Amply Rewarded

by Destiny Moon

  Either way, I wanted to learn from her. I wanted her to show me what she knew. I sort of hoped that, by virtue of her showing me, I would see something of her, too. I guess what I really wanted to know was her, but I didn’t get that then.

  Kelly was generous with her knowledge. She wanted me to sit in on her sessions and was disappointed when I didn’t. It started to bother me watching her with men, seeing her eyes glazed over, watching her calculated moves. The more I got to know her, the more I wanted to watch her experience pleasure, not what she called a means to an end. I had been at it for long enough to know what to do and so for me her lessons were redundant—except, of course, for the fact that I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible and I was glad that she allowed me to do that.

  Another one of her regular clients, Mr Collis, had been away for a few weeks. He was usually such a regular that he claimed he couldn’t go a week without seeing his beloved Mistress Veronica, or at least that was what Kelly told me.

  We were in her apartment on a sunny Tuesday morning. Kelly slipped her feet into those shiny boots of hers and donned a tight, black, PVC dress. I helped her lace up the corset portion. Carla had yet to give me any of the submissive clients. They were the coveted bunch, the ones who didn’t want sex as much as they wanted to worship feet and get spanked. Kelly had kept those clients sort of discreet, letting me sit in on all her standard sessions but not those ones. For that reason, I was particularly thrilled to be privy to the reunification of Mr Collis and Mistress Veronica.

  “It’s easier for me to get into this character,” Kelly said. “I’m tired of the costume thing. I hate doing the standard stuff. I hate the guys who come here for tenderness. It’s like, jeez, get a girlfriend, I don’t want to massage you. God.”

  “Yeah. They always want that.”

  “In this business, the customer’s not always right. In fact, he’s almost always wrong. That’s what I like about being Mistress Veronica. I get to speak my mind and it’s fine. In fact, it’s mutually beneficial. Just watch.”

  I did, and it was amazing.

  Mr Collis approached Kelly’s room as if he were entering a shrine. He was so careful and considerate. As soon as Kelly opened the door and emerged from the adjacent room, he dropped to his knees and greeted her with a kiss on each boot. She reciprocated with a kick to his face—not a violent kick, but a firm one nonetheless. The room was dimly lit with a few scattered dark red candles. Despite the sunny morning outside, Kelly had made sure to close all the blinds and close the blackout curtains. Kelly said she liked to go all out for Mr Collis because he went all out for her. He always came with a bag full of presents, and not sick stuff like crotchless knickers. Usable, good stuff, like really fancy chocolate truffles, a cashmere scarf or a lovely gold bracelet. One time he bought her a full day spa treatment at one of the most luxurious hotels in San Francisco. Mr Collis was a rich, middle-aged man. According to Kelly, he was a real gentleman.

  After kissing her boots and bowing down and thanking her for kicking him in the face, Mr Collis offered Mistress Veronica a foot massage. “Anything to please Mistress. Please forgive me for having been away from you for so long.”

  “I might forget, but I’ll never forgive and you know it,” she said.

  “May I please caress those gentle, beautiful feet of yours, Mistress?”

  Mr Collis sat on the floor while Kelly seated herself like a Persian cat on a throne. He slowly sniffed at and undid the zippers of her boots, carefully brought out her feet and sat there staring at them for a long time, as though he were afraid of touching her. From where I was, behind the divider again, I felt his pain. I, too, would have been afraid to touch such a majestic creature. As Kelly, at night, she was my best friend and I slept in her bed, holding her dearly and tenderly, but in this light she was a goddess and a force beyond my comfort zone.

  Mr Collis eventually held her feet, one at a time, in his palms the way one holds fine, antique silk. I couldn’t blame him for his zeal. Kelly thrust her toes at him almost as though she were attacking him. She opened his lips and mouth with her big toe and prised her way into him. It was oral pleasure like I’d never seen it before. She was rougher on him with her toes than any man had been on either one of us, and watching how much Mr Collis enjoyed it was more than a little stimulating. My panties dampened inside the dark room as I watched, anxiously anticipating what would happen next.

