A Fine Profession (The Chambermaid's Tales Part One) (41 page)

A flash of remembrance hit me – but I pushed it back. I also told myself not to doubt that this was real. I was in the z
one of just doing it, I guess…

I told him to sit on the
edge of the bed and he moaned, “Charlotte, I just want to make love to you.”

“
You will, darling, just let me savour this…”

His jacket already removed, I signalled for him to pull his shirt over his head.

“You're glorious,” I told him, and, he really was. He truly was Premier League.

I slowly unbuckled his belt. I pulled the button open, slid the zip down slowly. There was a huge wet patch of pre-cum on his underwear. I licked my lips. I kissed the skin just above the waistband of his boxer shorts and buried my nose in his body hair, taking molecules of his into my lungs. My hands wandered around his lower back as I took in his beauty.

“Charlotte,” he whined, aching for my body.

I gripped his waist either side, before grasping the clothing that separated me and my new toy. I gently pulled at his jeans and boxers and he lifted himself to let me uncover what was now surely desperate for my attention.

His enormous, engorged cock flipped against his midriff with a slap as it was released. It was at least nine inches and very thick at the stem. I hadn't seen a cock so very hard in so long. It was at maximum velocity.

“
Christmas is here,” I teased him.

My arms around his body, I buried my face against his groin and wrestled my cheeks and mouth around his lovely penis and balls until I had taken my fill of his scent, pre-cum and pre-coital pheromones. I wanted to bring him to climax with my mouth, like he had done for me, but the look on his face said he wanted us to be together in unison as soon as possible.

“On the bed,” I said, my face fixed in the most avaricious of smiles. My chest heaved with longing and I watched his wondrous man's body claw its way up the mattress until his head hit the pillows. I pulled my skirt down and off. My shirt fell easily and my bra, I left on for him. I crawled on top of him and kissed him wildly. His hands were rampant in my hair and his cock strained still.

“
On or off?” he asked.

“
On, it will keep these in check.”

“
Definitely off then,” he decided, reaching for the clasp. It wasn't there.

“
Front,” I advised, hoping he would not guess at the reasoning behind the convenience of that.

“
Oh baby,” he mouthed. I stared at him as he fiddled, watching his red face and puffy lips flush with sweat and desire. He had a condom ready to slide down his cock and I took it, quickly getting him ready.

My breasts unleashed, he held them gently. He started to tease the nipples and while he was slightly distracted, I reached for his cock quickly and slammed myself down on him hard. He fell back into the pillows and muttered
something along the lines of, “Mmmm, yes, fuck, oh.”

He was huge. I loved it. His ripe, delicious cock filled
me. I worked him slowly, carefully, knowing he was tender and hypersensitive. I lay my body out against his, stretching along his solid, comforting surface, and kissed his face, one bit at a time.

“
We can't have this,” he said.

He rolled me over and felt as wonderful and heavy against my body as I had always imagined he would. He moved inside me and I shuddered with every thrust.

“Cody, I…”

“
Now we're finally making love,” he murmured.

His mouth met mine again, forcing ravenous kisses down my throat. I yelped as he pushed further inside me. I had to take a deep breath to relax my belly. He was definitely a romantic pleasure-giver, despite my
best attempts to exert my power over him.

With his arms locked around me, and our bodies bundled together, I felt so miraculously happy. There was no dirtiness then, no frills, no cusses to get him going or a finger in his arse. He was happy enough to just have me. But it was the way our bodies slotted together so perfectly, hips locked as he thrust his way ever deeper inside. His voice, his scent, his skin, hair and cock; all of him was mine and designed for my enjoyment. My teeth clamped upon whatever I could seize as we suffered the most intense orgasm together. I almost drew blood. Afterward, I saw my imprint on him – various animalistic marks littering his neck and
shoulders. I kissed away his pain, both at his neck and at his palms. I asked him if I hurt him, he said no, he did not feel a thing. He said he did not care about anything but having me in his arms finally.

