This story is not new, but it was previous published and the copyright has reverted back to me at the end of the contract. I do hope you enjoy it.

One day, quite suddenly, you realize you are changing.

For me, it began in the middle of a cappuccino, sitting at my regular cafe, in the morning, just before the day became too hot. I sat silently, peaceably at the same table as a stranger. He was staring out over the courtyard, to where the gardener’s efforts had ceased and the busy street began.

He was middle-aged, balding, and somewhat overweight: a very plain man, a quiet man, thoroughly unremarkable. Some might even say he was ugly.

The more I looked, the more I saw. The eyes behind the steel-framed lenses were grey-blue, with a darker ring around the outside of the iris. The eyebrows were heavy, with flecks of silver amidst the dark brown. His hair was thinning at the sides, and threaded with the same silver strands. It was very neat, though. I could tell he was one of those men who went to the barber often; there was an almost freshly cut line where the back of his hair ended, well above his shirt collar. His nose was very average, neither small nor large. It was his lips that were startling: plumpish, cherubic. He had the mouth of a glutton, a consumer of things. The lips pursed.

“Thank God the rainy season’s over. I’d had enough of it.”

The sound of his voice kicked me out of my scrutiny and left me with a vaguely guilty feeling, as if I’d been indulging in something prohibited.

“You’ll be sorry for that remark by March. It’ll get stinking hot and you’ll dream of rain.”

“True.” He nodded his head, eyes still fixed on the distance.

I took a sip of coffee and resumed my guilty exploration. I had no idea why I felt so compelled to examine him, but he seemed conveniently oblivious to it.

He was wearing dark worsted trousers, and the jacket that completed his suit was neatly hung on the back of his chair. Highly polished black oxfords enclosed neat, small feet. Even with his legs crossed, his black socks reached high enough to cover his calves. A careful man. A man of habits, I thought.

Unexplainably, the crisp neatness of his white shirt disappointed me. The front was smooth and uncreased, and there were sharp, clean lines down each arm. Someone ironed his shirts. He was married or attached in some way. Well, of course he would be. After all, he had to be close to sixty, and living in Saigon, no white male ever stayed single for long

“Do you ever dream of the rain?”

The question startled me. It wasn’t a casual question at all. Not the kind you ask a stranger. And that is what we were. We worked in the same building, we nodded politely, affording each other recognition in the elevator, or outside, in the smoking area. We’d never talked before.

“I…” My immediate reaction was to brush the question off as a joke, but something stopped me. “Yes, sometimes I do. Do you?”

“Yes. Frequently.”

Still he hadn’t turned his head. He re-crossed his legs and laced his fingers together over the modest paunch of his belly. His hands were just like his feet–small and tidy. He wore no rings and his nails had recently been manicured, buffed to a high shine. The backs of his hands were browned from the sun and there was a light dusting of dark hair on the first joint of each finger, but no ring.

His lips pursed again. “Does it arouse you?”

That woke me up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Does it arouse you when you dream about the rain?” He turned his face slowly towards me wearing a completely impassive expression, as if he were still talking about the weather.

“N-no!” I said, gathering my glasses off the glass tabletop and stuffing them blindly into my handbag. I stood up and turned to go back inside the building.

“Liar.” I heard him say.

I didn’t respond.

Through the heavy glass doors of the office tower, I made my way across the marble-tiled lobby and pushed the button for the elevator. It was only in the safety of waiting that I realized that I hadn’t responded because he was right. I had lied. Something about the whole interchange had unsettled me. My heart was hammering.

Only when the steel doors whispered open and I stepped inside did I let out my breath, astonished by my overreaction. What in the world was wrong with me? It had just been one of those normal conversations that turned weird. They happened all the time. I usually just laughed and brushed them off. But this one had spooked me; he’d spooked me. And that was the moment I realized I’d changed.

* * *

I saw him again, a week later. I called the elevator to go down for a coffee and a breath of unconditioned air and, when the doors opened, he was there, alone. I hesitated before I stepped in next to him and gave him my usual nod, but this time it took an effort. As the car began to descend, I caught the smell him: soap, as if he’d just shaved, and something muskier beneath it.

“Coffee time?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

When the doors opened, I made an effort to get out quickly. I thought of walking around the corner to the coffee place on the street, but the day was hot already, and I had designs to check and a print-job to proof. The patio was bustling with people and I found the only empty table and sat down.

