Chapter 1

Aidan

Partying with Henry Carter used to mean a threesome in his sex club. What a difference a year makes. Now we went out for a civilized meal and dragged fellow businessman, Elias King along with us. I’d been polite while H had shown us ten pictures of his son, Lewis, on his cell phone, but now he and Eli had launched into a full on conversation about having kids and I was bored as fuck.

“Hey. Can we talk about something else now, man? Your son’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw but let’s talk sports or some other shit.”

Eli guffawed. “Oh, Aidan. You have all this to come.”

“I really can’t see it, not for me. I’ve met plenty of women I’ve liked well enough but the big old ‘L’ word, it’s never happened to me.”

Henry fixed me with a look and I knew what he was saying with that intense brooding gaze of his. A while ago we’d been talking about the deaths that had affected our pasts and I’d confessed that my brother had been killed in a motorcycle accident when I was fourteen. Henry had had to put his own tragic past behind him to be able to move forward with his now wife Amelia and I guessed he was hinting that my own past could be affecting my future. Or he could just be saying with that stare that I was a dick.

Elias took a drink of his scotch and then rubbed the spiky ends of his salt and pepper hair. We were quite a trio. Elias was forty-seven, the father of a twenty-four-year old daughter with a nightmare ex-wife who made the Housewives of New York look like sweet little puppies (yes, I’d caught an episode once). Actually, maybe it was that putting me off settling down here in Manhattan? Then there was Henry, who was forty; and me, the baby of the group at twenty-nine. Elias owned several businesses under his surname King’s, including residential properties, nightclubs and a business school. I had the sex club I’d bought from Henry, and my adult movie company, GoDown Productions. Henry had sold everything apart from a house in Manhattan and one in the Hampton’s and continued to work for Elias as a Consultant for his property business. I think the only thing he truly wanted to work on was having more babies with his wife these days.

“Out with it, Eli. When you rub that stubble we know there’s something on your mind, old man.”

He raised his middle finger at me.

“Just the one thing on your mind then?” I winked at him.

“My ex-wife is getting remarried.”

“Hallefuckingluyah.” I responded and Henry clapped.

“Yes, well she’s getting married in January and she’s decided that in the spirit of being amicable around our daughter that I’ve to attend, and bring a plus one.” He rubbed his chin again. “Basically, she wants to show off that she’s met a multi-billionaire who’s better for her than I ever was.”

“Just say you can’t make it.” Henry advised him. “If she’s so madly in love she’ll not even notice you’re there.”

“Brianna is putting the guilt on, ‘Daddy, I never see you. It would be so nice if you and Mommy could finally put your differences aside’. I love my daughter but Christ she takes after her mother. She’ll just want to hit me up for money and then I’ll not hear from her again until her bank account runs dry once more.”

Elias had told us the story of his bad marriage years ago. He’d fallen in love with whom he’d believed to be a sweet, lovely woman, but once the ring was on her finger and she’d gotten pregnant, she’d become a society climbing backstabber, who had to have the best of everything amongst her friends; an unrealistic ambition when some had royal connections. She’d basically made Eli’s life a misery until she divorced him when their daughter was ten. He’d discovered she was having an affair with a Sheikh and had several properties in her portfolio that he’d not put there. It had been an ugly and messy divorce and she’d moved to Los Angeles, creating a distance between Eli and his daughter and making Brianna so spoiled that Eli despaired.

“You’re gonna have to suck it up then and take a date with you. Preferably someone like twenty years younger than Katrina. No amount of plastic surgery is going to let her compete with a nubile young woman.” I said.

Eli’s face flushed. He picked up his scotch again and took a sip.

We talked business for a while and then Eli said. “Have any of you ever picked up any gossip about my Assistant, Alexandra? You know, about her love life. Just, you know, I don’t really like asking and she could have a celebration coming up, an engagement or similar. She’s worked for me a few years now, it would be bad of me to miss such a thing.”

“She’s married, Eli, to the love of her life. Used to be a fitness model.” I joked with him and watched his face fall.

“Joking.” I nudged him with my elbow. “Out with it. You have a crush on your Assistant?”

He sighed. “No. I just had it pointed out to me that Alexandra might like me. I’m just working out if there’s any basis to that.”

“Who told you that?” Henry asked.

“Haley from Green’s. She saw us together at a party a couple years ago.”

“A couple of years ago? And you did nothing about it? Fuck, Eli. What’s the matter with you?” I said exasperated.

“If Haley said it, I’d say there was probably some truth to it.” Nodded Henry. “She’s lovely, that girl. No mean side to her at all. So genuine.”

“Yes, well I find it hard to believe seeing as I’m forty-eight and Alexandra is twenty-nine. My daughter is not much younger than her goddamn it.”

“Well, Eli, I think you have your answer. The lovely Alexandra could be your plus-one to your ex-wife’s wedding. If she hasn’t given up all hope by now and joined a convent. All you have to do is find your balls and ask her.” I shook my head at him.

Eli ordered another round of scotch.

