Sabeen: At the Dorchester
The click of Sabeen’s Louboutins echoed through the glass corridors of Canary Wharf like a metronome keeping time for her double life. At forty-two, she still turned heads in the open-plan trading floor of Harrington & Black—tailored charcoal suits, silk blouses the colour of fresh blood, and those impossible heels that added four inches to her five-foot-six frame. Her colleagues assumed the height was for boardroom authority. Only Sabeen knew it was for the way it made her calves flex when she crossed her legs under restaurant tables, or how it forced her to walk slowly enough for lingering glances. The patent leather pinched her toes, but the ache was delicious; it reminded her she was alive, desired, in control.
Saad was three hours into a red-eye to Doha, cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet while Sabeen sat in the back of an Uber Black, thighs pressed together beneath a trench coat that cost more than most people’s rent. Her daughter, Zara, thought Mum was at a client dinner in Mayfair. The lie had been easy; Zara was sixteen and convinced her mother’s life revolved around yield curves and compliance reports. Sabeen had kissed her daughter’s forehead that morning, smelling of Chanel and deceit, and promised to be home by midnight. She would be—technically.
The Dorchester’s elevator smelled of oud and old money. Sabeen checked her reflection—kohl smudged just enough to look accidental, lips the same shade as the soles of her shoes. Marcus waited in the suite, shirt already unbuttoned, champagne sweating on the nightstand. He was thirty-four, divorced, and traded distressed debt for a Swiss bank. They’d met six months ago at a derivatives conference in Geneva. He’d asked about her risk models; she’d asked about his hotel room. Their first fuck had been in the conference centre’s disabled loo—her palms flat against the mirror, his hand over her mouth to muffle the sounds. Tonight would be slower. She wanted to savour the burn.
“You’re late,” he said, but his hands were already sliding under her coat, finding the lace edge of stockings she’d changed into in the office loos. His fingers hooked the suspender clips, snapping them open with a sound like a starting pistol. Sabeen’s breath hitched. She stepped out of her heels only long enough to let him lift her onto the desk. The heels went back on immediately—Marcus liked the way they dug into his back. He liked the marks they left, the way she could make him beg with a tilt of her ankle.
She unbuckled his belt with practised efficiency, freeing his cock—thick, flushed, already leaking. Marcus groaned as she wrapped her manicured fingers around him, stroking once, twice, then guiding him to her entrance. No panties; she’d removed them in the Uber, the cool leather seat slick against her bare skin. He pushed in with one thrust, stretching her open, and Sabeen bit down on his shoulder to stifle her moan. The desk creaked beneath them, papers scattering like confetti. He fucked her hard, hips snapping, her heels carving red crescents into his skin. She came first, clenching around him, nails raking down his back. He followed seconds later, spilling inside her with a guttural curse.
Afterwards, she showered with the efficiency of someone who’d done this before. No lingering, no pillow talk. She reapplied lipstick in the mirror, watching water bead on collarbones that Saad had kissed that morning while complaining about Heathrow’s new security queues. Pakistani breakfasts still happened in their Wimbledon semi-detached—paratha and chai at 5 a.m. before Saad’s flights, Zara scrolling TikTok at the table. Domestic normalcy in Surrey, carnal anarchy in Zone 1.
The affair with Marcus was the third this year. There’d been the barrister in Notting Hill who quoted Rumi between thrusts, his cock sliding into her from behind while she watched their reflection in the window. The married CFO who’d cried when she ended it, begging her to stay as she rode him reverse cowgirl, his wedding ring cold against her clit. Sabeen collected them like limited-edition handbags—beautiful, expensive, and easily replaced when the novelty wore off. Marcus was different; he paid. Not with cash, but with bonuses wired to an offshore account, with gifts like the emerald earrings glinting in her ears now. She’d worn them home last week, let Zara admire them, let Saad kiss her neck beneath them. The thrill was in the overlap.
She left the Dorchester at 11:47 p.m., heels clicking across marble that had seen royalty and rock stars. In the taxi home, she transferred Marcus’s bonus payment into an account Saad didn’t know existed. The money wasn’t the point; it was the control. Finance had taught her that everything had a price, even fidelity. She’d fucked Marcus with Saad’s cum still inside her from that morning—Saad had taken her against the kitchen counter before his flight, her legs wrapped around his waist, his pilot’s cap askew. The thought made her thighs clench again.
Zara was asleep when Sabeen slipped through the front door. She kicked off her shoes in the hallway, padding barefoot to the kitchen where Saad had left a Post-it on the fridge: Landed safe. Love you both. Home Friday. The note was in his pilot’s scrawl, precise as his pre-flight checks. She traced the letters with a fingertip, then crumpled it. Upstairs, she stood in Zara’s doorway watching her daughter sleep, one arm flung across a textbook about the Ottoman Empire. Guilt flickered—then died. Zara would never know her mother spoke fluent Urdu in bed with strangers, or that the emerald earrings she’d admired last week were payment for services rendered in a Knightsbridge pied-à-terre.
In their bedroom, Sabeen hung her trench coat carefully, smoothing the lapels. The bed still smelled of Saad’s aftershave. She slipped between sheets that had never known another man’s weight in this house, and set her alarm for 5:30 a.m. Another day of spreadsheets and secrets, another pair of heels waiting by the door. Tomorrow she’d wear the black patent ones with the red soles. Marcus had mentioned a lunchtime “meeting” at the Shard. She smiled into the dark, already calculating angles and interest rates, the mathematics of desire as clean and merciless as any balance sheet. Between her legs, Marcus’s cum still leaked slowly, a secret she’d carry into the morning.