The Accidental Call Girl (9 page)

But now he wanted to see the back of her. Perfectly understandable. Time to make a graceful exit, as the best escorts always did.

‘Now that’s a very sweet offer too, but it’s time I was on my way. I’ll just slip into the bathroom, if I may?’ She shuffled off the bed, surprised that her belaboured bottom was already feeling far less sore. Now, where were those knickers?

‘Of course . . . and you’ll be needing these.’ John handed her the garment in question. How the devil had he retrieved them without her noticing it? Was he a magician of some kind, as well as a fabulous lay?

In the bathroom, she tried to analyse the expression she’d seen on his face. Had he been relieved she was ready to leave? Or disappointed that he had to send her away? He’d become inscrutable, even with his angelic smile.

Men! she thought, perched on the loo.

A few moments later, she was surprised when he offered her another envelope.

‘Just a little something. For turfing you out like this.’

‘But you’ve already paid me very handsomely, John.’ She tried to push the money back into his hand, but he folded both of his around it, and her fingers.

‘No, take it. I’d feel better.’ His mouth quirked and he looked almost embarrassed. ‘I do have to work . . . but . . .’ His sigh wound like a breath around her heart. ‘I have this quirk. About sleeping . . . I just can’t go to sleep with a woman, escort or otherwise. I couldn’t fall asleep with
anyone
in the room, not just women.’

Lizzie just stared at him. What on earth had happened to John Smith? For just a second his beautiful apologetic mask of amiableness had slipped and the starkest, darkest expression had crossed his face. It’d been a fleeting look of horror and now she
really
wanted to stay, to understand, and more than that, to comfort . . . but she could tell that was the last thing he wanted.

‘I’m sure I could get a shrink to sort me out. Perhaps a hypnotist could talk me out of it, some charlatan or other.’ He shrugged, as if dismissing the odd blip in his mood, then gave her a smile that almost convinced her she’d imagined it. ‘But I’m used to it now. It’s a foible, a part of my psyche, and I suppose I’m just waiting for the day when Princess Charming kisses me better.’

Lizzie darted forward, intending to kiss his lips, but veering at the last moment to his cheek. She was nobody’s Princess Charming, especially not in her current deceptive role.

But a few moments later, as she walked, alone, along the corridor of the Waverley, she dearly wished that, for John, she might have been.

Sunday morning. Lazy Sunday morning. Usually one of the best times of the week, with no work to do other than a bit of sewing for herself, and with Sunday lunch and often a trip to the pub to look forward to. Not a care in the world or, more accurately, a tacit agreement, in the house, not to think about cares. With plenty of sport and old films on the telly, Brent was always at his most cheerful on Sundays, and Lizzie and Shelley went out of their way to make sure he stayed like that, at least until bedtime when they could no longer help him stave off his demons.

But, sipping her tea, and looking at the pile of money she’d tossed onto the bed to count, not to mention last night’s sexy underwear thrown over the back of the chair, Lizzie was thinking about cares. Specifically, a care in the form of a handsome and to all intents and purposes unattainable man by the name of John Smith.

‘Sod!’

He’d not made another appointment. He’d not even promised to call about one. He’d just accepted her kiss on the cheek, caught her hand to dust one of his own across her fingertips, and then let her go.

I’m just an escort to him. We had a good time, but I’m interchangeable with any other escort. Maybe he did want me for the duration of his stay, but then changed his mind. The punter’s prerogative. Brent had told her they were like that, whether they be male clients or female. They were just the same.

Lizzie took another sip of tea, absent-mindedly noticing there were now three cups on her bedside table. She frowned. Another lesser care to contend with. She’d have to do something about the Dumpster Room of Doom today as well. It was getting ridiculous. She was almost absurdly fastidious about her person, but hopeless at housework. An all-out onslaught on the clothes, the magazines, the books, all the sewing projects in various stages of completion, the piles of patterns she was adapting and, yes, the teacups, would take her mind off a certain gorgeous blond businessman.

Enormously fat chance of that.

Yes, she and John had shared a good time. Nobody could take that away from her. Not ever. She’d never forget her mad adventure of deception and kinky sex as long as she lived and she’d always be grateful for it. Some women, most women, would never even have that.

