She loves having the means to do whatever she pleases, but more importantly, she loves being able to pay her staff well, care for her building, and turn away any clients that don’t meet with her standards. This business is all about respecting boundaries.
“Logan, Shelly, Pierce, Antonia, Pearl and Caitrin are on the schedule tonight. Logan has a reservation here at ten, and then an engagement at one. Antonia and Pearl are already out on assignment. Shelly and Caitrin will take the other reservations here—only one requested Shelly by name. The others are all general requests. Two will meet with Caitrin’s restrictions. Dahlia is also here to help if anyone needs a second set of hands, or things get busy later.”
“Perfect Portia.” Janice rests a hand on her assistant’s shoulder.
“I aim to please.”
“What time will our new guest be arriving?”
“Mr. Teal will be here in about an hour. His portfolio is on your desk, along with a few recommendations of who might be a good match for him, depending on what services he decides to engage with us. Caitrin is all set to meet him as arranged.”
“Thank you. And is tomorrow night’s backstage show ready? You know how Rafe can be.”
“Caitrin is handling the club. I haven’t followed up yet, but I’m sure everything is up to your standards. She’ll be there anyway for the official performance with Donovan, so she can oversee the dungeon.”
“Right, I forgot the theme this month. Also, we need to get someone in here to work on the soundproofing downstairs. I can hear everything that goes on down there in my office.”
“Kinky.”
“Not so much. Take care of that tomorrow. The contractor we used last time didn’t do a very good job and wasn’t nearly discreet enough.” Janice shrugs. “Did Gott’s assistant call? He’s due to come again sometime.”
“Yes, I already have him scheduled for a night when Pierce is available.”
“Fabulous. The rest of New York gets hustled for money, and we get the rundown for an annual blowjob. Thank god for repressed homosexuality or we’d lose half our business. Oh, and is Logan back out with Mr. Indigo?”
“Yes, this will be the second time this week.”
“Excellent. Find out where they’re meeting. If they make dinner reservations, put the full bill on our account and send a bottle of champagne. Another bottle to wherever they spend the night.”
Portia raises her chin, appraising her employer. “Feeling romantic, Miss Necia?”
“Just encouraging return engagements.” Green eyes reflect back at her from the computer screen—a vision or memory.
“Of course.” Portia’s eyes sparkle as she drops them back to the screen.
Janice chuckles before heading back to her office, leaving Portia to manage the day-to-day management of The Sugar House. She sits behind her oversized desk and flips through the folder waiting for her perusal. Mr. Teal offers nothing of particular interest: a fifty-five-year-old man who was recently promoted to CFO of his company. His real name, and the name of his employer, will remain in this envelope, to which only she and Portia have access. Those details aren’t of much importance, much like the fact Mr. Teal is married and has a thirteen-year-old daughter.
The reality of his life bears little to no relevance on what Janice does. She needs to know, so she retains the upper hand and has a bit of leverage if things should ever threaten to get out of control, but that rarely happens. Janice—Miss Necia—has a reputation for her lack of tolerance. She’ll as soon put a client out of her house as she will step on a spider. Nothing threatens her brood.
She smiles. Brood, she thinks. Yes, it is a bit like that.
She notices a note from Portia suggesting their newest recruit, a girl now going by the name Juliette, for Mr. Teal. Juliette is taller, almost 5’4”—almost too tall for the kind of power play Mr. Teal is requesting, but she’s young, athletic, and her face retains a blush of baby fat, making her an ideal option.
Janice tucks the note into the folder and slips the file into the locked cabinet in her desk.
She loves this time of night, before the house is full of the thrumming energy of passions being explored, but after the business of housecleaning and food preparation. This is her personal witching hour, the time between business and pleasure, when she watches evening weave into night.
She retrieves the elegant candle lighter from her top drawer and begins her nightly ritual of lighting the many candles scattered around her room, checking to make sure the heavy red curtains are drawn tight. The process is soothing. Her skin flushes and she stands taller, taking on the mantle of Miss Necia. As she moves effortlessly through the room, a warm voice reaches out—I don’t recycle.
She smiles. Such a strange thing to say. He caught her off guard, and standing in the middle of her room with a wistful quirk of the lips, she still has no idea why. The question dangles in front of her, teasing her, tempting her, inspiring her curiosity in a way no request from a client ever has. She’s seen it all—every fetish, every deviancy—and she’s found a way to fulfill their fantasies, but the simple act of recycling grabs her thoughts and clings to them in an unfamiliar but delicious way. The oddity of the statement, the nonchalant way in which he spoke, and the nagging fact that there was something he didn’t tell her create a loop in her mind, with the man she only knows as Greenpeace at the center.
“What are you thinking about?” Caitrin stands in the doorway.
“Get out of my office. Don’t you have someone to pee on?”
“Not tonight! I’ve washed and powdered and the golden showers are set to off.”
“Such a delicate way with words.” She greets her friend with a laugh and hug before returning the candle lighter to its place.
“You were pretty lost there for a minute. Where was your mind?”
“Just replaying tonight’s dating adventure.”
“Are you still going to those speed-dating things?”
