The Accidental Call Girl (11 page)

‘I have powers . . . Now come on, more detail.’

‘It’s very dark and gloomy and there are torches. More chains and whips, and instruments of torture hanging from the walls. And people too, watching the show. I can’t see them properly. They’re in the shadows, but they’re all agog. Some of them might be masturbating.’

‘Agog, eh? I’m not surprised. It sounds like my birthday in there.’ He laughed softly, the sound of that just as sexy as his faux dictatorial voice. The way he switched from one persona to the other was breath-taking, and seamless. ‘And me, what about me in all this? What am I wearing?’

‘Er . . . it’s dark . . . it’s hard to see . . .’

‘Do you know, I think I might be wearing leather too. Skin-tight leather jeans and high boots, and a big belt. Nothing else, except maybe a studded collar?’

Lizzie exploded into laughter again, unable to help herself. John Smith was the most surprising man she’d ever met, both awe-inspiring and yet frequently hilarious.

‘And again . . . she laughs. You’re just asking for trouble, aren’t you, Bettie? Don’t you fancy the idea of me in leather trousers?’ She could hear that grin again, that sunny, beautiful grin of his. ‘Do you think I’d look like a dickhead?’

‘Well, it’s a bit of cliché, but you should be able to get away with leather, at a pinch. In fact . . . you look great!’

And he did. In her mind. The beautiful suit faded and she saw him clearly in the fetish gear, the black of it stunning against his golden beauty, the leather sleek over his thighs and arse, the collar round his throat a sigil of power. He didn’t look like a fool or a cliché. He looked wonderful.

‘Good answer . . . I think.’ He paused, and she thought she detected a rustle. Him getting comfortable, ready to bring himself off? ‘So, you’re strung up from the ceiling and I’m strutting around in my leather strides . . . What next?’

‘You whip me with a riding crop and it really, really hurts.’

‘Oh, my sweet Bettie, you do tell the best stories. I can just imagine it . . . You twisting on the chain, struggling and writhing, your gorgeous body jiggling about as you try to avoid the blows. Tears on your face. Fire across your bottom. Crimson nipples peeking out of the leather. You’re aroused and wet, and it starts to ooze down your thighs even while you’re moaning for mercy. Your arse is on fire but suddenly you’re begging and pleading for me to fuck you.’

He sounded breathy. He had to be pumping himself. He just had to be.

And his strictures forgotten, Lizzie was rubbing herself too, pounding her clit as she clutched her phone so tightly she thought she might snap it in half. Her bottom lifted from the bed, blindly pushing her crotch at her hand as much as that hand was pressing back down. Heels gouging at the bed sheets, she jerked her hips.

‘And I want to fuck you . . . but I want to hear you groan and cry a bit more first. So I crop you some more, criss-crossing the strokes, finding tender new spots. I whip your thighs, the outer curves of your bottom . . . the inner ones too. I catch you right across your delicious little arsehole and you scream.’

Biting down hard on her lip, so as not to actually scream, in the real world, Lizzie pressed down hard on her clitoris and the world went white with intense pleasure, an orgasm so ferocious it was almost brutal, laying waste to her as her sex pulsed like a heart.

She knew that John knew. She knew that he knew she knew. But he went on, pushing on, making the dream world all his own. ‘And while you’re still screaming, I let you down and then I fuck you on the floor, still in your chains, from behind. It’s hard-packed earth beneath us, and you’re on your knees. I have your pussy first, hard and fast. Your face is in the dirt as I thrust into you . . . but you’re loving it, despite the pain in your bum. In fact when I dig my nails into the soreness, you come like a train, milking me and grunting like an animal.’

If only.

Rising to pleasure again, Lizzie wanted to fling the phone away and howl and curse, her vagina clenching on the empty air where John should be. Keeping silent was a more perverse agony than having her bottom beaten raw.

‘While you’re still climaxing, I pull out . . . then I thrust into your arse instead. In deep. Right in. God, that’s gorgeous. So hot and tight. And when I rub your clit, you clench on me again, embracing me with your snug, luscious bottom . . . Oh, that feels so good . . . so good . . .’

Wriggling about, Lizzie finished herself, riding the last sweet ripples, fingertip wringing the last echoes of pleasure from her centre. Her chest was heaving, she was drenched in sweat. She felt like she’d been through a mangle, completely drained of sensation by the power of John’s profane yet beautiful words.