Sliding back down among the pillows with John’s twenty pound notes all around her, she brought back a picture of him. Yes, he’d always be a memory to savour with his luscious blond hair, his quirkily handsome face and his exceptional body. Not to mention his deft, taper-tipped fingers and his solid, indefatigable cock.

And the things he did.

Squirming, she wriggled her hand down the back of her pyjama shorts and fingered the skin of her bottom. Why didn’t it hurt? It ought to. But somehow he had miracle skills, and seemed to know exactly how to smack in a way that was excruciating at the time, but soon faded. She knew there wasn’t a mark on her, but she still felt the print of what he’d done to her, like an invisible tattoo, indelible, for ever.

She wanted to feel his slap now, again and again, so carefully aimed and delivered. Between her legs she felt herself moisten, as if she were back with him, enduring the rigours of that flexible blue ruler.

‘John,’ she sighed, closing her eyes, pinching the flesh of her buttock with one hand while sliding her other hand into her shorts at the front. Her bedroom door wasn’t locked, but she’d heard Shelley go out for the Sunday newspapers, and Brent was dead to the world, fast asleep. He’d been out last night too, after his evening shift at the garden centre. But even if he’d been up and about already and likely to waltz in at any moment, she couldn’t have kept from touching herself. It was as if John Smith was here in the room, standing over her, commanding her to masturbate in his name.

Behind her eyelids, she saw herself and him, not in the chintzy environment of his suite at the Waverley, but in some other place, darker, more forbidding.

A dungeon perhaps? She’d never been in one, not really. Maybe a club tarted up to look that way, but not the real McCoy.

In her fantasy, she was in an underground chamber somewhere. There was a brazier burning, and there were chains and fiendish implements hanging from the walls. Nameless, almost faceless people stood around; an audience.

John was there in a dark suit, with a dark shirt, looking both golden and ominous in his beauty. She herself was in a corset and high heels, much like the great Bettie Page herself might have worn in one of her bondage photo-spreads or even a private blue movie. Her stockings were fishnet, held up by suspenders. Her crotch was bare, no panties to protect or guard the modesty of her sex.

A heavy chain reached down from the centre of the low ceiling, with leather cuffs at the end of it. She was secured in them, and there was no slack; her arms were stretched up.

Oh wow, where was all this coming from? Slipping her middle finger between her labia she found herself sopping wet, just from the introduction to the fantasy. A little gasp escaped her lips as she flicked tentatively at her clit.

‘Ah Bettie, you wicked girl,’ her master seemed to say, his voice clear as if he really were in the room with her, prowling, watching. ‘You get aroused so easily. Nobody’s touched you yet and you’re dripping. You need to be punished for being so easy and so horny.’

As she started to rub at herself, Dream John was the one with his hand between her legs, mastering her clit with rough, powerful strokes, then pinching it and squeezing it. Her legs flailed in the real world and the fantasy, and she jerked her hips. Turning onto her side, she arched her body and, reaching around from behind, slipped a finger into her vagina while still worrying her clitoris and pinching it as John did in her fantasy.

Another moan escaped her lips and the master of her fantasies said, ‘Silence,’ in his low, musical voice, ‘or I’ll stop your mouth.’

She moaned again, and some barely visualised person handed him a scarf, or maybe just a length of silk. After giving her one hard kiss, with a fierce jab of his tongue, he gagged her with the silk, tying it tightly at the back of her head.

‘Now I’ll be able to punish you has hard as you need punishing, without any interruptions and entreaties.’ He was already punishing her, still pinching her clit while running his smooth, executive’s hands over her bare buttocks where they were fully exposed by the short corset.

‘I’m going to make these red and sore.’ His threat was silk, like the scarf that stopped her mouth, and he kissed the side of her throat like the kiss of silk too. When his teeth closed delicately on her earlobe, she keened behind the gag, her sex fluttering.

‘Dirty girl,’ he whispered, ‘you’re not coming, are you?’

She wasn’t yet, but she was barely a heartbeat away from it, both in the dream and in reality.

No, master. I promise. I’m not
, she silently pledged, even though it would soon be a lie.

In the dream, he whirled away from her and an acolyte handed him a fearsome riding crop, which he swished once or twice in the air.

‘And we begin.’