  What happened was beyond what I could have imagined. She became angry with Mr Collis, for not getting her off, she said. Mr Collis apologised profusely. Instead of accepting his supplication, Kelly brought out a leather whip and instructed him to pull his pants down, because she wanted to see his bare skin and teach him how to treat her properly.

  He followed the order and she went at him like an angered mother at a busy supermarket. She was relentless, and Mr Collis thanked her and bowed down so that his face was hidden in the carpet. His sounds were muffled but it seemed as though he was crying. It went on and on until finally, twenty minutes later, Kelly seemed as though she was satisfied—or bored—and stopped. He thanked her again and she put her whip down, kicked his ass and told him that he could have relief. She passed him a tissue. He thanked her again and took his cock in his hand. He jerked himself back and forth a little bit, then moaned in pleasure and collected his seed in the tissue in his hand, which he immediately crumpled up and put to one side. He fell forward, deep into the carpet in a final stupor. Kelly looked pleased with herself and sat on the sofa next to him, watching him intently. There was nothing indifferent about her this time. She looked engaged and happy.

  Mr Collis dressed himself and said, “Thank you, Mistress Veronica. I’ve brought you something in the hopes of appeasing you. I understand your anger over my bad behaviour and I promise not to stay away this long again.” Then he went to his jacket pocket and pulled out a tiny box.

  She opened it. “Diamond solitaire earrings. They’re lovely,” she said. “But don’t think that you can buy my affection.”

  With that, she took the box and walked away, back into the adjoining room, and closed the door. Mr Collis, stunned, let out a massive sigh, put on his jacket and sat down on the sofa with his face between his knees. He sobbed slightly. I couldn’t hear it—I knew because of the way his body jerked ever so delicately and he grasped his legs in a foetal position. After a few minutes, some composure came over him and he got up and left.

  Chapter Four

  We never locked the bathroom door. I’d only ever had that kind of intimate relationship—where I could sit on the toilet in front of someone—with my sister, and even then I’d resented her presence. Kelly seemed so comfortable in her own skin. She didn’t care if she was taking a bath, shaving her legs or her armpits or if she was changing a tampon. I was always welcome in front of her and that felt special.

  I had come to the city looking for money, and I’d found it. But I think the novelty of my job would have worn off if it hadn’t been for the friendship—or what I then called a friendship—with Kelly.

  Carla kept me on standard, straightforward clients. One evening a man in his mid-twenties, a well-to-do academic type, came to see me. He wanted to see Josie, actually, but I was the one who met him downstairs in Carla’s lounge. I tried to make conversation with him but he was stand-offish, which I thought was strange. Maybe he was just afraid of talking to girls. I reckoned that he had been turned down so often he had become all too familiar with the feeling of pretty girls being mean to him. He was the kind of guy who hadn’t danced at the prom.

  “I just need to relax,” he said, as though I was somehow in his way.

  “Okay.” I was calm. “Is that something I can help you with?” I winked. Flirty, I thought.

  “Listen, you’re pretty and I’m sure you want a good tip—and I’ll leave you one—just stop talking and massage me.” The tension oozed off him and I wanted to kick him out. I wanted to tell him what an idiot I thought he was, but I didn’t think Carla would
be impressed so I didn’t say anything. I kneaded his shoulders and back and thought about what might happen if I just took charge the way Kelly did. Instead, I promised myself a walk along the harbour later. I thought about dying my hair. I thought about how I was going to tell Kelly about him. Half an hour passed with our silent interaction.

  Then he turned over on the table and revealed his semi-erection underneath the thin white sheet.

  “On second thought,” he started, “I changed my mind.”

  It was perverted. He was an asshole, a spoilt brat. I might have been able to get into it if he had been nice about it, but he didn’t think I mattered enough to have to be nice. He thought all he had to do was shell out his money, and any service he desired would follow.

