Bound to You (18 page)

Even if my daily life was radically different to how it had been just a few months before, my sexual morals and my sense of how people deserved to be treated had not degenerated one jot. If anything, I was even more compassionate towards other people’s sexuality, and the battles they faced in reconciling what society told them it was OK to want with what they actually wanted. I had often reflected on the limitations of women’s sexual roles, but domination suggested to me that men were just as restricted. My understanding of what was meant by mutual respect and consent had also been strengthened. In most cases, the clients were far more respectful than the men I met when I went out dancing with Gina, for example, because the boundaries were explicit and the terms of the sexual-economic contract we were entering into were clear. I thought back in particular to that one obscene night in Soho. No, I felt no shame about anything I was doing.

And yet I knew that society thought less of me for it. I knew now that there were men that would never date me because I had sold sexual services. At the pop-up blood donation centre I was turned away because I couldn’t answer the question, ‘have you ever had sex for money?’ with a straight ‘no’.

‘Even if I’ve never had penetrative sex with someone for money?’

‘You can’t donate if you’ve exchanged sex for money. They’re the rules, it’s not defined any more specifically than that I’m afraid,’ the receptionist explained.

This baffled me. I understood that the restrictions were based on statistical rather than moral reasoning. This was why men who engaged in ‘male-to-male sex’, as the NHS pamphlet put it, couldn’t give blood either – because it was easier to catch the HIV virus that way. That said, I hypothesised that people who had lots of unprotected sex were surely the most high-risk group of all, regardless of whether it was with men or women.

‘But why would it matter if I had had sex for money? Surely the more important issue is whether I used a condom or not?’ I asked the receptionist.

‘We don’t condemn anyone’s lifestyle choice,’ she replied, robotically trotting out the equal opportunities phraseology that somehow managed to sound weighted with condemnation, ‘but you belong to a high-risk group.’ To this day, I have never been able to give blood.

I would reflect on my newly acquired ‘whore’ status sometimes as I took a white envelope stuffed with £20 notes to pay into the bank once a fortnight. There would be a plethora of other freelancers not on PAYE paying in their weekly earnings: child-minding women with other people’s babies in fashionable pushchairs; tradesmen in paint-splattered, sand-blasted overalls, and, often, some other girl my age, dressed innocuously in jeans and flats, concentrating hard on transferring from her own white envelope to the bank’s paying-in kind a similar bundle of bank notes. I would look at her and want to offer a comradely smile, but, even if she too suspected I was turning tricks, we never acknowledged one other, such was the secrecy and the social stigma of earning a living from sex work. I had managed to secure another, more prestigious internship starting at the end of February. But it was still unpaid. So this was what I had to do for at least another three months as I pursued my final career goal.

Although Sapphire and I made amazing money by many people’s standards, our hourly rate actually wasn’t as sumptuous as it first appeared. Five to ten clients a week didn’t mean five to ten hours’ work. There was prep to do; session planning and tidying up afterwards, research into new sex toys and the latest BDSM kinks.

What’s more, Sapphire invested much of the money she made back into the business, buying new equipment and costumes for the two of us, where required, and spending money on her website, advertising and professional photos.

Our beautification routines – shaving, moisturising, nail-painting – were, like our daily wardrobe, not much more than the basics most women performed just to go to work at the office each morning. We perfected our own manicures and pedicures and I got a trainee hairdresser friend to give my dark-blonde hair some free highlights. I became even more convinced that most beauty rituals really were carried out for the benefit of other women, not for men. Interestingly, despite the fact Sapphire kept her knickers firmly on for domination sessions, she purposefully maintained a well-groomed but full thicket of pubic hair. ‘These guys love to see the suggestion of a hairy bush,’ she told me. Even if they didn’t, she really didn’t care. And they never complained about this or any other aspect of our appearances, lending credence to my belief that domming was about much more than surface sex appeal.

The funds were never guaranteed, of course, and there was no way of guarding against session cancellation. We couldn’t take a deposit from the clients as this would have involved them giving us their actual names and bank account details, and most of them were as secretive about their real identities as we were about ours.

Sapphire was incredibly good at weeding out the ‘timewasters’ – men who had no intention of booking a session, but just wanted a free thrill from a bit of email communication with us. But from time to time we would still find ourselves waiting anxiously at the office. As I quietly fretted about how I would manage to pay my rent that week if this was the start of a trend, an irritated Sapphire would pluck her eyebrows into arched perfection as she gave the imbecile just five more minutes, then finally scowl and swear into the mirror when it became apparent that we’d been duped. ‘I could have booked that slot five times over today; I tell you, if I ever catch the cowardly little cunt . . .’

In the meantime, I still hadn’t forgotten about that night at Violet’s party, and the delicious Sebastian. Truth be told, he’d become my new favourite masturbation fantasy. It had been five months since I split up with Christos and I was finally ready to stop looking back at the ‘what might have beens’ and focus my energies on the ‘what may bes’. Now I was cursing the fact I hadn’t somehow procured his number. Anxious not to give away my crush to Sapphire, I had a roundabout conversation with her about it on our first day back in the office after the New Year.

‘Sapphire, I’m beginning to get curious about the whole submission thing. I’m wondering if I might like to try it myself.’

Sapphire raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, try it if you like, Nichi, but seriously, I think you’re like me. You can play kinky but really you’re just a passionate vanilla. All this faffing around with crops and paddles and ties. Honetly, all I want when I go home to Matt is a good old plain shag! And a decent cup of tea afterwards.’

Matt was Sapphire’s long-suffering boyfriend. She rarely talked about him, even with me, despite our growing closeness, and I found it quite touching that there were clearly still some elements of Sapphire and her life that were non-negotiably private.

