The Business of Pleasure (9 page)

‘Turn over. Look at me,’ he growled. I scrambled on to my back and drank in his powerful body and imperious face. I felt intimidated, but not by his physical stature – more from a kind of quasi-virginal nervousness. I knew what sex felt like, but I had forgotten, and it was like losing my cherry all over again. He reached for the condom pack out of his jacket pocket and began to snap the rubber on, never breaking eye contact with me. ‘Tell me you want this, Naomi.’

‘I … I’m a little afraid … but I want it.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m afraid I’ll like it. And then I’ll have to …’

‘You’ll have to?’

‘Have to stop … living the way I do.’

‘Have to start living again, you mean. Good. Because you should. You do want it, Naomi, and you should want it. And you should get it. As often as you want.’

‘Plenty of people live without …’

‘Don’t go back to that. Open your legs. Open yourself up to me.’

His gruff injunctions were kindly meant, I realised. They were for my own good – he just needed to put enough force behind them to ensure I took them seriously. Again, I loved him for it, in a way. And I opened my legs.

It did not feel the way I remembered. It felt much, much better. I was filled, for one thing, both length and width-wise. And Justus knew how to get the right angle, how to go in hard and how to ease off and how to speed up and how to vary the intensity and how to nudge against my clit and how to find my g-spot. What a lot of things this man knew. Intellectual property law wasn’t the half of it.

He knew how to take me from the front, from behind, from below and from on top. Also, from the side, over the side of the bed, in a chair, in the Jacuzzi, on the floor. He knew how to make me sigh, how to make me moan, how to make me crazy, how to make me come. There was nothing intellectual in it, but I would have liked him for my property.

By the time the hour the contract ceased had come, so had I, five times. I lay limply in the bath, half submerged in bubbles, raw, sore, chafed, satisfied, cured.

Well, perhaps not cured. Perhaps not as simply as that. But I still see Justus when I’m up in town, passing the Inns of Court, as I find myself doing quite often these days. I don’t wear a mask and I don’t wear gloves – or at least, not the latex kind. But I do wear a smile, and all the money I used to spend on Pledge now goes on underwear. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

T
HE OFFICE SUITED
C
HARLOTTE
well; it was not large but it was luxuriously appointed, with thick pile carpets and a smell of expensive leather from the chairs and the antique desk blotters.

With her opening day almost at an end, and nobody else in the office for the first time since she had sidled shyly in that morning, she went over to the window and looked down at the higgledy-piggledy Soho street life. The neon lights were just fizzing into lewd life in the sex shops of Brewer Street and the waiters in the Italian joint opposite were putting out menus, pristine napkins over their forearms. It was too far away to tell whether or not they were good-looking, but their bodies, in the dark red shirts and black waistcoats and trousers, were tempting enough.

Charlotte licked her lips. She was fantasising about any and every man she saw, these days, it seemed. Working in such a sexually charged atmosphere had turned her into a raging nymphomaniac – still, it was hardly surprising. She drifted off into pleasant reminiscences of her day while the streetlights popped on, one by one, in a golden haze before her eyes.

Walking up the final flight of stairs, she had smoothed her skirt down over her thighs, feeling the telltale bump of the stocking snaps beneath the silk-lined wool. Bryant’s phrase had stayed with her – ‘the suggestion of wantonness’ – and she hoped she had captured the effect. The skirt was a dark red tartan with golden thread in the pattern; the stockings were seamed but nude; the shoes were black high-heeled slingbacks; the shirt was white silk, two buttons undone at the top. Was it a mistake to wear knickers? If so, she would have to accept the consequences – for she was wearing her favourite red and black lingerie set from the expensive knicker shop down the street. The black and red meant that the bra was plainly visible through the gossamer-thin blouse – perhaps a bit more than a suggestion of wantonness there. But somehow she doubted her employers would mind. Leeway might not be given in the other direction, though, and she hadn’t bought a pair of tights since that fateful day in the forest.

Naturally, she was nervous – as anyone on their first day in a new job might be – but she was also excited. The lace stocking-tops rubbing together beneath the tight skirt might have been having an effect as well. Stopping to compose herself at the door, she realised that her nipples were pressing against the lacy confines of her bra. She took out her mirror compact, checked that her make-up was just that crucial bit overdone and tarty, and knocked on the door.

‘Enter.’ Both voices, dark and light, in shiver-inducing harmony.

She grasped the handle with both hands and turned it, standing in the doorway for a moment to assess how best to reach their twin desks, set at diagonal angles to each other, without tripping on the carpet fibres. The morning sunlight streamed in through the window, catching the imposing pair, who had stood to receive their new handmaiden, in its radiant beams.

‘Good morning, Charlotte.’ Collins was the first to speak. ‘Are you going to stand in the doorway all day?’

She took a hesitant step forward, but he shook his head and frowned, tutting slightly, making a downward motion with one hand.

‘Hands and knees, Charlotte,’ he instructed.

