Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 176002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Maybe this Lochlan guy will be the one to help her. I’ve never seen her smile at someone’s name like this before, and neither has Josh, clearly. He nudges me when she does it again, barely hard enough to feel, and looks me in the eyes with a smirk. He’s thinking the same thing I am.
Josh tips the cab driver and we walk up to the glamour of the Mulberry entrance arm in arm, all three of us. We’re escorted upstairs and shown to our table, where Eb, Bodica, Harlot and Devon are already waiting. We exchange massive hugs, and are still in the process of saying our hellos when more people are brought up to join us.
I’ve still got Eb in a bearhug when I hear Tiff announce, ‘Lochlan and Mack, hey, great to meet you’, and I pull away, keen to introduce myself. Until I catch sight of one of them and my blood freezes.
Mack. That’s his name. It’s the idiot who fucked me on Daddy’s sofa, before he got turfed out during the proposal and ran off.
He was a prize prick, and I couldn’t stand him from the moment I met him. The guy fucked me as part of a proposal, and it didn’t matter that I thought he was an idiot then, because it was just work, but to see him here, in front of me, with that same arrogant tosser grin on his face, is enough that the loathing squirms in my gut.
He may have been my boyfriend at Daddy’s house, but now he’s just a jackass I have to be friendly with at a restaurant.
I grit my teeth when I smile and give him a wave, Mack, and then I tense up when he takes a seat along with us – snort laughing as he tells everyone how we are already acquainted.
The prick announces it with pride, in front of my real-life boyfriend, as though there is no me at all, just the girl whose holes he was paid to slam.
“We fucked,” he tells my friends. “I know her pussy pretty well, and her ass, but not her name.”
“It’s Ella,” I say, glaring at him, but he doesn’t give a shit, just carries on recounting the action, loud and abrasive, even though we are in the fucking Mulberry.
He tells everyone about fucking me on a sofa, and having to run away when the sick freak daddy came home, and then he stares at Bodica’s tits and gives another snort laugh as he jokes that he wishes it had been her.
I’ve never been one to preach or protest, or shove my views out into the world, but with this asshole I can’t help myself. I swig back some of my wine and find a voice I didn’t expect from myself.
“Daddy isn’t a sick freak,” I say. “He’s a client, who pays your wages. And I’m a coworker, not a cheap piece of pussy you can laugh about around a table.”
He raises his eyebrows and snort laughs again, like I’m the one who is the asshole, but I won’t be rubbished, or silenced. Fuck him.
“I mean it,” I tell him. “If you want to take the piss out of our careers, then get yourself a new one. Loads of people would give anything to be given the opportunities we have.”
“To be hookers?”
Josh clears his throat, shuffling closer to my side as he glares at Mack. I feel the fire from him. He takes my hand in his, in clear view of everyone at the table.
“To be well-paid, high-class entertainers, I think you mean.”
“Yeah, hookers.”
“Fine, call it being a hooker if it suits you, it suits me just fine, just don’t spout your whiny trap off about it like it’s some kind of joke. And stop gloating about fucking my girlfriend’s pussy. Gloat about being able to fuck her pussy, instead. Most people don’t get that privilege.”
“Shut your face, basically,” Tiff says to Mack, and her glare is worse than anyone’s.
Thank fuck the tension eases a little when the final additions arrive to join us, filling up the table. Kingsley and Bodica’s old friends take the attention from Mackass the jackass, and he shuts his face, his snort laughing fading into the background. At least for now.
I ignore him and focus on introducing myself to Bodica’s old friends, excited to hear all about them, and Josh joins in with me, conversation flowing just fine.
“I miss being an entertainer,” Belle says. “But I don’t think Mark would like it all that much if I said I was going back on the books. He didn’t like sharing.”
Her friend Sasha nods along. “Same. But no, Frank wouldn’t like it, either. It’s a pain in the ass, but it would be a definite no-no. It would break his heart if he even thought I’d consider going back to it.”