Audacity: Chapter 4

Viewing Athena’s files is akin to being a lobster in a gently simmering vat of water. At least, that’s what I conclude as I look at the Contents page at the start of the document. My journey of discovery will take me, apparently, from her CV and professional references through to something called Intimate References, which simultaneously has my skin crawling and my blood heating. I’m sure it’ll fluff me up nicely before I look at the Images section.

As I read through her opening statement and the rest of her CV, it quickly becomes apparent to me that this woman is not only disgustingly accomplished but grotesquely overqualified to assist anyone.

She went to school in a number of European countries—the daughter of two cultural attachés, apparently—and speaks French, German and Italian fluently. After that, she finished up her secondary education one year early at the unimpeachable Cheltenham Ladies’ College and read Classics at Balliol, Oxford.

After only two years at Bain instead of the requisite three years for MBA entry, the Sorbonne accepted her for their MBA programme from which, reading between the lines of her employment history, she was plucked by Seraph.

Camille was certainly telling the truth about Athena’s capacity for work that goes far beyond administrative duties. Her CV is a list of her achievements: projects led and foundations established and corporation-wide systems overhauled. I bet she did it all without breaking a sweat. While the company names are withheld, I note that she hasn’t worked for many bulge-bracket firms since Bain, Wolff excepted.

Either Seraph doesn’t operate within those companies, or it’s a function of Athena’s own admission in her opening statement: she seeks to gain as much of an education as possible from the access her position gives her.

I choose not to linger on the word access.

Her first position was in Paris, it seems. She then worked for a ‘conglomerate’ which I’d guess was Anton’s company, Wolff Holdings. After that, she was at some kind of tech firm and now holds a position in the renewable sector.

There’s no doubt this woman would overhaul Rath Mor more quickly than you could say dinosaur.

I skim through the professional references. They are as glowing, as grateful, as I imagined they’d be.

The next section—the Intimate References—makes for uncomfortable reading. I’m desperate to click through to her photos, ravenous to see what a woman this accomplished, this polished, this adored by Max and Anton, looks like. But I don’t. Instead, I force myself to dwell on the pithy soundbites laid out on the page in elegant quote marks, as if I’m reading a selection of verdicts from restaurant critics and not horny businessmen. They’re horrifying and arousing in equal measure, a kind of sick boys’ club where we’re all winking and high-fiving each other over our excellent choices.

“Athena fucks like a dream and took absolutely everything I gave her.”

“Athena is that rare woman who is even filthier than me. She led a lot of our fantasies together and pushed me beyond my limits.”

I press my lips together. I can feel the judgement radiating from myself at these comments. I can’t bear it, but neither can I look away. And with every dirty word I read, my anticipation ramps up.

It’s the final review that has my dick thickening in my trousers.

“Do yourself a favour and, more importantly, do Athena a favour. Unleash her. Hiring this woman and just fucking her on your desk twice a week would be a travesty. It would be like buying a thoroughbred and making it do kiddy rides at the fair. THIS WOMAN LOVES DICK. She wants it from you. She wants it from your clients. She wants it from you IN FRONT OF your clients. Ask her yourself. Just promise me you won’t treat her like the fragile little rose she looks like, because she will wilt and die.”

I hit return, breathing heavily as the screen turns to a white page entitled Images. My skin is prickling, my dick now fully hard. What a disrespectful, nasty prick that last guy is. Emotions push through my veins like a twisted, toxic rope. I have no way of knowing whether he’s telling the truth, whether he understands or respects Athena’s needs at all, but I’m suddenly, uncomfortably, aware that this is the big leagues. This woman is experienced. She’s done things I can’t begin to imagine with some of the most powerful men in industry.

And if I go ahead with this insane scheme to hire her, I’ll have to make it worth her while.

In every way.

I click through, and I almost laugh.

The build-up to this moment has been ridiculous. Athena has been lauded as the most competent employee and incredible fuck, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Some AI concoction of the perfect woman, I suppose.

But not this.

The young woman gazing back at me from the head and shoulders portrait is beautiful in a way that makes the word feel meaningless and trite. It’s clearly a business photograph. Her auburn hair is in an updo loose enough to showcase its natural wave. She’s in what looks like a black dress with a modest crewneck, a simple strand of pearls at her neck and pearl studs in her ears. Her makeup is light. Tasteful.

