(no subject)
[Backstory: Early spring 1993]
"Why don't you stay for breakfast, my dear?" he asks, as he always asks, and her answer this forty-first time is the same as it was for the other forty (and that's a record with the agency, forty-one dates with this man who before her had never seen any girl more than twice):
"I can't," in a tone of plaintive regret. "My poor kitty, I have to feed her. She's probably starving." In truth, she's never owned a cat and never plans to, but it's both the perfect excuse (she's even used it on other clients) and exactly what he wants to hear.
"Couldn't you have one of your neighbors feed her?"; he asks (the same routine, every time, she could sleepwalk through one of these dates.) She pauses in her dressing, lingerie on and her blouse unbuttoned, hanging off her shoulders, and crosses the room to sit on his lap.
"I'm not meant to have pets in the flat," she whispers guiltily. "If they tell my landlady I could get in trouble."
"Oh, you are a naughty girl," he tells her, tapping her lightly on the nose.
"Terribly naughty," she agrees with a nod. "I don't know why you're so good to me. I don't deserve it." Here, instead of sticking to their usual script ('But you do deserve it, I only want what's best for you, and you deserve the best'), he improvises.
"Why don't I find you a new place to live? You could bring your kitty, and then you wouldn't be quite so naughty, breaking your landlady's rules all the time."; She makes her eyes very wide and round, surprised -- hardly difficult.
"Why would you do something like that for me?"
"It might help you be a better girl, don't you see? If you were nearer by, then I could correct you right away when you were naughty," he says, and squeezes her cheek, still red and aching from the previous night's activities. She winces. "Instead of saving it all up for big punishments."
"Oh, but you would get bored with me so quickly," she tells him, and now they're edging back into familiar territory. "I might be even more naughty, if punishments were so quickly over and forgotten, and you would go looking for a better behaved girl, who you didn't need to correct so very often." She wraps her arms around his neck and showers kisses on his bald head. "And then whatever would I do, when you left me? I would miss you so."
"Don't worry, my dear. It was only an idea." He smiles and taps her nose again. "Take care of your kitty, you naughty girl."
"Will I see you again?" she asks, a little plaintively, because he likes to think she looks forward to their dates as much as he does.
"Of course you will. You'll be a good girl until then?"
"I'll try," she whispers.
"That's my girl." He pats her arse again. "Go on." Unspoken is their awareness that his time is ticking down fast, and she gets up to finish dressing.
"Here," he tells her when she's ready to leave, and picks up an envelope from the dresser. "Buy yourself something nice." She doesn't count her tip, doesn't even open the envelope before she tucks it into the garment bag slung over her shoulder, and in her suit she could be a business traveler, arrived early or leaving late to take advantage of a weekend-stay airfare. From the feel of the packet he's tipped roughly the same as he always has, and she wonders, the way she does every time, what his wife thinks of him spending near sixty grand every two weeks on a whore -- a damned good, damned expensive, extremely popular whore, but a whore nonetheless. A whore who doesn't bother hailing a cab (though she could certainly afford to, right now, and not even notice the difference in the envelope she just pocketed) but instead descends into that great leveler of New York society, the subway. The subway, she feels, is where she does her best thinking right after a date.
She's seen his wife, on those occasions when propriety demanded that he take his lawfully wedded to this charity event or that social function, and she arrived on the arm of one or another of his younger, unmarried (and therefore less constrained by society's rules) associates. She's a sharp, hard woman, the wife, with the sort of bony angularity of body that only a woman with no responsibilities and a live-in personal-trainer-slash-dietician can achieve, and a face kept preternaturally smooth and taut by her near monthly visits to the best (most expensive) plastic surgeon in the country. A woman born to and brought up in unimaginable wealth, and that's actually her saving grace in Nicole's eyes, because were it not for the legal tangle of her money and his need for it, he would have long since been shut of the wife and pursuing Nicole, or some other poor girl, actively across the landscape, instead of constrained by the rules of the agency and the limits of their dates.
She wonders if he realizes just how much more she makes than what he pays her. Oh, not everyone is quite so generous as he when it comes to tips, and most of them only spring for six or eight instead of the full twelve hours, but still, it adds up rapidly. He's generous, true, but not that generous, and she's not about to take the sort of pay cut he's indirectly proposing as well as limit herself to only his (relatively well preserved, but still aging and liverish and crepey) flesh against her own.
Letting herself into her small and blessedly cat-free apartment, she heaves a sigh of relief, and immediately draws herself a bath. Her selling point on this apartment, the tub was, and even all the negative factors -- the tiny square footage, the exorbitant price, the awkward kitchen, the basement setting -- couldn't compete with the old-fashioned claw foot tub, big and wide and deep enough for her to soak submerged up to her neck. She tilts the jar of lavender bath salts over the tub and watches as the pale crystals slide into the roiling water, then folds up a clean towel and drops it in as a cushion for her poor, sore arse. He was really whaling on her last night, and she'll be more bruised than usual.
