by Ruby Forrest
“What size are you?” she asked, breaking her attention away from her phone.
“Size of what?” I said back to her. I didn’t really understand what she wanted.
“Shoe size, waist size, bra size and dress size for now.”
For now?! What the hell was I doing and who was this woman?
“Why do you want those?” I asked, hoping to find out why I was in a car that looked more expensive than most houses.
“I’m not here to answer questions, you are. Sizes, please?” she said.
She didn’t seem like the type of woman to be messed with, so I acquiesced and answered the questions.
“5, 30, 34C, 8”
She typed them into her phone, seemingly sending a message. A few minutes later we arrived outside of a hotel. It was a nice hotel, but not a luxury one. And my next instructions were on their way.
“Here is a key card, your room number is 364. The directions to the rooms are quite clear, so just follow the signs. This car will be waiting for you right here at 16:00 hours. I don’t expect you to be a minute late, understood?”
“Yes.” Well, no, not really, I thought. I didn’t understand anything that was going on right now.
George
Monday mornings are horrible even when you’re rich—actually, probably more so when you’re rich. Throughout the whole morning you’re just thinking that you don’t really want to be here, and knowing you don’t quite have to be just makes it drag. I was at the point where I could just delegate my responsibilities to someone else and live the good life, but the drive to earn even more money fuelled me.
I’d had sex twice over the weekend, two very different experiences. I’d been giving both a lot of thought, for two very different reasons. One had left me emotionally unfulfilled and the other one sexually, both times the sex was fun but I had left with a bitter taste. Being tied into a relationship never really appealed to me, but finding someone with the same sexual interests did. I just didn’t want to have to put up with the monogamy, the social element and the expectation. I suppose finding a friend with benefits was an option but I was closed about my sexual desires, and there was no-one I trusted to keep those secrets.
The view from my apartment was sublime, the view of the city never failed to give a great start to my day. That was, unless it was raining; the rain would blow onto the window and cloud the view below. Monday morning was one of those such days, the view wasn’t very clear and all you could see below were people scrambling around with umbrellas, trying desperately to get out of the rain.
On such a morning I’d usually be thinking about myself and the inconvenience it would cause in getting into work. This morning, however, I wondered how inconvenienced someone else must have been—Sophie. I had wondered if she had to sleep out in the storm or if she’d found a place to stay. I never quite did get her story. How did someone as beautiful as her end up out on the streets? Someone with those looks won’t be out on the streets for long, I thought, I’m sure she would have found somewhere to stay.
At that point though I was more bothered about prostitutes. I had a few good experiences from the agency I most often used, but last night was different and I wasn’t too happy about it, not at the prices they charged. I had developed a level of trust and expected to get what I wanted. I hated phone calls so I drafted up an e-mail to register my dissatisfaction. I let them know that the girl was very good, but that I expected a lot more trust from the girls that I used. I just wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again.
I had made my way into work when I had got a very unsatisfactory e-mail back from the agency. It said that they couldn’t guarantee what limits each girl would set and that if I was unhappy with a girl then I should look at rebooking one that I’ve had a positive experience with in the past. I was annoyed at not getting what I wanted, and thought that the fun of paying for sex is that you could be with a different girl each time. Maybe it was time I tried something else.
“Are you okay, George?” said one of my work colleagues, who had clearly seen the annoyance on my face.
“Yeah, fine... just some bad news about an investment, nothing serious.”
“Oh right, is that one of our shared investments?”
Lies can quickly get out of hand, so I decided to end the conversation dead.
“No, it’s not. I’ll speak to you later,” I replied with authority. If only he knew the truth, if only anyone knew the truth about my weekend, it’d spread through the industry like wildfire. It made me wonder what other secrets people had. I liked to employ people who didn’t ask too many questions—it was the best way of keeping secrets. Just feed enough people as little information as possible, you eventually get what you want without anyone actually knowing what you’ve done.
Sophie
364, 364, 364. What was this room and what was I going to find inside? I was nervous about my instructions, mainly because I had been given no information about what was going on. I found the room, on the third floor and in a corridor of rooms which all looked a similar size. I flashed the key card on the door and entered, apprehensively.
There was no-one in there, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t empty though. There were a few items on the dressing table laid out as if it were done by someone in the military. There was a piece of paper, a phone and a bank card. The instructions read out that I was to get washed immediately to be ready for my 16:00 pick-up, that the phone was mine to be kept on me at all times and that there was a bank card on the table with £2,000 available to spend.
My confusion had only grown, but following the first instruction I was more than happy to do. I headed off to the shower and it felt nearly as sweet as the one in George’s apartment. I was terrified of losing track of time so I had set-up an alarm on my new phone to make sure I wouldn’t be late. The alarm sounded and I reluctantly shut off the shower. I grabbed a towel to dry myself off and went back into the main room.