“All the tables are taken. Mind if I join you?” It was the voice I was dreading.

“It depends on what you’re going to talk about,” I said, glad to findi the assertiveness I had managed to misplace before.

He didn’t respond. He simply pulled out the chair opposite mine, shrugged off his neat, charcoal jacket, and hung it on the back of the chair. The waiter arrived.

“Two cappuccinos,” he said, and sat down.

His face held the same deadpan expression. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Not the weather.”

A small smile nicked the corner of his lips. “Not the weather, then.”

Our coffees came and, for a while, we sat in silence. My earlier compulsion to examine him returned, but I didn’t give in to it.

“What do you do here?”

“I’m a designer.”

“What do you design?”

“Pretty much everything. Brochures, fliers, corporate identities.”

“It sounds very dull.”

“It is.”

“Is that what you do all the time?”

“No rest for the wicked,” I murmured.

He fired neat, pointed questions at me. I answered pleasantly and sipped my coffee. I didn’t ask any in return, vaguely worried that any interest shown on my part might encourage him to veer onto less suitable subjects. Slowly, we lapsed back into silence.

I’d made a point of not looking at him at all, but just at the corner of my vision, I could see his hand on the table, next to a pack of cigarettes, resting lightly and possessively on a slim gold lighter with chased engraving. The tip of his index finger slid slowly back and forth over the tooled surface. The manicured nail shone and flashed in the sunlight.

“It’s alright not to answer a question, you know. But you shouldn’t answer it with a lie.”

There it was, I thought. I had known it was coming. It was a game for him. I smiled. “If you want people to tell you the truth, you should try keeping your questions appropriate.”

Even as I answered, I could feel myself beginning to tingle with an odd sort of fear. What had happened to my detachment? How could someone so insignificant, so blatantly unattractive, cause me to feel this way?

“I spend half my life being appropriate. It bores me,” he said, softly. “Doesn’t it bore you?”

“Sometimes. But I try not to offend complete strangers by asking intimate questions.”

“Why?”

I swivelled in my chair to face him. Behind his mask of calm there was an annoying hint of amusement. “Because it’s not polite, that’s why!”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to be impolite, would we?” he teased.

I couldn’t help myself. I grinned back at him. “No. We wouldn’t.”

“So, it would be an absolute faux pas to ask what you’re wearing under that skirt, would it?”

“It would,” I snapped. I knew that I had the right sort of mildly disapproving look on my face. It wasn’t easy to maintain it when, unexplainably, a small, insistent pulsing had begun between my legs.

“Then I guess I’ll have to save that question until we know each other better.”

I shook my head and gathered up my things to leave. “Yes, I guess so.”

As I walked back into the building, I could feel his eyes on me. It took every bit of willpower I had to stop myself from smoothing the back of my skirt, to make damn sure he knew exactly what I was wearing beneath it.

* * *

He came over to my table the very next morning.

“May I?”

“Sure.”

Again he took time to hang his jacket, this time a mid-grey one, before sitting down. And again, for a while, we sat quietly.

It was only when we did this that I was forced to admit to myself that I was glad to see him. More than glad, actually – excited. I had no explanation for this. This man was at least twenty-five years older than me. He didn’t look the least bit like anyone I’d ever been attracted to before. In fact, he was exactly the type of man who didn’t register on my radar at all. And yet, there I was, strangely excited.

He held the same chased lighter as he smoked, stroking it pensively with his finger. “It’s a strange little game we’re playing, isn’t it?’

“Is it?”

“Yes, it is. Not that I don’t like games, I do. But I’d like to play another.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

“I don’t actually have a name for it yet.” His face suddenly changed. All the levity bled away. “I have a proposition.”

I laughed nervously. Something was warring inside me and, I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. I started to get up, but his hand encircled my wrist before I could move away. “Just listen, then you can go.”

I looked down at his hand, mentally battling an unexplainable fight or flight reaction. It was the trespass on my physical space. It was just too real. “Okay, what it is?”

“I’d like to buy some of your time.”

Almost speechless. I jerked my arm to shake off his grip. “You what?”

“I’d like to purchase some of your time.”

He could have been offering to hire me as a designer, but I knew with a blazing certainty that was not what he meant. Perhaps it was the persistence of his grip, or something lying semi-dormant behind those steel-framed glasses. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew precisely what he wanted.

“I’m not a prostitute!” I said, far too loudly.

