Author: Akiko

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“Then the price should come down a bit,” I said. “Shouldn’t it? If it’s not the full menu.”

The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the minibar humming.

Vivienne put her glass down very carefully. “I’m sorry,” she said pleasantly. “Did you just try to negotiate me?”

“Not you. The rate. It’s a commercial arrangement.”

“It is a commercial arrangement,” she agreed. “And like any commercial arrangement, there are terms. You read them. You agreed to them. You paid a deposit.” She stood up and smoothed down her dress. “And one of those terms, Graham, in bold, is that if a client makes me uncomfortable I can end the booking and keep the fee.”

My stomach dropped through eleven floors.

“Wait. I’m sorry. That was stupid. That’s my job talking, not me.”

She paused with her hand on her coat. Her face was unreadable. Then she sighed.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” she said. “Because you look like you’re about to cry, and I’ve had a nice week. You can pay the full fee you already agreed, apologise like you mean it, and I’ll give you what’s left of the hour. Strictly business. Or you can keep arguing, in which case I go home and have a bath and tell the girls about you.”

“Those are the options?”

“Those,” she said, “are the terms.”

→ I apologise and pay the full fee

→ I keep arguing

← Back

I put my glass down and rubbed my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Genuinely. I’ve been treating this like a meeting because I’m terrified, and that isn’t fair on you. Can we start again? From the door?”

Vivienne studied me. Then she stood up, walked to the door, opened it, stepped outside and closed it.

Knock knock.

I opened it. She stood there in her camel coat, smiling. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Vivienne.”

“Graham. Come in. Would you like a drink? I promise not to read you a list.”

She laughed and came in, and this time I took her coat, and this time I asked what she liked before I said a word about me. She liked being kissed on the neck. She liked hot water, a lot of it. She liked men who said please.

“Please,” I said, “can I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

I kissed her neck. She sighed and leaned back against the wall. My hands found the zip of her dress and she nodded, and it pooled on the floor, and she stood there in black lace and nothing else, smiling at me like I’d passed an exam.

“The bath in this suite,” she murmured against my ear, “is ridiculous. I noticed it on the way in.”

Then she pulled back. “Or tell me something you actually want. Not a list. One real thing.”

→ I run us a bath

→ I ask her to be my date at tomorrow’s client dinner

← Back

“I think I just want to talk,” I said. “For a bit. Is that pathetic?”

“It’s the opposite of pathetic.” Vivienne curled up beside me on the sofa, close enough that her knee touched mine. “Go on, then. Talk.”

So I did. About Maureen, my ex-wife, forty-four now, and the eleven years of being slowly turned into furniture. About my daughter, twenty-two, at university in Bristol, who phones on Sundays. About the pitch that went well and how there was nobody to tell. Vivienne listened. She asked good questions. At one point she laughed so hard she spilled whisky on her dress and didn’t care.

She put her feet in my lap. I rubbed them without thinking. She made a noise like a contented cat.

“You’re very good at that,” she said, eyes closed.

“I’m very good at feet. It’s my only skill.”

“I doubt that.” She opened one eye. “You know, we’ve still got forty minutes. I’m not going to push you. But I’m also not going to pretend I haven’t noticed what’s going on in your trousers every time I wiggle my toes.”

I went red. She grinned.

The truth was I was exhausted. Three days of handshakes. I had a seven o’clock call with Singapore. And the sofa was very soft, and her feet were very warm, and my eyelids were very heavy.

→ I lean back and close my eyes for a minute

→ I tell her I’ve got time for something quick

← Back

“Call her,” I said.

Vivienne already had her phone out. Twenty minutes later there was a second knock, and Odette walked in like she owned the hotel.

She was small and dark and sharp-featured, with a short black bob, red lipstick and a leather jacket over a silk slip. Thirty-one, as promised. She kissed Vivienne on both cheeks, then on the mouth, then turned to look me up and down.

