The Business of Pleasure (15 page)

‘I …’

‘You do, don’t you, Mrs Masterton? You want a good fucking. You don’t even care who you get it from. Could be me. Could be him. Could be both of us. Could be some passer-by off the street. Couldn’t it?’

He homed in on her clit and she was beyond all resistance, leaning back against him, gyrating slowly on his fingertips, needing the release so badly, so very, very badly.

‘Mmmm,’ was her distant response.

Collins whipped his hand away, shoving the fingers with their sex-drenched aroma between her lips so she licked the evidence of her from them.

‘I need to examine you,’ he said curtly. ‘Make sure you have … normal … physiological responses to sexual stimuli. From what I’m seeing now, you are abnormally hypersexual. I may want to study you at length, if your husband is amenable. Remove all clothing, please.’

Charlotte was left to take off her blouse and bra while Collins opened the door to a small anteroom and wheeled out a medical examination bed, upholstered in black leather with adjustable sections and restraints attached to the sides.

‘Lie down on this, please,’ ordered Collins. Bryant gallantly stepped forward to help her up, lovingly strapping her wrists above her head and her ankles high up in a set of stirrups while Collins fiddled with the settings until she was half-sitting, half-lying, thighs wide and high, almost straining, everything on full show for the doctor and his client.

Collins, frowning, pulled the stirrups higher until Charlotte’s aching bottom was half-off the leather, cheeks parted and vulnerable to further rough manipulation.

‘Good,’ he approved, one finger pressed contemplatively to his chin. ‘This little slut can’t hide a thing now, can she? Do you mind awfully if I call her a slut, by the way?’

‘Be my guest. It’s what she is,’ said Bryant, beaming gently at his ‘wife’.

‘Now, I would like you to kiss her. Go on. With tongues, if you wish.’

Bryant hesitated for a moment, then stood by Charlotte’s head, twisted down and put his lips to hers, engaging her in a long, slow, sensual French kiss.

Charlotte, taking his tongue inside her mouth and shutting her eyes in helpless pleasure, almost bit down in shock when she felt a cold invasive pressure around her clit, then inside her vagina. What was that?

‘No need to tense up, Mrs Masterton,’ she heard Collins say. ‘It’s just my finger. I’ve put on some surgical gloves for this exercise. You are well lubricated, by the way. You enjoy being kissed and tongued, hard and deeply, don’t you? You needn’t answer. I know it’s rude to speak with your mouth full.’

Charlotte’s mouth was indeed very full, and she was perfectly happy for it to be so but, to her regret, the order came for the kissing to stop, and Bryant’s tongue was retracted with a sigh.

‘Fondle her breasts, Mr Masterton.’

Bryant obeyed with a will, rolling nipples between finger and thumb before applying the tip of his tongue and squeezing the soft flesh that surrounded the hard nubs. Once more, Charlotte felt Collins’s fingers, swirling and pinching her intimate lower areas.

‘I am going to take your temperature,’ he informed her, inserting a slim glass rectal thermometer, to Charlotte’s considerable shock and shame. He held the thermometer in firmly, continuing his digital manipulations of her pussy all the while, before withdrawing it and taking a reading.

‘Temperature – elevated,’ was the verdict. ‘You are hot, Mrs Masterton. Extremely so. Well, Mr Masterton, I doubt she will refuse you now. All the same, I have one final test for her. I need to time the period from first sexual contact to orgasm – first I need to lower her arousal levels a little. Could you hand me those wipes?’

Charlotte shivered as the antibacterial wipes were applied to her nether regions, sopping up the gush. Somehow she couldn’t help feeling that Collins was setting himself too tall an order, though, if he expected her to calm down now. She was right on the edge of that heightened consciousness he often brought her to; tense with need, unable to come down until one or other of her skilled employers arranged her release.

‘Hmm, well, her nipples are still erect, but perhaps we could attribute that to cold,’ mused Collins. ‘Here, Masterton.’ He handed Bryant a sleek metallic vibrator. ‘Which of her orifices will you commandeer?’

