Happy Friday everyone! Thanks so much for the lovely comments over the last week, and to those of you who went and checked out A Bee in her Bonnet too. It's so great to have encouragement.

So here's Chapter 2 of Will's POV and already it's getting quite rude... oh well.

Enjoy!

Will heard the pet quant moan under him, and with another vengeful thrust or two he finished and pulled himself and his condom out.

'That took longer than usual, you alright?' dB observed as he rolled over.

'Yeah, sorry.'

'I didn't mean it like that,' the lady de Bourgh said with reassuring unconcern.

Bless her, it wasn't her fault she couldn't have looked less like the pet quant. Besides, from behind and with your eyes closed, the sound effects were convincing enough, really. And since they'd stuck with the "ladies first" rule for as long as they'd traded sexual favours, at least Will was done pretending for now. Free to close his eyes and forget about dB's long flaxen hair, about her little waifish hips and stick insect legs.

Predictably, as soon as his eyes were closed and his hands folded back behind his head the pet quant got right back in there, boobs first, her own hair wild from all that fiddling she'd done with it all day at the off-site. Dean was right, he really should have seen dB before today. Rotten luck that Will had left it too late and she'd not been free until tonight.

'What were you up to yesterday then?' he asked.

'Oli. He was up me. Remember Oli? From school?' dB said placidly as she re-fastened her black lace bra.

Not that her boobs had ever been in any need of support: they were very much in keeping with her heroin-chic hips and legs. But it was typical of dB's consideration for others that nonetheless she bothered to wear a bra, and a nice one too. She was a quick dresser, and her matching g-string had long disappeared under a pair of jeans no doubt a lot more expensive than they looked.

'Oli... vegan wanker with the pony tail?' Will checked, intrigued.

'He wasn't wanking last night.'

'Good for him,' Will said, and they smiled at each other as she stood up and reached for her handbag, 'Good for you too mylady, I hope?'

'Surprisingly good, yes' she said, bending back down to peck his lips.

'Still a vegan then?' Will asked, for something else to do with his mouth.

'Aha, he's running a yoga centre now, near Maida Vale.'

'Figures.'

'Gotta go now, you don't mind?'

'Not at all, you go. Thanks, dB.'

'De nada, Fitzwilliam, thank you,' she said, waved at him and walked her skinny ass out of his flat.

Will sighed as he heard the door close, but it had worked. He'd probably manage a decent night's sleep now, ahead of tomorrow's inevitable bollocking. Dean was right though: he should have done this a lot sooner. And no surprise there, since for as long as they'd known each other Dean had always been the voice of reason.

Which was strange, considering the guy managed to make such a daily train-wreck of his own love life but hey, as Will remembered smugly, that's what happens to guys who try to have a love life, when they could have a perfectly good, no-strings-attached sex life instead, with someone as tactful, presentable and accommodating as the lady de Bourgh.

Still, in the dim cold light of after-sex dusk, it was clear to Will that he should have got a hold of dB a lot sooner. Had he not assumed that she'd be as readily available as, to give her her due, dB usually was, it was very likely Will wouldn't have been such a twat today at the off-site. Almost certain, in fact.

It would have been hard for anyone to be more of a twat than he'd been today at the off-site. Every couple of slides there'd be a figure somewhere which didn't match the summary screens from Pimms. What dull and tedious work it had been to check, but so worth it in the end: all Will had to do was smile at the other idiots in the room, put his hand up and put forward his alternative number, and then watch the quant stop and stutter and blush, and off her hands would fly to tuck back her hair, only for her hair to fly right off again, and whatever hand she didn't throw at her hair would be shaking so hard she'd almost dropped her notes a couple of times, but all the while she'd still stare straight ahead of her, or at Raj for reassurance, and with her bottom lip all but trembling she'd carry on defending whatever numbers she'd arrived at by excluding warrants, or some mis-labelled futures activity or missed stock splits or some such nonsense, which judging by the rest of the audience no one cared a jot about, apart from her.

Also, as it turned out, not staring at her boobs was dead easy: all Will had to do was watch her hands instead, her crazy, pretty, never still hands. They reminded him of the hands of that great aunt of his, now long dead, whose entirely benign tremors meant everyone kept thinking she was an alcoholic, when really, to this day, she was the sweetest funniest old lady he'd ever met.

