34. Dex

The Playroom is a masterclass in sensory overwhelm and disorientation, which I suspect is exactly the point. The music is seriously loud—some kind of house with sexy, moaning vocals overlaid—and this space I've been so nervous about stepping foot in is the oddest mix of classy and carnal.

It has high ceilings and huge white pillars from which billow gauzy white drapes. It's pretty full, and maybe it's because of the time of night, but the, er, coupling isn't as in your face as I was worried it would be. There are plenty of sofas dotted around, and I definitely spot some horizontal action on one of the near ones, but most people seem to be dancing and mingling and making out rather than hardcore going at it.

Thank fuck.

Darcy told me the other night that she was the patrons' fluffer, and it looks like she was bang on, because if everyone in here isn't desperate to hump each other after the show she puts on, then there's something physiologically wrong with them.

The stage runs down the right-hand side of the room. I stand beside Max towards the front of the dancing, writhing mass of bodies. We're almost shoulder to shoulder, which is far too close for my liking, and both nursing a pitifully small scotch that he procured from the bar across the room as soon as we came through.

His proximity, the heat pumping off his body through that beautifully tailored shirt, is bothering me, but it would bother me more if less of my brain function (and blood flow) was redirecting itself to the woman undulating on stage like every fantasy my teenage self wasn't inventive enough to conjure. I'm growing hard, and I despise myself for it.

Question:how can a woman who looks like Jessica Chastain, all achingly delicate facial bone structure and russet waves and huge doe eyes, move like sin personified?

Because there's no doubt that everything about this situation is sinful. I quickly push away the thought that this must be my baby sister's second home. If I never talk to Belle about sex for the rest of our lives, I'll be happy. But I recall one thing she said to me, when she'd had it out with Dad and was happy and loved-up.

She told me that there was something about submitting to the sinfulness of it all that was downright delightful.

Maybe she's onto something.

Because this club and what it stands for contradict every last binary number of the moral framework encoded into my Catholic-shaped soul. And I'm standing here, clutching my pearls and trying my damnedest not to look and not to perv and not to desire, especially when faced with the woman on stage. I'm acting like I'm here against my will, which I sort of am. But nobody made me come.

I'm a grown man, for fuck's sake.

Maybe Max here is right.

Maybe I should take my fill tonight—visually, I mean—and strut into the office tomorrow at whatever time suits me, and stop railing against everything. Stop denying everything, just for an hour.

Everyone else is enjoying themselves. No one else looks to be beating themselves over the head with anything from a metaphorical Bible to a figurative Debrett's. In a room full of consenting adults, I can at least try not to be a total killjoy.

Besides.

Just look at her.

I'd be certifiably insane if I didn't drink in the sight in front of me with every fibre that makes me human.

She was dangerous the other night, I knew it then, with her perfect, perky breasts and disarming friendliness and her total lack of filter when spouting compliments that could fell a man.

But at least she had some fucking clothes on.

Now, though, she's dancing in a gilded cage onstage, naked except for her wings, some sheer mesh, and a few crystals that do nothing to conceal anything. Instead, they make her shimmer like some kind of mirage. They enhance her otherworldliness.

To be honest, when she told me she was a dancer here, I imagined a pole and a thong and some nipple tassels. Right? I didn't imagine an erotic Cirque de Soleil.

Her body is mesmerising. Exquisite. She's a bona fide bombshell, with curves in all the right places and a defined waist. Her legs are strong and shapely. The sight of her breasts has me wanting simultaneously to lay my head on them and to suck those taut little nipples until she's screaming to have my hand between her legs.

Speaking of… nothing down there is concealed at all. So help me God, I find my gaze flitting from the light strip of hair above her pussy to her breasts and back, hoping and wishing that she'll do something crass like bend over and show us everything.

What the hell is happening to me?

If the lines of her figure are perfection, the way she commands her body is sublime. Even if that bodystocking were fully opaque, I wouldn't be able to look away. She moves like water. She floats and she ripples and she morphs.

And when she performs a kind of vertical split, I swear my heart stops and my lungs empty. She flings one leg up high, foot resting on one of the front bars of the cage as she grips two of the neighbouring bars and arches back into a perfect crescent.

Her hair cascades down. Her upturned breasts fill the mesh perfectly. Her throat is white, her legs sinewed.

And her pussy is on full display, even if the scissored legs twist what I would rather see open.

The crowd roars and whistles and claps. The music's relentless beat throbs on. And Max leans in, right in, his lips going almost to the shell of my ear. His breath on my skin is warm, and it sends a smattering of goosebumps down my spine.

‘She's quite something, isn't she?'

I turn my head to look at him and instantly realise my mistake, because our faces are far too close for comfort, and that grin on his face is smug and proprietorial, and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

The descriptor we used for the ruthless head of Equity Capital Markets at Goldman flits into my head.

Smiling assassin.

This guy does affable and debonair like he's got a Masters in the subjects. But I bet he'd slit your throat with a straight razor while grinning right at you, just like he is now.

I'd love to cut him down to size, but it seems far too churlish to give Darcy anything but the compliment she deserves in the process, so I tell him the truth.

‘She might just be the most beautiful creature I've ever seen.'

His smile fades. He surveys me thoughtfully.

‘You know, she said something very similar about you, too.'

She said something very similar to me, too, but I'm not inclined to tell him that. He's got enough of her already.

Instead, I avert my gaze from his piercing one and turn my attention back to Darcy.