‘Oh!’ She covered her mouth with her hand, feeling dizzy and giggly. They really were going to continue with this dynamic, even in the office. How … interesting. Wondering if it would be possible to sustain total submission over the course of a working day, Charlotte dropped to her knees, thankful for the embracing plush of the carpet. She moved forward, unable to look her bosses in the eye, moving between chair legs and pot plants until she reached the desk interface, at the apex of which her new colleagues stood, side by side, smiling down at her if she had but known, though she imagined them to be stony-faced.

‘Up,’ said Bryant gently, and she perched up on her knees, back straight and shoulders back, breathing a little unevenly. She felt Bryant’s hand cup her chin and lift her head up so that she was looking up his long torso to the overhang of his head, right into his clear blue eyes.

‘Make-up is good,’ he said, but to Collins, not to her. ‘Nice shade of lipstick. What’s it called, Charlotte?’

‘Harlot.’

They chuckled in unison. ‘How perfectly appropriate,’ approved Collins. ‘Charlotte the harlot. It’s the very shade that always looks so good around a cock. Don’t you think?’

‘I certainly do,’ replied Bryant. ‘Good girl. You may stand, for the rest of the inspection.’

Charlotte rose to her feet, feeling shambling and awkward, her head hanging down over the flapping open collar of her blouse.

‘And such a stylish bra too,’ noted Collins with a vocal smirk.

‘I love a girl who doesn’t match her underwear with her clothes. Dark bras under white shirts …’

‘Visible panty lines are supposed to be such a fashion crime,’ mused Collins. ‘I never understood that. I once followed a girl the length of Oxford Street because she was wearing such an obvious pair of high-cut knickers under a very tight miniskirt. It defined her arse rather wonderfully.’

‘Oh, I wish I’d seen that.’

‘Perhaps we could get Charlotte to do it.’

‘Good idea.’

‘One more button, Charlotte. You look wanton, but today I think I’m in the mood for slutty. No, I’ll do it for you.’

Collins reached out to undo a third pearl button, leaving her cleavage exposed right down to the front-fastening clip of her bra.

‘Do you get many visitors to the office?’ asked Charlotte nervously.

Bryant put a finger to his lips while Collins shook his head, giving his colleague a tragi-comic look.

‘Oh dear, speaking out of turn,’ he said. ‘Charlotte, you did not give us time to outline the rules, my dear. But now you have forced our hand, let me make it clear to you that, when you wish to speak, you must first ask permission. “Please, sir, may I speak?” is the preferred form. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ whispered Charlotte.

‘Good. To answer your question, no, we do not receive visitors here very often. But those that we do will be perfectly aware of your position here, make no mistake. So there will be no need for rapid covering-up. Barring a police raid.’

She managed not to splutter, but gave him a very wide-eyed look instead.

‘What we do is not illegal,’ Collins explained. ‘We are not a brothel. But we do procure sexual services, although it would be very easily defended if any complaint was made. Bryant and I are lawyers. We know the law. But just be prepared – plenty of people do not. It is why we keep the service limited by word of mouth recommendation.’

‘Anybody who comes here will be a friend. We don’t bring clients to the office – we think it best that as few people as possible are aware of its location. So if we ask you to work naked, you may do so with the assurance that no shock or dismay will be caused by your nudity. At least, not to the visitors.’ Bryant paused to smile fiendishly at Collins, then at Charlotte, who was biting her lip. ‘That skirt is rather long. Perhaps you could lift it a little. I see it comes with a handy pin.’

Bryant reached out for the silver pin that adorned the corner of Charlotte’s kilt, unfastening it, while Charlotte rumpled the fabric diligently up her thighs, waiting for somebody to say ‘when’. Nobody did.

‘I like kilts, but I prefer the shorter, pleated version,’ commented Collins, watching the inexorable rise of the hem above the lacy ends of Charlotte’s stockings. ‘They always make me want to reach for my cane.’

Charlotte looked around her, as if she expected to find a cane somewhere within reach, but there was none that she could see.

‘I’ll introduce you to it sometime,’ Collins said, the words a tender promise rather than a threat. ‘Keep going then.’

The skirt had concertina’d almost to the crotch of Charlotte’s red and black knickers. Any higher and it would no longer qualify as a skirt, surely. No suggestion of wantonness any more – nothing less than a blatant broadcast. With megaphones.

Charlotte took a breath and hiked it ever upward. Even though the office was well heated, her thighs felt cold and her knickers struck her as ridiculously flimsy now that they were all that protected her modesty from the iron stares of her bosses.

‘You wore knickers.’ Bryant’s observation was on the obvious side, but hinted at another reading – that perhaps knickers were surplus to working requirements.

‘We have rules about knickers,’ said Collins. ‘You will find them on the rules we have prepared for you. They are rather complicated, so I won’t go into them just yet. The rules, that is. Not the knickers.’

