At The Edge of Lust

Prologue

First Published in Great Britain in 2021 by Ardent Eleven

2024 by Aiden Abbo

The right of Aiden Abbo to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

AA

Prologue:

Time seemed to move slowly for some people in parts of the country but Shelby had always known she was a fast paced person. It was in her blood, she had to be busy, she had to be engaged she had to be doing something or she felt somehow like she was losing and other people winning or somehow gettint the edge in her.

People were relaxed in these parts of the country outside of London.  In Shelby's mind, however, things were always moving fast, something which she had inherited from her father.

There were small cities and towns where a snail's pace was the norm, and the residents preferred it that way, where there was a contentment. Places where people got by with the bare minimum in terms of going to their job, doing just enough to not get fired and then gleefully fleeing at the end of the shift and not thinking about starting, doing something different or even being their own boss.

Living pay cheque to pay cheque and loving the simple life of a good beer and curry in front of the telly. The focus, in these lives was always on nothing more than getting through the week in the least painful way possible and then getting to the glorious weekend. Those two short days consisted of getting blitzed all of Saturday and then nursing the hangover on Sunday. It was the sort of life where a box of fish and chips from the local chippie could be considered a great evening meal and the drink which went with it being beer or cider without question.

The drama of the local neighbourhood was something to be relished and to watch from the window, the sort of gossip and chaos which rivalled that on East Enders. A small-world type of mentality where it didn't really matter what was happening in the rest of the country let alone the rest of the world.

It wasn't the sort of life that Shelby wanted for herself although she respected those that chose to live this way like her brother, someone who she thought had lost his mind when he not only decided to stay there but also to open a business.

Shelby had been born in Clacton a small seaside town with a population of 53 thousand people, that didn't have much of an appeal to it apart from the pier and beach and maybe the seashells. The only part of the year when this place was busy was summertime and during those few months the place would be overrun every weekend with busloads of tourists and people trying to get away from the hectic inner city.

The rest of the year when the weather was cold, bitter and abysmal with cold winds blowing in from the majestic sea. There wasn't much reason to visit partly because there was one cinema, one hospital, one bowling pavilion, one pier, a few shopping areas and even fewer amenities to really enjoy.

As a young girl, Shelby could immediately feel that she had too much energy for a place like Clacton, by the age of 10, she felt she had outgrown it already. She had ambition, dreams and hopes to achieve something big, which some of her classmates just didn't share and couldn't possibly understand.

She had an obsession with computers and videogames, spending absolute hours in her bedroom tinkering around with computer programs and playing at her friend's house when he got the latest console. She had a good personality but was also driven by a sense of competition which she just couldn't ignore. If it was climbing a tree she wanted to find her way to the absolute top, if it was videogames nothing suited her until the end had been seen.

If it was grandad asking her to tend to his garden, she wouldn't stop until all the weeds had been pulled up and all the flowers trimmed. Sometimes this did rub people the wrong way and create enemies but at the same time, she knew she was destined for greater things and so she had to find a way to prove it and follow her dreams without compromising herself or needlessly hurting others.

She knew from a young age the power of ambition and how it was a light that not everyone could appreciate let alone withstand, some people hated you just for having the idea that one day you might lift yourself from a mediocre life into excellence.

One source of inspiration had come in the form of the opulence that she had seen being portrayed on TV shows that she had watched in youth. She knew there was more to the world than what she had understood so far. although it was something that she had come to understand by visiting her auntie who ran a successful pub, they had even briefly lived in Clacton when Dad had relocated for a job which he absolutely hated before he quit and started his own business.

Those had been some of the best summers because of how charismatic and funny her Auntie was, the way that she always seemed to be getting on everyone's nerves or being overly loud, but it was her way of showing love. She had been an example of a hardworking businesswoman before Shelby had known that she could do the same thing herself. She remembered being completely carefree as a youth and having ice cream down at the beach, with the parasol being threatened to be blown away by the wind and the warm sea water lapping at her feet, the wet sand between her toes. She remembered the smell of old leather and fresh beer in her Auntie's pub and some of the locals who were regulars and had a sense of melancholy behind their smiles. Auntie had warned her not to spend too much time with them even though they were some of her best customers.

Good old Clacton where the wind blows... was a place she could only stomach in short bursts, she had moved because it was too slow a style of living for her, there was one cinema for the entire town, for such a small place and had felt as if she was on the verge of suffocating, of giving up and settling. She had a boyfriend at one time who had a decent job as a shop manager and a great touch in the bedroom, he could hammer her into orgasm ruthlessly but at the same time he lacked ambition for more. They had great chemistry and had met whilst out one night at the Bowling Pavilion, he had watched her with her group of friends having a good time knocking down pins and he had split off from his own group to come and talk with her, complimenting her on her form before asking her out. Everything else was good he was waiting to inherit the house from his parents and wasn't in any sort of urgency regarding chasing his dreams, if he had any beyond being a shop manager. She knew deep down that if she gave up on her dreams and settled then she would have lost her way and grown resentful as the years passed and she was haunted by thoughts of all the wasted potential. 

She didn't want that for her life and had made strong choices to change the trajectory. Something that she had inherited from her father who had taught her to pursue what she wanted both in love and life. He had left Clacton to pursue his career and moved to Colchester where he established a wholefoods business which had then turned into a string of Hotels as well, she had been there to help carry the fruit, count the money from the registers and to clean the carpets and iron the uniforms of the hotel staff. The hard work ethic had been engrained in her. 

In her own life she had then taken what she learned from her father to move on on her own after University and the Masters Business had been completed, she had moved from the family home in Colchester down to Chelmsford, where she could be just 45 minutes from London and 45 Minutes from home. A place where she could establish her technology company and hopefully find someone with a similar drive and energy to her. someone who was young and fit and able to live life with a hunger and passion for both success and the fruits of carnal desire. She needed a partner who she could share everything with and she was determined that she would eventually find what she was looking for.