He
stroked my face and hair as he professed no other woman had ever affected him as much as I. In that moment, I believed maybe he did love me a little. His heart rate, his breathing and his defeated body told me so. I wept as I admitted I had suffered so much since first encountering him. Perhaps, seeing him again just made me realise how far I had come.

He started making love to me again shortly after. There were really no words. I watched him exploring my body and felt amazed that this man, whom I was so strongly attracted to, felt the same way. The gold St Christopher he wore had been thrown and was stuck to his shoulder with sweat. My eyes were drawn to the way his neck sat in his shoulders. He was so athletic and taut, his veins bulging and popping, and his face red and flush with desire.

“Cody, oh Cody,” I moaned, as he explored me in all the ways I wanted to explore him. He kissed my body slowly and it drove me insane, the way he groaned and breathed in my scents wherever he went.

“
I don't know where to start. I have imagined this so many times.”

“
Oh baby, we have all the time in the world now.”

He growled his approval into my belly as he tongued my navel and I held the back of his head. My legs were spread wide,
soles of my feet together, and the temptation became too much. He knew what I wanted, again. He grabbed a cushion and placed it under my bottom, raising me up. He wrapped one of his muscular, defined arms around my left leg and held it over his shoulder. He pressed his other palm down on the inside of my right thigh to spread me. I had Cody's face, neck and shoulders encased and I whimpered at the sight.

“
Please Cody, please,” I encouraged.

With a mischievous grin, he plunged right in and made me cum immediately, his tongu
e lapping so that we might start afresh all over again. By then my clit was bullet-hard, my juices were running over my anus and his chin had a definite sheen.

“
I am going to suck you so hard in a minute. I'll get you back,” I warned him, but he was straight to work on me yet again, staring at my pussy and teasing his tongue around, watching and nibbling, tasting and guffawing as I continually bucked up into his face each time he took me to the edge. I almost reached my peak again several times and with each disappointment, came renewed pleasure. He was toying with me so expertly. I was tiring quickly. He was relentless, truly. He took me, like a gymnast, and stood me on my head, his arms round my legs, holding most of my weight. He used his tongue to make love to me, dipping in and out of my vagina, with speed and precision. My cunt pointed up to the heavens as if he were offering me up. All his attention was on my central core. There was nothing else to concern him with that one aspect of my body completely open and available to him. It was always a delight, having my vagina being fucked by a tongue, but that alone had never ever got me off. I could feel the juices now dripping down my back and between his body and mine. I held back my commands. All he would have seen were the communications of my throbbing, gaping pussy.

He dipped for several minutes, all the time keeping me on the edge, throwing moans and whispers from my mouth as he teased me with his wonderful, long, darting tongue. When he started licking my clitoris slowly, I groaned, I groaned, and I groaned, louder and louder. The execution was so swift, it sound
ed like I farted. My engorged pussy had clenched with his change of tack. He didn't react. He liked it, I decided. He sucked instead. He bit the flesh between his front teeth, before repeatedly licking swiftly and rapidly over the opening of my urethra, up to my mountain of delight, over and over again. In a fit of pleasure, I lifted myself into a handstand to bring myself up further into his mouth. He was hungry and I was willing. When he put his tongue inside my ass, I was conflicted between being hampered and yet delighted by his other exploration. I screeched incredibly loudly and begged for him to make me cum. Always, I was on the edge, always just too aroused to let myself go, lest it prove too much. I was constricted and tense. When his mouth finally clamped around my clit and sucked, I demanded he not stop. I grabbed the sheets in my hands and held on, desperately seeking something sturdy to hold me straight. With the first spasm, I relaxed and slumped, but he held me up. He kept going. I jolted and jolted, my vagina squeezed itself several times, with little spasms to begin with, before welling, gut-ripping, thumping contractions rendered me senseless and became more and more intense with every lick of his tongue along the length of my pelvic floor. I could not stop myself screaming like a banshee.