  “You changed your mind about what?” I asked. My voice was stern.

  “I think I want a little something extra,” he said, looking down at his cock.

  “Too late.”

  “What? I thought you wanted a nice tip.”

  “Oh, I’ll get my nice tip.”

  “Honey, you have to earn it,” he whispered. He put his hand on my shoulder and vaguely tried to pull my head down.

  “Get a girlfriend,” I sneered. I could tell he was just the kind of insecure mama’s boy who expected that everyone would cower to his wants. Well, not me. And I knew that calling him on it would anger him.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m a paying customer.”

  “For a massage. That was what you wanted. You said so yourself.” I was prepared to stand behind my statement even to Carla. Nothing was worth being talked to like that. I could walk out on this job and find another.

  “That’s a bad attitude.” His response was so predictable, but his actions surprised me. He grabbed my hair and pulled me towards him, not aware yet that one mustn’t take what is not offered. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it.

  “Let go of me.”

  “I could have you fired,” he said. “I’d be doing you a favour. You’re young. You should go to college or something.”

  “And how do you know I’m not?” I asked.

  “Are you?”

  I didn’t want to tell him that I wasn’t so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I decided that I would lose him as a client and I’d be doing him a favour. He couldn’t rely on his parents’ money forever and this was no way to talk to a lady.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to walk out that door and you’re going to go down to Carla and tell her that you had the most incredible experience of your life with me, and then you’re going to pay twice as much as she tells you to. You’re going to insist. And why? Because you learned the most valuable lesson of your life here today. Then you’re going to go home and think about what you’ve learned. You’re going to start being good to people and treating women with the respect that we deserve and then, when you’ve worked it all out, you’re going to come back here and tell me about it and maybe, if I believe you, we’ll go for dinner—on you, of course—and you can have the pleasure of my acquaintance in public, which I know is actually what you really want.”

  I was expecting him to flare into a mad frenzy. Anyone with self-respect would. I had insulted him to the core. But, not surprisingly, he did exactly as I said. He got dressed, thanked me and left.

  Later that afternoon, Carla knocked on my door. “Here’s your first bonus. I don’t know what went down in that room, but he couldn’t stop raving about you,” she said, and smiled. “Nice work. Welcome to your new life.”

  People who grew up with money either learn this lesson late in life—the so-called ‘hard way’—or not at all. Money is not power. Money can’t actually buy anything—it’s an illusion. If used correctly, it can be powerful. But that makes it no different than anything else. If we were playing a game of cards, that jerk’s hand would have been no match for mine, even if he had gone to all the right schools and would eventually become a snooty, high-paid lawyer.

  I told Kelly about him—about what a pasty, puffy-lipped dork he’d been. That, I thought, would be his worst nightmare—the threat that a pretty girl, be she paid or not, would recount all his insecurities and laugh at them with her friends. It had to be most men’s worst nightmare. It was also to my great advantage, and so I didn’t tell Kelly what I had made him do.

  Instead, I told her I wanted to take her out. I wanted to reciprocate even just a little of the hospitality she had shown me.

  * * * *

  We walked from our house through Chinatown to Kelly’s favourite restaurant. Sometimes, she said, she got homesick and went to this place that served up the best fried chicken she had managed to find outside Alabama. I didn’t have the same kind of attachment to my home. Her childhood, I speculated, had been laced with these kinds of memories—tastes and smells—and she told me her parents had been sad when she’d decided to leave.

  “What could I do?” she asked. “They didn’t get that Green Hill was a dead end for me. What could I have done there?”

  “What did they want?”

  “They wanted me to get married, have children, be like them, I guess. But they hated their lives. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. I hated my life. Maybe theirs was okay. I never asked. Anyway, I had to get away from my uncles. I had to get away from…” She stopped, looked into a little shop window and tugged on my arm. “Damn, it’s closed. I’ll have to take you here some time. They have the most amazing things in here.”