As soon as I did, I panicked. My old clothes had been taken off the radiator and were missing.
“Hello?” I said nervously, wondering if anyone had got into my room. As soon as I turned my head I relaxed a little. On the middle of the bed was a pile of perfectly folded new clothes. There was a pair of flat shoes, calf-length boots, two pairs of jeans, two tops, a coat and two pairs of matching underwear. I looked at the sizes and they were all perfect. They were all very plain, but I wasn’t complaining about style right now. It was great just to be able to wear some fresh clothes.
I got dressed, pulled up my new black boots. Put the phone and card in my pockets and left the room with time to spare, ready to get picked up for wherever I was going. I left the building and the same car was waiting with the same woman inside.
“Sorry about the clothes,” she said. “I just needed to get you out of those horrible old ones for the moment before we can get something nicer.”
“I’m fine with these, honest, thank you.” I was more than happy with just these clothes for now—not looking like a tramp for the first time in a couple of weeks was a fresh change. I walked to that car with my back a little straighter, with my shoulders back and a smile on my face, knowing that anyone looking at me wouldn’t instantly turn up their nose in disgust. The woman looked at me with a knowing smile, as if to say I was getting different clothes whether I liked it or not.
We stopped out on a street and entered into a boutique clothes shop, where I was swiftly taken into the back and into a more private room. A woman was there to take my measurements as if I was getting fitted out for a tailored suit.
“What is this all for?” I asked the woman who’d brought me here. And for the first time, as I could tell by her face, came an honest reply.
“I don’t know.”
She genuinely didn’t know, which made it all the more confusing. But right now I was getting made to feel like a princess. I was being chauffeured around London, getting my measurements taken in a high end s
hop. All my details were taken and we left the shop, and it was late by this point as it was just about to shut. I was guided into a restaurant where we ordered food, we shared some idle chat about the weather and such, before she broke the light-hearted conversation with some final instructions.
“This is where I leave you,” she said. “The address of the hotel is on the back of the key card and I’m told you’ll be receiving further instructions later. The money on the card is to spend however you please and here is my card to call if there is any difficulties with the hotel, card, clothes etc.”
She gave me her card and the only information it had on there was a number. I felt like I was in a spy film. Little information, blacked-out cars, secret messages... it was all very exciting.
“Thank you,” I said to the woman as she left, paying the bill before she did.
“Don’t thank me,” she said, smiling.
“So who should I be thanking?” I thought I’d take one last shot at getting some information about her before she left.
“I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.” With that, she turned and walked away. I gazed on as she got into the car that had come to pick her up and drove away.
I left the restaurant not knowing what to do with myself. I put my hand in my pocket and picked out the card, and was excited at the prospect at being able to spend money. But then I was immediately annoyed at myself: the PIN was written down on the hotel instructions and I’d forgot what it was. I’d have to feel poor for a little while longer at least. That meant no money for a taxi either. I knew the area, however, and the hotel was only a few miles away. I was happy to walk.
I was happy to be invisible. When you walk down a street, you don’t really notice anyone else, but you notice a homeless person. Walking down the street and not being avoided felt new. I developed an odd habit of smelling my clothes. They didn’t smell of anything nice, they were just clean.
I got back to the hotel and wondered whether I should go back out to use the card that I now had access to, but the bed was too tempting. Just lying in it was heaven. I helped myself to some wine from the minibar and put on one of my TV shows. I was in my own piece of heaven, I felt like I could stay here forever.
Then the phone rang.
George
My day had been dreadful. My head wasn’t in it and I may as well have not showed up. All I was thinking throughout the day was wondering what the hell I was doing, whether this plan would work or should I just leave it. I was excited though, and anxious, I had butterflies like I did when I was in the playground at school and a girl would come up to me. I hadn’t felt like this in so long, which is why such a big part of me was wanting to reject it like it was a virus.
I got back to my apartment, pulled up a chair in front of the panoramic window over the glistening lights of the city as the sun started to set, and poured myself a glass of whisky to settle my nerves.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello,” said a hesitant voice.
I hated phone calls, but I wanted to sound confident with this one.
“Hello, Sophie.”
“So all this was you? I thought that it must have been you,” she said, still sounding cautious.
“Tell me your story,” I replied. I wanted to know... for some reason I just had to.
“I thought you paid for my body, not my story.” Her reply annoyed me. It was as though she was playing games, and as far as I was concerned she was in no position to do so.
“Considering you’re sat in a warm hotel room with a glass of wine, £2,000 pounds in your pocket and new clothes on your back, I think it’s quite clear that I’m paying for both.” I wanted to make clear that she was to do what I asked.
“How do you know I’m in the hotel room with a glass of wine?”
Well I knew people, and it was one of those hotel minibars that could detect when something was removed—I wanted to know that I was in control of her life, it turned me on.