“So, I hope I can count on you both to come to the relaunch of the Club next month?” I said. H’s Club S would be no more. A complete redecoration was currently taking place and in two weeks time Abandon would be opening. I was excited. It was an entire new concept in sex clubs. There was a lot of competition in Manhattan of late and I wanted my club to be one of, if not THE best. There would be a high end movie theater showing GoDown’s own movies of course. I was currently in negotiations about a line of sex toys that could be purchased and played with. I’d kept the black and silver tones of Club S, but the previous stage had now been removed from the bar area and would now become a relaxing zone where patrons could take a break if they so wished. Instead, there was a separate room containing a stage which could be hired and performances ran all night. All the staff at my club were strictly off limits and in order to enforce that rule I’d decided that I would no longer take part now I owned the place, taking on the mantra of ‘don’t shit where you eat’. This would seriously affect my sex life, but I was sure I’d find someone to hook up with should the need arise, and I could always grab the number of a sexy woman from the club. Finally, there would be a series of rooms, all fitted with windows with blinds, in case people wished to be watched or keep their fantasies private. All rooms however were fitted with security cameras and I had a team on board to make sure that everyone played safe.

“Yes, Amelia can’t wait for an evening out. She says we might visit one of the rooms to play so I’m definitely coming.” H said.

“Good to see the support for your fellow businessman.” I quipped.

“He’s pussy whipped, or wants the opportunity to whip the pussy. You selling whips?” Eli chuckled. “Anyway, I’ll be there. Purely to see your up and running empire. I won’t be partaking. No offense but sex in public just isn’t my thing.”

“No offense taken, old man. There’s no one wants to see your wrinkly dick.” I laughed.

“I think a whip needs taking to your ass, boy, only not in a sexual way. Don’t cheek your elders.” A small smirk curled the edge of Eli’s top lip.

“Why don’t you bring Alexandra with you to the launch? See what she thinks to it?”

“Not a cat in hell’s chance. I’ll be flying solo that night.”

“Pussy.”

“Yes, I should imagine I’ll see lots of it.”

He patted Henry on the back. “I think we should look around, H, and see if we can’t find a woman for our Aidan here. He needs someone to keep him in line, dontcha think?”

“It’ll happen to him when he’s least expecting it.” H replied.

I shook my head. “No way. I’m still young. No intention of settling down any time soon. I’m still empire building. No woman will want to be stuck at home while I’m out at my sex club.”

“Why would they be stuck at home?” Eli queried.

“I wouldn’t want any woman of mine hanging round that kind of establishment. They might decide they want a threesome. We know there’s plenty of those around,” I said to H, as we used to take part in a hell of a lot of threesomes to make women’s fantasies come true at Club S.

“You hypocrite! You mean after all you’ve taken part in, in the past, you want a woman all to yourself?” H’s jaw dropped.

“Absofuckinglutely. I refuse to share my woman’s pussy with anyone. In fact I’m going to fit her with a pussy lock when I find her.”

Eli and Henry guffawed.

“Oh my God, you are crazy. Fucked up crazy. So your ideal woman is what? A sex-crazed stunner who’s willing to wear a chastity belt and stay at home while you mingle with women who want to have threesomes with you?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

More laughter ensued. “Then there’s no wonder you are still fucking single.” H said.

Eli’s cell beeped. He picked it up, and a smile played out on his face. He typed out a quick message. When he put his cell back on the table, we were both staring at him.

“Who was that?” I asked.

Eli cleared his throat. “It was Alexandra. She sends me a text when she’s home.”

“Excuse me?” H said. “Want to run that past us again?”

“Look, I can’t even remember how it started, but we must have been on a working dinner or something and I asked her to text me when she got home safely and she laughed and said I had to text her too and then she kept on with it. She texts me every night and I do the same. It’s nothing. Just lets someone know you’re home safely, like a security thing.”

“Oh dear God, are you really that stupid, Eli? You like this woman and by the sounds of it, she likes you.”

“She’s far too good an assistant for me to fuck it up by fucking her.”

“Okay, whatever you say, Eli, but I think you’re being a complete dick and ought to grow a pair of balls.” I huffed at him in frustration.

H sat back and looked at both of us. “I don’t know which of you is the most dumb. The one who won’t take a chance on his assistant because she’s great at her job, bearing in mind, Manhattan is full of amazing PA’s, or the guy who thinks he can own a sex club and his wife will just sit at home and cook his dinner. It comes to something when I’ve become the most well adjusted out of the three of us.”

He had a point.

“I will find myself a woman. Just to shut you all up. I will find that very woman. Who will let me own her pussy all by myself and accept my job.”

“Okay, and when are you going to find her by, because this sounds like something to wager on.” H said.

“At the very latest by Christmas.”

“Three months? You’re going to find the woman of your dreams in three months?” Eli shook his head.

“At the latest. You know me. I love a challenge.”

“So what’s the wager?” H asked.

“If I lose, I’ll babysit your daughter once a week. If you lose you are only allowed to show me pics of the kids at their birthday and at Christmas, with a maximum allotted time of five minutes exactly.”

“You have no heart, but deal.” H said.

“Eli. If I win, you have to ask your Assistant out. What do you want if I lose?”

“You take my nightmare of a daughter out and somehow try to make her human.”

“Holy crap. I’d better make sure I win.” I said and shook Eli’s hand.

Then we carried on drinking scotch and shooting the breeze until it was time to head off home.