She looks like the daughter of diplomats, that’s for sure.

She looks like she belongs in a fucking Ferrero Rocher ad.

But none of that matters, because her face alone is its own best advocate. She’s not merely hot or sexy or enticing—she’s classically, ethereally, achingly beautiful in a way that appears to be down to the perfect alchemy of her huge hazel eyes and delicate bone structure and shapely nose and rosebud mouth.

It’s an elite, untouchable kind of beauty. The kind that would make a man wary even of approaching her if he saw her in a bar. A flawless loveliness that belongs on centuries-old frescos and one that I absolutely cannot square with the filthy, carnal, animalistic things those men said about her.

That this woman sells her body for money is the biggest head fuck I’ve ever had.

That she sells it for seven figures a year and has men like Anton and Max drooling over her memory years after their paths crossed is marginally less shocking, I suppose.

The next photo is a similar crop, but this time she’s makeup free. Her hair is loose, and I can see it is indeed wavy, trailing past the bottom of the image. I’m no expert, but it looks professionally blowdried and very, very glossy. If it wasn’t for the thin black bra straps, I’d think she was naked.

Her skin is clear, that rosebud mouth slightly open and just as pink without its light sheen of lipstick. There are the faintest shadows under her eyes, and they make her look even younger. More fragile. That she allegedly enjoys being gang-banged is a thought I can’t allow myself to entertain, not when I’m hard like this. And, despite my throbbing erection, I slip into priest mode, asking myself the questions I would have asked about any member of my flock.

Is she vulnerable? Has she had sufficient agency with these men? Does she have someone to advocate for her? To keep her safe?

The next shot is, God help me, a full-length image against a white backdrop: Athena, barefaced and barefooted, naked except for a sheer black bra and what looks like a thong. It’s a simple pose, not provocative. She’s standing still, hands hanging loose at her sides, feet together. Sheer lingerie aside, there’s absolutely nothing porno about it, yet it’s oddly confronting.

I think it’s the lack of artifice. Once again, she looks young and fragile and untouched, and I have the distinct impression that I’m looking at something—someone—I shouldn’t. If the effect Seraph is going for is intoxicatingly forbidden, then these people are diabolical indeed.

She’s on the slim slide, with a slender waist and fuller hips, but she’s not gym-honed at all. Her skin is pale and flawless aside from a smattering of moles on her stomach that look positively decorative. There’s little muscle definition. Her breasts are heavy, the outlined nipples full. Her stomach is a soft swell.

A man could lay his weary head between those breasts or on that stomach and feel thoroughly, happily contented.

I let my gaze run over the photo as I palm my dick through my trousers. Suddenly, the box of tissues Camille pointed out makes a lot more sense. There is absolutely nothing about this picture I don’t like. No doubt about it, Athena Davenport is a stunning woman.

The arrow at the bottom of the screen is still black. Looks like there are more images to see.

Oh holy fuck.

Dear, blessed Father in Heaven, I know not what I do… because I was not expecting this.

Athena, perched on a tall stool.

Utterly, wonderfully naked.

She’s sitting upright, eyes wide, lips still parted, that same, neutral expression on her face. This time, it strikes me as more disingenuous. More dangerous.

Her toes are propped up on the rungs of the stool, her knees wide. That beautiful auburn hair hangs loose, trailing over what are indeed glorious breasts, their rosy nipples now tightly furled.

She’s cupping a breast with one hand while, with the other, she reaches between her legs and opens herself up for the camera with her fingers.

I zoom in.

So help me God, I zoom in like a frenzied madman, so I can enjoy the glossy pinkness of her bare cunt, exposed for me, for my viewing pleasure. I stare at it, palming my cock harder. I absolutely will not be that man who gets himself off in someone’s office to pornographic images of a beautiful woman with whom he has not yet entered into a contractual relationship.

I will not.

But there’s something so deeply arresting about this juxtaposition of Athena’s facial inscrutability and the wantonness, the brazenness of her pose.

It feels less like an invitation than a challenge.

A challenge to try in vain to resist her.

And it’s clear, simply from the miraculous arrangement of pixels in front of me, that I will fall at that first hurdle.