Around us, on the patio, other people’s conversations suddenly died. I bent down and hissed, “There are $20 hookers all over Saigon. I’m sure you already know half of them–so let go of my wrist before I scream.”

His fingers eased their grip, and he nodded. “Fair enough. But give it some thought. If you change your mind, I’ll be in the bar of the Caravelle at eight PM.”

My face was burning and my heart was pounding by the time I reached the elevators. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doubling over in a fit of giggles and why I wasn’t taking this for the comedy it so clearly was. My own puzzling reactions added immeasurably to my discomfort. The man was creepy and predatory and, somehow, very manipulative. He had managed, somehow, to frighten me and attract me at the same time.

* * *

I finished work at four, and took a taxi home through the insanity of the rush hour. The house was cool and dark and Fred, my cat, came to meet me at the door.

From five until six, I churned through the day’s personal emails and thought about what to eat for dinner. I leafed through the order-in menus feeling uninspired and not very hungry. There was a horrible, restless feeling in the pit of my stomach. Instead of dinner, I opted for a bowl of fruit and sat down to watch the news.

Whatever tragedies had transpired in the world that day, I remained ignorant of them. Unable to concentrate enough to watch, I got up and paced, sat down again, stood up. I fought an inexplicable urge to go on a five-mile run.

Finally, bored with my own restlessness, I undressed and took a shower. I hoped that a nice long, cool soak would settle me down. But as I stood beneath the spray and closed my eyes, I understood what was making me restless; it was just past seven-thirty.

All day, somewhere in my subconscious, I’d kept the time he’d told me, toying with it in my head like a Chinese puzzle. The realization shocked me; I’d been considering the possibility of keeping the appointment.

* * *

I checked my face in the mirror of the hotel elevator. My lipstick was too bright; my dark hair, pulled up in a twist, seemed over-groomed. My black cocktail dress was too tight, too sleek, my heels too high. The doors slid open at the top floor, offering a view of the bar and the city’s silhouetted, twinkling skyline beyond. For one adamantine moment, I imagined what it would be like to let the doors slide shut again, and take a taxi home. I would be the same; nothing would have happened; I would not have changed.

It was my feet that took me out across the expanse of terracotta tiles, and into the bar. Above the soft, insipid music, I heard my heels click against the ceramic as I walked towards one of the high, chrome stools and sat down.

I’d been there countless times before with colleagues and girlfriends on raucous nights out. We’d sat at the low tables, making bitchy comments about the well-turned-out working girls that plied their trade with visiting westerners. Now the place felt different. The lights were too bright, the bar top was too hard, the music too low. It seemed like everyone else in the bar was sleepwalking. I was sure the shooter of vodka I ordered would calm me down, but it didn’t even register. I stared past the bar and terrace, at the sprawling, garishly lit city.

The sound of someone moving the bar stool next to mine made me jump. A slender Vietnamese woman dressed in a sheath-like silk dress wriggled into the seat. She spoke to the bartender in Vietnamese and then looked me up and down without bothering to hide her contempt.

“You Russia?”

“Sorry?”

“You from Russia?”

“No,” I said, confused just for a moment. Why Russian? Then it hit me, of course The only white prostitutes working in Saigon were Russians, or from the ex-satellites.

“No, I’m not Russian. I’m not…”

A hand slid up the middle of my bare back and settled possessively around my neck. “May I?”

I looked over my shoulder. It was him. “Sure,” I said, a wave of relief washed over me.

He sat on the stool to my left and ordered a scotch. It wasn’t until it had arrived and he’d had a sip that he spoke.

“I must say I’m surprised. Delighted, but surprised.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d accept my offer.”

“Neither was I.”

He took the familiar gold lighter and a matching case from his pocket and offered me a cigarette. I took one – although it had been years since I’d quit – and watched his perfectly steady hand as he lit my cigarette.

The smoke felt wrong going down into my lungs. Like everything else: the dress, the place, the music, the lighting, the man. It all felt terribly, terribly wrong. Underneath all the wrongness, a little seed of burning defiance flared brighter. The seed that had frightened me, that had made me restless, that had brought me here. After a lifetime of doing the right thing, I was about to do something really, truly wrong.

“You understand that the offer is somewhat unorthodox?”

“Yes. I rather thought it would be.”

He inhaled and blew a thin stream of smoke across the bar. “Good, good. I want to make sure you understand the nature of the thing.”

The nature of the thing, I repeated to myself. A cloud of dizzy insects swarmed up from the pit of my stomach. “I think I do.”