“Of course.” Janice perches on the edge of one of the overstuffed chairs in her office.
“And people call me the freak.”
“My love, you attach clothes pins to testicles for money.”
“Everyone is happy, no harm. What you do though, it’s unhealthy.”
“Caitrin....”
“No, don’t you dare. I’m not your employee right now.” She sits down, eyes piercing with intelligence. “I’ve been your friend since you were a second shift barista, Janice.”
“Fine, you made your point. Now leave.”
“Nope, tell me about your night.” Caitrin leans back and crosses her long legs. The leather skirt she wears hitches up high enough to show the tops of her thigh-highs. Standard issue.
“I’d rather not.”
“You will, ‘cause you always do.”
Caitrin’s overconfidence usually grates on Janice’s nerves, but tonight her heart buoys above day-to-day concerns, her tolerance high. “Do I really?”
“Yes. Besides, you’re here early, which means no one caught your eye. You can almost justify it as market research.”
“It is market research.”
“How’s that again?” Caitrin mocks.
“I study the mating patterns of the average heterosexual male. It helps keep me tuned in with the needs of our clients.” The explanation rings hollow even to Janice’s ears. She’s so practiced at weaving truth into lies and offering every excuse to allow her clients to admit what they really want, she can’t remember the last time reality trumped fantasy.
“Not many of our clients can be described as average.”
“True.”
“And more than a few defy the heterosexual part of that statement as well.”
“Fine, I go because I’m a glutton for punishment.”
“You go because you’re a bleeding romantic and you can’t stand to sit by while everyone around you falls in love.”
Janice snorts and waves a hand in front of her face, dismissing her friend’s statement
as easily as the idea of ordering a deli sandwich for dinner. What they do can hardly be considered love.
“Always such a dreamer, a damsel in distress waiting for a knight in shining armor.”
“All right, that’s it, get out.” Janice stands and approaches her friend.
Caitrin feigns fainting across the side of the chair. “If only there was a man out there who could love me the way I’m meant to be loved!”
“Portia, Caitrin is having a seizure! I need your help getting her out of my office!” She grabs Caitrin’s arms and hoists her to standing while her friend hangs limply—dead weight.
A platinum blond head peeks inside the office door. “What’s that, Miss Necia?”
Janice never calls out for Portia; she always gets what she needs herself, or steps out into the main room to ask.
Caitrin says, “Our beloved Mistress, our Madame of the Night, has fallen ill with a longing heart, a pain inside her soul which can only be cured by the kiss of her One True Love.”
“I will hit you.”
“Come on, Caitrin.” Portia separates the laughing women before it goes too far.
In this business, knowing how far to push someone’s boundaries is essential. While Caitrin is an expert in knowing how much pain someone can tolerate, she lacks the ability to tell when that line is near with friends.
“Fine, I’ll relent, I’ll retreat. But know this—” Caitrin points a long black fingernail in her boss’s direction. “—I know something happened tonight, something more than just market research.”
Janice rolls her eyes. “You imagine conspiracies where only conversation lies.” She snickers and turns her back on Caitrin, resuming her nightly ritual of preparing the office for clients.
The Lap of Luxury
Morning tends to announce its presence reluctantly at The Sugar House. No one ever wants her to arrive—an unwelcome interloper in the night’s pantheon of pleasure—but the sun cannot be stopped. Like time, like rain, she moves across the sky regardless of the city dwellers’ desire to remain under the cover of night.
The brightness of day brings a brash reality for the clientele. Most prefer to leave during the early dawn hours, if not before the sun begins to outshine the distant stars. By the time the sun peeks over the horizon, most employees of The Sugar House have sanitized and packed away their tools of the trade, set out the night’s laundry for the daytime staff, and are ready for something filling to eat and a good day’s sleep.
For Janice, the persistent distraction is Greenpeace. He’s on her mind when she wakes in the morning. All she can think about in the shower, as the hot water runs down her body, is the mocking twinkle in his green eyes and the way his lips curved around his perspiring glass.
Her thoughts swim with images of those lips wrapped around her nipples, pulling on them, sucking them into hardened pebbles, drawing her pleasure to the surface. Day after day.
This morning, she can’t settle down to sleep. The Sugar House closes down every week on Monday and Tuesday to give her and the staff a much needed break after the weekend. Some still opt to schedule clients, making engagements with Portia in advance, but only with those who have earned the privilege of outside meetings. Plus, her brood can handle themselves, and if something should go awry... well, Janice hired Jackson for a reason. His willingness to make anyone pay who hurt one of their own was a big part of that.
The sun rests high in the morning sky, but Janice tosses restlessly in her Egyptian cotton sheets. She rests one leg under the comforter, and the other over top. Her internal body temperature won’t regulate, and persistent thoughts about her mysterious man push the heat to dangerous levels.
She listens to the hum of the city on the street below. Her third storey SoHo loft doesn’t cancel out much sound, but the small, elegant space designated as a bedroom is warm and intimate. She just needs some sleep, to clear her mind of a man she doesn’t even know.
