Category: IST

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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“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