“So this is Graham,” she said, in an accent you could spread on toast. “He is handsome. You did not lie.”

I paid the second fee into a second envelope. My hands were shaking slightly. Odette noticed and put her own hand over mine.

“Rules are the same,” she said. “Condoms. Anyone says stop, we stop. Nobody is doing anything they do not want. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She shrugged off the jacket.

Then the two of them started kissing each other, right there in front of me, slow and deep, hands in each other’s hair, and Vivienne’s green dress slid off one shoulder and Odette pushed it the rest of the way, and I sat on the end of the bed with my mouth open.

Vivienne broke away and looked at me, lips wet, breathing hard.

“Well?” she said. “Are you joining in, or are you just going to watch?”

→ I join them on the bed

→ I tell them I’m happy just to watch

← Back

“A game,” I said.

“Lovely.” Vivienne shuffled the deck and held it out to me face down. “Pick one. Whatever it says, we play.”

I drew a card. It said: STRANGERS.

“Ooh, a classic,” she said. “Here’s how it goes. I go downstairs to the hotel bar. In ten minutes, you come down and pick me up. You’ve never seen me before in your life. I’m not a professional, I’m a woman at a bar, and you’re going to have to work for it.” She smiled. “Or, if that’s too much theatre for a Tuesday, you pick a second card and we skip the acting altogether.”

I turned over the next card without being asked. It said: TOYS.

“Ah,” she said. “The other end of the spectrum.”

She lifted the wand vibrator out of the bag, plugged it into the wall by the bed and switched it on. It hummed like an angry wasp. She held it against my palm for a second and my whole arm buzzed.

“I can use this on you,” she said. “You can use it on me, which I’d honestly prefer, because I’ve been on my feet in heels all day and nobody ever offers. Plus the glass one. Plus your mouth. Very hands-on. Very educational.”

She switched it off. The room was suddenly very quiet.

“Stranger,” she said, “or toys?”

→ I tell her to go down to the bar and wait for me

→ I take the vibrator out of her hand

← Back

“You,” I said. “In charge.”

“Good boy,” Vivienne said, and something in my stomach flipped over completely.

She made me undress while she sat in the armchair with her legs crossed and watched. She made me kneel. She walked around me slowly in her heels, trailing the riding crop across my shoulders, and told me the rules. I was not to touch her unless she told me to. I was not to come unless she told me to. I was to say thank you.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you, what?”

“Thank you, Miss.”

“Better.” The crop tapped lightly under my chin, lifting my face. “Colours?”

“Amber to slow down. Red to stop.”

“Good.” She stepped out of her dress. Underneath she was wearing a black leather harness over bare skin, straps crossing her breasts and hips, and I made a sound I’d never heard myself make before.

She tied my wrists behind me with silk, not tight. She blindfolded me. Then for ten minutes she did nothing but tease: her breath on my neck, the tip of the crop along my thigh, her nails on my nipples, her hand wrapped round my cock and then gone again just as I started to push into it.

My brain was a white hum. I was harder than I’d been in a decade.

Then she untied my hands, which was a test, and I knew it was a test, and I wanted very badly to fail it.

→ I keep my hands where she told me to

→ I grab her and try to take over

← Back

“Two hours is plenty,” I said, and meant it.

“Then let’s not waste them.” She kissed me and reached into her bag for a condom.

She rolled it onto me and lay back against the pillows, pulling me down with her, guiding me in with her hand. She was hot and tight and she wrapped her legs round my waist and held me there, deep, kissing me like we had all the time in the world, even though we didn’t.

It was wonderful. Slow at first, then harder when she whispered harder, her nails in my back. She came with her head thrown back and a gasp that turned into a laugh. I held on, somehow. I didn’t want it to be over.

We lay tangled for a while. She traced lazy patterns on my chest.