Bryant laughed. Charlotte pressed her lips together, hoping that the wet spot developing beneath her was not spreading too visibly. The skirt was around her waist now, an inelegant bunch that showed off the high-cut briefs in all their silky boudoir glory. Bryant pierced the spare tyre of material with the safety pin, holding it precariously in position at one edge.

‘Hmm, it will have to do,’ said Collins. ‘We’ll buy you some suitable office wear. Perhaps after work, if you aren’t busy. Or sometime during the week. Would you like that?’

‘You’ll … buy me clothes?’

‘Yes. I think, in the circumstances, a clothing allowance is only fair. We can’t reasonably expect you to have a wardrobe as diversely whorish as we have in mind for you.’

‘Mmm, yes,’ fantasised Bryant. ‘Uniforms. Latex. Very short skirts. Very high boots. Scraps of slave-girl toga.’

‘Corsets,’ added Collins. ‘Special corsets, with special additions.’

‘I know a woman who makes those. Shall we book an appointment?’

‘I think we should. Or rather, Charlotte should. Remind her to call Miss Frost later.’

‘Well, I think you’ll do,’ said Bryant breezily. ‘We’ll keep you like that for today. Come and look at your workstation. All the documents you need can be found there.’

Thus had Charlotte been introduced to the place where she would pass her nine-to-fives in the least nine-to-fiveish manner imaginable for as long as the three of them should find each other’s working company agreeable.

She had spent the day at her new desk in the corner of the office, her bottom in its silken casing perched on an ergonomic swivel chair with a kind of nubbed rubber cushioning which felt altogether too sexy to be businesslike. It kept her mind focused on her lower regions, which she supposed was the intention, but it did rather distract from the spreadsheets, as did the constant sight of her bare thighs above the stocking tops every time her eyes made a downward sweep.

Collins and Bryant came and went, never both present at the same time, popping in for a few minutes here and there to make sure that she hadn’t had a software crash or a particularly bizarre email request, but most of the time she was alone, reading requests, tweaking the website, checking over the accounts and noting down ideas for planned fantasy scenarios.

At lunchtime, Bryant had brought her a paper bag of edibles from Prêt-a-Manger and asked her, quite politely and without any trace of demand, if she would mind sucking his cock when she had finished. She did not mind in the least, and rounded off a good lunch of crayfish and rocket sandwich, packaged grapes and a fruit-of-the-forest smoothie with a generous mouthful of spunk.

All in all, it had been an interesting day. She thought she had the measure of the job now and, as the Italian waiters beetled around below, she drifted off into possibilities for fulfilling her clients’ dreams – venues, fixtures and fittings, transport, suitable men for the jobs.

She came to with a jump when the office door clicked open, spinning around to see Collins, his tall, angular frame striking her anew with its imposing presence. Had it been Bryant, she might have caught her breath, relaxed her shoulders, smiled an ‘oh, it’s you!’ but it wasn’t. She remained, spine stiff, face frozen in an expression of mute supplication, awaiting his terrifying pleasure.

‘Charlotte,’ he said, his voice so velvet low she had to strain her ears to snag its words. ‘How was your day?’

‘It was very good, thank you, sir,’ she said deferentially, feeling as if she ought to curtsey. ‘Is it over? I’m not exactly sure when it’s over.’

Collins moved further into the room, switching on a tall lamp in the corner.

‘You will be told when you are no longer needed. Every day will be different. Some days will take you out of the office. Sometimes you will be needed in the evenings, sometimes in the middle of the night. But that was explained in the Rules, I think.’

‘Yes – I just wondered if there were normal office hours – when nothing extra was planned. But I know to wait for your permission to leave now. Thank you, sir.’

There was a loaded silence.

‘Do I have it, sir? Your permission to leave?’

‘Have I given it?’

‘No, sir.’ Blood rushed to every extremity of Charlotte’s body, lighting it up with mortification, anxiety and excitement.

‘I have come here to review your day’s work, Charlotte. This is going to be a weekly feature of your employment here – a performance review. I think in general it will be held first thing on Monday morning, but I wanted to familiarise you with the procedure, so tonight’s version is simply a taster.’

He opened a store cupboard and drew out a high stool, of the kind Charlotte had not seen since school science lessons, made of varnished wood with an oval seat and a strut halfway up the legs to act as a footrest. This he placed in front of his high desk before moving behind it to take up his seat.

‘Sit down, Charlotte.’ He nodded at the stool. ‘And put your skirt back up. Nobody gave you leave to unpin it.’

Cheeks ablaze, Charlotte rolled the kilt back up to waist level and re-fastened it before perching herself, as demurely as she knew how with her knickers and bra on show, on the stool.

‘Don’t cross your legs. Open them. And you needn’t fold your arms either. Keep your hands holding on to the edge of your seat please.’

Under Collins’s close scrutiny, Charlotte rearranged herself as instructed, her thighs wide and legs dangling from the edges of the seat, highly conscious of what an inelegant and lewd sight she must make.