Unfurl: Chapter 16

Maddy has spent the entire morning blowing up my phone, so I agree to meet her for a bowl of pasta during our respective lunch breaks.

To be honest, I don’t need much persuading. Not only am I dying to hear what she got up to at the club last night after I went through for my, ahem, session, but I need to unload on her. Badly. Because my head has not stopped spinning since those guys walked out of that little room.

Maddy’s the only person I would dream of talking to about this stuff. Not only is she my best friend, but she’s the least judgemental person I know. Fourteen years of convent school made many of us fear-and-shame-driven. Judgemental. Not Maddy. It made her determined to take everyone as she finds them, and it’s one of the things I adore most about her.

I walk up Old Bond Street, absentmindedly perusing the window displays. I may be preoccupied, but I can always find headspace to appreciate a great dress or a pair of killer heels. Mummy instilled in me from a young age both a love of dressing up and the importance of investing in quality pieces that will stand the test of time.

With that in mind, it’s hard to force myself away from the stunning white sheath in the window of Ralph Lauren’s massive London flagship, but I know Maddy’s waiting. So I sigh and instead turn into Burlington Gardens.

Maddy is indeed waiting at the bar of Cecconi’s, looking gorgeous and refreshed and not at all like she had an all-night orgy. This place is rammed full of hedge fund types, and they’re throwing interested glances her way, but for once she seems oblivious.

I hug her before pulling out one of their iconic green leather bar stools and climbing up. ‘How’d you get a reservation?’

‘Dropped Ventrix’s name.’ She shrugs. ‘Always works. I could only get the bar, though.’

Ventrix is the hedge fund she’s temping at. I imagine their employees give Cecconi’s pretty steady business.

‘Works for me.’ I lean in. ‘As long as no one overhears our conversation.’

She laughs. ‘I’m sure they’d love to hear our conversation. Half of them are probably Alchemy members.’

I look around nervously.

God.

I hadn’t thought of that. Imagine if one of the random, obnoxious finance-types doing deals over Cecconi’s iconic crab ravioli had his face between my legs last night. The exclusive enclave of Mayfair feels uncomfortably small all of a sudden. But he wouldn’t recognise me with my clothes on and my sleep mask off.

Would he?

She laughs and hits me playfully on the arm. ‘Relax, babes. No one here knows you’ve turned into a dirty little ho overnight. You still look innocent and gorgeous.’

That gets a grin out of me. ‘I could say the same for you. Minus the innocent part. But tell me what you got up to last night. I’m dying to know.’

‘No. I’m dying to know.’

‘I’ll fill you in on every detail, I promise. But you’ve got to tell me—did you go into the Playroom bit? I can’t even imagine.’

Her knowing grin tells me I’ll regret asking her, but a server interrupts us with menus. We wave the menus away and order what we always have here: Pellegrino, crab ravioli and a green salad.

‘Okay.’ She shimmies in her seat. ‘It was amazing. Honestly, like porno Disneyland.’

I groan and cover my face with my hands. ‘Oh God.’

‘Yeah. Oh God, indeed. I don’t know why the hell I spend so much time going out to clubs and getting fucked and going home with some guy who can’t find my clit.’ She leans forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m telling you, this place is the bomb. I had two drinks and three orgasms and I was home by midnight, sober and well-fucked. I slept like a fucking baby. Alone. Like, hello? What’s not to love about that?’

I laugh at whatever revelation my beautiful friend is having. I can’t even imagine the experiences she had last night, but I love her attitude. ‘I’m glad you found it so… convenient?’

She throws her hands up. ‘Super-convenient. Orgasm express.’

‘I need more information. Talk me through it. Were the three orgasms all from the same guy?’

She blows out a breath. ‘Please. No. Three guys.’

‘All at once?’ I venture, because apparently I’m now the kind of girl for whom three guys in one night is not remotely shocking.

‘Okay, okay. I’ll tell you the juicy details.’

‘I bet there was a lot of juice,’ I deadpan.

‘Look at you, making a sex joke! Who are you and what have you done with my innocent friend Belle?’

I smirk.

‘Yes, there were a lot of juices,’ she concedes. ‘Though, you know. Safe sex and all that. But still.’

‘Tell me,’ I order.

‘So, right after you left, Genevieve, who I really liked, by the way, took me through to the Playroom, and oh. My. God. I swear I got wet the second I walked in. It was just so… carnal. Unapologetic. People fucking left, right and centre like it was the most natural thing in the world. And everyone seemed pretty hot. It was definitely encouraging.’