But now he was silent. Dead silent. Was he coming? Was his spunk shooting out of him, anointing the Waverley’s colourful chintz bedding?

Surely if he was climaxing, she’d at least hear heavy breathing?

‘Are you still there?’ she asked, aware that he’d certainly be able to hear her heavy breathing.

‘Of course I am. Where would you think I’d be?’ His voice was even, low, completely unruffled. And thoroughly annoying. He could control her with words, via a phone, but none of it seemed to have had an effect on him.

‘Did you . . . did you . . . did anything happen?’

‘Do you mean, did I come?’

‘Yes, what the hell else would I mean?’ He was so contrary, but somehow that made her hotter than ever rather than cooling her off him. She wished he was right there in bed, next to her, so she could pummel him, then jump astride him and ride his beautiful cock.

‘No, Bettie. I didn’t come. The object of the exercise was to make
you
come . . . Did you?’

She leapt up, searching for her shorts. She’d had enough of his controlling games for the moment. Dropping her phone she wriggled into her shorts and considered just hanging up on him. It was a stupid thing to do, and cutting off her nose to spite her face, but her emotions were suddenly in a whirl.

‘Yes, I did. And you really are the most perverse pervert, I’ve ever encountered,’ she growled into the speaker on retrieving the handset. ‘You needn’t think I’m paying
you
for all that, you know
. . .
Just because you like to play mind-games, it doesn’t mean you’re not taking up my valuable . . . and billable . . . time!’

‘I wouldn’t dream of short-changing you, Bettie, don’t worry.’ He paused, then named a sum for her recent services that made her gasp.

‘That’s ridiculous if you didn’t come!’

‘Indulge me, sweetheart. Sometimes the climax isn’t everything, you know?’

‘You’re a very weird man, Mr Smith.’ She couldn’t help but smile. It was hard to stay cross with him long. That heavenly smile of his could melt the heart . . . even when you couldn’t actually see it.

‘You don’t know the half of it, Bettie, but hopefully you’ll soon find out. Will you have lunch with me, then? Here at the Waverley?’

She wanted to. It sounded so lovely, almost like a date. She imagined sitting across a table from him, sharing good wine and food and conversation. He was so handsome that every woman in the restaurant would envy her. It didn’t matter that he was paying her for her company. They weren’t to know that. They’d just think she’d pulled the most fabulous man in the county. Or even the country . . . or beyond.

But, there was a ‘but’.

‘I’d love to, but I usually spend Sundays just chilling out with my house-mates. It’s sort of tradition, and . . . well . . . it’s especially important now. Brent, he’s one of them, he’s very depressed at the moment.’

Jesus God, why had she blurted that out? What escort had a male house-mate? Or maybe escorts did have male house-mates? How was she to know? And Brent, a sometime male escort himself, had a couple of female house-mates.

‘Well, why not bring them along?’ replied John instantly, apparently not turning a hair. ‘It doesn’t have to be an appointment, just a pleasant lunch, though I’ll still pay you for your time, naturally. Do they know what you do for a living?’

‘Um . . . yes. Shelley’s an office temp, but Brent’s an escort himself. Well, a part-time one, sometimes. We’re not involved or anything. Not now. We used to be an item, long ago. But now we’re just friends. We’re
all
just friends.’

Why, why, why was she telling him all this?

‘Ask them, then. If you won’t feel awkward, and you don’t think they’ll feel awkward. And I’ll just save this massive erection until our next “date”, instead.’

He was silently laughing again.

‘Oh God, are you still hard. I thought . . . well . . . that you probably weren’t, if you hadn’t come.’

‘Ah, Bettie, sometimes I like to prolong the anticipation. It makes the eventual pleasure all the sweeter and more intense.’

‘But don’t you mind? I mean . . . to be “wanting” like that?’ She didn’t have to imagine the sensation of frustration. She had it now, for him, and she’d only come moments ago.

‘Not in the slightest. I’m a grown-up; I can wait for my treats. Now, shall I book a table for four, and your friends can join us if they feel like it, and if they don’t it’ll just be us, OK?’