She rolls over and pulls the sheets up higher, encasing her body in warm luxury. Her satin nightgown pulls gently along her flesh, rubbing against the soft sheets. She shivers, moving one hand up to massage her breast, while gently tracing patterns along the satin curve of her hip with the other.
A vision of a tall man standing in the dark corner of a restaurant appears to her. With eyes closed, she imagines herself approaching him and drags her nails along her thigh. When she reaches her destination, he smiles and takes her hand, leading her into a back room.
The vision of Greenpeace speaks, the sound of his gravelly voice intensified in her fantasy. He calls her name and kisses her. She brings her fingers to her mouth and traces the soft contour of her lips. The dream kiss lingers and she imagines his hands gripping her sides, her hips, her ass. She slips a hand into the top of her nightgown and squeezes her erect nipple until she cries out for more.
“Please...” she whispers into the hazy morning light. “Please, please, please.” She moves her hand away from her mouth and follows the path she imagines his lips taking, down her neck and across her collarbone. She lingers at her nipple before smoothing her way down her abdomen and dipping into the dark below. “Please....”
Greenpeace drops to his knees. His imaginary hands knead her thighs and ass, pushing them apart, as his imaginary voice says, you are so wet. He groans in her mind, the vibration of the rumble pulsing across her body, titillating her cunt.
“Fuck!” She removes her hand from her breast and pulls the nightgown up to her hips. She teases the soft hair of her sex, running soft fingers across the sensitive lips, but not dipping lower.
When the vision lover lowers his head and presses his tongue against her, she slides her finger along her slit, pushing her swollen lips apart to make room for him. She strokes herself with one hand, and moves the other back to grip her breast, squeezing and massaging. Her pace is uncontrolled, not the practiced stroke of a woman seeking release, but the mad ministration of lust.
“Yes.” She rolls on her side, easing two fingers into her cunt. It opens easily, desperate to be filled. Her fingers explore her depths, and soon she inserts another, spreading her legs wide, imagining something thicker and deeper inside her. She rides the heel of her hand, pushing her fingers deep, but unable to reach the depths she desires.
She flings the covers off and reaches for the bedside table, where a well-used Laya vibrator waits in the drawer. Her dream lover sits behind her, in her room, in this bed. She imagines his arms wrapped around her, pushing her down on her back and easing his weight onto her body. The familiar buzz of the vibrator sends shivers through her, and she feels the familiar anticipation of pleasure before even touching it to her cunt.
The handheld toy slips easily against her folds. She arches up and closes her eyes, imagining Greenpeace within her. He would fill her up, stretch her limits, and boil her blood. Drawing the vibrator along her lips, she seeks her clit. The toy teases her senses and exploits her need as it sends out flashes of pleasure. Every time it makes contact with her swollen clit, her body jumps—so close to oblivion already.
She flips onto her stomach, holding it in place so she can grind against it. She imagines straddling the mystery man who doesn’t recycle. She wants to slap him for ensnaring her, to swallow him whole. In her mind, she rides him, twisting her hips as she slides along his shaft. She grabs her breast again with her free hand and squeezes, abusing her tits as she calls out. It’s him massaging her clit with this thumb as she loses control and frantically seeks an orgasm. It’s his flesh she bites into as the apex arrives and blackness blots out her fantasy, pure pleasure grabbing hold of her body as he delivers another, final thrust.
Exhausted and spent, she drops her toy back into the drawer and drifts into a deep sleep.
Speed-Dating Part Deux
Janice’s mood sinks, pulling the corners of her mouth down. She hadn’t intended on getting her hopes up—just another night at the lonely hearts club—but about halfway through the night, when she finally admits to herself Green
peace isn’t going to show, her heart plummets.
Half an hour after the usual meet and greet ends, she frowns at herself in the ladies room mirror. Waiting on a man. What are you, twenty? A love-sick co-ed? Men come and go and this one is no more special than any of the others.
She grimaces at her lie, unable to achieve even a momentary reprieve. What is she still doing here, waiting around, sipping a drink, and chatting with the other hangers-on hoping for one more chance to make an impression? “Pathetic. Time to go to work.”
She straightens her dress and tugs the hem down over the thigh-highs she donned in hope Greenpeace would be watching her cross her legs again tonight. She runs her fingers through her soft curls, reapplies the deep crimson lipstick she adores, and prepares to re-enter the bar.
Now to extradite herself from Simon, who’s still hopeful, even after last week’s miserable showing. With her shoulders back and head held high, she strides from the ladies room out into the blooming chaos of happy hour. The lights were dimmed and candles lit while she was in the washroom. A mood of romance, inebriation, and hope fills the room. Only the lack of wispy tendrils of cigarette smoke separates this scene from the back drop of a Tom Waits song.
At the bar, Simon faces away from her approach, having left her drink unguarded.
She frowns—any chance he had with her gone. A man who doesn’t protect his date’s drink isn’t likely to show more consideration for her person.
She slides in next to him and hails the bartender. “My drink sat here unattended. I’d like another. Who knows what someone might have slipped in it.”
The bartender nods his bald head and a laugh breaks out from her right.
Sugar & Salt Page 2