‘Oh, I think I’ll work on her cunt,’ he said. ‘This vibrator has a clitoral stimulator, does it? I’m not sure we’ll get an accurate reading without one.’

‘Oh, yes, I do beg your pardon.’ Collins replaced the no-frills vibrator with a more complicated version, complete with clitoral attachment. ‘I shall use this one in her more private passage. If I might venture a personal disclosure, I’m more of an arse man myself anyway.’

‘Please be my guest,’ said Bryant formally. ‘Now, do you want me to stand at the right or left side of her?’

‘Oh, you take the right, I think.’

So it was that Charlotte was brought to a state of full submission, by way of intense, double-plugged, overstimulating, tear-streaked and red-faced orgasm. She was made to watch as Collins and Bryant, still impeccably suited and booted, stood at either side of her hips, lazily swivelling and thrusting inside her with their humming tools, waiting for her to reach a panicked fever pitch, then smiling and clucking encouragingly as she tipped over her edge, flailing and desperate, into a black hole of deepest, most heartfelt surrender.

‘Goodness,’ remarked Collins, checking his stopwatch. ‘Only three minutes from start to finish. I think your wife needs taking firmly and frequently, Mr Masterton, if you want her to stop masturbating all the time. She seems quite unable to control her sexual urges. You need to take them into your control. If you cannot fuck her as often as she needs, perhaps we can come to some kind of clinical arrangement …’

‘What an excellent idea. Shall we say, home visits, three times weekly?’

‘I would be delighted to assist.’

Later, after several more orgasms on everybody’s part, the trio found tea-making facilities in one of the rooms along the corridor, and they sat together in the office, drinking and recovering their collective breath.

‘That examination couch is really rather remarkable,’ said Collins, caressing the stirrups. ‘I would like one myself. I wonder who makes them?’

Bryant shrugged, smiling as Collins stood and wheeled the bed back into its allotted space next door.

Charlotte took advantage of the absence, leaning towards Bryant to whisper, ‘Is he really married?’

Bryant raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would you ask me that?’

‘He said … his wife liked Agent Provocateur underwear. Is that true?’

‘Charlotte, I have no idea what anybody’s wife likes to wear under her skirts. Well, maybe
some
people’s wives,’ he amended.

‘Yours?’ Charlotte was struck again. ‘Are you married?’

‘No, Charlotte, I am not.’

His face, so amused and playful seconds earlier, suddenly darkened, eyes seriously intent.

‘Lady Markham would have enjoyed that,’ she said, changing the subject awkwardly on Collins’s return.

‘She most certainly would. And she will.’

‘Will you be the doctor for her?’

‘Oh no,’ said Collins, seemingly appalled. ‘I don’t mix business with pleasure!’

Charlotte laughed, stunned. ‘Um … what was that then? Just now? I mean, I thought it was research, so business, no?’

Collins looked vaguely annoyed for a second or two, as if caught out.

‘You’re special, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘We knew that from your very first email.’

She knew she was glowing; she felt golden and she could not stop smiling at Collins, until she heard Bryant cough and replace his teacup with a clatter.

‘It’s late,’ he said brusquely. ‘We’d better wash these up and go. Dr Mahmood wanted everything left the way we found it.’

But all the way back in the cab, her bruised bottom bumping over the potholes and her orifices raw with overuse, she heard those words – ‘You’re special, Charlotte’ – and the lights of the lonely London early morning seemed like magic lanterns.

I
RARELY SEE THE
women whose houses I clean; for the most part, they leave early, come home late, and leave me a wad of banknotes on the granite, or Corian, or quartz kitchen counter at the end of the week. I do, of course, know what they look like, from our initial hiring meeting, and from the large glossy portraits of them, in wedding dresses, or graduation robes, or accepting awards at some industry dinner or other, all over the walls and mantelpieces. Their personalities sometimes come through in the messages they leave me.

Mrs Redvers, a sleek brunette corporate lawyer, often complains that the refrigerator shelves are left in a mess, and I have explained over and over again that this is because young Jonquil and Reuben run rings around the nanny and are constantly raiding for illicit snacks. Her notes are terse; she is time-poor, as they say, and the subsequent need for economy seems to be carried over into her manners.

