Category: IST

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I put my hands on her hips.

Just resting there. Lightly. Her skin was hot under my palms, and she felt incredible, and for one second it was worth it.

Then she went completely still.

“Owen.” Her voice was flat. “Hands.”

“Sorry. You just…”

“I just nothing. I told you the rules a minute ago.” She lifted my hands off her, one at a time, and placed them back on the velvet like she was putting toys back on a shelf. “There’s a camera right there. If Dez sees that, I get a warning and you get a pavement.”

“I’m sorry. Really.”

She looked at me for a long moment. She was still sitting in my lap, topless, her nipples still hard, and I could feel her warmth through my jeans. Some of the sparkle had gone out of her face, though. She’d become professional again in about two seconds.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try that again.”

She started dancing again. Slower this time, more careful, a little more distance between us. She was still gorgeous. Still grinding, still letting her tits brush my chest. But it felt like she was dancing at me now instead of with me.

My hands were trembling on the couch. Part of me knew I’d blown something. Another part of me, the stupid part, was still staring at her hips and thinking about how good they’d felt.

She turned around and lowered herself onto me, arse first, and that stupid part got louder.

→ I apologise properly and keep my hands to myself

→ I reach for her hips again

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I kept my hands on the couch. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done my own tax return.

Scarlett noticed. Of course she did. She straddled me, her knees sinking into the velvet either side of my hips, and looked down at my hands gripping the cushions.

“You’re actually doing it,” she said.

“You said those were the rules.”

“Everybody says yes to the rules. Then everybody tries it on in the first ninety seconds.” She sounded surprised and, for the first time, a little bit shy. “You’re sweet, Owen.”

Then she leaned down and put her mouth right against my ear. “That means I get to break them for you.”

She took my right hand off the couch herself and laid it on her bare waist. Just that. Her skin was hot and damp. She moved against me slow and deep, my cock pressed hard along the soft crotch of her knickers, and she let out a tiny, real gasp when she rolled over the head of it.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “You’re really hard.”

“Thirty minutes of you will do that.”

The red light hummed. Somewhere down the corridor another song started. She kept riding me through my jeans, slower and slower, her forehead resting against mine, breath mixing. I could feel how warm she was through the lace.

Then a soft buzz. Time.

She sat back, flushed to the collarbones, and looked at me like she was making up her mind about something.

→ I tip big and tell her I’ll stay until close if she wants me to

→ I pay for one more song right now

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“Goodnight, Scarlett,” I said.

She shrugged, a little smile, like it made no difference to her either way. “Night, puppy.”

I walked to the car. I didn’t look back. I was quite proud of myself for about a hundred yards.

Then I sat behind the wheel with the engine running and the heater roaring, and I thought about her open coat. The black lace. The goosebumps on her freckles. Twenty minutes, and I’m bored and cold.

I nearly went back. I actually had my hand on the door handle. But when I looked down the alley she was already stubbing out her cigarette and heading inside, and the fire door swung shut behind her with a bang that sounded very final.

I drove home.

The flat was exactly as empty as I’d left it. The gap on the kitchen counter where the good kettle used to be. Her side of the wardrobe, bare hangers. The silence.

I boiled water in a saucepan and made tea I didn’t want. Then I lay on the bed in my one decent shirt and, inevitably, unzipped my jeans.

I thought about Jade’s hand on my chest. About Scarlett’s cold nipples and her green eyes. I thought about what might have happened in that alley if I’d just said yes. It didn’t take long.

Afterwards I lay there staring at the ceiling.

Monday, job. Wednesday, girlfriend. Friday, the two most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and I’d gone home to a saucepan.

Next week, I promised myself. Next week I’d say yes.

Ending 25 of 25: Home Alone. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

Start again from the beginning

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“I’ll keep you warm,” I said.

“Good answer.” She grabbed my lapels and pulled me against the wall with her.

Her coat swung open and I wrapped my arms around her inside it. She was freezing, all goosebumps, and she pressed herself against me with a little hiss. Then she tipped her face up and kissed me.

It was not a polite kiss. Her tongue was in my mouth before I’d caught up, tasting of smoke and mint, her cold hands sliding inside my shirt. I groaned and she laughed into my mouth.

“No cameras out here,” she whispered. “No rules.”

