I'll be frank with you, Danny. I don't like shelling out twenty percent of my hard-corned gelt to a middleman. Besides which, I don't agree with you. Writing a contract of employment can be as creatively satisfying as painting a picture or setting up a camera angle. She kicked off her shoes. Her bare feet were strong and shapely as her hands. She twisted her long denim-clad legs under her and settled back on his buttoned leather sofa. Let's talk business. Okay, let's do it, he capitulated. On principle I won't pay a crew by the hour, and I don't recognize overtime. We work whenever there is work to do, and for as long as it takes.
We go wherever I say, and we live off the land. No five-star accommodation. That sounds to me like two thousand a week, she said sweetly. Dollars? This isn't New York, brother Dan. It's London.
Pounds. That's stiff. I don't get anywhere near that myself, he protested. No, but you probably get twenty percent of the gross, whereas I will have to be content with a lousy five percent. Five percent of the gross on top of two thousand a week. Daniel looked horrified. You have to be joking. If I were joking, I'd be smiling, wouldn't never given a cut to a cameraman, forgive me, a camera person before. Once you get used to the idea, you won't find it unbearably painful. I tell you what, let's call it twelve hundred a week, and forget about any percentage. The acoustics are terrible in here. I can't believe what I thought I just heard. I mean, you wouldn't want to insult me, would you, Danny boy? Would you do me a favour, Miss Mahon?
Would you do up the top button of your shirt while we talk? The upper part of her chest was freckled like her face. It showed in the deep ! of her open neck, but below a clear line where the sun had not stained it, her skin was as white as buttermilk. Under the thin cotton shirt her breasts, unfettered by any brassiEre, were tight and firm.
She glanced down into her deep cleavage. Is there something wrong with them? She grinned slyly. No. Nothing at all. That's what I'm complaining about. She closed the button. Did I hear you say seventeen-fifty and four percent? she asked. You are right. There is something wrong with the acoustics, he agreed. I said fifteen hundred and one and a half percent. Two percent, she wheedled him, and when he sighed and agreed, she added craftily, And a hundred a day location allowance. it took them almost three hours to hammer out the terms of her employment and at the end he found his liking for her tempered by respect. She was a hard lassie. Do we need a letter of intent? he asked. Or will a handshake do? A handshake will do fine, she answered.
As long as I have a letter of intent to back it up. He went through to his office and tapped out a draft of their agreement on his word-processor, and called her through to check the text on the screen.
She stood behind him and leaned over his shoulder to read it. One of her breasts pressed taut and weightily on his shoulder. It was warm as a tsama melon that had lain in the desert under the Kalahari sun. You didn't put in the bit about first-class air tickets, she pointed out.
And the salary to commence from date of signature. The smell of her skin that he had noticed on their first meeting was more pronounced.
He inhaled it with pleasure. It reminded him forcefully that he had been celibate for almost a year. Good boy, she complimented him as he made the alterations she requested. That will do very nicely indeed.
The timbre of her voice had altered, it was softer and more resonant.
There was also a subtle change in the odour of her body as well. He recognised the heady musk of female arousal; she was pumping the air full of pheromones which put his own hormones on red alert.
He was having difficulty concentrating as he ran off four copies of the agreement, one for each of them and another each for Eina and BOSS's legal department.
Bonny reached over him to sign all four copies, and now she pressed herself against his back and her breath was hot on his cheek. She handed the pen to him and he signed below her. Handshake?
He asked, and offered his open right hand. She ignored it, and instead reached over his shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt. She ran her hand down inside it. I can-think of something more binding than a plain little old handshake, she whispered, and pinched his nipple between her fingernails. He gasped; it was more pleasure than pain.
Danny boy, you and I are going to be alone in the jungle for six months or so. I'm a girl of healthy appetites. It's going to happen sooner or later. It might as well be sooner. It would be Hell if we waited until we got out there and then found that we didn't like it. Don't you agree? Your lo ic is irrefutable, he laughed, but it was shaky and rough. She took a pinch of his chest curls and used it as a goad to force him to his feet.
Where's the bedroom? We might as well be comfortable. Follow me.
He took her by the hand and led her to the door.
Standing in the centre of the bedroom floor she stepped back when he tried to embrace her. No, she said. Don't touch me.
Not yet. I want to draw it out until it's unbearable. She stood facing him, an arm's length between them. Do what I do, she ordered, and began to unbutton her shirt.
Her nipples were tiny, like miniature rosebuds, carved from pale pink coral. You're as hairy and muscular as a grizzly bear. It gives me goose bumps, she said, and he saw her nipples rise into rosy points.
The colour darkened and the skin surrounding them puckered. His own flesh responded even more dramatically, and she stared at him shamelessly and chuckled as she unbuckled her own belt.
Her jeans were tight and she wriggled and squirmed to get them down.
Exodus, he said, chapter three. That's not original. She glanced down at herself complacently. I've had the quotation applied to myself before, the burning bush. She combed her fingernails lingeringly through the thick mop of flaming curls at the base of her flat white belly. It was so crisp and dense that it rustled. It was one of the most excruciatingly erotic gestures he had ever watched. Come on, she encouraged him. You're falling behind.
He dropped his own trousers around his ankles. Who have we here?
She studied him frankly. Standing to attention and positively aching to sacrifice himself in the burning bush? And she reached out to capture him expertly. Come along, my little mannikin, she murmured throatily, grinning that sly tomboy grin and led him to bed.
BOSS's head office was at Blackfriars in the City, just opposite the pub that stood on the site of the old monastery that gave the area its name.
Daniel and Bonny came out of the entrance of the tube station and paused to stare at the building. Shit! said Bonny sweetly. It's imperial Roman rococo, with just a touch of Barnum and Bailey. BOSS House made the Unilever building down the street look insubstantial.