Ms Livesay is a television producer, a slightly manic-looking blonde. Although she is nearly thirty, she still lives like a student, and of all my houses, hers is the most labour-intensive. Bottles and cigarette butts in the sink, clothes flung everywhere, a leaning tower of magazines and CDs piled high on the coffee table. She is thoughtless, but usually quite effusive in her notes. ‘Thanks, darling, you are a lifesaver,’ she will sometimes scribble, with an extra fiver on top of the wage if the toilet was pebble-dashed with vomit or there was a particularly heinous stain on the sofa.

My final lady is a Lady. Lady Markham’s London pied-à-terre is only occupied when the House of Lords is sitting. I must admit I used to have a crush on her, when I started cleaning for her. She is a stunning woman in her forties, with a look of Honor Blackman in her 1960s heyday, and the accent to match. She is, I suppose, quite patronising, but she patronises me so graciously and with such charm that I fall for it every time. She is habitually tidy, which makes the job easy, and she has beautiful, elegant taste, so that spending time among her knick-knacks is a pleasure. I do wonder about the little room – a walk-in closet really, I think – tucked to the side of her bedroom that is always locked and strictly off-limits, but it pleases me to think of Lady Markham having her secrets, just like I do.

I clean these houses in St Johns Wood every day, then I go home to my own tiny flat on a rough estate – just a stone’s throw from their mansions – and clean up all my mother’s clutter before cooking her supper. It isn’t the life I dreamed of when we came here, but it is a life, of sorts.

Well, it
was
, until that awful Thursday at Mrs Redvers’s house. It was a school holiday, so Jonquil and Reuben were underfoot all day, pretending to blast me with their space guns while I vacuumed. A tiny plastic alien I had not seen when picking up the toys earlier was sucked up into the tube and Reuben began to shriek and wave his arms like an alarmed octopus.

‘What is wrong, Reuben?’ I asked, clicking off the drone of the hoover.

‘You’ve just hoovered up Floople, you bitch!’ he shouted.

I might not be a rich or well-respected woman, but I was not taking this from an eight-year-old.

‘How dare you use that disgusting language to me! I will tell your mother!’

‘She won’t care! She thinks you’re a stupid foreign bitch as well!’

‘It’s true,’ drawled ten-year-old Jonquil from the doorway. ‘She’ll freak if she hears that you’ve been telling us off. Who the hell do you think you are? The hired hand is all you are.’

‘Yes,’ I hissed at her, ‘I am just a cleaner. But I used to be a lawyer, just like your mother. Would you like somebody to speak to your mother like that?’

Jonquil’s reply came in a V-shape. Reuben, effing and blinding hysterically, was trying to dismantle the vacuum cleaner, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the room. I reached out for the tube.

‘Mummy, mummy!’ I heard Jonquil screaming, ‘she’s gone mental, she’s trying to hit us!’

Mrs Redvers walked in to the room to find me wrenching the vacuum cleaner from a howling Reuben while particles of refined St Johns Wood dust darkened the air like storm clouds.

‘Sack her! She’s killed Floople!’

‘What on Earth is going on? Why are the children so upset? I think you’d better give me an explanation, Krysztyna!’

I stood up, coughing, and looked Mrs Redvers in her icy eye.

‘Your children have insulted and sworn at me, Mrs Redvers. I think they had better give me an apology.’

‘My children … they do not swear! Oh, you must be lying! I think you had better get out before I say or do something I regret!’

So I got out. I walked the three streets to Ms Livesay’s chaotic terrace and let myself in. There was a terrible smell in there, bad enough to turn my stomach. I couldn’t face it; not just then. I doubled back to Lady Markham’s mansion block, found her beautifully comfortable sofa, sat down in it and cried until I thought my heart had broken.

‘I say, Krysztyna, whatever’s up?’

Lady Markham was up, standing in the hall with an aghast look on her face. I leapt off the hand-embroidered cushions.