‘How does it work in there? Do random people just come up to you and ask you to have sex? Or do they even ask?’ I’m not yet up to speed on the workings of Alchemy proper. I’m still the sad little virgin in their equivalent of pre-school, and I have to admit to being fascinated, in a horrified kind of way, by what the big kids get up to.

‘Kind of,’ she says. ‘It’s all far more open than in a normal club, where you have to make small talk or skirt around the issue. So I’m standing at the bar with Genevieve, and this guy makes a beeline for us. He’s gorgeous. He opens his mouth, and he’s Italian.’

I roll my eyes. I love how Maddy attracts the Italian stallion straight off the bat.

‘I know, right? He says he and his friends were checking me out and they wondered if I’d like to join them. I’m like, why not? So I follow him over to a darker corner, and there are people everywhere, going down on each other and fucking, and some just watching and getting themselves off.

‘So this dude—he doesn’t give me his name—sits down next to his equally hot friend on the sofa, and they kind of lean back and admire me. I go to sit but he’s like no, the view is way better when you’re standing, and then he asks me if I’m wearing underwear, and I say no.’

I gape. ‘Weren’t you?’ Maddy was in a gorgeous mini-dress last night, made entirely of gold chain-mail. It definitely wasn’t the type of dress most people would choose to go commando under.

‘Nah. It’s a sex club. What’s the point? Anyway, the friend says prove it, and I’m thinking I’m not going to flash you, so I say, “Why don’t you have a feel and prove it for yourself?”

‘So the hot friend leans forward and he just slides his hand up my thigh and starts fingering me, right there and then, while the first guy looks on, stroking himself over his trousers. I swear, babes, I nearly came right there. Then his friend gets involved too, and I’m just standing there, widening my stance, and their fingers are everywhere, and I’m practically exploding. It was just so hot, you know? Standing for them while they inspected me.

‘Next thing I know, they get me on the sofa so I’m draped over one of them. He holds my legs open while the other one goes down on me, and I come so quick it’s embarrassing.’

Wowzers. I’m horrified and transfixed and turned on all at once. I stare at my friend, at her flushed cheeks and starry eyes, and wonder if that’s how I was last night, too. ‘Go on,’ I croak. ‘So that was orgasm number one.’

A server leans over the bar to pour our Pellegrino, and we stay quiet, eyeballing each other in a way that could have us bursting into a fit of giggles if we’re not careful.

‘Yeah,’ she says when he’s withdrawn. ‘Then they ask me if we should find a bed, and I’m like hell, yeah. I mean, they’re gorgeous. And they know what they’re doing—I figure I’ve found the people who’ll show me the ropes for the evening, right? They ask me what I want to get out of tonight, and I tell them it’s my first time here and I just want to be used. I want them to take over.

‘So we find this room, and it’s got a bed in it, but also a bench in the middle of the floor. They leave the door wide open, and they strip me and get me on all fours on the bench. They’re both still fully clothed, by the way, which is, like’—she blows out a breath—‘so erotic, because I basically feel like a hooker. And then one of them—the one who didn’t go down on me—fucks me from behind with a finger up my arse, and the other guy fucks my face, and I blow. I come so hard I practically black out.’

She slaps the bar. ‘Hottest night of my life, babes. Seriously. God, it feels good to find a place where all the men who actually know what they’re doing hang out. I could tell these guys had fucked a million women there, and I loved it. They gave all three holes a workout at the same time. I literally felt fulfilled.’

I’m uncomfortably warm, and I’m not sure why, but hearing Maddy talk like this is telling. Because I want to be horrified, but I’m not. I’m actually a little jealous.

Jealous of how totally uninhibited she is.

A tiny bit jealous that she had a night like that.

But mainly jealous that she can walk away from it without a backwards glance, feeling no regret or shame, and look forward to more of the same in the future.

Sex has always seemed to me to be fraught with complexity, but people like Maddy make it seem like the simplest thing in the world.

‘I make that two orgasms,’ I say weakly, holding up a couple of shaky fingers.

‘Oh yeah.’ She shrugs dismissively. ‘Then another couple of people came in, and once the guy was finished fucking me, another one went down on me, while the guy who’d come in my mouth played with my boobs. They basically all played with me, and I was honestly a dribbling mess when they’d finished. Like, I was so relaxed and floppy. I was probably in some kind of subspace. So I staggered out of there and cabbed home and passed out like I’d drunk a bottle of vodka. I mean, who needs facials and massages? Last night was like someone pressed the reset button, restored me to my factory settings, and I feel fabulous this morning.’