Squeezed tight-shut and with only little aftershocks coming in thin waves, my pussy signalled he could slow down, and he kissed my clitoris with delicious, tender kisses, the like of which no man had ever spent the time bestowing once he had been gifted the sight of my multiple orgasms. I fell on the bed, limp and languorous, and he crawled up beside me. I was totally done for. He wrapped my arms around his neck and rested on my chest, breathing his exertio
ns away. I didn't have much energy to hold him. When we were regained a little, he pulled me closer and folded me into his embrace, stroking his hands over my back and behind, sighing and murmuring his delight. He found pockets of cushioned flesh to massage and admire, and curves and planes of a mysterious new feminine landscape to drink in with his eyes. He held a hand under my chin, pecked my nose and gently kissed my mouth, telling me with his eyes that he was simply so relieved to have found me again. We stared at one another, before I giggled, and he buried his laughter in my shoulder. We wrestled about like young teenage lovers and he wrapped himself around me, before we entered into a wonderful, long session of kissing and whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears. It was that quick with Cody. It had been seven years previously.

Later that night, as Cody and I sat up in bed eating room service in our robes, I asked him what he was doing at the hotel, though I imagined he was in the area for a game. He revealed he was there for that reason but also to catch up with an old school friend who now lived in the area. I saw a flutter of guilt flash across his brow. The furrow embedded, momentarily, before he brushed off whatever minute confliction he suffered. I glanced at the hotel phone on the bedside table and noted the white sticker with big black letters that reminded guests of their room number. It was the very room my client for that night had. The very number. I never knew clients' real names but I knew my Initiate that night had been recommended he try my service by one of my other customers. He wanted whipping because his girlfriend wouldn't do it for him. I had not noticed his room number earlier as we'd entered in such a frenzied fashion. I searched his face for signs. I awaited perhaps an admission, a confession, or otherwise – some small truth that might appease me for the short-term. It never came. He admitted it no longer mattered – this meeting with a friend – but I knew better. The text he sent, telling his “date” it was off, actually reached my own phone.

All night, he made love to me. He pleasured me and teased, worshipped and adored me, and all the while I knew that it was not meant to last.
It was merely a moment of sheer, pleasurable enjoyment. I insisted we keep the conversation minimal while we enjoyed our first night together; me not willing to lie about my own circumstances and reason for being there. I told him it could all wait until morning. For I felt certain he would never accept the real me. He wanted me but only because he thought I was one thing and not another. He was one of the profaning romantic pleasure-givers who saw the sexual side of me but not the rest. He probably never would do.

He slumbered finally at
4am but I did not sleep a wink. I lay those two hours wrapped in his arms, shedding tears, knowing then what I had given up with Noah. In that bed with those hands of Cody's, those strong man's hands clutching at my woman's figure, I had truly never felt sadder. His body folded around mine perfectly, and indeed, our lovemaking was helped by our similar physiques. He occasionally brushed his mouth against the nape of my neck as he slept and each time he did, my heart boomed just that little bit louder inside my chest. But then… I knew it had all been a fantasy. It was lust of the highest, purest kind, but nothing like love.

I left at dawn,
taking my ring out of my purse to leave on his pillow, ensuring he would know who I was. The mark of the notorious Chambermaid was then his. My guise was finished. I was getting ready to swap agenda yet again. I would be me.

I remember the day I got Alex's last gift to me and how blaringly I was forced to realise I had a condition. It was that thunderbolt moment, seeing the reality in print, and though it seemed so simple a task to overturn my problems, the process had been long and arduous.

I still visit
Alex's grave every year, on the day, but on the fifth anniversary someone I did not expect to see ever again crossed my path.

I headed to the grave and placed my friend's single rose on the ground. The loiterer stood near me, afraid to say a word.
I tried not to acknowledge his presence.

“
How are you?” he asked.

“
Not too bad,” I muttered.