‘Oh, Lady Markham, I am so sorry! Please do not be angry – I have had some bad news, is all. I will start cleaning now.’

‘Dear girl, please sit down! I’m not an ogre, you know. You look as if you could use a brandy – let me pour you one.’

I remonstrated, but she was insistent, and the mellowest, fruitiest, fieriest brandy I had ever tasted burned a sweet path to my stomach, calming my angst and bringing the old Krysztyna back to the surface; the girl who had laughed and loved, not the woman who mopped and scrubbed.

‘What do you do for fun, dear girl?’ asked Lady Markham, once she had extracted my full confession about the horror at Mrs Redvers’s. ‘You seem to work terribly hard. When do you play?’

‘Never,’ I said with a bitter little laugh.

‘You have no lovers? You are an attractive woman, you know.’

I looked away, blushing, wanting to tell her, feeling she would understand … but what if she didn’t?

‘No,’ I said simply.

‘Darling, there are so many men in London who would simply adore a gorgeous thing like you on their arms. I can think of at least twenty offhand. Most of them are terrible old roués, mind you.’ She chuckled and rubbed my arm. I drew a deep breath. I took the plunge.

‘Men … I’m not so interested in …’

She sat back a little, regarding my face with a look of amused surprise.

‘Oh, Krysztyna! I should have guessed! I’m usually so good at guessing that kind of thing!’

‘Are you shocked?’

‘Good Lord, girl, no, why would I be shocked? I’m just shocked that you haven’t taken yourself out to one of the very many lovely gay bars and clubs in this City and scored yourself a nice young lady.’

‘I live with my mother. She is not well, and she is a very devout Catholic. I have never told her, and I never will.’

‘I see.’ Lady Markham sat, pursing her lips, intent in thought for some time. I did not like to break the silence, and there did not seem to be much I could say, anyway.

‘Listen, Krysztyna. I’d like to give you a gift. I think you deserve this gift, and I think you would know how to use it. If you do not wish to, then that is your prerogative, but I rather hope you will.’

‘I would never ask for anything …’

‘Hush, hush, dear, I know you wouldn’t. That’s rather why I’m giving it. But it must remain strictly – and I mean strictly –
entre nous
. You must never breathe a word to anyone. Can you promise me that?’

‘I can keep secrets.’ I was too intrigued to deny her this mysterious offer she was making. Even if it turned out to be something I could not use, I wanted to know what it was. Was she going to let me into her private room?

In the event, she did not. But she let me into another secret; a wonderful and decadent secret. A secret I intend to keep for the rest of my life.

Thus it was that I found myself looking through portfolio photographs with a friendly young woman in a top-floor office.

‘How many pleasure slaves did you have in mind?’ asked the woman, whose name was Charlotte.

I remembered Lady Markham’s words:
I insist that you spare no expense. If the bill runs into millions, I shall still cover it.

‘I would like perhaps half a dozen. And all female, as I mentioned in my email.’

‘That shouldn’t be any problem at all. Do any of these appeal to you?’

I shuffled the photographs, searching for the types I wanted.

‘This one,’ I said. She was tall, angular, well-groomed, with sleek chestnut hair and cruel eyes. She looked just like Mrs Redvers.

‘OK.’ Charlotte ticked a box on her computer screen.

‘Oh! Yes! Her!’ A cheery-looking girl with blonde dreadlocks and a nose ring who could have been Ms Livesay’s sister beamed out of a photograph, begging me to choose her.

‘As for the rest … well …’ Now I was free to just pick the girls I fancied, and I did so with alacrity, imagining them oiled and ready for me, pouring my wine and licking the stray drops from my lips. This might be my one and only chance to achieve sexual nirvana, and I was going to seize it with both hands.

What does the mistress of a fleet of pleasure slaves wear?