Anyway: however hard the Pet Quant worked her old holier-and-brainier-than-thou routine, her fidgety hands gave her game right away: yes, she did care, the Pest, and look at her, barely keeping it together, and of course while Will stared at her lovely silly hands he couldn't very well look her in the face, and that only wound her up further. Ah, what fun…

What a twat.

Too easy for starters, as Dean would rightly have pointed out. Like shooting at kittens before they were old enough to see, only in a barrel, with a semi-automatic. And not at all what Raj was paying him to do, as the boss had made abundantly clear over the course of their many so-called-informal pre-hire calls. Still, if there was one thing boarding school prepared you for - even the most expensive and progressive co-ed boarding school in the whole of England & Wales - it was to take a well-earned bollocking like a man, and so he would. And then he'd behave himself around the pet quant, if he really had to. Just let her get on with whatever she was doing over on the opposite side of the desk with her stock splits and her spreadsheets, just get a regular dose of dB and watch the Pet's hands whenever he had to sit in the same room with her, it'd be fine.

x

All things considered, then, Raj's bollocking was extremely diplomatic indeed. Just as Will himself had done the previous day, Raj played dumb, pretending to assume that Will must have been unaware of the effect of his interruptions on Raj's Precious Pet, and unaware too of how important it was for Trading and Research to work hand in hand if tradePad was to become a reality.

From what Will had experienced of Pimms so far, it was true that tradePad couldn't go live a minute too soon, but however hard he tried to imagine it Will couldn't picture the Pet Quant bringing that about. Not with those hands. Not with those… not with that stupid kamikaze bravado and that crazy hair and that trembling bottom lip. Though her bottom lip, he'd noticed, was no longer trembling when they'd had the misfortune of bumping into each other in the staircase.

Will mused, all the while keeping on his face the air of general engagement a boss deserves, who's taking such great care to give you the world's most diplomatic bollocking ever. Back in their Goldman days, as well as being a star trader Raj had been famous for poaching other teams' best performers. Could the Pet really be a top performer? What ever at…? Will's musing and nodding along was going splendidly until Raj got to:

'..so I really think that you two need to physically work closer together. Luckily the workspace between you and Neil provides the ideal opportunity for…'

For fuck's sake, for what? Oh no, please, no:

'You mean for her to come and sit between Neil and I?'

'I'm so glad you agree,' Raj lied. Not only was the cunning old bastard not glad at all, on the contrary he was still pissed off with Will, and rightly so. But it was also clear that Raj didn't believe for a second that they were of a mind. He was just doing that thing he did best, besides trading and poaching other teams' star performers: smiling while making you sound like you agreed to whatever it was he wanted you to do – usually something hard.

Will smiled politely while trying not to think of having to sit next to the Pet Quant, all day, five days a week.

'I think you'll also agree it'll be more collegial all around if the proposal comes from you, Will, rather than from me.'

The proposal?

The fucking proposal?

There: once he'd worked himself into an internal fury, Will found it almost easy to sound cool and collected. Just another life-skill boarding school had taught him, and the Pet Quant would probably never master, not in all her future years of industry-leading computer-based probabilistic data analysis, or whatever Raj called it.

'Sure thing, Raj,' Will said with a commendable appearance of enthusiasm.

And with that, the bollocking-that-wasn't came to an end. Will got back to his desk, stealing but one look at the Pest en route, and decided he'd better make a call to IT support about the move before he spoke to her. Fucking proposal, seriously! Thankfully the helpdesk delivered as only the helpdesk could, and their legendary, brazen incompetence soon left him sufficiently riled up, as to enable him to deal with the Pest Quant with comparative composure.

Even when she stood up and then immediately stepped back away from him, like she literally couldn't stand to be near him.

Even when she then backed away some more, in case he didn't get it.

Even when her voice broke half-way through voicing her agreement with Raj's plan, when, seriously: did she think this was his idea of fun? Since when did girls get voice-breaks anyway? Or was it just quants? Who the fuck even knew?

Or cared.

x

Then someone called him away from the desk – maybe it was the actual receptionist, now she was definitely client-bait-slash-coat-hanging-material, but at least this one could carry coffee, apparently. Anyway, when he came back to the desk God knows what the quant had been up to but she looked at him like she was about to murder him, truly. Pure, unadulterated, and utterly irrational fury.

French thing?

Hormones…?

Who the fuck even knew?

Or cared.

And then Will remembered that he was going to have to sit next to that all day, five days a week.

He'd have taken a proper bollocking over that, any day.