When the Siren Calls Read Online Free PDF Page A

drinks came and went and her gaze was drawn back once again to the dashing compere. Her eyes travelled up his body, resting on the gold watch, the designer-buckled belt, the wellheeled suede loafers and, lastly, on the chunky platinum wedding ring - the only adornment to strong and animated hands. Three years ago that humble piece of jewellery would have been the end of Lucy’s quest. But her career of late nights with her body wrapped around a silver pole taught her that the world, or at least one part of it, was stocked full of wealthy and generous men, married and otherwise, who were only too ready to spoil her. She attempted to engage him in eye contact as the spoof awards descended into bedlam but it seemed pointless; he was the one man in the room who didn’t see her.
    Even when his group settled down and struck up conversation across the two tables, merging the parties into one, he remained elusive, sitting at the furthest point away from her. Growing impatient, Lucy loudly excused herself to the bathroom and meandered her way towards the door, choosing a strategic route that took her between the man and one of his captivated courtiers. The gap was a narrow one and the man held his position, forcing Lucy to turn sideways to pass through, her crotch all but brushing his nose as she tried to make her way out. But he stopped her with a friendly hand on her thigh and, averting his eyes from the short skirt looked her straight in the eyes, grinned, and said, “It’s all looking a bit tight isn’t it?”
    “Tighter than you might think,” she replied, before making her way through to the bathroom.
    Lucy lingered in the toilets at her leisure, reapplying makeup and fiddling with her hair as she contemplated what now inevitably lay before her. She could still feel his touch on her thigh and, imagining his hand sliding up under her skirt, wedding ring and luxury timepiece in close proximity against her skin, she left to claim what she hungered for.
    Over the next hour the group was fluid, with people moving chairs as others came and went from the bar or the bathroom. The man, whose name she discovered to be Jay, remained elusive but Eamon — acting on his personal motto that ‘faint heart never won fuck all’ — eventually secured himself the seat next to her. He showered her with enraptured attention, stroking her crossed legs as he plied her with compliments and innuendos.
    Lucy’s concern was not the progress that Eamon’s wandering hand was seeking to make on her anatomy, but the progress Georgia — her glamorous and worldly supervisor — was making a few feet away. She was probably close to Jay’s age, and to Lucy’s eye well enough preserved to merit the interest of even a discerning suitor. Worryingly, her advances seemed to be welcome and Lucy, powerless to intervene, had to resign herself to waiting for her superior to need the restroom.
    Time passed with all the speed of a dull sermon but eventually, just when Lucy was concluding that Georgia must have the bladder of a bison, her rival took her turn to excuse herself.
    “Don’t go away now, will you,” she instructed in her most seductive tone, before reinforcing her intention by placing her jacket over the back of the chair. But such signals were null and void in Lucy’s world and with a seductive smile she turned to Jay, twisting her pole dancer’s body with a graceful ease that threatened to make the most staunch and devoted husband want to rip off her clothes and devour her supple flesh.
    “Oh Jay, while you have a second, you were talking earlier about your holiday in the Seychelles,” she began, locking his eyes in a smouldering stare that said ‘I don’t need to introduce myself, because you’ve asked who I am already.’
    “Maybe you could send me the details, if you still have them?”
    “Sure,” said Jay with a casual air, as if he had been expecting just such an enquiry, “I’d be pleased to. Do you have maybe an email address