For Hire: The Intimate Adventures of a Gigolo

LUKE BRADBURY

For Hire: The Intimate Adventures of a Gigolo

With Catherine von Ruhland

A special thank you to Keshini Naidoo and the rest of the team at AVON/HarperCollins and to Diane Banks.

To Catherine, thank you for another great book

and for capturing my story perfectly through

hard work and many late nights.

Table of Contents

Coverpage

Title Page

Dedication

Along for the ride

A New Beginning

Gray

Aidan

Karen

Heather

Melanie & Alison

Tash

Josephine

Melanie

Karen again

Agnieszka

Tom & Claire

Lars

Gray again

Marcus & Rachel

Nina

Jill

Marie & Craig

Carla & Denise

Jill & friends

Kim

Shami

Haley

Christine

Jill again

Fiona & Co

Christine plus three

Gray’s place

Jane

Nina & Luke

More about Mischief

About The Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

Along for the ride

Don’t move a fucking muscle. Julie’s cold fingers pad over my hard dick which is cradled in the palm of her other hand. I hold my breath. Julie’s focus is just as taut, her attention fixed on the wet plaster she is spreading over my entire cock. I watch her from above the hardening cast that runs all the way down from my shoulders to just above my knees.

Julie’s top teeth bite into her lower lip with the concentration. Her fingernails. That bite. The cast’s brittle white outer shell. It is me that is putty in her hands.

She could do whatever she wants to me.

I breathe out. She catches my eye.

‘Not much longer,’ she smiles, and the lines crinkle around her eyes.

She takes a step back to observe her handiwork.

‘Looking good,’ she mumbles, ‘looking good.’

Julie picks up her mug of tea from the paintsplattered trestle table and takes a sip. I lick my lips. My own mug sits tantalizingly out of reach.

‘It shouldn’t take too long to set, and then we’ll have you out of there. Free at last,’ she winks.

While we wait, I try to imagine what I must look like from Julie’s point of view. A fit young guy caught in suspended animation in the middle of her studio, and on the way to giving her a new coat hanger. Or whatever she plans to do with my sculpture.

I was Julie’s muse, her model, her material all in one. It was my dick that had got me this far. But standing here now, I had a hunch that maybe sometimes it was taking me too far. Because the only reason I was here was because of my prime-quality cock, legs and torso. I could be anyone.

I now knew what it felt like to be treated like a lump of meat. My hands might have been free, which meant that I could help Julie a little with her work, but I had to be careful, as the very movement of my underarm muscles threatened to do serious damage to Julie’s cast.

I’d shake my head at what my escort work got me caught up in—If I didn’t fear that moving my neck and chest muscles might ruin Julie’s artwork.

I’m not sure what I’d expected when Julie had called earlier in the week and asked me to help her out; I was just happy to be able to do so. When she’d told me she’d need to cover me in plaster for her artwork, it had taken me right back to the beginning of this game when I’d needed photos for the agency websites and paired up with a photography student who wanted snaps for his portfolio. We’d been doing each other a favour.

Even though Julie was paying me, I still liked the idea of being an artist’s muse for the afternoon. And who knows? I might end up on someone’s wall.

As long as none of my clients recognizes me!

In my mind’s eye, I could see the metal length of me—from breastplate down to my thighs and, jutting from the midst of it, a shiny golden cock—featuring in a Sunday supplement or a famous gallery. And someone pointing out, ‘I know him. He was a good lay.’ Well, of course, that went without saying.

Yup, it was Dick who was more of interest to Julie than Muggins here. I couldn’t help wondering if I was the one being dragged along for the ride.

I didn’t know much about art, but this situation certainly felt surreal. Me standing here, butt-naked except for the cold damp paste that Julie had been slathering over me. I’d had enough trouble finding Julie’s cottage. My scooter had stuttered up a dirt-track country road in Kent to reach here and it felt like the back of beyond. I’d barely seen another house once I’d turned off the motorway slip road. She’d taken me along a garden path to a renovated barn filled with her artist’s stuff. Yeah, this was all happening in the middle of nowhere. It meant we were free to do whatever we liked. And no one would know anything about it. But then again, I’d laid myself wide open to anything happening. And that thought sent a shiver of vulnerability down my stiff spine.

Julie set down her mug, and took a walk around her masterpiece. I relaxed a little too, beneath my solid second skin. From where I was standing I couldn’t help feeling pretty impressed by the shape my cock was in. I’d feared that I wouldn’t be able to remain erect while the plaster set. But Julie had made sure that was sorted by leaving my dick until last. Her hands sweeping the whiteness over my chest and then up my legs had certainly fired me up.

Julie was back in front of me, looking me up and down, assessing me. She clapped her hands, then rubbed her palms together like she was satisfied with how things were going. She was ready for the next stage.