Thinking of this, and other things, she cuts the taps and tests the water -- perfect, steaming but not so hot she can't just slide in -- and reaches out the door to drag the phone from the dresser in and onto the bathmat. She strips, tossing her clothes through the doorway and onto the bed since they've nowhere else to go, and, picking up a clean washrag from the basket full of them, dips it in the water and scrubs at his dried and itchy-sticky cum on her back. It's one of his favorite 'punishments,' not letting her wash before she leaves, and the longer she waits the harder it is to get it off; she could soak it off, but it's a rule that nothing of her clients go in the tub with her, both literally and, as much as she can, metaphorically. Two washrags later, she's finally clean, and she immerses herself with another sigh, this one of bliss. Before she can quite drift off, she dangles her arm over the side of the tub to pick up the phone, and dials by feel.
"Star Lights Incorporated, what's your pleasure?" asks the new girl, and Nicole grimaces, remembering when she was the new girl and had to answer the phone the hours the secretary wasn't working.
"Hey Anna, it's Nik," she says. "Has my usual called for his next date yet?" He won't have, she thinks -- 72 hours from their last date is his rule -- but he's already changed the rules on her once today, and she wants to be sure.
"Which one, mister Ro--" Anna begins before Nicole can shush her and remind him of the rules. "Mister, um, mister 'naughty'? No, he hasn't"
"Could you put a note on my calendar? I'm not available for him." She make herself only erratically available for a while. If she's lucky, he'll take it in the spirit meant, and never suggest kept-womanhood again, no matter how obliquely. If she's not lucky...
Well, if she's not lucky, she'll miss his money, but that's about it.
"Is this a temporary thing, or..." Anna trails off, unwilling to complete the question. Does she fancy him, then, snatch a prime client out from under (ha!) the agency's star girl? She's welcome to keep him if she can; Nicole's earned every penny he's spent on her, earned it in bruises and welts and tears (some real, some faked) and the eye-popping headache that comes from being the perfect society lady along vaguely victorian lines for six hours, and then an insufferably stupid five-year-old punished for misbehavior the next six. She's fucking earned it calling him "Papa" as he spanks and paddles and canes her every second Saturday so she can't sit right until Monday and can't take a sensitive-stomached client until Thursday at the very earliest (though there's plenty of men who'll take a ready-bruised girl, poke and squeeze to hear her hiss in pain with hardly any effort on their part) -- earned it as he wheezes and humps and grinds against her and comes all over her, never in her (thank god!) but never in a goddamn rubber either.
If Anna thinks that's what she really wants, she's welcome to it.
"No, just this month. For now."
"Okay then." Anna is quiet for a moment. "It's on your calendar."
"Thanks, dear." Nicole drops the phone on the cradle without looking, and hears the click as it lands true.
"Why don't you stay for breakfast, my dear?" he asks, as he always asks, and her answer this forty-first time is the same as it was for the other forty (and that's a record with the agency, forty-one dates with this man who before her had never seen any girl more than twice):
"I can't," in a tone of plaintive regret. "My poor kitty, I have to feed her. She's probably starving." In truth, she's never owned a cat and never plans to, but it's both the perfect excuse (she's even used it on other clients) and exactly what he wants to hear.
"Couldn't you have one of your neighbors feed her?"; he asks (the same routine, every time, she could sleepwalk through one of these dates.) She pauses in her dressing, lingerie on and her blouse unbuttoned, hanging off her shoulders, and crosses the room to sit on his lap.
"I'm not meant to have pets in the flat," she whispers guiltily. "If they tell my landlady I could get in trouble."
"Oh, you are a naughty girl," he tells her, tapping her lightly on the nose.
"Terribly naughty," she agrees with a nod. "I don't know why you're so good to me. I don't deserve it." Here, instead of sticking to their usual script ('But you do deserve it, I only want what's best for you, and you deserve the best'), he improvises.
"Why don't I find you a new place to live? You could bring your kitty, and then you wouldn't be quite so naughty, breaking your landlady's rules all the time."; She makes her eyes very wide and round, surprised -- hardly difficult.
"Why would you do something like that for me?"
"It might help you be a better girl, don't you see? If you were nearer by, then I could correct you right away when you were naughty," he says, and squeezes her cheek, still red and aching from the previous night's activities. She winces. "Instead of saving it all up for big punishments."
"Oh, but you would get bored with me so quickly," she tells him, and now they're edging back into familiar territory. "I might be even more naughty, if punishments were so quickly over and forgotten, and you would go looking for a better behaved girl, who you didn't need to correct so very often." She wraps her arms around his neck and showers kisses on his bald head. "And then whatever would I do, when you left me? I would miss you so."
"Don't worry, my dear. It was only an idea." He smiles and taps her nose again. "Take care of your kitty, you naughty girl."
"Will I see you again?" she asks, a little plaintively, because he likes to think she looks forward to their dates as much as he does.
"Of course you will. You'll be a good girl until then?"
"I'll try," she whispers.
"That's my girl." He pats her arse again. "Go on." Unspoken is their awareness that his time is ticking down fast, and she gets up to finish dressing.