“I’d like to buy your time for the night. If the night is satisfactory, I’d like to prolong the arrangement: two nights a week, for an indefinite period of time.”

“What if…”

“I am willing to pay a five hundred per night, if that is acceptable to you.”

My jaw dropped. I shook my head in disbelief.

“I’d be willing to go as high as a thousand, at a push.”

Still I couldn’t find any words. Memories of broke boyfriends and altruistic, romantic promises flitted through my head. Fumbling, insecure, sweet-hearted boys who had thought that buying me a beer was magnanimous. It had never occurred to me to even wonder what my flesh might be worth. But I billed out at $45 an hour on design work.

I nodded, still stunned. “Ah… no. Five hundred is fine.”

“Excellent, then.” Beneath the bar, I felt his hand settle on my thigh and give it a squeeze. “Of course, the agreement can be nullified by either party, at any time, should our arrangement prove unworkable.” His fingers traced small circles over the nylon of my stocking. I sat in silence for a moment, feeling his fingertips edge incrementally up my thigh to where my stocking ended.

“I understand,” I muttered, distractedly.

“Excellent.” He cocked his head, a smile playing at the edges of his mouth.

Behind the metal frames, I watched the dark parts of his iris open out. He didn’t blink or relieve the tension in any way. I swallowed hard against a dry throat. I could smell him again: soap and something darker. Warm fingers played over naked skin beneath the hem of my dress, edging upwards until I felt one brush the inside leg of my panties.

“I guess I have the answer to my second question.”

I thought for a moment, then laughed. “I think you had the answer the day you asked it.”

“There’s a world of difference between guessing and knowing.”

Below, a single fingertip edged its way between my thighs. That’s when I noticed I was wet.

“Shall we go? I have a room downstairs,” he said, withdrawing his hand. He signed the bill and stood up. Surreptitiously, I tried to catch a glimpse of the name he’d signed, but it was just a scrawl.

“That’s one of the aspects of the agreement I’d like to clarify,” he said, helping me down from the stool.

“What’s that?”

“No names. No names ever.”

He led me towards the exit, his hand, formal and polite, on the small of my back, like a man leading a woman onto a dance floor.

The better part of my nature was hovering just above us, watching a middle-aged man and an anonymous prostitute leaving a bar.

I left her behind as I stepped into the elevator.

* * *

The suite was on the 14th floor and looked out towards the river. There were books on tables and other items that suggested he hadn’t hired the room for the night. He lived there.

“Would you like another drink?”

I shook my head, suddenly feeling terribly nervous again. I wasn’t at all sure how this was supposed to go. My only experience with sex in hotel rooms had been stumbling into one, in the throws of passion, with someone I fancied. This was cold and remote and emotionless, and if I was attracted to this man, I couldn’t even figure out why.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just…”

“Nervous?”

“Yes.”

“I understand. You’ve never done anything like this before?”

The fear had well and truly returned. I could feel my heart thumping against my ribcage. “No. No, I haven’t”

He nodded sympathetically. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what to do.”

I took a deep breath. “What should I do?”

“Take off your panties and step out onto the balcony.”

I could feel him watch me as I bent forward, reached up under my dress, and fumbled to reach the sides of my panties. I had to hike the hem of the skirt up quite a ways to get at them. The rough silk linen of my dress rustled, unnaturally loud in the quiet room. I slid them down, over my stockings, and stepped out of them.

“Okay,” I whispered. “And…”

“Balcony.”

“Right.”

But I might as well have said ‘check’. I felt like an automaton, as if my feelings were there, at a distance, somewhere near the corner of the sedate, beige room. I turned, pulling the sliding door open, and stepped out onto the balcony.

The air held no freshness. The heat of the day was still rising up off the pavement, bleeding into the night. I stood at the railing and gripped it with both hands, hard, as if it was my nerve I was holding on to. Beneath me, the chaos of the traffic was sending up a cacophony of noise, but the click of his footsteps behind me made me glance over my shoulder.

“Don’t turn around.”

“Alright.” My fingertips lost their warmth against the metal of the railing, the darkness of the city pulled at me hypnotically.

I flinched as his hands flattened on the sides of my dress, pushing it up and exposing my legs.

“S-sh…Easy.”

Standing behind me, the heat of his body pressed into me. He reached around, his hands circling my bare thighs and pulling them apart. I moved for him, widening my stance.