I still had to remain stock-still. She looked me straight in the eyes, her fingertips clipped over the upper edge of the cast at my collarbone. ‘Right, Luke, this is the moment of truth. It’s time to get you out of these dry clothes.’

Julie winced as she worked as if the plaster was being pulled away from her skin. The trouble was that the skin was mine, and as the cast was drawn away from my body it was dragging my body hairs with it.

I whistled with pain through my teeth, and then exhaled. There was a responding glint of concern in Julie’s eyes.

‘Careful,’ she whispered, as if she was directing herself as much as me. ‘Not long now.’

I rolled each released shoulder, enjoying the freedom my arms now felt. Julie drew the cast away from my diaphragm and a hairline crack suddenly appeared across the concave smoothness, splitting the plaster apart. The chest-piece slipped to the floor and shattered into lumps like chalk.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ rattled Julie. She was still gripping tight to the lower casing. I froze and said nothing.

After all, everything was in her hands.

Julie bowed her head, wondering what to do next. She then looked up at me.

‘It’s salvageable. I hope.’

She bit her lip, as though she was trying to stop herself quivering. It wasn’t working.

It wasn’t exactly as if she had much alternative—unless she wanted to begin all over again. Standing here for another few hours certainly wasn’t my idea of a good time.

Then Julie rallied, as if making a new plan. ‘No,’ she reassured herself, her voice stronger now. ‘I can make something of this.’

She picked up a scalpel and began to lever it under the remaining edges of the casing. Her other hand was round the cock-shield as if she was using it as a handle to steady herself. The cast came away from my lower half without any trouble at all.

She settled it down on the floor in front of her knees. Her whole face beamed.

‘Go and get yourself a shower, Luke, while I finish off here.’

I slung my clothes back on and headed back to the house. The golden light in its windows promised warmth against the late afternoon’s growing darkness.

My entire body savoured the rush of hot water. My limbs relaxed and shifted in pleasure like they had just woken up. I closed my eyes and stood directly beneath the shower nozzle and raised my head to let the water pour over me.

I opened them again at the sudden opening of the curtain. Julie stepped into the cubicle, as naked as I was. This was more like it. I didn’t know if it was her plan all along—whether this was exactly why she’d ordered me in the first place. For the art, and then the show afterwards. I couldn’t care less, to be frank. I was only happy to oblige.

Julie’s hands once more glided all over my body, her touch mixing with the streams of water. I pulled her to me, wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. She slipped beyond my grasp.

Julie looked longingly at my hardened cock. Again. Her eyes flickered up to meet mine at the very same moment that her hands encircled my dick.

‘I’m going down,’ she cackled, dropping to her knees and drawing my prick between her dripping wet lips. Her tongue flickered to greet me.

The rush of water seemed to get louder around us. Who cared where my cock had dragged me to this time? The pleasure was all mine.

A New Beginning

February

Eva, her husband Lars, and I came at exactly the same time.

God, I am so on top of my game.

My eyes met Eva’s beneath me. Hers shone with raw bliss.

She flicked a look across at Lars, sitting low down in his armchair, still collecting himself. Eva wanted him to have the pleasure of her pleasure. Apart from the sex, I wasn’t needed at all.

Fine by me, love.

Eva’s arm reached out to stroke her husband’s leg. I didn’t have to turn to look at Lars. From the look of love his wife was giving him, I knew his scheme had worked for him as much as for Eva.

Because Lars had hired me as her birthday surprise. On top of the suite at the Dorchester Hotel he’d booked especially. Eva had had no idea I’d be turning up as her extra treat.

The surprise had made things a bit awkward to begin with. I’d been hired before by this pair when they came up to London from Cornwall. But since Eva hadn’t been expecting me, I couldn’t help wondering as I travelled upstairs whether she’d be in the mood. Suppose she was looking forward to a night alone with Lars? Though I was sure I’d be fine once she’d clocked me and realized what was coming to her.

Fortunately, as soon as I’d stepped into the suite, I could tell that we were all on the same page. Lars had made sure of that.

‘Ta-da!’ he’d announced, raising his glass of champagne to his wife: ‘My present to you, darling. Luke. For you to unwrap.’

I’d bowed as dashingly as I could. ‘Happy Birthday, Eva,’ I’d beamed.

She’d made a point of looking me up and down, the smile creeping up her face topped by the sheer lust blazing from her eyes.

‘Just what I’ve always wanted,’ she’d laughed.

Eva released herself from my hold, slipped out of the bed and crept on to her husband’s lap. Lars enfolded her in a bear hug and buried his face in her coppered brown hair.

Eva was a slight woman in her mid-thirties, with a sleek figure and cute neat ass that just begged a guy to run his hands over its contours. Lars was a few years older than his wife, and far taller than me. I’d presumed that I was doing well as a six-footer. Yet he was lean and must have been close to seven foot, and a brunette like Eva. When we’d first met a month or so ago, I’d been surprised to learn these two were Norwegians. With my blondish hair, I looked more Scandinavian than either of them.

