Author: Akiko

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I asked. Very politely. With an amount of stammering I’m not proud of.

Tess’s eyebrows went up and then she smiled, slow and amused.

“Just my mouth,” she repeated. “Ben Hartley. You’ve gone bright red.”

“You can say no.”

“I’m not saying no.” She picked up the envelope, tucked it in her bag, and walked over. “Sit down.”

I sat on the sofa. She knelt between my knees on my living room rug and undid my belt, unhurried, watching my face the whole time with a little curl at the corner of her mouth. When my cock sprang free she wrapped her hand around it, considered it for a second, and said, “Well. That’s going to make the next barbecue interesting.”

Then she leaned forward and took me into her mouth.

She was very, very good at her job. She took her time. Slow and wet and warm, her tongue swirling round the head, her hand moving in rhythm, her other hand resting on my thigh. She hummed. She looked up at me. I gripped the sofa cushions and said her name several times, then several more times, then made a noise that wasn’t a name at all.

Afterwards she sat back on her heels, wiped her lips and smiled sweetly.

“Professional enough for you?”

I couldn’t speak.

At the barbecue that August she handed me a hot dog and winked, and I dropped it on the grass.

Ending 4 of 16: Just Her Mouth. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I turned the phone face down on the coffee table.

“Just us,” I said. “Tonight there’s nobody else.”

Tess let out a breath and kissed me so hard the sofa creaked. I carried her into the bedroom. Her dress came off over her head. My shirt lost two buttons. I kissed my way down her body, every inch I’d spent six summers not looking at, and licked her until she came with her thighs trembling round my ears. Then she pulled me up, rolled a condom onto me, and guided me inside her, her eyes locked on mine.

“Promise me,” she gasped. “Nobody knows. Not yet.”

“I promise.”

We barely slept. In the morning Gemma’s message turned out to be that Tess had been promoted to team leader at her part-time cafe job. We laughed until we cried.

That was eight months ago.

Now there’s a family barbecue every August, and Tess brings a potato salad, and we don’t look at each other across the garden. Then she texts me a single word, shed, and I go and get more ice.

Today she was waiting there in a sundress with nothing under it. She pushed me against the potting bench and dropped to her knees, then turned and bent over the bags of compost and let me take her from behind, both of us biting our lips, while my dad’s terrible jazz played on the patio.

Gemma still thinks the shed has a wasp problem.

Ending 1 of 16: Our Little Secret. You found the full happy ending.

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I picked up the phone. I don’t know why. Twenty years of being a big brother, I suppose. When Gemma texts at eleven at night, you answer.

“What about Tess?” I typed.

The reply came instantly. “She’s been weird all week and she’s not answering my texts. I think she’s seeing someone. Have you heard anything??”

Tess, still in my lap, read it over my shoulder and made a strangled noise.

“No idea,” I typed. “Why would I know?”

“Because you’re being weird too.”

Then, before I could stop her, Gemma video-called.

I panicked. I hit the wrong button. I answered.

Gemma’s face filled the screen, in her pyjamas, with a face mask on. Then her eyes went very, very wide. Because in the corner of the frame, with her dress half off and her hair all over the place, was her best friend.

“TESS?”

“Hi, Gem,” Tess said weakly.

There was a long silence. Then Gemma screamed. Not angrily. Delightedly.

“I KNEW IT. I KNEW you fancied him. I’ve known since the swingball. Oh my God, I’m telling Mum.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Too late, I’m adding her to the group chat.”

She hung up. Tess and I stared at each other.

My phone buzzed. Mum: “About time. Bring her for Sunday lunch. xx”

Ending 2 of 16: The Group Chat. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Here,” I said. “If that’s all right. I’ve had enough restaurants this week to last me a lifetime.”

“Then here it is.” Vivienne shrugged off her coat and hung it on the back of the door like she lived there. Underneath, the green dress clung to every curve. “Pour me one of those, would you? Small.”

I poured. She took the glass, kicked off her heels, and sat sideways on the sofa with her legs tucked under her. Up close she smelled of something expensive and smoky.

“First, the boring bit,” she said, “so it doesn’t get in the way of the fun bit. Condoms always. No marks, no photos, no kissing if I say no kissing, which I almost never do. I can say stop and so can you, and either of us stopping means we stop. All right?”

“All right.”

“Good.” She sipped. “Now. Some men know exactly what they want and say it the second I’m through the door. Others like me to lay out the menu, so to speak, and see what catches their eye. Neither’s wrong.”

She reached over and loosened my tie with one finger, slowly, watching my face the whole time.

“You’ve got two hours, Graham. How do you want to spend them?”

→ I ask her to tell me what she’d recommend

→ I tell her exactly what I want

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“Dinner,” I said. “If that’s allowed.”

“It’s encouraged.” Vivienne slipped her arm through mine as we walked to the lift, as if we’d done it a hundred times. “Men who feed me first are usually men I like.”

The restaurant on the ground floor was all candlelight and white linen. The maitre d’ gave us a corner table and didn’t blink. Vivienne ordered the scallops and a glass of Sancerre, and asked me about my pitch, and actually listened to the answer, which was more than my ex-wife managed in eleven years.

She was funny. Dry, quick, a little wicked. She’d studied art history, she told me, and done this for four years, and owned a flat in Leith with a cat called Bishop. She told me some of it was true. She didn’t say which parts.