“
I thought this might be one of the only ways to find you.”

“
I went freelance, so to speak.”

There was a pause. It felt very uncomfortable. I saw vaguely out of the corner of my eye that he had turned quite grey. He looked like a different person to the last one I had seen.

“You remembered me telling you about my friend and you hoped…”

“
Yes, I thought you may visit. I hoped. I did my research. You know me. I have been here since dawn just in case.”

“
Why are you here, Mark?” I asked, rearranging Darcey's new bouquet around my single rose. It had become a ritual of ours, it seemed; her being the one to visit first before I added my one fleck.

I stood up and faced him. He looked drawn and weary, as if he had aged ten years since I had last seen him.

“Florence and I parted ways.”

“
And you thought, what? I might be game for another go…”

“
No. Not at all. I have been trying to find you to say sorry. I really am. For everything. I abused your good nature. It was wrong of me. I should never have tried to… it was all wrong. Florence should never have befriended you. It was wrong.”

“
It's negligible, Mark. All that. Besides, I am a grown woman. I always could have said no. I really liked Florence and I was glad to make her acquaintance. What's done is done. If I told you what has happened since, you might be surprised. Meeting you and Flo led to something else. It was all meant to be. It has not been easy but I'm better for everything that has transpired.”

“
You mean Him?” Mark asked.

“
Who?” I asked, suspiciously.

“
The Grandmaster's son. The millionaire's estranged son. The one who famously sought to make his own way in the world, outside of his father's global haulage business, based right here in Nottingham.”

“
What are
you
talking about?”

“
Noah Yeardley. One of the richest men in London. The divorcee every girl wants to bed. But, he only wants you. He's been searching for you. I saw you with him once, at a masked ball at the Lodge. You didn't see me.”

It all became clear.
Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the news.

“
When I was initiated, you mean…?”

“
They were Noah's brothers in the bukkake room with us. CCTV would have shown the Grandmaster your little performance.”

Oh my god.

“
I was shocked to see him there with you that night at the ball. He renounced the Lodge after his wife slept with his brother. He tried to tear himself away from it all.”

“
His marriage? It really was over then?”

“
Yes, that's how crazy the lifestyle can get. Time away from it has made even me realise that.”

“
You never told me how you got involved in the Lodge.”

“
Noah's father felt certain he had royal blood in his veins. It was an obsession of his; a myth passed down through the generations. He had been trying to prove it for decades. He felt sure that his ancestor, the woman who died in childbirth, the one who supposedly lost the will to live and snuffed it, was impregnated by an actual duke. The Grandmaster visited the archives frequently searching for records. He invited Florence and I over for dinner a number of times before we joined the Lodge. He created that shrine to the whore's memory out of a misguided sense of duty, or perhaps, even to qualify his own need for debauchery. Maybe, because Noah's own mother died when she gave birth to him. Noah's the oldest, you see, and his brothers are from a second marriage his father had. There have been several more step-mothers since. It was my interpretation that Sir Yeardley was another among the new-money set unable to satisfy his thirst for having it all. Just a madman with a penchant for all the sex he can get and more. He built the Lodge because he must have felt that he still had to impress his peers, perhaps because of an innate inadequacy he harboured over his origin in lower class stock. Isn't it strange… even in this day and age, Lottie, we are still bound by prejudice, aren't we? By class. By wealth.”

I tutted loudly. I did not want to discuss Noah and his strange family. I took the spotlight and shone it back on Mark…

“I did think you were unsettled about your own roots. I always thought Flo's wealth, or something, made things difficult for you.”

“
It wasn't that.” He shook his head. “I actually can't see myself getting married and having children. I can't. I came clean to Flo about that and she could hardly fathom my choice. I guess you might have seemed like a little escape route, but, I was so wrong. I was an utter shit doing what I did to you.”

“
You don't need to apologise. I was never in love with you, Mark, I told you that.”

