33. Dex

If my little sister was brave enough to put her virginity in the hands of this club, then I can handle a single evening here.

That's what I tell myself, anyway, as the strikingly attractive brunette on the front desk signs me in. She hands me a clipboard to which is clipped a longwinded waiver. A quick scan of it tells me I'm signing a comprehensive NDA and an acknowledgement that I understand the code of conduct here at Alchemy and that any breach of those rules could jeopardise the member whose guest I am tonight.

Max Hunter has already signed it.

I sign with a flourish and head down the wide, elegant corridor like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, because it's eight-fifty on a Wednesday night and I have a five-thirty alarm call. I should be at the gym, or catching up on some of the giant equity research reports mocking me from my kitchen table.

I categorically should not be going to see some alluring woman whose scent still haunts my olfactory system and whose kind-of boyfriend has sponsored me tonight in a move that surely has kink or power games at its core.

Neither of those options bode well for me, and I can't believe I've allowed Darcy to talk me into this. Nothing good can come from watching her dance.

Nothing good at all.

When I open the next set of heavy doors and step into the bar area, it's buzzing in a low-key, genteel way not at all reminiscent of a sex club. I wonder if people come here to do deals and then go next door to fuck all that adrenalin out of their system once they've closed them.

Of course they do.

We're in the heart of Mayfair, at a club whose price-point would make Annabel's or Maison Estelle weep and which is populated by the great and good of British finance, industry and politics.

They can get up to whatever they want away from prying eyes.

I've only scanned a third of the room when my gaze meets his.

Max fucking Hunter.

He's sitting alone at a small table off to one side of the room, his eyes on the door as if he's been watching for me. He raises his hand in a small and totally unnecessary salute of acknowledgement, because his handsome mug is plastered on the front page of The Economist this week above the apt title: Hungry Like the Wolff: The Next Era.

Everyone in the City of London not only knows what Hunter looks like but wants right now to get into bed with him.

Figuratively speaking.

As I head in his direction, he unfolds himself from the low velvet bench he's been sitting on and stands to greet me. Once again I have that what the fuck am I doing feeling.

I'm here because Darcy asked me to come, and she seems sweet, and she's very attractive, so watching her dance will be no hardship at all. Plus, she's kind of like a distant cousin by marriage, really, if you consider the Alchemy founders to be a family, which they pretty much are.

That's all well and good. But why the hell I've agreed to let the guy she's fucking sign me in and watch as I, some random guy, perv freely at his sort-of girlfriend, I have no clue. This feels like some awkward blind date, at a sex club, for Christ's sake.

God. I hope none of these people think he and I are here to…

Surely not.

He's lean. Tall. He has maybe an inch on me. Like me, he's in his summer work uniform of suit trousers and a shirt with the top couple of buttons undone. No jacket. No tie. My shirt is pale blue and his is white. But it's his eyes that get me. Deep-set and blue and piercing.

Alarmingly piercing.

His face is—I don't know—classically good-looking, I suppose. He sports an even, golden tan, a fact that only enhances his eyes. His smile, when he bestows it on me, verges on smug, but this guy has everything he wants, so the fact that he's a smug, self-satisfied bastard comes as no surprise at all.

He sticks out his hand, and we shake. ‘Max,' he says. ‘Dex, I assume?'

‘Good to see you,' I say. God knows how he recognised me, but I know better than to ask him, because you never get a straight answer from guys as slippery as him.

I thank Christ my colleagues don't know I have any form of personal intro to Max Hunter lined up for tonight, because they'd be relentless if they thought we had any tiny edge on the Wolff deal.

‘Thanks for coming,' he says. ‘Darcy's excited to have you here.'

I don't like that. He sounds like her pimp or her agent, and what the fuck is wrong with him, anyway? If I was with her in any form I'd go feral at the thought of her exposing her body to anyone else, let alone a club full of sex addicts.

But some people are weird like that. Maybe he gets off on knowing that everyone else wants her and he gets to have her to himself when she's got off stage. I couldn't begin to guess what kind of kinks a guy like Max Hunter would have.

I make some polite, ineffectual murmur of acknowledgement like of course or something equally banal, and we take our seats.

‘She'll be on in ten minutes,' he says, ‘so I grabbed us both a GT.'

He slides a tall glass over to me, and we clink. A nice long, quenching gin and tonic is perfect, actually. I take a sip, and he laughs at my expression.

‘It's practically all tonic. There's no way you're getting drunk in this place.'

‘Makes sense,' I say, recalling the strict two-drink limit here the other night. While I'd like a little more hard liquor to take the edge off, it makes me marginally less uneasy to think none of the animals leering at Darcy next door will be drunk.

He crosses one ankle easily over its opposite knee and lolls back on the sofa. Not for Max that particularly British faux pas of exposing an inch of hairy leg above the top of his socks. No, he's wearing the longer, fine merino kind that my European colleagues wear and which were probably hand-knitted by wholesome young virgins. ‘I heard you've moved back to join Loeb? Head of Equities, is that right?'

‘It is,' I say.

‘Congratulations. That's impressive. You're seriously young—you must be one of their youngest ever partners.'

I am in fact their youngest ever partner, singular, but I'm not one to toot my own horn. ‘I am, yeah. I'm thirty.'

‘Wow. And you've been back how long?'

‘A week and a half, but it feels like a year already,' I confess, and he chuckles.

‘I'll bet. I assume they've put you to work? You must be busy.'

‘Not as busy as you,' I deadpan, and he rolls his eyes, amused.

‘You've got that right. If I have to read one more RFP I'll shoot myself in the head.'

I can only imagine. The RFPs, or requests for proposal, that every bank submits as part of its pitch to win an IPO are as tedious as they are girthy.

‘I don't envy you,' I tell him. ‘So tonight's about a little light relief from the grind, is it?'

Something about the way his eyebrows wing up and the hand holding his drink freezes halfway to his mouth has me regretting my use of the word grind. I meant it as the epitome of relentless toil, but I suspect he's homed in on its possible double meaning, a hunch that has me flustered. He's probably the kind of dirty bastard who'll wring an innuendo out of the most innocent throwaway comments and manage to make them filthy in their raw physicality.

‘Light relief, definitely,' he muses. ‘And who knows what else, eh? The night is young.'

‘Not if you have my wake-up call,' I say in a feeble attempt at a joke. ‘It's nearly my bedtime.'

He surveys me, and for a second I have the most discomfiting feeling that he can see through every thread of the bullshit I wear like an ineffectual cloak.

‘You're thirty,' is all he says. ‘Live a little. Walk in there tomorrow when you like and don't even think of explaining yourself. You're a fucking partner. It's none of their fucking business how you structure your time.'

He's correct, absolutely, but I don't particularly care for this avuncular, fireside-chat style he's adopting.

‘I'm sure you're right,' I mumble.

‘Besides.' He leans forward. ‘Sex is far more restorative than sleep. And you can have as much of it as you want next door—they'll go crazy for you. Guys. Girls. The lot. Take your pick.'

I stiffen. ‘I don't—I mean?—'

But he's not listening. He's draining his drink and looking around the bar. ‘Let's go through, shall we?' he asks. ‘And for God's sake, relax and enjoy yourself. Even good boys come first here, if they play their cards right.'

And with that he stands, slaps me far too hard on my shoulder, and strides off through the throng.