I didn’t want to look as if I was gawping at them entwined in each other, so I stared out of our sixthfloor window towards the shadowy treetops of Hyde Park, shaking in the wind. An image of the Dorchester’s phallic tower flickered through my mind. I smirked to myself. Lars was sure making a statement when he’d booked this place for our rendezvous.

I’d done the job I’d been hired for—to be hors d’oeuvre to Lars’s main course. I collected my clothes, nodded my ‘She’s all yours’ at him over her shoulder, and got a grin and a ‘Thanks, mate’ in return. Creeping into the sitting room to dress, I let myself out.

I took the lift down to the ground floor, satisfied that I’d left a couple of clients pleased with my service. Happy Birthday to you, doll!

I checked my watch as I hotfooted it across the lobby. It had just turned midnight and I needed to get home. There were people milling around the reception area but I took no notice. I’d pick my scooter up from round the side of the hotel and head back to my bed. I’d had a run of late nights this past week and needed to catch up on the zeds.

I stepped out of the main doors behind a glamorouslooking couple who were being snapped by a barrage of paparazzi. As I turned left out of the hotel, I took a quick look back. I instantly recognized the two of them. She was Shelley Yates, an American movie starlet who I’d read in yesterday’s paper was in town for the release of her new film. And on her arm was Guy Raynor, an English pop star who was last year’s cool thing and sure needed the publicity now. You couldn’t tell if the pairing up meant anything to either of them, but they were milking the attention for all they were worth.

Good luck to ’em.

But I was too damn tired to desire such sparkle at this time of night. I walked away from the cameras, down the side road, stepped onto my scooter and was away from there.

As far as I was concerned, Sunday was meant for lounging around, maybe watching the football on the box in the afternoon. I’d benefited from my lie-in and was in the mood for not doing very much at all.

The Girls seemed to have the same idea—I could hear them pottering around as I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and cut across the hall to make myself some brunch.

Carrie was sitting at the kitchen table, the dregs of her own breakfast strewn around her. She’d pushed her plate and the jars of jam and marmalade out of her way and was engrossed in her Sunday redtop.

I started to prepare my own breakfast, putting bread in the grill and cracking a couple of eggs into the pan. Carrie looked up from her paper as I hovered beside the oven.

‘You had another night on the tiles? I didn’t hear you come in last night.’

I was unsure whether this was Carrie’s way of finding out my business. Since I’d moved in earlier in the month, I’d managed to fob my three new flatmates off about what I actually got up to, but I was very aware that that was going to be more difficult to get away with the longer I lived here. But for now, I was prepared to put that aside and only cross that awkward bridge when I came to it.

‘Oh, I can assure you I came in last night!’ I grinned.

‘Clubbing, were you?’

‘Oh, I had a night of it, y’know,’ I lied.

I decided to shift her focus away from me. ‘What about yourself, Carrie? Were you and the girls out larging it?’

‘You bet,’ she moaned, clutching her head in mock pain.

‘The others are still paying for it, I’m afraid, so no bashing any pots and pans when you’re putting together your fry-up, thanks.’

‘No worries,’ I replied, focused on the two eggs crisping round the edges just the way I liked them.

I sat down opposite Carrie with my breakfast and poured myself a mug of tea.

‘Anything happening in the world today?’

I was more interested in the back page, but I knew that the girls never read that far. Carrie flapped the front pages back and forward.

‘No X Factor scandal today, I’m afraid,’ she mused.

‘God, I don’t know what the world’s coming to!’ I spluttered. ‘What, have they got a blank front page or something?’

She flipped a wry grin across at me: ‘Might as well be, eh?’

None of us took the paper seriously. It was light relief of a Sunday. Hangover reading. But then again, the tabloids did help me keep in touch with who was in and who was out in celeb land—and that couldn’t but help me in my work. Especially some of the circles I found myself in. If only to massage some famous person’s ego by not looking blank when they told me what TV show they’d been on or pop group they were in. Not that I could let on to my new flatmates about that.

I let Carrie get on with reading and laid into my fry-up. God, there was something about a good English breakfast that set the world to rights whatever was in the news.

Carrie got up from her seat. ‘I need to shake the girls up. We’re off shopping this afternoon. You want to read the paper?’

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled through my full mouth.

She left me to finish off my breakfast alone.

I pushed my empty plate away and dragged the paper across the table towards me. I turned the pages without looking too closely at anything. My mind wasn’t ready for any proper news. I wasn’t up to looking at much more than the pictures, to be honest.