This had been my quandary all day, and as the evening approached – The Evening of Evenings – I was still undecided. I knew what my slaves were wearing. The Mrs Redvers lookalike would be sporting an abbreviated French maid’s outfit, cut low at the bust and high at the derrière, together with uncomfortably high heels, padlocked on at the ankle. Ms Livesay Mark 2 would be in nipple tassles, a diamanté thong and very little else. She was my toy for the evening. The other four girls would be dressed in various underwear combinations, chosen from the agency’s exclusive catalogue. Lovely, silky, scanty things – tiny panties and severe corsets; teddies and camisoles and boned suspender belts, all frothy with lace and sheeny with satin. The anticipation of all that prettiness and sexiness at my command was making me feel giddy.

I was at the door of the hired town house in a smart London Square before I made my final wardrobe decision, and when I ventured out of the dressing room and down towards the banqueting hall where my minions awaited me, I was draped in a diaphanous sequinned gown that loosely covered my curves, but left every place of interest comfortably accessible. My shoes were high and clacked unforgivingly on the wooden floors, and I felt like a Queen, like Nefertiti or Cleopatra, high on the charge of my sexual power.

The double doors to the banqueting hall were flanked by two of the pretty girls in underwear. Each one dropped a deep curtsey and I gave them my arms, escorting them inside. The table was laid in magnificent style – I had worked a few shifts as a silver service waitress in my time, and I knew a good table setting when I saw one. This one seemed to shimmer, its opulence almost beyond the bounds of good taste, yet working well in the lavish surroundings. Another barely-dressed nymphet pulled out my chair – a kind of throne – for me, and waited until I was seated. The four underwear girls, who were to be my waitresses and general handmaidens, ranged themselves around me, dropping to their knees and demurely hanging their heads.

At one end of the room, on her hands and knees, panting and puffing as she applied wax to the floor, was Mrs Redvers. The stiff nets under her tiny black skirt rose over her pale bottom as she worked, exposing it rudely with its strip of black latex thong between the cheeks. She looked completely humiliated and a little hot and bothered. I sat back, enjoying the sight, before noticing that the banquet centrepiece in front of me, with its elaborate abundance of flowers and fruit, was actually Ms Livesay, lying flat on her back, breasts and belly overspilling black grapes and posies while a solid silver candelabra was lodged between her thighs. Like her real-life counterpart, she was a bit of a mess, and would doubtless be even more so before the evening was out.

‘How charming,’ I breathed, unconsciously imitating Lady Markham’s voice and accent. I reached out to touch Livesay’s thigh, around which was wrapped some twine with little buds of flowers attached. The candelabra blocked my immediate view of her pussy, but that would not stay the case for too long. Livesay twitched, very slightly, but was not able to speak, because she had a peach lodged in her mouth. ‘You do look edible, Livesay,’ I murmured to her. ‘I shall certainly be enjoying you later.’

Beyond the end of the table, Redvers was still polishing effortfully, her tight backside wriggling in a fury of industry.

‘Redvers! Stop that and come here.’

It was not easy for her to rise gracefully in those sky-high heels, but she did her womanly best, tottering over to the table with a blank, sulky look.

‘You can take that sullen look off your face,’ I told her. ‘Come here and wipe the table in front of me.’ I pushed my chair back so that she could bend right over and apply that duster with the maximum of elbow grease. Her pretty arse was within my reach as she huffed and toiled. I reached out and touched it, cupped it, rubbed a thumb over its softness. She did not miss a beat, polishing on, swaying on those ridiculous heels.

‘Do you know what, Redvers?’ I said, stroking the back of her thigh, right down to the hold-up stocking top. ‘Later on, you are going to polish me. I am going to work you so hard … I won’t let you stop work until you have cleaned me right out.’

Redvers said nothing but ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and continued her buffing until the wood shone, at which point she turned around and curtsied, so beautifully. I had never seen a sexy curtsey before, but this girl had the knack.

‘Keep those knees on the floor and that lovely bum in the air, Redvers,’ I instructed, pointing to the floor immediately to my right. ‘Carry on cleaning until I have finished eating. I expect perfection, or I might have to spoil that gorgeous arse of yours with a spanking, do you understand?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Redvers, slightly throatily. Oh good. This was making her horny as well.

I turned my attention to the feast at the table, clicking my fingers so that two of my oiled beauties hurried either side of me.