Wicked Ambition. Victoria Fox

black girl waiting for her inside. The girl was drugged up to the eyeballs, reclining on a velvet sofa with her legs wide apart. Wordlessly Cosmo tore off Grace’s coat and pushed her to the floor.

       ‘Open your mouth, cunt,’ he directed. ‘And look like you’re enjoying it.’

      She recognised Cosmo straight away. She had seen him in the papers, on TV, the twenty-something up-and-coming actor who was billed to take Hollywood by storm. Yes, he was staggeringly handsome. Yes, he resembled a young Marlon Brando with his brooding looks and muscular build. Yes, he had the face of a boy who would never say no to his mom. Who knew he was also a despicable pervert who liked to beat on women? But she was here to do a job, and as one of Madam Babydoll’s she couldn’t afford to disappoint.

      Grace used her tongue in the way Cookie had shown her. The black girl’s thighs were strong and held her in place like a vice, hands snatching down to push her in deeper. It was salty and sweet and wet, and every time she broke for air Cosmo forced her back.

      ‘Keep goin’, bitch,’ he snarled, kneeling next to them for a front row seat. ‘You like that, don’t you, you greedy whore?’ Grace closed her eyes and concentrated on the task.

       ‘Oh, yeah…’ the girl moaned. ‘Yeah, baby, that feels so fine…’

      Cosmo started to feel her up. He began by removing Grace’s thong, roughly dipping his fingers in, two or three at once, which made her gasp her discomfort. They were covered in a freezing cold gel that was meant to open her up but instead she contracted against. His thumb pushed violently into her ass, forcing her to cry out.

       ‘Get back to it, slut.’

      The girl’s hips tilted to meet her and Grace forced herself to keep going, despite the pain. Cosmo freed his cock and slammed into her, grunting at her rear, snatching at her breasts and pushing in deeper and deeper till it felt like there was nothing left of her to give. With a gurgling whimper he climaxed. She felt a jet of warm liquid spurt across her back.

      If she’d thought that was it, she was mistaken. Cosmo could go all night.

      ‘Your turn, bitch.’ He slapped the black girl’s face, twisting her pair of dark, hard nipples to bring her out of rapture. An enormous dildo appeared, its tip glistening. Obligingly the girl attached it to her waist, an obscene rubber proboscis, huge and frightening as Grace was flipped over a chair and her legs brutally spread. The hurt was like nothing she had ever experienced, tearing her in two, but still there was no mercy. The girl pounded into her, delirious, deaf to her complaints. Cosmo paced, proudly stiff once more, pausing at intervals to refresh his viewpoint. Eventually he stopped at Grace’s head and drove his cock into her mouth. She could taste the remnants of his first ejaculation and gagged.

      When it was over, she returned to Madam Babydoll’s with three thousand dollars in her pocket. It was the most she had ever been paid for a job but that made no difference.

       ‘He likes you,’ encouraged Madam Babydoll the following week. Grace had only just recovered from the ache Cosmo had inflicted on her—but she’d never recover from the humiliation. ‘You’re his favourite. He wants you again. He’s requested you personally.’

      The other girls were jealous. Cosmo was the biggest catch on the books.

       ‘I don’t want to.’

       ‘It’s five grand this time, honey. You keep three and a half. It’s your call.’

      The second occasion she went he’d hired a redhead with freakishly large breasts. Grace took charge of the dildo and was instructed to nail Cosmo with it while the redhead sucked him off. The ordeal took hours because Cosmo was so high he couldn’t come. He made Grace call him a bad boy and tell him he needed his ass screwed to teach him a lesson. When finally he was done he was so exhausted that he had them run him a bath and put him in it, relaxing with a joint while he scoped them making out on the floor. Recovered, he took them in turn over the rim of the tub, so many times she lost count, and when Grace left the mansion at five a.m. she was sorer and more bruised than she’d ever been.

      After that he asked for her every time. Madam Babydoll tried to switch her appointments to accommodate before realising that Cosmo would pay more and more for whatever it was he couldn’t have. Soon a night with Grace reached ten thousand dollars.

      ‘I said I was through with that,’ she told Madam Babydoll. But in truth she had almost enough saved to get her own place, try going it alone in LA and getting out of this sordid game once and for all. One last night with Cosmo Angelopoulos, that was it; she’d endured it before so she could endure it again, and after that she’d be made. How much worse could it get? The exchange was surely worth it. She’d never need to prostitute her body again. She could meet a guy, fall in love and do it like it was supposed to be done. No one had to ever know what she’d been through or how she’d lived. A fresh start…a clean slate.

      Deciding to go to Cosmo’s that night was the worst decision she ever made.

      The girl he’d got was young. Grace saw straight away that he’d plied her with drugs—blow, pills, weed, anything he had going—and, judging by the clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor, had already had sex with her. The girl’s eyes were glassy and stoned, she kept giggling and slurring and when Cosmo beckoned her over to attend to his burgeoning hard-on she weaved drunkenly before crashing to the ground.

       ‘I don’t think she’s well.’

       ‘Shut it, bitch. Take your clothes off.’

       ‘She needs a doctor. What have you given her?’

       ‘What she begged for: a big hard cock.’

       ‘She’s tripping. We should call someone.’

      Brutally Cosmo slapped her. He grabbed her chin in his hand and squeezed. ‘I said, take your fucking clothes off. Now. Or I’m going to make you regret it.’

      One night. As Grace removed her stockings she repeated the promise in her head.

      One last night and then I’ll be free.

      Kneeling, she fondled the girl’s breasts. The girl was out of it, slumped on the floor, her limbs shut down. When the girl arched her back, at first Grace thought it was with pleasure. It wasn’t. She’d started to spasm, her body jumping and seizing. Grace saw a pop of foam at her mouth, the eyes rolling back in her head until only the whites were visible.

      ‘What the fuck is this?’ Cosmo cried.

       ‘She’s fitting. Call an ambulance. Right now.’

      Grace attempted to hold her down, tilting the girl’s head as best she could to prevent her choking on her tongue.

       ‘Like hell I am.’

       ‘Do it. She’s in danger.’

       ‘So am I if we get the fucking cops round!’

       Grace pinned him with a hateful stare. ‘Do you want her to die?’

       ‘She’ll get over it. It’s a bad trip, that’s all.’

      It wasn’t all. The girl’s body surrendered to a series of rapid tremors before suddenly, too quick, impossibly quick, it strained a final time before becoming still. Frantically Grace touched her pulse. Nothing. She felt her heart. Still. Dead still.

      No. No, no, no, no, no…

       Before she could think twice, Grace was resting the girl’s head back, opening her airways and breathing into her mouth. Cosmo was useless, hanging back and swearing, freaking about the mess on his luxury shag-pile carpet and how the fuck they