“Good girl.”

The fingers of each hand made their parallel ways up my legs and met at my crotch, bunching up the skirt of my dress as they went. Then, one curved around, cupping my bare, waxed pussy as the other reached up and covered my clothed breast. He squeezed softly at first.

The fingers of his other hand grazed over my pussy lips, and I felt him press, slipping a finger between them. It slid easily between the wet, swollen folds.

“Oh, my…I wasn’t expecting that at all,” he growled into my ear.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I not clear on…” This wasn’t how men treated prostitutes, I was sure of it. I was equally sure this wasn’t how prostitutes behaved.

“S-sh. Silly girl. What are you sorry for?”

His fingers slid through my cleft, grazing my clit as they went. Wetness, displaced by his touch, oozed and trickled down the inside of my thigh. With each stroke, the fingertips dipped shallowly into my hole, teasing but not penetrating. I moaned and spread my legs wider in response.

“You want it, don’t you?” The hand at my breast found my nipple beneath the fabric and pinched. “You want my cock…say it.”

“I want it.”

“Good girl,” he whispered. “You’ll get it. When you need it.”

Two fingers eased inside, teasing the edge of my opening, making my legs shudder with tension. I arched, pushing my hips back, pressing my ass against him. He was hard; I could feel his cock tenting his trousers, pressing between the globes of my ass. I moved my hips to feel his erection slide smoothly against the silk of my dress.

“That’s it. Show me how much you need it.” His grip on my nipple was cruel, twisting it roughly through the dress. “Mmm… pull your skirt up and show me.”

I released my hold on the railings and tugged the hem of my dress up over my hips. The warm air felt cool against my skin, cold where the wetness had trailed down my legs.

He let go of my nipple and removed his hand from my crotch. I whimpered.

“Such a greedy little whore,” he muttered. I heard him unbuckle his belt and unzip himself. I heard the crinkle of packaging and his grunt as he put the condom on. He stepped up behind me again, pushing his sheathed cock between my thighs. He teased the head of it through my cleft.

“Is this what you want?” One hand slipped down the front of my dress and closed over my breast, cupping it, kneading it roughly, then withdrawing it. “Is this what you need?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Why? What kind of a question was that? I screamed in my head.

“I… I don’t know,” I stuttered, bending forward, pushing my ass back at him.

“Yes you do,” he hissed, teasing his cock slowly back and forth through my slit. He slid a hand possessively over my ass cheek. “You’ve got the young professional thing all sewn up, don’t you?”
I just moaned, feeling his sheathed cock throb and thicken as it stroked me.

“But all that is just a facade,” he whispered. He angled the head of his cock, so it was just poised to enter me. “Isn’t it?”

I rolled my hips to try and push him in, but he teased me, stepping back a little.

“Yes,” I would have agreed to almost anything.

He dragged the shaft of his cock against my cleft again and nudged his head at my opening. “You want it because you’re a slut, aren’t you?”

The hand that had been caressing my ass cheek came down on my hip with an audible slap.

“Yes,” I whimpered.

“M-mm. Just a sweet little whore.”

He shoved his cock in hard. The violence and the wonderful relief of it made me gasp. Almost as soon as he had sunk himself fully, I closed my eyes and started coming.

“Mm-m… Good girl. That’s right.” He panted out the words as he began to fuck me, one hand on my hip, and the other on my belly. Holding me steady, he stroked through my spasming cunt, embedding himself over and over.

Even as my first orgasm was ebbing, I felt the stirrings of a second begin. My grip on the railing was so fierce, my nails bit and split against the metal. I bent forward, lower, angling my hips up to take more of him, grinding backwards to meet him for every stroke.

“That’s it. Fuck you’re so sweet and tight.”

As the second flood of spasms hit me, I opened my eyes. The sight of the dark city, its chaos and gaudiness rose up and overwhelmed me, until I could no longer separate it from the sensation of his cock, thrusting into me. It all became one. I groaned and whimpered as he fucked.

Then I heard him make a strange noise, like a sob. It was the only time I’d heard him lose his reserve. He wrapped his arm around my waist and held me still on his cock as he bucked.

I felt him shudder hard. He grunted and buried his face against my back, sinking himself deep, up against my cervix. Even through the latex, I felt him explode, felt three distinct pulses as he came, his whole body rigid against mine.

“Sweet little slut,” he moaned.