The pain was unimaginable. Literally. She had no idea what a crop would feel like. But she could remember the ruler and the fierce, sweet kiss of his hand on her bottom, and just the recollection roused her. Hot. Intimate. Relentless. His palm landing again and again became the crop landing again and again, blazing through her loins, making her run wet and her sex ache with yearning.

Rocking on her side, Lizzie fingered herself furiously, attacking her clit while Dream John’s beautiful, implacable blue eyes stared into hers. Almost wrenching her wrist, she pushed her finger deeper inside her, and then, in frustration, withdrew it and added another, stretching herself.

‘Dirty, dirty girl,’ the phantom of John Smith said again, ‘filthy, dripping wet, lascivious little trollop. You have no grace, no self-control. You’re just a nasty, randy little harlot and you deserve to be thrashed until you scream.’

She was chanting the words herself, but he was with her, his expression blazing with the very lust of which she accused herself. In the fantasy, he’d created agony in her buttocks; in reality, the idea of him made her come.

‘Oh, oh, God,’ she gasped, burying her face in the pillow to muffle her moans and whimpers as her clit leapt and pulsed and her core clenched and clenched again around her fingers.

Oh, if only John were here now. If only he could climb into this bed with her, gorgeous, warm and naked. If only he could be lying behind her, dragging her fingers from her pussy, and then pushing in with his gorgeous cock. In, in, in . . . while his gracious hand cupped her from the front, stroking her clitty.

Oh John . . . John . . .

Wriggling, riding the waves, she tried to conjure him, but a jangling, jingling, ringing sound snatched him from her. She almost sobbed as he seemed to recede, as if hurtling away down a dark tunnel, leaving her behind.

‘Buggeration, fuck and fucking bugger!’ she growled, snatching for breath, then hoped that Brent hadn’t woken up and heard her.

Wriggling and scrabbling around she grabbed for the phone from her bedside cupboard, scowling and half prepared to hurl the damn thing across the room . . . until she realised it was her ‘Bettie’ mobile that was trilling, and apart from Brent, who was in the house, and Shelley, who would surely use her normal number, there was only one person in the world who could possibly call her on her second phone.

‘H—hello?’ She was still panting. Her chest was heaving. And between her legs, her sex was still rippling in exquisite little aftershocks.

‘Hello, Bettie. Whatever are you doing that’s making you so short of breath?’ His voice was low and full of laughter, and he might as well have been in the room, standing by the bed, looking down on her. She had no cover across her, and he would clearly have been able to see what she’d been doing.

Good God, her free hand was still inside her shorts.

About to whip it out and make herself decent, she hesitated, her mad, wicked ideas making her smile. ‘Oh nothing,’ she said, wriggling again and making adjustments. Her voice still sounded breathy.

‘I don’t believe you. You’re up to something. I can tell from your voice. We had an exclusive deal – you’re not with another client, are you?’

She could tell he didn’t really think that. The teasing note in his low voice was unmistakeable.

Miles apart, they were already playing.

‘On Sunday? How could you say that? I don’t do clients on the Lord’s day!’

He laughed now. No pretence of seriousness any more.

‘Well, that’s a shame, Bettie, because I was hoping to engage you again myself today.’ He sounded very arch. ‘I thought lunch, maybe, then some “afters”? All on the clock, of course.’ He paused. Lizzie listened hard. Had he caught his breath too? What was
he
doing? ‘But, of course, if you’re at your devotions, I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you.’

‘I’ve finished now!’ she blurted out. He was playing, but it was a delicate game and she didn’t want it to end too soon.

‘Yes, I think you have, and not long ago, either, judging by the way you were panting when you picked up the phone. God, I wish I was there with you!’

Oh, me too. Me too!

Picturing his cosy, fussy, chintz-clad room at the Waverley, she imagined him in his bed, just as she was in her bed. Did he wear pyjamas, or sleep naked? Was he holding his erect cock now; was he close to coming? His blond hair would be wild and tousled from sleep, and he’d have stubble too, all sexy and lovely.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t be very impressed with me this morning, John. I’m not done up. No make-up. My hair needs washing and I’m wearing ancient and very scruffy clothes.’ They weren’t that bad, but she was painting a different kind of picture for him. ‘Nobody would believe that I’m an escort, to look at me now.’