He seemed a little aggrieved that I did not care more for him, but he accepted the reality. I knew
that in his heart of hearts he might change for a woman who did not bow down to him as easily as Flo had done. That was not a fault of hers. Just a mismatch.

“
Noah distanced himself from his father's world for decades but maybe he eventually started believing his father's conviction that you love your wife and fuck your mistress. A twisted mantra if you ask me. Old fashioned till the last.”

“
The last?”

“
He died at the Lodge two months ago. A sex game gone bad by the sounds. He was 71 and a heavy smoker. The place has been shut up.”

“
Noah… what, what about Noah?” I stumbled.

“
Like I said, he is looking for you.”

“
And why are you here?”

“
There is a reward. But also, I am here because I felt as though you deserved to know the truth.”

“
You're so transparent, Mark, you always were. Don't you realise you actually had a woman who really loved you? You threw that away so easily. She's a good woman.”

“
Yeah, maybe,” he trailed off.

“
I don't care if he is searching for me. I have plans that don't involve a man.”

I still missed Noah so much but what I really couldn't come to terms with was how I had treated him. I was so ashamed and after seeing Cody again, I knew what I had given up. Perhaps, the love of a lifetime that I would never find again.
I contemplated contacting him but always, I imagined, he had already moved on and perhaps had found a woman to love him. A little part of me hoped someone was giving him the happiness that I felt sure was totally beyond my capabilities. That he was still unwilling to give up on me only made me more hateful of my own actions. I couldn't live with what I had done.

“
What are your plans?” Mark asked.

“
They are not your concern and I do not wish anyone to follow me.”

“
You'll just go then, alone?”

“
Yes, I'm okay, alone. I'm fine, in fact. It's when other people try to interfere that things flounder.”

“
He put ads in the paper.”

“
I saw.”

“
He has a website asking for information.”

“
Yes, I heard.”

“
He really seems to love you and yet…”

“
Yet, yes. I'm going anyway. What are you? Some kind of twisted cupid?”

“
I'm just inquisitive,” he said.

“
A woman's mystery is what drives a man. When that's gone, bam, she's done for. Fate sent me a love too strong to contend with. I had it for a good while. It ceased. That's the end of it.”

“
You're arrogant,” he said.

“
You're a cheating manipulator,” I seethed, and turned to walk toward my car.

Just as I was slamming the
door shut, I heard him shout, “His father's estate paid for a new facility for leukaemia research! He made sure of that!”

My head droo
ped over the wheel and I nearly lost my rag. I sighed deeply. I breathed away the ache in my lungs and took myself to task.

What else can I say? The Chambermaid is done and now I plan to fly to the Caribbean and have a long holiday. I have paid for a rented villa for up to six months. I'll use that time to think and decide what to do with the rest of my life. Perhaps, I may write more. Otherwise, I might do what I've always wanted to and that is run my own little boutique hotel. It would be an amazing feat for me, but little by little, I could probably do it. The things I'd see in a small establishment; the people passing through; the stories and the tales their filth would tell. It would be a dream for me. I could start somewhere totally new where nobody knew me. I might pretend to be a former pole dancer who's flying through. I might travel to Australia or South America and seem so exotic – a child of the world who needs to be shown the way.

I only know this:
I was once a chambermaid living a life half-lived. I was forced out of my shell by individuals who were present throughout certain periods of my life. Nobody meant more than my precious Noah, however, and I know when he reads this he will know that what we had was true. We didn't seek it and at first, neither had any respect for what we shared. It grew over time and it was beautiful and imperfect but wonderful nonetheless. This new version of me has to go and she has to leave for pastures new. I hope those who suffer low self-esteem like me realise that progress begins with self-love, it develops with shared love, and it ends with self-love. If shared love maintains, it probably means it is meant to be. Right place, right person, right time. If those factors don't coincide straight away, just hold on to hope. Or otherwise, learn to embrace the imperfections, and always, take pleasure from life.