It was the words. Like after years of wandering the world nameless, someone had finally given me a name. My knees gave way. If it hadn’t been for the balcony railings, I would have collapsed.

He stepped away, from me, and the sounds of the traffic – unnaturally absent from my consciousness – returned, as if someone had switched on some speakers. I stood up, still gripping the railing, shell-shocked.

I heard him grunt as he removed the condom and zipped his pants back up.

My legs shook precariously as I pulled my dress back down over my hips. When I turned to speak to him, he was already inside the suite. Unsteadily, I followed him in.

“Thank you,” he said, without meeting my eye. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, counted five crisp hundred-dollar bills and placed them on the coffee table.

“You… you don’t want me to spend the night?” I tried not to let the bewilderment show on my face. I’d just had sex with this man, and he behaved as if I’d cleaned his windows.

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

“So…I guess that the ‘arrangement’ is unworkable?”

Then he looked up, his face had regained the same impassive expression I had always seen him wear. He smiled cordially and shook his head.

“No, the arrangement is very workable. Is it workable for you?”

For a moment I stood there, dumb-struck. I breathed deeply and smoothed a loose strand of hair off my face.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“Then I’ll see you on Thursday at eight? Is that good for you?”

I walked toward the door, my body felt strangely numb. “Thursday, eight, sure.”

The knob of the door was dead and cold in my hand. Prostitutes didn’t feel this way, I thought. If I wanted to keep playing this game, I’d better get used to it. “Well… bye.”

I stepped into the hotel hallway and headed for the elevator. Before I reached it, I heard his door open. I turned and he stepped into the corridor.

“You forgot something.” He was walking towards me, holding out the crisp sheaf of five bills. “Your money.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks,” I muttered, clumsily stuffing the cash into my clutch purse. My fingers felt cramped and stiff.

He gave me a quizzical look. It lasted only a moment, and then it was gone. “Good night. See you Thursday.”

I turned and walked the rest of the way to the elevator. Only then did I realize I’d left my panties on his floor.

* * *

It’s a nasty word. Whore.

Feminist that I was, I knew all about the psychology of women who craved psychological abuse, or at least I thought I did. They had low self-esteem and poor self-images. They were often abused as children or grew up in unsupportive environments. I wasn’t that woman.

I also knew about the sociological fallout of the sex trade, especially in Southeast Asia. All the porn in the world couldn’t make women enjoy being prostitutes. It was about economic survival, pure and simple. I was sure about that. Absolutely.

And, if all that wasn’t enough, 50,000 dead feminists had collectively rolled over in their graves: as I came on the cock of a sexist, elitist middle-aged suit while he called me a slut, as I walked meekly out of his hotel room, as I stuffed his money into my purse.

I played the tape over and over in my mind; I thought of all the things I should have said, all the ways I should have acted. There were a lot of reasons not to keep the Thursday appointment.

I spent the whole of Wednesday convinced I wouldn’t go. It was all decided, all settled until Thursday afternoon, when I got home from work and felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin.

I couldn’t relax or concentrate on anything; I couldn’t eat. Even Fred the cat knew enough to stay out of my way.

Showered and changed, I was out of the house by seven-thirty. I had to deliberately slow my pace so as not to reach the hotel too early, and still I did. I considered waiting in the reception area but, irrationally, I imagined that everyone walking through the hotel lobby knew exactly what I was doing there.

The elevator ride to the 14th floor was just as disconcerting. It was crowded with people headed for the rooftop bar, and the thought of going up there again made me cringe.

Outside his door, I stopped and looked at my watch. I was still ten minutes early. Instinct warned me that it would spoil the game for him if I seemed too eager. He wanted it to be a nice, neat and business-like–just like the way he dressed. The hallway was deserted, so I sat on the carpeted floor with my back to the wall and settled down to wait the ten minutes.

At five to eight, I heard the elevator doors open. I stood up quickly and pretended to search for a key card in my purse, but I needn’t have bothered with the charade; it was him.

“Have you been here long?”

“No. Not at all.”

“I apologize if I’ve kept you waiting.” He swiped the lock and held the door open for me. “Please, come in.”

It struck me as strange that he could be so friendly and polite until the sex happened, then he changed utterly, but there was something about the immaculately balanced duality that was both obscene and hypnotic.

The room was exactly as it had been before, a kind of sitting room affair with a pair of sofas, a desk with a laptop on it, a built-in entertainment cupboard with a wide-screen television in the middle, all done in endless shades of beige. The balcony door was shut, but I could hear the faint hum of traffic from the street below.