Still dubious, Lizzie agreed. She seriously doubted Brent would want to do lunch under these strange circumstances, but she’d ask. Shelley would probably be aching to accept, but would still decline because she was a doll and would never put the mockers on another woman’s action. John named a time, apparently not in the slightest doubt he could get a table, then said, ‘Ciao, beautiful Bettie, see you soon.’

Staring down at the phone in her hand, Lizzie puffed out her lips, vaguely nonplussed.

John Smith might be gorgeous, but he was the oddest man. She didn’t know what to make of him sometimes.

How on earth would a
real
escort handle him?

Why did she feel so nervous? She’d been to lunch with a man before. It was silly to get all of a flutter like this, even if she did like him more than she’d liked anyone in ages.

The trouble was, this wasn’t an ‘appointment’. They couldn’t have sex across the table, unless the Waverley’s risqué reputation was even more extreme than she’d been led to believe. She’d have to spend time actually
talking
to John. And that would involve even more elaborate twists and turns to her fabrication.

That was, unless she decided to come clean over the soup or hors d’oeuvres.

She’d have to play it by ear, and if the right moment occurred, grasp it. Preferably when John had drunk a glass or two of wine to mellow him. Selfish as it seemed, Lizzie was relieved that both Brent and Shelley had declined John’s invitation. Their presence would have created even more complications, and that was a fact. Brent, she was fairly sure, could be relied on to maintain her subterfuge, but Shelley, though meaning well, would probably have slipped up.

Even so, Lizzie still felt desperately worried about Brent. Time just didn’t seem to be doing its healing thing for her friend, and Brent had refused to even come out of his room when she’d tried to tempt him with John’s offer. Worse, judging from the sound of his voice, she had a feeling he’d been crying.

‘Look, I won’t go. He won’t mind,’ she’d said. ‘We can all go to the pub and have our usual lunch, and I’ll see him some other time.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Lizzie. I can take care of myself. You and Shelley don’t need to keep mothering me.’ Brent’s voice had been a growl. ‘Just fuck off and have lunch with your rich stud, will you?’

‘All right, I bloody well will!’

Lizzie sighed now, still worried despite knowing Shelley was at home and doing her best to whip up the jolly, laid-back Sunday mood. Brent did try to conquer his unhappiness, and mostly did a pretty good job of it, but she knew he still hurt badly, even though it was almost a year now since the loss of Steven, a man he’d been in love with. It had almost crushed him, and even though she and Shelley did the best they could, Lizzie knew their best efforts weren’t achieving much. But still they both tried, and much as she’d love to linger as long as she could in the company of her delicious ‘client’ John, she’d decided not to stay
too
long at the Waverley today. No matter how fabulous the sex was.

And at least if Brent wouldn’t come out of his room and talk to Shelley, Lizzie knew at least he still had Mulder for company. She’d heard him talking to their furry sweetheart, through the door, and she knew that the little feline’s purr was a sovereign remedy for the deepest of the blues.

As her taxi drew up in front of the Waverley’s handsome ivy-clad façade, Lizzie tried to orientate herself, and remember whether she’d seen a sign for the restaurant in the reception area when she’d last been here. It was barely twenty-four hours ago, yet still it seemed like a lifetime. Time seemed to be stretching and warping most strangely at the moment, and hours away from John Smith seemed like days, like weeks.

Where is it? Where is it?

Feeling ridiculously nervous, she cast her glance around the warmly welcoming lobby of the hotel. Her eyes skittered about and couldn’t seem to locate signs for the restaurant. She felt certain she’d been rumbled as an escort – or at least a faux one – last time she’d been here, and it had been all right. But it still seemed a bit dodgy to draw attention to herself too much.

Ah, too late!

‘Can I help you?’ said the smiling young woman on reception, a twinkly-eyed blonde whose mischievous expression was both appealing and disquieting.

Damn, she knows.

‘Yes, thanks. Could you point me in the direction of the restaurant. I’m having lunch with a friend.’

‘Of course, it’s over there.’ The blonde pointed to a large, clearly visible sign saying ‘Restaurant’, and Lizzie suppressed her self-directed sigh. ‘You’re Mr Smith’s guest, aren’t you? I believe he’s already in there, waiting for you at your table.
Bon appetit
!’

‘Thanks.’

The naughty glint in the receptionist’s eye seemed to suggest that she too found John Smith as toothsome as anything on the menu, but happily she didn’t seem to be passing judgement on the handsome guest’s appetite for working girls.