tocked toward eight.

  “Hello, Leila.” A deep voice. A very familiar voice. A voice that knew my real name.

  Fuck.

  Joseph stood beside a nest of Venetian couches. I knew his name because he was a partner at Bach and Dagier, and none other than my boss. Matt–of all people–sat nearby. Oh God. They knew.

  And they were going to fire me.

  “I–um–”

  Joseph raised a hand. “You don’t have to worry. We’re not trying to catch you out.” He wore no smile, yet it sounded like he should. “This will be our little secret...if you like.”

  I froze. Tried not to gawp at the pair of them. This was either career suicide or a sordid little wet dream. We all knew how the partners played, and stories about The Hotels haunted corners of the office, drooling in curious ears. I’d never planned on taking part, though.

  I was meant to be safe, so why did it suddenly feel like a tragic waste of hormones?

  Joseph had intrigued me since I’d started at the firm. He had a good ten years on me and a command that went with it. The world squealed on its hinges when he blinked. Nordic blond hair and lush green eyes did nothing to soften his rough edges, and I had forgotten myself while staring at those broad shoulders and neat hands in more meetings than I could count. It was only fantasy. It was never this.

  Then...Matt. Ah. I’d tried not to think of him that way because we worked so closely, but now I saw the entropy in the tall, sinewy boy so curious to be corrupted, and I struggled to remember how the politics here were blurred.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Are…are you hiring me?”

  Joseph beckoned and I walked slowly–too fast and I’d have tumbled at that point. I dropped my bag as I sank to join them, and he slid a fat envelope into its front pocket.

  “There,” he murmured. “Now you’re bought and paid for.”

  Don’t shiver like that when he–Hello, Charlotte. You’re late. Tick tock.

  Matt turned to me. “I know this is a little weird, but...but–”

  “He’s nervous.” Joseph’s breath warmed my ear. “Matt’s never been with a hired girl before. Have you, huh?” He eyed him over my shoulder. “A girl who’ll do whatever he wants. When we saw you on the website, we couldn’t resist.” There was a little hiss of air as he inhaled the perfume at the nape of my neck. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “Does she kiss?” Matt twisted big hands in his lap.

  Joseph tipped my chin up and looked me in the eye. A beat...and then a quiver of a kiss, as if he sampled me from a menu. He tasted sanguine–vodka, sugar. Blood. “Yes.” He smiled. “She does.”

  I’d barely caught m
y breath before Matt pulled at my waist, his mouth harder, hungrier. How odd to submit like this. I usually beat him at everything. Earlier, in the office, had he known? His shoulders were thick with tension, the muscles twitching beneath my palms.

  I threw my voice against Matt’s ear. “This is a very, very bad idea.”

  “Ah...I know.”

  “So–so what the fuck–”

  Matt's long fingers cupped my chin. “Do you want to leave?”

  Yes. No. “This is awful, an awful idea…” It bordered on blackmail, actually. I’d bet much money on the fact that I’d be fired tomorrow if I didn’t play along.

  Charlotte didn’t have a problem with that. Maybe I didn't, either. Oh God.

  “Well?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know…”

  “She doesn’t know,” said Joseph. “But she’s open to persuasion. Aren’t you?” He tucked a curl behind my ear as he leaned in once more, his fingers walking up my bare thigh. “Have you ever been with two men at once?”

  I shook my head. Lies–surely, he knew that.

  “We won’t hurt you. Not a lot.” He dragged my skirt up in a slow reveal. “Now. No speaking unless you’re spoken to. If I hear a peep, you’ll be punished. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. Even if Charlotte was punished…I think she’d rather like that, wouldn’t she?

  “Matt, fetch Leila a drink. Nothing too strong.”

  “Of course.” Matt shuffled off to the bar, and Joseph set his fingers to my jacket buttons. They parted as if they’d been buttered, and he bared my shoulders slowly, making sure his hands brushed my skin. His eyes were wide and alert. Interested. Like I was a potential new contract and he was just limbering up.

  “Take your knickers off,” he said.

  At work, I questioned his decisions. Dissected them as part of my job. Giving in to his demands like this, my mouth was so stuffed with yes that it ached. Apparently, I was very open to persuasion.

  I stared straight at him and hooked my fingers over the slips of purple at my hips. They were skewered with a heel before I kicked them aside.