“Would you like a drink?”

It occurred to me that this was just another politeness, that I should refuse it and get down to business.

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

“Do you mind if I have one?” he asked, shrugging off his suit jacket and laying it carefully across the back of one of the sofas. “It’s been a long day.”

“Please, go ahead.”

He turned towards the bar fridge and then stopped, looking back at me. “Are you sure? I’ve got vodka. That’s what you had the other night, wasn’t it?”

“Okay, sure, if it’s no trouble.”

He looked at me oddly again, and began to fix the drinks. The ice cubes clinked as he dropped then into the glasses. He brought the drinks over to where I stood and held one out for me.

“Thanks.”

“Have a seat.”

I nodded and sat down on one of the sofas. It felt hard and recently manufactured, and had that faintly acrid smell of new upholstery. He took a seat opposite me and sipped his drink.

For a moment, the glass in his hand made me think of the old subliminal message research that documented images of skulls and naked women in the ice cubes of alcohol print advertising.

“I’m very pleased you decided to continue our arrangement.” His voice was pleasantly casual.

“I hadn’t really intended to.”

“That’s understandable. New paradigms are not easy to adjust to.”

I laughed, unable to help myself. “A ‘new paradigm’. That’s an interesting way to put it.”

He smiled then, and shrugged. “A new mode of being, then.”

I gave another chuckle. “Yes, a ‘new mode of being’.”

“That’s a very nice outfit you’re wearing. What’s under the skirt?”

My laughter evaporated. I cleared my throat. This time, when I’d dressed, I’d done so knowingly. I’d chosen a top with no buttons; it was a silk halter, and wrapped around to tie at the back. The skirt was the same, a like a sarong.

“There’s nothing under the skirt.”

He sipped his drink and sat forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “And why is that?”

“I thought…” I shook my head, and started again. “I thought there wasn’t any point in leaving another pair of panties here.”

“So practical, so pragmatic. But a lie, all the same.”

I felt my face colour, the tendrils of heat climbed up my neck and onto my cheeks. “You tell me, then.”

“You wanted to get fucked. You wanted cock as soon as you could get it.”

Immediately, I was aware of the change of tone. It was like a door opening, or a light going out. It was harsh and nasty, and very erotic.

“Show me. Spread your legs and show me.”

Leaning back into the sofa, I inched my thighs apart until I was sure he had a good view.

His plump lips pursed, his pupils dilated behind his glasses. “Wider,” he whispered.

There was something very specific about the way he consumed what he saw that sent a surge of electricity down my spine. He didn’t just look. Somehow, his eyes were mouths: they tasted, they ate, they chewed, they swallowed.

I spread my legs wider, and pulled the sides of my skirt away. Everything I was showing him started to heat up and burn: the inside of my thighs, my cunt, even the skin of my chest and my face.

“Touch yourself. You want to. I know you do.”

At first, he was wrong – I didn’t want to – I wanted him to touch me. But as I started, a hand down between my legs, fingers slipping easily between the folds of my labia, his desire infected me. After all, I thought as I began to masturbate, it was his dime.

“Good girl,” he murmured. I saw him take another sip of his drink, saw him take the ice into his mouth and roll it around.

He stood up and walked towards me, and the ice in his mouth crunched as he bit it. The sound, dangerous, destructive, made me pause.

“Don’t stop,” he said, settling down on the carpet in front of me, between my legs. “Show me.”

And so I resumed my attentions all the more diligently, his close scrutiny pushed me on.

“You’re wet, so wet. I can smell it.” He took another sip, and another ice cube into his mouth.

“Yes.” My body twitched, as it always does when I masturbate.

He took hold of my thighs and pulled my hips to the edge of the seat, until his face was only inches from my cunt. Suddenly, he pushed my fingers aside and pressed his mouth to my mound. The cold made me squeal and arch my hips. As I did, he used his tongue to push the ice cube from his mouth into me.

The shock of the temperature change made my internal muscles spasm shut around it. Instinctively, I wanted to push it out, even as I felt it melting and trickling out of me.

“Don’t.”

I froze, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Still the ice burned inside. He took another cube from the glass, this time with his fingers, and pushed it into my opening. Then another.

“God!”

“Don’t,” he repeated.

