[This story is a continuation of the preceding two chapters, and I strongly urge that you read them first in order to fully understand and enjoy this chapter. I have placed it under the Mature category as that is one of its main aspects, but it also has Anal, Voyeur, Group Sex, Spanking, and Bisexual aspects. If any of those are not to your taste, you had best look elsewhere for a story more to your liking. All characters are over 18 and consensual adults.]
Newly settled in London, Neil begins to take charge of the Honeypot
Once I returned to Chicago, all my attention was focused on accepting Mary's and Henry's invitation to work with them at their smut shop in Soho. They took care of the particulars for obtaining my work visa to join their business. I suppose that it took no great talent for me to qualify for such employment, but perhaps Mary smoothed my path with a select application of oral attention to bureaucratic requirements. If she did, I hope she enjoyed it. The results certainly facilitated my way into a new career opportunity.
At college, I'd had an English major, which was virtually worthless, but a minor in Business, which was much more useful. I knew my way around a profit-loss statement and the fine points of business expense deductions. It didn't take long for me to position myself at the heart of The Honeypot's financial fine points, such as they were.
Suffice it to say that The Honeypot was skirting along on the edges of financial legality, with much that was rather vague when you got down to particulars. As best I could, I tried to clean up such details and put the shop on firmer financial footing. Of course we had to deal with the Mob who ruled Soho's dens of sin, but Mary's appetites served to take care of their protection schemes. I was beginning to see how things worked out in Soho.
The Honeypot's 'stock', such as it was, was well behind the times and rather pathetic when one began to consider the range of what was now out there. We did have choice items by Eric Stanton, Gene Bilbrew, and John Willie, but a new generation of kinky customers barely knew who these masters of perversity were. I set about revamping our mail-order catalogs into must-have collectors' items in their own right, spotlighting our best stock with detailed descriptions, and gradually hiking prices on items that had been sorely under-priced.
With Henry as my guide, I found treasures in the Honeypot's storeroom, sometimes in cartons that were still unopened after a decade or two of gathering dust. Mint-condition runs of 'London Life' from the '20s and '30s were worth their weight in gold and priced accordingly. An overlooked stash of Irving Klaw's bondage photos - many featuring Bettie Page in all her glory - helped fuel the growing collectors' market for vintage kink. The punk scene's fondness for bondage gear and 'in your face' shock upped our walk-in traffic, especially once I persuaded Mary and Henry that some brash new shop signage was called for and we began to run small spot ads in the 'New Musical Express'.
I considered it a personal triumph when Siouxsie and the Banshees showed up one afternoon and we had them up for tea and biscuits and a discrete dash of titillation.
Perhaps most importantly, I had the front shop space totally cleaned and overhauled, with our best stock no longer hidden in back, but tastefully displayed in glass showcases.
Needless to say, this boom in business increased the number of "choice prospects" for Mary's carnal cravings, and the old coot and I had to exert serious 'quality control' on who got invited up for a bit of jolly fun and hospitality. Henry was still in charge of vetting potential 'guests', a task he had down to an Art, but we had to be far more discrete in how and when appropriate young men might be entertained. If we had a half dozen walk-ins in the shop, it didn't really work to pull one aside with all the others present and take them up the stairs. Ironically, I was among the last of the 'spur of the moment' invitees, as the flow of regulars and new prospects required careful scheduling and a reworking of shop hours. Mornings and early evenings were now reserved for Mary's trysts by appointment, with the shop only open for walk-in customers from Noon to 5:00.
For most of Mary's appointments, it worked best for the old coot to take them up and stick around to play his twin role of wanking cuckold and watch dog. I wasn't the inveterate voyeur that he was, and my time was better spent minding the shop and taking care of mail orders and bookkeeping. Now and then, if I found one of the fantasy appointments especially intriguing, I would swap myself in to watch the show, but to be perfectly honest, I found it a little depressing to watch my Soho Goddess take on all comers, some of whom were frankly rather disgusting.
Mary accommodated me as a regular once a week, or sometimes twice if there was a lull in the parade of horny young studs. It was part of the Honeypot's benefits package for its sole employee, and I always looked forward to it. Her combination of elegant charm and utter slutiness had hooked me from the moment I first met her, and it wasn't long before she knew my twisted little fetishes so well that I could just wind her up and let her go, as it were.
More often than not, she would just come to my bed in my room and we would go at it privately, though we did like to invite the old coot in for a DP on a regular basis. There was something rather cozy about the three of us all plugged into each other that was oddly heartwarming in a dissolute kind of way. A polyamorous relationship had never attracted me, but willy nilly I found myself in one with this odd couple. It's funny where life takes you.
* * *
One late afternoon, early on, when things were still pretty loose and slow at the Honeypot, Henry and I were tending the shop when the doorbell rang. The old coot pressed the buzzer under the counter and the door lock released and in walked a very attractive willowy young lady, nicely dressed in heels, a floral skirt, white cotton blouse, and a light knee-length unbuttoned coat. She was carefully made up, with nicely shaped brows and light red lipstick of the sort that was popular back then. Her blonde hair was carefully coiffed in a style that was reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe.
"Brigette!" the old coot exclaimed, as if greeting an old friend, "Where have you been keeping yourself? So nice to see you!"
The young lady flashed a dazzling smile and walked over and gave the old coot a little kiss on his cheek. She spotted me nearby and raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"Now, who's this, Henry? Don't tell me you've taken on an employee?
"This is Neil, my dear. Brigette, Neil. Neil, Brigette. He's a Yank, of all things, terribly bright and a real bookman. Mary and I took a liking to him and persuaded him to move in with us and help build up the shop. He's been with us for, what, six months now?"
Brigette stepped over to me, gave me the warmest smile, and offered me her hand.
"I am very pleased to meet you, Neil. Aren't Mary and Henry just super? I always have such a good time when I drop by. It has clearly been far too long since my last visit. I've been a bad girl, Henry. Please forgive me."
"I'll consider it, but only if you agree to come up and have a nice refreshing cocktail with us and tell us what you've been up to. We have some catching up to do."
"I'd be delighted, and I do hope that Neil might join us as well?"
"Yes, of course. It's cocktail hour and we can close the shop for the day. Why don't you go on up and surprise Mary. We'll be right up after we lock up and close the till."
We watched her pass through the door to the back and the stairs. She clearly knew her way around.
The old coot gave me a wink and a grin.