My hands found her arse under the coat, bare except for a strip of lace, and squeezed. She ground against me. Then her hand slid down between us, unzipped my jeans and slipped inside, wrapping round my cock.

“Oh, hello,” she said.

She stroked me against the wall, slow at first, then faster, her mouth on my neck. I slid my fingers between her thighs, under the lace, and found her hot and wet. She gasped and rode my hand while she worked me.

She came first, quietly, shuddering into my shoulder. I came a minute later, into her fist, my forehead against the brick.

A door banged somewhere. She pulled away, laughing, wiped her hand on my shirt and buttoned her coat.

“Break’s over,” she said. “Next time, pick me first.”

She went back inside. I stood in the alley, shirt ruined, completely in love.

→ Next Friday, I walk in and pick her first

→ I go back inside and ask Jade for a dance

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I opened my mouth to say yes. What came out was, “I should get home.”

Priya blinked. Then nodded quickly, like she’d expected it.

“Course. Yeah. No, that’s sensible.” She let go of my wrist. “Sorry. That was weird. Forget it.”

“It wasn’t weird. I just…”

“Owen, honestly, it’s fine.” She smiled, a little too brightly, and pulled her cardigan tighter. “Get home safe, talker.”

Dez held the door. The cold hit me like a slap. I had thirty-eight quid in my wallet, which wasn’t enough for a cab across town, so I walked to the night bus stop and stood under the shelter with a drunk man eating a kebab.

The bus took forty minutes to come.

I sat on the top deck and replayed it. Her hand on my wrist. Ten minutes away. A bottle of wine and a sofa. A lot of practice at lap dances that I never get to finish properly.

I had said no. To that. Why had I said no?

Because of the job, I told myself. Because of Tuesday. Because I was sad and broke and didn’t want to be a sad, broke man in a stripper’s flat.

None of those reasons sounded any good at three in the morning on the top deck of the N29.

When I got home, I lay on my bed in the dark with my jeans open and my hand round my cock, thinking about her sofa, and hated myself just a little.

Ending 22 of 25: The Night Bus. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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Priya’s flat was above a launderette, warm and cluttered, fairy lights round the window and a grumpy grey cat on the sofa. She shooed the cat off, poured two big glasses of red and pushed me down onto the cushions.

“Stay there,” she said.

She put on music. She dimmed the lamp. Then she took off her cardigan and jeans and danced for me in her plain black underwear, barefoot on the rug, and it was a hundred times sexier than anything she’d done at the club.

“No camera,” she said, climbing into my lap. “No Dez. No rules.”

I put my hands on her. Everywhere. Her waist, her arse, her full soft tits as she unhooked her bra and pressed them into my face. I sucked her nipple into my mouth and she moaned and ground down harder.

Then she slid off my lap onto her knees between my legs.

“Always wanted to finish one of these properly,” she said, and unbuckled my belt.

She sucked me slowly, deep and wet, her dark eyes on mine the whole time, one hand stroking the base. When I warned her I was close, she just hummed and took me deeper, and I came in her mouth with my hands in her hair.

She swallowed, wiped her lips and grinned.

“That’s all you get tonight,” she said, curling up against me. “I’m wrecked. But you can stay on the sofa.”

I fell asleep with the cat on my feet and her head on my chest. Sometime before dawn she slipped off to her own bed and left the door open.

→ In the morning, I make her coffee and take it to her in bed

→ I sneak out at dawn before she wakes up

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“Come home with me,” I said. “Tonight. After. Forget the money.”

Jade stopped moving.

She didn’t get off my lap straight away. She just stopped, and looked down at me, and something in her face closed like a door.

“Ah,” she said.

“I didn’t mean it like…”

“You did, though. You all do, eventually.” She lifted my hands off her waist and put them back on the couch. “I’m not a girlfriend, Owen. I’m not an escort. I’m a dancer. I dance, you pay, we both have a nice time, and then I go home alone to my cat and my telly. That’s the deal.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t ruin it.” She climbed off and reached for her top. “You were doing so well.”

“Can we finish the dance?”

She considered it. Then she shook her head, kindly enough. “Not tonight. The mood’s gone, babe. Happens.”

She didn’t refund me. I didn’t ask her to.

She walked me back to the bar, kissed my cheek for appearance’s sake, and went straight to a group of lads on a stag do by the stage. Within a minute she was laughing at something one of them said, head thrown back.