"Here," he tells her when she's ready to leave, and picks up an envelope from the dresser. "Buy yourself something nice." She doesn't count her tip, doesn't even open the envelope before she tucks it into the garment bag slung over her shoulder, and in her suit she could be a business traveler, arrived early or leaving late to take advantage of a weekend-stay airfare. From the feel of the packet he's tipped roughly the same as he always has, and she wonders, the way she does every time, what his wife thinks of him spending near sixty grand every two weeks on a whore -- a damned good, damned expensive, extremely popular whore, but a whore nonetheless. A whore who doesn't bother hailing a cab (though she could certainly afford to, right now, and not even notice the difference in the envelope she just pocketed) but instead descends into that great leveler of New York society, the subway. The subway, she feels, is where she does her best thinking right after a date.
She's seen his wife, on those occasions when propriety demanded that he take his lawfully wedded to this charity event or that social function, and she arrived on the arm of one or another of his younger, unmarried (and therefore less constrained by society's rules) associates. She's a sharp, hard woman, the wife, with the sort of bony angularity of body that only a woman with no responsibilities and a live-in personal-trainer-slash-dietician can achieve, and a face kept preternaturally smooth and taut by her near monthly visits to the best (most expensive) plastic surgeon in the country. A woman born to and brought up in unimaginable wealth, and that's actually her saving grace in Nicole's eyes, because were it not for the legal tangle of her money and his need for it, he would have long since been shut of the wife and pursuing Nicole, or some other poor girl, actively across the landscape, instead of constrained by the rules of the agency and the limits of their dates.
She wonders if he realizes just how much more she makes than what he pays her. Oh, not everyone is quite so generous as he when it comes to tips, and most of them only spring for six or eight instead of the full twelve hours, but still, it adds up rapidly. He's generous, true, but not that generous, and she's not about to take the sort of pay cut he's indirectly proposing as well as limit herself to only his (relatively well preserved, but still aging and liverish and crepey) flesh against her own.
Letting herself into her small and blessedly cat-free apartment, she heaves a sigh of relief, and immediately draws herself a bath. Her selling point on this apartment, the tub was, and even all the negative factors -- the tiny square footage, the exorbitant price, the awkward kitchen, the basement setting -- couldn't compete with the old-fashioned claw foot tub, big and wide and deep enough for her to soak submerged up to her neck. She tilts the jar of lavender bath salts over the tub and watches as the pale crystals slide into the roiling water, then folds up a clean towel and drops it in as a cushion for her poor, sore arse. He was really whaling on her last night, and she'll be more bruised than usual.
Thinking of this, and other things, she cuts the taps and tests the water -- perfect, steaming but not so hot she can't just slide in -- and reaches out the door to drag the phone from the dresser in and onto the bathmat. She strips, tossing her clothes through the doorway and onto the bed since they've nowhere else to go, and, picking up a clean washrag from the basket full of them, dips it in the water and scrubs at his dried and itchy-sticky cum on her back. It's one of his favorite 'punishments,' not letting her wash before she leaves, and the longer she waits the harder it is to get it off; she could soak it off, but it's a rule that nothing of her clients go in the tub with her, both literally and, as much as she can, metaphorically. Two washrags later, she's finally clean, and she immerses herself with another sigh, this one of bliss. Before she can quite drift off, she dangles her arm over the side of the tub to pick up the phone, and dials by feel.
"Star Lights Incorporated, what's your pleasure?" asks the new girl, and Nicole grimaces, remembering when she was the new girl and had to answer the phone the hours the secretary wasn't working.
"Hey Anna, it's Nik," she says. "Has my usual called for his next date yet?" He won't have, she thinks -- 72 hours from their last date is his rule -- but he's already changed the rules on her once today, and she wants to be sure.
"Which one, mister Ro--" Anna begins before Nicole can shush her and remind him of the rules. "Mister, um, mister 'naughty'? No, he hasn't"
"Could you put a note on my calendar? I'm not available for him." She make herself only erratically available for a while. If she's lucky, he'll take it in the spirit meant, and never suggest kept-womanhood again, no matter how obliquely. If she's not lucky...
Well, if she's not lucky, she'll miss his money, but that's about it.
"Is this a temporary thing, or..." Anna trails off, unwilling to complete the question. Does she fancy him, then, snatch a prime client out from under (ha!) the agency's star girl? She's welcome to keep him if she can; Nicole's earned every penny he's spent on her, earned it in bruises and welts and tears (some real, some faked) and the eye-popping headache that comes from being the perfect society lady along vaguely victorian lines for six hours, and then an insufferably stupid five-year-old punished for misbehavior the next six. She's fucking earned it calling him "Papa" as he spanks and paddles and canes her every second Saturday so she can't sit right until Monday and can't take a sensitive-stomached client until Thursday at the very earliest (though there's plenty of men who'll take a ready-bruised girl, poke and squeeze to hear her hiss in pain with hardly any effort on their part) -- earned it as he wheezes and humps and grinds against her and comes all over her, never in her (thank god!) but never in a goddamn rubber either.
If Anna thinks that's what she really wants, she's welcome to it.
"No, just this month. For now."
"Okay then." Anna is quiet for a moment. "It's on your calendar."
"Thanks, dear." Nicole drops the phone on the cradle without looking, and hears the click as it lands true.