‘That’s amazing,’ I tell her. ‘I’m so happy for you. Are you going to join up?’

‘I emailed Genevieve as soon as I woke up. Let’s see if I can afford it. It’ll probably have to come out of the trust fund.’ She sighs. ‘Living my parents’ dream for me, eh?’

‘Maybe you should get a job there,’ I blurt out. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but it seems like an excellent one.

Her eyes widen. ‘Do they have professionals there—like sex workers?’

‘I’m not sure how it works,’ I tell her. ‘You should speak to Genevieve. But it could be worth considering. If you like it that much.’

‘Hmm.’ She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Do that a few times a week and get paid. You’re not stupid, Belle Scott.’

Over delectable ravioli, Maddy coaxes the story out of me.

‘Start at the very beginning,’ she urges me. ‘I want to know everything, and especially how you were feeling. I still can’t believe you went through with it. I’m so proud of you, babes.’

Maddy is a fantastic listener. She gasps and laughs in all the right places. I tell her about picking the sheer underwear, about how surreal it felt as I got ready in that little changing room and how bloody terrified I was.

How quickly that terror ratcheted up as I pressed the ORGASMS button and lowered my eye mask and during the brief hiatus when the guys had arrived but hadn’t started touching me.

‘Do you have any idea how many there were?’ she asks.

‘Three. Definitely three. One at my feet, and one on either side of me.’

She smirks. ‘So hot. Eek! I can’t believe my little Belle had three guys last night!’

‘Shh!’ I say, looking to either side of us in a panic, but the noise level in here at lunchtime is loud enough to drown out our decidedly dodgy conversation.

‘Tell me this.’ She nudges my arm with her elbow. ‘Were you tempted to look?’

I recall that moment when I recognised Rafe’s scent. When I knew with utter certainty that he was in the room with me.

‘No. I would have been too self-conscious, I think. It was better I couldn’t see any of it, and it made it hotter, not knowing who was doing what or what they were going to do next. It was just’—I wave my hands around in an attempt to explain—‘hands and mouths everywhere.’

Maddy’s beaming at me like I’ve just taken my first steps and she’s my proud mummy. ‘Yes,’ she hisses. ‘Exactly. Ugh, I’m so fucking jealous.’

My eyebrows shoot up. ‘You’re jealous? You had a foursome too, last night, and it sounded far wilder than mine.’

‘I know, and it was great. But there’s something about the whole virgin thing—it’s so hot. Like, you’re lying there and you’ve never been touched, and then there are three guys going to town on you. Whew.’ She fans herself. ‘Maybe next time I go, I’ll pretend I’m a virgin.’

I roll my eyes. This girl is so dramatic. ‘I’m not sure you could hold that ruse for long.’

‘Rude. But you’re probably right. Anyway, tell me exactly what they did. I want every filthy little detail.’

As we finish our orgasmic ravioli, I regale her with a blow-by-blow chronology of my short but explosive session, except, because it’s me, there’s a lot of gesticulating at body parts rather than being as technical as Maddy wants me to be.

God, I’m bad at this stuff.

I need to get better.

I’ll never be able to have a healthy relationship if I can’t even say the word—

‘Clit. Just say it. Clit,’ Maddy annunciates.

I glare at her. ‘Clit. Happy? So he rolled an ice cube around my… clit, and then he and, I think, Callum, had their fingers down there too, pressing against my… entrance, and I just exploded.’

Maddy shifts sideways on her bar stool so she can cross her legs. ‘God, you’re turning me on.’

I grimace. ‘That was absolutely not my intention.’

‘So what was Rafe doing when you came? Kissing you?’

‘Yeah.’ Although kissing falls laughably short of describing the way Rafe’s ravenous tongue devoured my mouth. A flash of electricity travels through my entire body as I recall the intensity of having his face and mouth smashed against mine like that. ‘And he and Callum each had a hand on one of my boobs, as far as I can tell.’

‘So Callum’s dirty talk was good.’

‘It was excellent. He made me feel really sexy, but it wasn’t too intimidating.’

‘And then you had Rafe eating your face off and some other guy eating you out.’

‘Over my knickers, yeah.’

‘Such a strong formula,’ she mutters to herself. ‘I mean, fuck, babes. That was a lot for your first time. You went from nought to sixty in, like, half an hour.’

‘I know,’ I say weakly.

‘And you loved it?’

I raise my head from my plate so I can look her in the eye. ‘I loved every second of it. Honestly. It blew my mind.’

‘That’s my girl.’ She’s a proud mum again. ‘Now, tell me. When are you going back for more?’