49. Dex

DARCY

Hiii

Thanks so much for coming last night

(Whoops I didn't mean that as a pun)

I had the most amazing time xxx

Hope you are ok… x

DARCY

Hey - you ok? I just wanted to check in bc I know it was a lot

DARCY

Dex?

Hi again… let me know how you're doing x

DARCY

Well this is embarrassing [sad face]

MAX

If you want to avoid me, fine. But for fuck's sake have the decency not to ghost Darcy, you spineless little cunt.

Jesus.

I feel like shit. I'm a horrible, horrible person. Max is right—I've ghosted the most beautiful, incredible woman for the past five days. She let me run rampant on her body. I took her pussy and her mouth. I took her trust, and I fucking torched it because I am indeed a spineless little cunt who can't look her boyfriend in the eye.

And therein lies the problem. God knows, I want to reply to Darcy. I want to tell her I haven't stopped thinking about her, that her lips and her breasts and her eyes and her pussy and her hair and her skin are imprinted indelibly on my mind, that I want more—crave more.

But I can't.

Because Max's eyes are etched even more permanently, as are the seams of his thumbprint and the short, sharp slice of his thumbnail as I ran my tongue along its edge. My lower lip still bears the bruising of his bite, his dental records committed in the form of tiny, painful cysts along my gum.

And if Darcy's body is a celestial delight from start to finish, Max's is an evil, evil thing, so depraved and violent and dangerous it could send a man crazy from wanting more of it.

So I've floated in a useless holding pattern of anguished stalemate, sleepwalking through the week at work and spending most of the weekend in the gym, denying and resisting and gritting my teeth in frustration as flashes of skin and slivers of tongue continue to haunt my waking and my sleeping.

Not to mention, the announcement of which banks are on the ticket for the Wolff IPO is expected in the next few weeks, and work is a fever pitch of excitement and pointless, endless speculation. If I hear Max's name one more time from my colleagues, I might take a leaf out of his book and bite someone, just to shut them up.

I'm staring into space in my office, my productivity void hidden from the trading floor by a bank of monitors that Bloomberg's black screens dominate. The FTSE and the Eurostoxx are more green than red today, which I'm sure I'd find encouraging if I could summon the energy to find anything encouraging at all.

My phone console rings, showing the name of my ultimate boss, Jochen Thum, head of Loeb's London office. I sit up guiltily. He can't tell I've been sinning by night and slacking by day, can he?

I pick up the phone. ‘Jochen. Hey.'

‘Dex.' His soft Swiss-German voice is friendly. ‘Last-minute meeting. Moira Davenport has called and asked if their leadership team can come by our offices today for a quick chat.'

‘A quick chat?' I repeat dumbly. What the actual fuck? Moira Davenport is Wolff Holdings' CFO and undoubtedly one of the most influential women in British industry.

‘I know.' He laughs. ‘Crazy, right? She emphasised that it's very informal and we shouldn't prepare anything. They want to have one more conversation before they allocate the banks for the IPO.'

‘They want to see our bankers?' I guess, screwing up my face.

‘Actually, they'd like a meeting with our Equities and research guys. It's a good sign, I think.'

Huh. It is a good sign. We're a small outfit compared to the bulge-bracket banks, who will absolutely expect a big role on the ticket. Our strength, though, lies in the breadth of our research. Wolff Holdings won't be a straightforward stock for any investor to analyse. It straddles so many sectors, from chemicals and consumer to hospitality and leisure.

That not only means that the banks' sector-specific research teams who advise fund managers on their investments will need to collaborate across sectors, but that the performance of the stock, when it starts trading publicly, can be affected by goings-on in multiple sectors. Bottom line—it's complex.

Jochen and I discuss the people we'll need to get in the room for this ‘casual' chat before he drops his bombshell.

‘Good. That all sounds workable. She said this has come straight from Hunter. He'll be coming along, so we want to put our best foot forward.'

I manage to wait until he's ended the call before I let my forehead drop to my desk with a loud thump.

Fucking seriously?