“We’ve got about twenty minutes,” she said. “You were very gentlemanly. Which means you haven’t finished, which means you’re about to ask me for something.” She smiled. “Go on. Men always do.”

I had two thoughts and both of them were embarrassing. One was simply that I wanted her again, properly, start to finish. The other was something I’d never done with anyone and had always been too shy to ask about. The website, in its careful wine-list way, said she might.

“You can ask,” she said. “I can say no. That’s how this works.”

→ I ask her for a second round

→ I ask her, shyly, about anal

← Back

“I’ll pay for extra time,” I said. “Another two hours. If you’ll stay.”

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she picked up her phone, sent a message to the agency, and put it face down on the table.

“Done,” she said. “Now stop watching the clock. That’s my job.”

We didn’t rush. That was the gift of the extra hours, I realised: nobody was in a hurry. She rolled a condom onto me with her mouth, which I had not known was possible, and then climbed on top and sank down onto my cock with a long, low sigh, her hands flat on my chest. She rode me slowly, her auburn hair coming loose from its pins, and kissed me every time she leaned forward.

When she came she buried her face in my neck and said my name, and it didn’t sound like work.

Afterwards we ordered chips from room service and ate them in bed. She wore my shirt. She told me her real name was Isla. She told me she wasn’t supposed to tell me that.

“Why did you?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at me with chip salt on her lip. “You’re nice, Graham. It’s annoying.”

Just after midnight her phone buzzed. Time. She didn’t move.

“So,” she said quietly. “Here’s the bit where I get dressed.”

→ I tell her she’s welcome to stay, no clock and no money

→ I tell her I think I’m falling for her

← Back

I kept arguing. I’m not sure why. It’s a reflex, like ducking.

“Look,” I said, “all I’m saying is in any other industry…”

“Goodnight, Graham,” Vivienne said.

She put her coat on. She picked up her bag. She walked to the door, opened it, and then turned back as if she’d forgotten something.

“In any other industry,” she said, “if you spoke to a supplier like that, they’d also leave. And they’d also keep the deposit. And they’d also tell everyone they know.” She smiled sweetly. “Velvet Hours has a very active group chat.”

The door clicked shut. I stood in the middle of an empty suite with a glass of whisky and an erection that was rapidly losing interest.

I tried to book another agency the next night. Then another. Unavailable. Unavailable. Fully booked for the foreseeable. One of them sent back a polite message that just said, in full: No thank you, Mr Whitlock.

On the last morning I went down to breakfast and the waitress, who couldn’t have known anything, smiled at me with what I swore was pity.

I flew home to Leeds and told nobody. A month later my sister set me up on a blind date. She was a lawyer. She asked me what I did for a living.

“Contracts,” I said, and for some reason she laughed.

Ending 16 of 16: Terms and Conditions. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

Start again from the beginning

← Back

I paid the full fee. I apologised, properly this time, with no excuses in it.

“Thank you,” Vivienne said. Her voice was perfectly pleasant and about four degrees above freezing. “Bedroom?”

What followed was, technically, everything I’d paid for. She undressed efficiently. She rolled a condom onto me with one practised movement. She lay back on the bed and let me fuck her, and made the right noises in the right places, and her body was beautiful and warm and I was inside it, and it was the loneliest sex I have ever had in my life.

She didn’t kiss me. I didn’t ask.

When I finished she patted my shoulder, got up, and went to the bathroom. I heard the tap running. When she came back she was dressed.

“Thank you, Graham,” she said at the door. “Good luck with your pitch.”

“Vivienne. I really am sorry.”

She paused and looked at me, and some of the frost went out of her eyes.

“I believe you,” she said. “Next time you book someone, don’t treat her like a supplier. You’ll get a much better product.”

The door clicked shut.

I sat on the end of the bed in the hotel robe and thought about Maureen, and about what she used to say about me and contracts, and for the first time I understood what she meant.

Ending 15 of 16: Strictly Business. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

Start again from the beginning