Not great.

I may not have had a lot of respect for her, but she was a therapist and good at her job, she knew everything I tried to say and a bunch more techniques besides. I was getting frustrated enough that I almost suggested either a good hard fuck, or a masturbation session, but we ran out of time before I ran out of patience, fortunately.

I bailed, without receiving anything as mundane as thanks, or more progress having been made. I headed over to Diamond’s place where we were meeting up as it was relatively central for all of us attending and we were taking one car over, they said it was to avoid parking issues, or appearance issues with taking a bunch of cars, but I was pretty sure it was a combination of Jasmine and Diamond playing games with each other, while both of them wanted to avoid embarrassing me by having me show up in my beater, or a cab.

Bringing me at all was a bit of a stretch, but it was a ‘reward’ for ‘helping’ her out with Jinx, which was a story that had leaked out by now. That was fine, Arkham already knew about that…the second Jinx encounter was more secret, but that wasn’t likely to come up, as far as everyone else knew, that was just Zatanna and Batman. This wasn’t, technically, a date, but people would probably assume we were fucking and that Jasmine was my sugar mommy…which was honestly fine. It would provide a lot of explanation for my fancy outfit and distract from my relationship with Diamond.

I was early. Andre was still dressed for work when he answered the door, he almost fucking bowed to me and his appearance had subtly changed. His hair was growing out and…he was wearing makeup? It wasn’t elaborate, just making him a bit more androgynous. If not for Diamond’s comments, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the appearance change, but the behavioral changes were exceedingly obvious.

He called me ‘sir’ when he told me that the kids were out, as Diamond had told Romy to take her brother out. I smiled at him, “I wonder when she’ll have earned another reward,” I wondered as if to myself. His eyes damn near crossed, and his legs did cross as a small bulge appeared and he raced off, pausing at my question to tell me where Diamond was.

I laughed to myself as I headed up to her bedroom. Diamond had left the door open, despite the fact that she was changing her clothing. As she heard me walk in, her voice was sharp as she spoke and twisted to face me, “Andrea, if you’re peeping just because you’re uncaged for the evening, then I swear--”

I smiled curiously at her and she tried to move to embrace me, which nearly tripped her as the skirt was half off. I caught her easily and kissed her thoroughly. “You’re early, Mr. Cain,” she said when I finally straightened her out and she’d recovered.

“Only a few minutes.”

She glanced at the clock. “Shit! Got distracted making sure Andrea--Andre wouldn’t mess things up. I doubt his little cocky even can get hard tonight.”

I almost responded, but was distracted by the show as she pulled on her clothes, quickly. Her makeup was already done, and she looked gorgeous, which I said.

Diamond stepped forward and pulled off my jacket and the shirt, I smirked. “Are you sure we’ve got time for--” she pressed a kiss against the center of my chest, leaving an obvious mark from her lipstick, which had to be deliberate, she usually wore expensive nonsmudge stuff that didn’t do that. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but my throbbing dick argued convincingly for giving in.

Which meant that I was disappointed when she pulled away and passed me another shirt. I didn’t see any difference, but obediently pulled it on. It was a bit more comfortable than the other one, but not significantly. It wasn’t until I went to button the cuffs that I realized it was missing the buttons there and when I looked up in confusion, Diamond slid cufflinks into the holes and sealed them.

The cufflinks were silver, with some sort of green stone, emerald? They certainly looked expensive. I looked at her quizzically. “If anyone asks, you can say they’re a loan from Andre.”

“And in truth?”

“They’re a gift from me. I gave them to him for our tenth anniversary. Now, I want you to have them, just like you have everything else I ever gave him.”

I reached out to kiss her, but she shook her head and cleaned off her shitty lipstick off herself, then off my lips, which were covered in the stuff, then kissed me, before carefully applying her more standard makeup. “I have to go with Andre, and you with Jasmine, so we can’t have anything visible.”

I tapped my chest where her lipstick still marked me.

“Not visible.” She said, after examining the shirt to make sure it wasn’t see through, or sticking to the lipstick.

She touched my belt, which did not help me deflate enough to not be visibly aroused, then pulled back. “No, that…that looks good. Marks you as not like all the other rich idiots who’ll be there. You’ve got the suit, the shoes, the watch, the cuffs, the cologne, but the belt, that’s all you, as it should be,” she leaned in, “to bind some bitch’s hands, or whip her ass until she falls into line.”

That also didn’t help. I gave her a flat look, but Andre knocked on the doorframe, waiting to be allowed in, which killed the mood. For me. He took a look at us and became visibly aroused again. Diamond glanced back at him, sneered, and spoke, “Pathetic. Go put your cage on, since you can’t control yourself at just the sight of him.”

I expected some sort of objection, or denial, or just an assertion that he’d been looking at his wife, but instead he just skittered out of the room. She glanced back at me and snorted in laughter and awe at my effect on her ‘husband.’ Jasmine arrived a moment later, in quite a pretty dress. I took a moment to look over the two beautiful women.

Jasmine’s dress was black and gold, but she looked…nervous, which detracted from her beauty.

Diamond had no such nervousness, and wore her blue dress like she’d been poured into it.

I smiled to myself and gave them both a hug, as Diamond sent Andre out to ‘bring the car around.’ There was no time for anything real, but just giving Jasmine a kiss got her to loosen up and relax a little, even if she did slap me in the chest, right where Diamond had kissed me and whisper “Not while my brother’s around, bad boy.” I groped her ass and she whimpered against me, but then we had to break apart.

We headed out, with Andre driving, Diamond, alas, beside him in the front and Jasmine and myself in the back. That limited what we could game plan out, but by rephrasing our goals somewhat, we could still talk.

Instead of seeking to increase our control over Penelope and Alyce, and maybe even some other players at the event, we were going to ‘help my career advancement by interfacing with my bosses and networking with Gotham’s rich.’ Unfortunately, Diamond didn’t know the guest list really, so Jasmine did most of the talking.

Most of them were nobody I knew, and was unlikely to ever really matter. This was a ‘new money’ fundraiser, not an ‘old money’ one, so no one from the board would be there. The only people whose names I recognized were the Shrecks. Jasmine clearly didn’t know that Diamond and the Shrecks were on the outs and a sharp interruption when I tried to ask why they were attending meant that she wasn’t intended to.

I followed up later, she hadn’t told anyone else about what Shreck had tried to pull. Even Max himself might not know that she’d figured it out. Everyone was playing buddy-buddy up front. This was an opportunity to get access to whoever he brought along, which might be any or all of the women who could bring him under control, if we got them under control.

I met Diamond’s gaze in the mirror, “Maybe we should network a bit with them? Not fair for this all to be about helping me.”

Jasmine elbowed me, “Hey, if you’re doing that, you should help me out with Mr. Kane. That old bastard would probably love you, white guy, ex-cop,” she glanced over at me, “what are your politics?”

“Don’t have any,” I shrugged.

She looked at me in confusion, but I looked away, letting my mouth run on about none of it mattering, given the world I lived in, but I was watching Diamond, seeing if she would nod, or shake her head to my question and the implicit question, should I try to go after the Shrecks at this party?