Category: IST

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“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

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“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

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“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

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“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

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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.

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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.

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“I want to take you to dinner tomorrow night,” I said. “My clients are bringing their wives. I’m always the sad divorced man at the end of the table. I’d love, just once, to walk in with someone.”

Vivienne laughed, delighted. “A social booking. I love those. I’m very good at wives.”

She was. The following evening she turned up at the Michelin place in a black dress and pearls, introduced herself as Vivienne, an art consultant, and charmed the entire table in fifteen minutes. She knew which fork to use. She knew about Rembrandt and rugby. The finance director’s wife asked her for her number.

Under the table, her hand was on my thigh the whole time.

Back at the suite she kicked off her heels and pushed me onto the bed.

“That,” she said, unzipping her dress, “was the most fun I’ve had on a booking in months. You were adorable. You kept looking at me like I was a lottery win.”

She rode me with the pearls still on, slow and laughing, then fast and not laughing at all. When she came she clapped a hand over her own mouth and her pearls bounced against her breasts.

On Monday, the client signed a contract twice the size we’d pitched.

“Your wife’s lovely,” the finance director said. “Bring her next time.”

Ending 14 of 16: The Plus One. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I ran the bath. All of it. Hot water, the expensive hotel bubbles, the lights down low.

Vivienne got in first and sank down with a groan of pure bliss. “Oh, you lovely man. You have no idea how much my feet hurt.”

I got in behind her. She leaned back against my chest and I washed her hair, slowly, my fingers working into her scalp, and she went completely limp and made noises that had nothing to do with sex and were somehow more intimate.

Then she turned around in the water to face me and straddled my lap.

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed me, and it was soft and grateful and then very much not soft.

Her slippery body slid against mine. I cupped her breasts, wet and warm, and she arched into my hands. She reached down and stroked my cock under the water until I was gasping. Then she reached over the side of the bath for a condom from her bag, rolled it on, and sank down onto me with a sigh.

We moved slowly, water lapping over the edge, her arms round my neck. She came with her face buried in my shoulder. I followed with my hands tangled in her wet hair.

We stayed in until the water went cold.

“Most clients,” she said, “never ask what I like. You’ll get a discount next time.”

Ending 13 of 16: Bath Time. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“I’ve got time for something quick,” I said. “If you’re offering.”

Vivienne’s smile went slow and wicked. “Quick,” she said, “is a speciality.”

She slid off the sofa onto her knees between my legs and undid my belt without looking down, holding my eyes the whole time. My trousers came down. My cock sprang up, embarrassingly eager. She laughed softly and wrapped her hand round the base.

“Hello,” she said to it. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Then she took me into her mouth.

The website had not been exaggerating. She was slow at first, warm and wet, her tongue swirling round the head, then deeper, her hand moving in time, her other hand cupping my balls. She hummed. She made eye contact. She did something with her tongue that I am still not sure was legal. I gripped the arm of the sofa with one hand and her hair with the other, very gently, and she let me.

It took me about three minutes. I’m not proud. She didn’t stop until I’d finished, then sat back on her heels, wiped her mouth with a hotel napkin, and grinned.

“Three minutes,” she said. “Not my record. Not far off.”

I made my seven o’clock Singapore call the next morning with a smile on my face that the head of procurement found very confusing.

Ending 12 of 16: Something Quick. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I closed my eyes for a minute.

When I opened them it was a quarter to eleven, and the suite was dim, and someone had put a blanket over me.

Vivienne was sitting in the armchair opposite, shoes back on, reading the hotel magazine. She looked up and smiled.

“Morning,” she said, even though it wasn’t.

“Oh no. Oh God. How long was I out?”

“Nearly an hour and a half. You snore like a tractor, by the way. A small, polite tractor.”

“I’m so sorry. You should have woken me.”

“Why?” She closed the magazine. “You clearly needed it more than you needed me. Happens more than you’d think. Very successful men booking two hours of the most expensive sleep in Scotland.” She stood up and stretched. “I had a lovely time, honestly. I read about a whisky distillery. I ate your minibar Toblerone. I’m adding that to your bill.”

She came over, leaned down and kissed me, soft and warm, on the mouth.

“That’s the only kiss you get,” she said. “Since you slept through the rest.”

At the door she paused.

“Book me again when you’re not dead on your feet,” she said. “I’ll make you regret ever closing your eyes.”

I did. She did. But that’s a different story.

Ending 11 of 16: Paid to Sleep. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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