“The same reason that I could have you back out on the streets in five minutes. How did you end up on the streets?” I was getting quite confrontational, which wasn’t the vibe I was going for, so wanted to bring it back to what I wanted to know.
She told me her story, and I regretted asking. It pulled me in, it made me feel sorry for her and it made me want to protect her. She told me about how her father died when she was young, she told me how her mother turned to alcohol and barely looked after her. She told me how her mother found her knight in shining armour over the internet, who was going to take care of them. She told me how she had to leave her friends and her old life behind, and how this knight turned out to be a devil of a man, who convinced her mother that Sophie was a burden on them. She told me how she’d missed out on education and work to try and look after her mother, and got repaid by being thrown out onto the streets with no protest from her.
By the end of the conversation Sophie was in tears, and I was trying my best to keep my composure. I gave my apologies for her horrific life and I was pleased that she had a roof over her head for the night. I was trying to find a way to bring the conversation back to normality, but Sophie decided to do that for me.
“So why am I here?” she said, clearly still upset, but now in control of her tears.
I was thinking of making sure she was alright, but I decided to get to the point. “I was thinking that we should have a mutually beneficial arrangement,” I said, trying to sugar-coat my intentions.
“You’re letting me stay in a hotel so you can sleep with me whenever you want?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
It was a simple verbal agreement that we both seemed to be happy with. I told her that the hotel was booked for seven nights, and once they were done that would probably be it. She could use the money to set herself up the best way she could before she left my life. I thought that a week of having sex the way I wanted it would be a great use of my money.
“There’s more,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether to go through this now, or later, but I thought I’d get it out of the way. “Do you know what BDSM is?”
“Yeah, I know what it is.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“I’ve never really tried anything,” was her answer. I didn’t really want that; I’d prefer if she was comfortable with the subject rather than a novice, as I didn’t want to have to explain myself.
I laid it out there. “With me you’d be taking the role of the submissive, and all that entails. You will wear what I want you to wear and do what I want you to do. If you have any problem with that, I’ll let you stay one more night at the hotel then I’ll leave you alone. Do you understand?”
She was nervous. “No... I mean yes. I mean I’m not sure exactly what you want me to do but I’ll try it... are you coming to the hotel tonight?”
“No, you’ll be coming to me. Tomorrow will be the first time. I will message you at some point tomorrow with further instructions. Enjoy your wine.” I hung up the phone.
I’m sure this is what I wanted. A beautiful girl who would be able to fulfil my desires without protest, and someone who had far too much to lose to let anyone else know. It was the perfect arrangement. After a week I would have got my sexual thrills and I could leave her knowing that she would probably be alright. I was excited about the next day.
Sophie
The phone was a smartphone with all the regular apps. After George hung up I gulped down the rest of my wine and poured another glass up to the brim. I was in a whole world of mixed emotions. Telling him my story felt incredible, it felt like a weight off my shoulders to hear that someone actually cared. But did he care? I thought he must have done, he’s the one that asked.
The room had free Wi-Fi which I connected to the phone, and typed "BDSM" into the search bar. I spent the rest of the night doing research. George was only the second person I ever slept with, and the first was a boyfriend who I was only with for a few mont
hs when I was a teenager. I didn’t have the time, money or friends to go out to parties in school, so never had that life. I was scared that night with George, but he took command and knew what he was doing, and it had opened up my mind.
I was nervous about what I was reading though—why would somebody get pleasure from pain? I knew it was a common thing, so maybe I’d like it? Even if I didn’t I thought I’d be able to get through it; I’d been through a lot worse. I looked at pictures of BDSM and watched a bit of porn. It probably wasn’t a wise move. It all seemed too broad and wide-ranging, and I was being left with more questions than answers. I suppose it was a matter of wait and see... or not see.
The previous day I had woken up in a puddle of muddy water, this day I had woken up warm and cozy in what felt like my own bed. I put on the TV, made myself a coffee and just lay there for a few hours in my own bliss. It’s funny how you miss the little things, the creature comforts. I received a message on my phone that George wouldn’t be requiring my company until the late evening. He also said that he expected me to be looking my best, which was fair enough I suppose. I had no make-up, my nails were chipped and my hair was plain and washed with cheap conditioner. I was looking forward to treating myself.
I was still aware, however, of the time frame, six more nights. I thought, it will go quickly. I wanted to make sure I was in the best possible position to survive once the support was gone, living on the streets again after a week of luxury would be tough. I had to make sure I was prepared for it.
In the meantime I had tonight to worry about. Looking my best? What exactly did that mean? I thought it implied the usual beauty regimes, but what about clothes? Is that what the money was for? I thought I’d have to ask as I didn’t want to let him down. I wanted to make sure my hotel stay lasted the full seven nights.
“What should I wear? X,” I messaged him. I debated for far too long about whether I should include an "X" on the message, but I wanted to come across as flirty and friendly.