I finished my whisky alone.

On the drive home I kept replaying it. Her warm skin under my palms. That one moment where she’d looked genuinely turned on. And then my mouth opening and ruining everything.

Ending 19 of 25: Not For Sale. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I reached into my pocket, peeled off a hundred and tucked it into the gold chain at her waist.

“Good tipper,” she breathed. “Good boy.”

She let me keep my hands on her. She guided one up to her breast and I cupped it, warm and heavy, her nipple stiff against my palm. She gasped and rolled her hips harder.

She wasn’t dancing anymore. She was riding me. Her knees dug into the couch, her hands gripped my shoulders, and she ground her pussy along my cock in long, deep strokes, the sequins rasping against my jeans. Her face was flushed. Her mouth was open.

“Fuck,” she said, surprised. “Fuck, that’s the spot.”

I squeezed her tit and she moaned, a real, ragged sound. She went faster, chasing it, her clit rubbing right over the head of my trapped cock on every pass. I felt her thighs start to tremble.

“Don’t you dare stop me,” she whispered.

She came. Right there, shaking in my lap, her forehead pressed to mine, biting her lip to stay quiet. The feel of her twitching against me pushed me over and I came too, helpless, in my jeans, gripping her waist.

We sat there panting.

“That doesn’t happen,” she said finally. “I want you to know that. That doesn’t happen to me in here.”

The buzzer went. She climbed off on shaky legs, pulled her top back on and blew out a breath.

“Same time next Friday,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Then she went back to work, and I sat at the bar trying to stop grinning.

→ I come back next Friday, as ordered

→ I find her at the bar later and ask her out on a proper date

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“I can’t afford this,” I said. “I lost my job on Monday. I should have said before you ordered. I’m sorry.”

Jade stopped mid-strap. She looked at me for a long time.

Then she sat down next to me on the couch, still topless, and sighed through her nose.

“You’re serious.”

“Deadly.”

“God.” She took the folder off my lap and looked at the total herself, and winced. “Okay. Look. I get commission on that. I can’t just tear it up.” She chewed her lip. “But I can tell them the bottle was corked and we sent it back. Happens all the time. You pay for one glass.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re the first man in seven years who’s told me the truth in this room.” She laughed, a little embarrassed, and pulled her top on. “Also because you didn’t touch me once, even when you wanted to. I could tell you wanted to.”

“I really wanted to.”

“I know. I was sitting on it.”

She grabbed a cocktail napkin and an eyeliner pencil off the table, scribbled on the napkin and folded it into my shirt pocket.

“That’s my actual number. My name’s Priya. I’m twenty-nine, I’m off on Tuesdays, and I’m not dancing for you next time. You’re buying me dinner. A cheap one.”

She kissed me. Just once, soft, on the mouth.

Then the buzzer went, and she was gone.

→ I ring her on Monday and book dinner for Tuesday

→ I play it cool and wait a week before calling

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I paid it. Four hundred and twenty quid for a bottle of fizz I’d had one glass of.

The barman ran my card without blinking. Jade watched from the end of the bar, gave me a little wave and a kiss blown off her palm, and then went straight back to work on a man in a pinstripe suit.

I sat on my stool in a kind of daze.

I replayed the last half hour in my head. Her arse pressed into my lap. Her tits slick with champagne. Her breath in my ear, telling me what she would do if only the rules were different. She’d made me so hard I could barely walk. She hadn’t let me touch her once. And I’d paid six hundred and twenty quid, in total, for the privilege.

The worst part was that I’d loved it.

I watched her for another hour. Watched her do almost exactly the same routine for the man in the suit, right down to the champagne trickling between her tits. “Oops.” He bought a bottle too. I felt a strange sort of kinship with him.

At midnight I got up to leave. My legs were stiff. My balls ached in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager.

On the way out, Dez the bouncer held the door for me.

“Jade’s champagne?” he asked.

“Jade’s champagne.”

He nodded, almost sympathetically. “She does that to everyone, mate. Every single Friday.”

I drove home, wanked twice in the shower, and went to bed broke and smiling. By Thursday I knew I was going back. The only question was how.

→ Next Friday, I sit at the bar and just talk to her

→ Next Friday, I order the champagne again