Undercover: The Adventures of a Real Life Gigolo. Luke Bradbury

      I shuffled on the chair to make myself more comfortable.

      ‘He’d been seeing my best friend. She’s a stripper at the same club as me, and that’s where she met him.’

      My ears pricked up.

       A stripper. Can it get any better?

      ‘But she was also seeing someone else who she didn’t want to lose,’ Sasha continued, ‘so we decided to get him interested in me. We arranged a lunch date, and I paid instead of him, which got him intrigued but also meant I could start pulling the strings. I’ve done it before.’ She shrugged her shoulders.

      Sasha had me hooked too. I listened wide-eyed with my jaw on the floor as she told me of her complete set-up designed to snare the poor rich sucker. The plan was to reel him in, marry him, and a couple of years down the line to divorce him for every penny she could get. She told me how, when they’d first started dating, practically all her money went on him though she could barely afford it. Whatever she killed, that’s what she was eating. And when the relationship began to get more serious, she chose to mirror everything he did. The way he brushed his teeth, the way he put his toothpaste on the brush, the way he put the brush back in the cup. Every little thing.

      ‘And then he bought me this place to keep me interested. Ha! It’s something to play with. I mean, I don’t have to work now. It keeps me occupied,’ she smiled.

      I didn’t know what to say.

      ‘Shit.’

      ‘I know,’ she went on, revelling in what she was getting away with. ‘He gave me a card to shop at Harrods too. I treat myself to the designer labels, keep the receipt, take it back a couple of weeks later and cash it in and bank the money.’

      My mind was spinning with the sheer audacity of it all. I shook my head a couple of times as if to clear it, and put an arm round Sasha’s shoulder.

      ‘So how does Chloe fit into all this?’

      ‘Not easily.’ She quietened, looking down at her hands. ‘We’ve known each other since back when she was working at the club.’

      Shit! I’ve been paid a grand tonight for sex with two strippers in a lesbian fantasy.

      I was quickly brought back down to earth.

      ‘Look, my fiancé. He’s away a lot on business. He is now, but he has people looking out for me, checking up on me. But he doesn’t know about Chloe. He can’t find out.

      ‘When he’s here, I tell him I’m going to visit my sister, but go off and see Chlo,’ she continued. ‘I’ve got clothes ’n’ stuff dotted round at friends’ houses and in the car for my Great Escapes, like tonight.’

      Sasha’s mood lightened, and her whole body relaxed in my lap, but she couldn’t quite disguise the trap she’d got herself into even while she’d been busily weaving a web of her own for her future husband.

      ‘He can’t find out about Chloe,’ she repeated, half to herself. She then looked up into my eyes to make sure I got the picture. ‘If he ever found out that I was seeing someone else, he’d have us both killed without giving it a second thought.’

      It chilled me how it rolled off her tongue, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I held her closer to me, and for a few minutes we sat together in silence.

      ‘Are you okay?’ I half-whispered, brushing her arm with my thumb.

      She nodded. ‘If I paid you another thousand, could you stay longer?’ she asked, in a quiet voice she was only just succeeding to keep steady.

      ‘I’m sorry, Sasha, I wish I could but I can’t.’

      I took a sideways glance at my watch. It was 6 a.m. An extra grand was tempting, I had to admit. But not tempting enough. I thought of the run of late nights and missed sleep I’d rung up, and wondered how I was to catch up with myself. Tiredness threatened to engulf me, but it was mixed with a fear of all I might get myself tangled up in if I accepted this girl’s offer.

      ‘I’ve got to go home, Sash.’

      I closed my eyes for a second. She slipped off my lap and I rallied myself.

      ‘I tell you what. You’ve got my number,’ I told her. ‘Call me this evening and we might be able to arrange something some other time.’

      I pulled myself out of the chair and we both put our clothes back on. She paid me the grand. In cash. I didn’t challenge her.

      ‘Luke?’

      It was late afternoon and I hadn’t been up long. But I recognised her as soon as she spoke.

      ‘Hello, Sasha, you’ve had a good day?’

      She was standing there sexily in my mind’s eye, her head cocked to her mobile. ‘Yes, I have, thanks. Hope we didn’t tire you out.’

      ‘Not at all,’ I lied. ‘It was a pleasure.’

      It would be an early night tonight, though I decided to be professional about it and not let Sasha know. But the tiredness was mixed with the warm glow of satisfaction of at last ticking off my first handful of sessions.

      ‘It was a good job you left when you did. The cleaner turned up half an hour later.’

      There was more to it, I knew, than the fuel for a bit of idle gossip among the staff. Sasha’s fiancé owned everything. Anything untoward that happened in his girlfriend’s gilded cage would get right back to him. I shivered.

      ‘I’d like to see you again a few times before I’m wed,’ she continued.

      For a split second I considered the danger, but it was swept away by the sheer fantasy made flesh of this girl. And so we made a date.

       Mark

      ‘You’re kidding me!’ Mark gasped, his eyes like saucers when I told him about the night before last as we geared ourselves up for a game of pool. Our work shifts were so out of synch these days that it was the first time since then that we’d had chance to catch up. I didn’t reply, but leaned against my cue and raised my eyebrows.

      ‘Fuck,’ he breathed out, as he stretched himself over the table and lined up for the break. He turned his head away from the job in hand and looked over at me, bemused. I threw my head back and roared with laughter. Mark frowned at me, confused.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I bet you wish you hadn’t given the game up,’ I gloated, a wicked smile across my face.

      ‘You know what, when I hear stuff like that, bloody hell, no.’ He shook his head and returned his attention to the table. ‘Two naked gorgeous lesbians. Fuck me.’ He fired off a shot and the balls went ricocheting around the baize.

      I’d been burning to tell the guys what I’d got up to with Sasha and Chloe ever since it happened—from the moment I’d walked into Chloe’s flat, to be honest. That