  It was an antique shop with beautiful, old, art deco oak furniture piled high at the back. It was dark now, and I imagined it was the kind of place that was dark even on sunny days because there was so much stuff piled on display.

  “Look at that little box.” She pointed at the window. Her finger touched the dewy glass and left a mark. It was a gold pill box with gemstones on the top of it. I didn’t know if she was really keen on the box or if it was her way of changing the subject, so I never asked about either again.

  Her favourite place was an old-style diner that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We had walked through a stretch of warehouses and were somewhere in the industrial district, but I was no longer sure exactly where. It’s funny what you learn about people based on where they like to eat. When I’d first seen Kelly, I’d thought she was the embodiment of glamour. She’d been everything ‘big city’ in my mind, but I had been wrong. Green Hill, she said, was a tiny little town, a forty-minute drive from another fairly small town. She had grown up, much like me, obsessing over the idea of a bigger, brighter, better place.

  “So, what’s your plan? You know…at Carla’s?” she asked as we were seated in the blue vinyl booth.

  It was a direct question. I had barely moved in. I had almost screwed up with today’s client. I didn’t even know if I could cut it. “I’m not sure yet.” I grabbed the plastic menu and studied it, hoping we weren’t going to talk about work all night.

  “Well, a word of advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “Carla knows what she’s doing. She’s a good person, you know? She’s the reason I could leave my job at the Side Bar and I’m glad I’m out of that dive. I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s hard. It was okay when I first got here. It seems like this place is a big city, you know, but it’s not. You will get recognised. I didn’t think so at first. I couldn’t imagine it. But then it happened. I was minding my own business, shopping for groceries and some guy, some random asshole, came up to me and said, ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ and I was like, ‘Who?’ but we both knew and…”

  “You hated it?”

  “Hate is a strong word. I’m very private. I don’t like knowing people I haven’t set out to know. The good thing about Carla’s is that it’s a lot of regulars, a lot of word of mouth and overall pretty decent people.”

  “And the bad thing?”

  “Money. She takes half of everything. It’s not my idea of a good deal. It’s just I needed something to get on my feet. She’s getting the b
etter end of the stick, though, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “But the other day you said that it was great money.”

  “In comparison to the Side Bar, but it’s not a long-term thing for me. I don’t want to get stuck making someone else rich, you know?”

  She glanced at the menu. “I’ll order for you,” she said. “I’m the Southerner. I like this place. Betty-Anne, the owner, really is from the South. It’s the real deal here. You like okra?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The waitress, a middle-aged woman with a ponytail and a pencil behind her ear, came over. Kelly ordered a ton of food and smiled at me. “Good for the soul,” she said, revealing the twang she usually hides to the waitress, who also smiled.

  “So what’s your plan?” I asked.

  “Long term, I want to build my own thing. I’m not sure what yet. I’m not even sure if I’ll stay in this industry. It can really wear you out if you’re not careful.”

  “You seem pretty together.”

  “How do you mean?” Her question was vaguely defensive, as if she didn’t like that I had made that observation.

  “I just mean that you seem to be pretty happy.”

  “Yeah, well, ‘seem’ is the word there.”

  “Really?” It hit me. I don’t know what kind of strange vision of Kelly I’d carried around in my head before that moment. I had sincerely thought that she liked what she did. I had been naïve, I guess.

  “You were so nice to me. I guess I thought you were happy.” I knew it was a dumb thing to say.

  “So being nice is being happy?” Kelly retorted. I didn’t blame her. I was nervous and I’ve always had a bad habit of saying dumb things when I get nervous.

  “That’s not what I meant.” I didn’t know how to take it back. I didn’t know what to say. I had hurt her feelings because of my own stupidity. God, I just wanted to hold her and tell her I was sorry and for her to forgive me. Her eyes were piercing, as if she had a threshold that, once crossed, would make her turn harsh and angry almost immediately. “Sorry, it’s just that you’re the one that asked me to stay at Carla’s. I thought you…”