Somewhere around dessert, her foot found my ankle under the table and stayed there.

“Here’s the thing, Graham,” she said, licking chocolate off her spoon. “Most men who book me want one of two things. Some want a girlfriend for the night. Someone who kisses them like she means it and lets them pretend. Others want something they can’t ask for at home.” She tilted her head. “Something wilder. Me in charge. A game. A bag of toys I don’t carry for decoration.”

She signed the bill to my room with a flourish.

“So which one are you?”

→ I tell her I’d like the girlfriend experience

→ I tell her I’d like something wilder

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I told her exactly what I wanted. In detail. In order. I’d been rehearsing it in the shower and it came out like a project brief: her on her knees, then the bed, then from behind, then the bath, no condom because I’d had a test last month, and could she do that thing I’d seen in a film where…

Vivienne held up one hand. I stopped.

“Graham,” she said, quite gently. “That was very thorough. Most of it I’m happy to do. Some of it I’m not. Condoms aren’t negotiable. Ever. Not for you, not for anyone, not for a test certificate. I’m sure you’re very healthy. That’s not the point.”

My face went the colour of the wallpaper. “God. Sorry. Of course.”

“It’s fine. You’re nervous and you planned it like a meeting. I’ve seen worse.” She tilted her head. “But I’m going to need you to stop treating me like a shopping list and start treating me like a woman in your room. Can you do that?”

There was a pause. In that pause, a small stupid part of my brain, the part that negotiates software contracts for a living, noticed that she’d quoted a rate for two hours on the website and that I had, technically, only got one and three quarters of the menu.

I could apologise and start again. Or I could be an idiot.

→ I apologise properly and ask her to start over

→ I suggest the price should come down, then

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“Tell me what you’d recommend,” I said. “You’re the expert.”

She laughed, delighted. “Oh, I like being called the expert.” She set her glass down and counted on her fingers. “I can be your girlfriend for two hours. I can be very much not your girlfriend. I give a blowjob that has made grown men cry, and I’m not even exaggerating for marketing.” She grinned. “And I sometimes work with a friend. Odette. She’s thirty-one, French, filthy, and she’s free tonight because her eleven o’clock cancelled. She’s at a bar two streets away.”

I must have looked like I’d been hit with a frying pan.

“That’s a lot,” she said kindly. “Here’s another option. Some men book me and don’t actually want sex at all. They want company. Somebody to talk to who isn’t going to judge them or tell their mother.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s fine too. It’s your two hours. Truly.”

I looked at her. I looked at the bed. I thought about how tired I was, and how lonely, and how long it had been since anyone had looked at me the way she was looking at me now, which was with patience and something like curiosity.

“Odette,” I said slowly. “Tell me more about Odette.”

Vivienne’s eyes glittered. “Or,” she said, “tell me more about you.”

→ I ask her to call Odette

→ I tell her I just want to talk for a while

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“Wilder,” I said, before I could chicken out.

Vivienne’s smile changed shape entirely. It got slower and sharper, and she leaned back in her chair and looked at me the way a cat looks at a bird that’s just landed on the windowsill.

“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you full of surprises.”

Upstairs in the suite she put her little leather bag on the desk and opened it. I tried not to stare. There were silk ties, a slim black blindfold, a riding crop with a leather tongue, a glass dildo, a wand vibrator with a long cable, lube, condoms, and a deck of cards with words written on them instead of numbers.

“Two ways I can take you,” she said, running a fingertip along the crop. “Option one, I’m in charge. Completely. You do what you’re told, when you’re told, and you say amber if you need me to slow down and red if you need me to stop. You’d be surprised how many CEOs love that one.”

She picked up the deck of cards and fanned them.

“Option two, we play a game. A scene. Strangers, a hotel bar, a teacher and a student who’s very much a grown man, whatever you like. Or we skip the costumes entirely and I show you what every one of these toys is for.”

She put the cards down and stepped closer. In her heels she was nearly my height.

“Choose,” she said.

→ I tell her I want her in charge

→ I choose a game

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“The girlfriend,” I said, and felt my face go hot. “Is that ridiculous? I just haven’t been kissed properly in a very long time.”

Vivienne’s expression softened into something that looked a lot like real. “It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s my favourite, actually.”

In the lift she took my hand. By the eighth floor she’d pressed me against the mirrored wall and kissed me, slow and unhurried, her fingers in my hair. By the eleventh I’d forgotten what floor we were going to.

In the suite she undressed me like she was unwrapping something she’d been looking forward to. Shirt, belt, trousers. Then she turned around and let me unzip the green dress. Underneath was black lace and pale freckled skin, and I kissed the back of her neck and felt her shiver.

We lay on the big bed and kissed for a long time. She guided my hand between her legs and showed me exactly how she liked to be touched, little circles, patient, until she was wet and breathing hard against my mouth. Then she took my cock in her hand and stroked me slowly, smiling at the noise I made.

Her phone buzzed on the bedside table. A gentle alarm. She glanced at it.

“That’s the halfway mark,” she said softly. “Just so you know where we are. No pressure.”

I looked at the clock. I looked at her.

→ I tell her I’ll pay for extra time

→ I tell her the two hours is plenty