I opened my eyes to look at him. He was holding the glass beneath me, catching the drops of melted ice. I made a wordless sound, fighting my desire to expel with all my might. It was a strange, awful sensation. Not pain, perhaps, but a deep, throbbing burn.

He lowered his mouth onto my pussy again, covering the whole of my mound. The heat of his mouth was exquisite. He snaked the flat surface of his tongue between my lips and pressed it hard against my clit.

“Oh, please… I’m going to come. I can’t hold it if I come.”

“Then don’t come,” he said, his words muffled. “Not until it’s melted.”

I whined, straining to control muscles that fluttered and spasmed autonomously. His tongue began wicked little flicks over my clit, interspersed with long, slow laps. My thigh muscles began to twitch, shuddering in sympathy with my cunt. Through my panting, I could hear the soft, liquid sound of water trickling into the glass beneath me.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Oh, please!” I whimpered.

He lifted his head. “Please what?”

“I need to come.”

“Not yet.”

“I can’t! I can’t hold it any longer.”

He put the glass down on the coffee table; it clanked dully, glass against glass. Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out a condom. Carefully, slowly, he undid his belt, the button on his pants, and unzipped himself. And just as carefully, he eased his fully erect cock out of a pristine white pair of boxers, and slid the condom down its length.

The minute I saw it, I knew just how deliciously hot it would feel inside me. How beautifully it would soothe the cold burn.

Picking up the glass, he took a single sip, and then knocked back the rest of the diluted amber liquid in one go: the scotch, the ice water and me. He swallowed me. Then he let the glass drop to the floor and, in one fluid movement, pushed his cock deep into my cunt. I yelped. The heat of him was almost too much to bear after the ice.

“Like it?”

“Oh, yes. Fuck, yes.”

“Good girl. Ride it.”

He held himself still, his hands under my hips, so that I could roll them and push myself onto him. There was something deliciously exposed about it. He looked down at me, watching me greedily engulfing him, over and over again.

Slowly his enigmatic expression changed, as if with each stroke, I was pushing that reserve, that barrier, that hollowness away. A strange way to get to know someone, but that’s what was happening.

He swallowed hard. I could tell he had to work to hold himself still. “Feels good?”

I smiled. “It feels fucking excellent.”

“You’re such a whore,” he whispered, smiling down at me as I fucked myself on him.

“I know,” I panted.

“You love it.”

“Yes.”

“What a sweet, fucking whore. Can’t get enough, can you?” His voice was breaking now, and a distracted smile was playing on his lips. He began to thrust, and was guiding me onto him, his hands on my hips.

“Never. N-neither can you.” I could feel the electric swell of my orgasm beginning; a hydra at the base of my spine was opening its tendrils, climbing, spreading up the synapses.

I arched my hips high, spreading my legs even wider, and watched, hypnotized as his cock disappeared into me, over and over.

He grabbed my legs and pushed them up, until I was splayed open for him. “You like it, being my whore, don’t you?”

I could hardly speak, it felt so good. “I like it. Being your whore.”

The instant I said it, I started to come. He grunted and thrust hard, deep, not even bothering to withdraw before reburying himself. He was letting my spasms do the work, squeezing and milking him.

A small smile spread across his face, he began to fuck differently, smoothly, and I knew he was coming. Fingers digging hard into my thighs, he shuddered and held himself buried in me, jerking as he orgasmed.

“Sweet God,” he grunted. “You’re nothing but cunt.”

As the contractions eased, those words rang in my ears. He crumpled forward, panting, with his face on my chest.

“Sometimes.”

I whispered it, because it was true. Sometimes, for all the education, the centuries of civilization, the manners and the roles we all learn to play to well, the sophistication and complication of the whole of human society–sometimes, I was nothing but cunt. And it felt simple and good and primal and, most of all, it felt true to admit it.

* * *

I didn’t offer to stay; I knew he didn’t want me to. Like the previous time, he took the five pristine hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and put them on the table, right next to the glass that had once contained the essence of me, along with some scotch and water.

This time, I didn’t forget the money. I knew it would bother him if I did. I figured there was something about the money that made it possible for him to play this game. We all had our locks and keys. I tucked the bills in my purse and smoothed my crumpled, damp skirt.

“Next Tuesday, then?” Everything, including his reserve, was back in place.

“Sure. Same time?”

“Yes. That would be fine.”

“Goodnight, then.”

He held the door open for me, and wished me a good night in return as I walked out.

This entry was posted on March 5, 2011 at 9:28 am and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.