I stopped at the celeb pages. They snapped people coming out of the same nightclubs and restaurants that a good number of my clients hung out at. I focused on the photos, though I wasn’t taking a lot in. My head was still throbbing. And then a picture of a young woman and a guy managed to get my attention through the haze of my half-asleep brain.

Those two last night! Shelley Yates and Guy Raynor.

That brought me to my senses quick-smart. I took a closer look. They were standing in front of the Dorchester. For a second, I was back leaving the foyer through the glass door to be met by the paparazzi shield.

Oh fuck. No.

The thought hit me before I saw the truth in the photo. If they were being shot just as I was coming out, then chances are the paps had caught me too.

Panicking slightly, I smoothed out the page to take a closer look. Right first time. There was me at the back of the photo, heading out of the doors to my scooter round the corner. Only from where anyone else was sitting reading the paper at this time of the day, it appeared that I was part of Shelley and Guy’s entourage.

A wave of cold fear swept over me. Suppose someone out there who knew me—one of my clients, say, who definitely knew what I might be doing coming out of a top hotel around midnight—saw this picture, put two and two together and made five? And then all they needed to do was phone up the same paper and let them know about The Celeb Couple’s Appointment with The Hooker.

Oh God.

It wouldn’t take too many steps for the path to lead to my door. And my cover to be well and truly blown. And, God knows, in those sorts of stories it was always the escort or call girl who came off worst.

I closed my eyes for a second, half hoping that the picture would have disappeared when I opened them again. But it hadn’t, and Kirstie was breezing into the kitchen.

‘Morning, Luke,’ her voice rang out, crashing into my dread.

I rallied, turned over the page, and greeted her with a sunny, ‘And a good morning to you too!’, silently praying that she hadn’t spotted my unease when she entered the room.

I sipped at my tea and tried to read the rest of the paper as she busied herself around me. My mind was elsewhere. Even the sports pages didn’t do it for me. All I could think of was the photograph and me hovering in the background, just asking to be identified.

Kirstie sat down with her bowl of cereal. She ate a spoonful, and reached across for the paper.

‘You finished with this?’ she asked, her mouth full of cornflakes.

‘Yup,’ I replied, ‘not that there’s anything worth reading this morning.’

I felt sick with nerves. There was nothing I could do. The morning paper always did the rounds of the flat of a Sunday. It wasn’t my paper to snatch away and hide in my room—its absence would have been noticed. And if I’d simply removed the celeb spread, that would have been noticed too. It was the page we all turned to.

That hit me. Carrie must have seen the pages before I’d even entered the kitchen. Had she seen me? Surely not. If she had done, she’d have mentioned it to me, wouldn’t she?

My mind was a mixture of horror and worry. The shock of seeing myself in the paper. The fear of my cover being blown. The trouble that would cause. The Girls recognizing my picture. The questions they would ask. What if, what if…? All I could hope was that Carrie hadn’t seen the photo, and Kirstie wouldn’t. If any of the Girls did pick me out, then all I had to do was lie.

They had no idea of my business, so all I had to do was say I was there because I was visiting someone from home. A distant relative, or someone like that.

I would have to think on my feet, but sitting here, fearing the worst, was no help to me. I stood up from the table.

‘I’ve got to sort myself out for the day,’ I smiled. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’

I left the room only hoping that all the damage that picture could do would remain in my imagination.

Gray

Early March

Gray had his hand around his pint and was staring intently at the picture in the paper. He looked across at me and screwed up his eyes as if he was really taking me in, looked back down again and shook his head a couple of times. Then he picked up his beer and took a couple of gulps. Gray was playing for time, keeping me in suspense, in that way he had.

‘Come on,’ I laughed. ‘Give it to me. What do you think?’

‘It’s definitely you, all right,’ he teased, setting his glass back down on the table.

I rolled my eyes in mock exasperation. ‘I knew that! But do you think I’m likely to be found out?

That was the crux of why I’d called him up. The paparazzi shot had got under my skin, and the only person I knew who’d help me make sense of it was Gray. As the manager of my ‘Satisfaction with Luke’ website, he knew exactly what I was about. There was no having to explain myself with him.

He half whistled out of the side of his mouth. ‘That’s a hard one. It’s a possibility, of course.’

‘Isn’t everything?’ I countered, as I picked up my beer glass to take another swig.

‘True. My point is, there’s a strong chance nothing’ll happen.’

‘And if it does?’

‘Cross that bridge when you come to it, mate. And never admit guilt or shame. That’s what the bastards want, y’know.’

He set down his glass hard on the table, signalling that that was the end of it.

Gray wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t expected, or already thought about myself. But it helped to have him reflect it back to me. And to have someone listen to my worries.

Let’s face it, it wasn’t as if I could talk to my flatmates about my escort work. They were the very people I feared would find me out. It was just too early days for them to know my business and, anyhow, why should they need to? As long as I paid my bills on time and was friendly enough, surely that was all that mattered?