‘Anyway, you see what happens with Violet. She becomes utterly consumed with these bastards and they’re never really nice to her. And then she ends up heart-broken and doesn’t eat, and she loses her tits, and her clients cancel because she looks so morbid. You don’t want to get into that.
I
don’t want you to get in to that!’

Later that week we had lunch with Violet and Angela again. It was the first time we’d seen Violet since the night of the party. She was utterly morose.

‘Jesus, girl, not another one!’ Sapphire sighed.

Violet’s eyes started to fill with tears. ‘Sapphire, don’t say anything! Don’t say I told you so! I know I’m a fool.’

Angela put her arm around Violet and tucked her hair behind her ears maternally. ‘No, you’re not a fool. You just, you just give too much of yourself, Violet.’

‘What happened?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Oh, I don’t know. One minute Dan and I are having this amazing hot D/S sex, spending every weekend together and making summer travelling plans, and the next he’s disappeared.’

‘What do you mean, disappeared?’ Sapphire asked.

‘He’s gone off to South Africa. No reason. He just rang me up from the airport, and was like, “take care, doll, see you in March. I’m off to join Sebastian in South Africa”.’

‘Sebastian?’ exclaimed Sapphire.

‘Yeah, you know. Sebastian’s working on an art project out there. He’s got a commission to paint the daughters of some rich white Afrikaaner family or something. Dan said he was going to work as his assistant.’

‘And Sebastian didn’t tell you this? I thought he was meant to be your friend, Violet!’

Violet shrugged again, biting back fresh tears.

‘I’ve tried Dan’s phone and his email but he hasn’t responded. I guess we’ll just have to wait until they get back. Originally, Sebastian was due back for this big spring fetish ball, you know the one. But who knows now. No doubt they’re plotting to seduce the daughters and tie them up.’

Sapphire pursued her lips in disgust. ‘Are we done with dominant men now, please?’

One wet evening in mid-February, one of those evenings when you feel spring has decided to take a sabbatical in the Caribbean and will never return, I arrived at the office to find Sapphire in a truly foul mood. Business had started to pick up but this meant our delayed 6 p.m. was going to back into our 7.30. Sapphire had painful, spasming RSI, initially contracted from too much typing as she replied to the dozens of slave-mails she received each day. It was being exacerbated by all the corporal punishment she was having to deliver, for alongside working with me, Sapphire still saw the same amount of clients alone. The money she was making was obscene, but I did worry about the toll too much domination was taking on her health. It wasn’t as if there was a HR department to check up on her.

At least our 6 p.m., when he did arrive, would hopefully relax her. Jack was a strapping Canadian businessman with the body of a paratrooper and a boyish face, tanned and dimpled. He also had an unapologetic foot fetish. He would pay us to spend a full hour examining, stroking and massaging our feet. We had even trained him up to give us pedicures. At first his hands had shook too much to do a good job, he had been so in thrall to us and absorbed in the privilege bestowed upon him. But with practice he had improved – mainly because he knew that he would feel the fury of our wrath if he didn’t. His adoration was so intense, and so pure, that it was almost impossible not to feel genuinely warm towards him because of it.

I would make sure that Sapphire got the first foot massage. We now had access to a second room, which we used as a bedroom, complete with wrought-iron four-poster double bed. Sapphire reclined on it stiffly.

When Jack arrived, he came with his head hung in apologetic deference. ‘Mistress, I’m so, so sorry I’m late.’ He ran his hand through his hair and tugged at his tie. He’d clearly had a harried day at the office, too. ‘I’ve brought you a gift to say sorry.’ It was a Coco de Mer perfume she loved. Did he know that she had nearly run out of her current bottle?

‘Yes, I mentioned it in passing last time, didn’t I? And he remembered, like the perfect slave he is.’ She patted his tanned and dimpled cheek.

Jack was perceptive, and evidently he could see that Sapphire was tense. ‘You look like you’ve had a hard day too, Mistress.’

‘Damn right,’ she snapped back. ‘Honestly, the pain I put myself through for you deviants. My shoulder is killing me.’

Sapphire was struggling to lie flat. I took a spare black velveteen cushion off a nearby chair and gestured that she might like it underneath the offending shoulder. She waved me away before I could get to the bed.

‘Don’t bother, Jade. It’ll only set me at an even more awkward angle. I should have gone to Pilates this morning but instead I waited in for some spineless sissy that I was interviewing to be my cleaning maid. He never turned up. He can forget trying to rearrange that. Now, Jack, be a good little pet and come and do what you’re good for!’

Jack approached the bed. He had already stripped down to just his boxer shorts. He clearly had been rushing to get to us. The sweat glistened in tiny beads across his soldier’s body, and down the centre of his chest. He never needed to be asked to strip. The routine was always the same when Jack came to serve. I would let him in and he would give an adoring and adorable smile, blue eyes beaming out from beneath his black hair. Once inside, he would place his white envelope on the mantelpiece, or the dressing table, depending on which room we were in, soundlessly take off most of his clothes, hang them on one of the provided hooks and ask who required service first.

Despite his size, Jack was very gentle. But he had simply enormous hands. Both Sapphire and I, by contrast had rather small feet and he could massage the whole length of one with a single hand, they were so big. Jack cradled our feet the way a love-struck seventeen-year-old cradled his girlfriend’s cheek, and stroked our toes with similar adoration.

Jack took Sapphire’s left foot to begin with. After a few undulating strokes I could see she was beginning to relax. I relaxed at the sight of that. She slipped back soporifically into the pillows, which were made out of violet sari fabric and coordinated with the curtains. As Sapphire smiled, so did Jack, both of their bodies softening in tandem. Jack got as much out of giving the massage as Sapphire did receiving it. I unscrewed the top off a pot of rose-scented moisturiser to use on Sapphire’s feet and passed it to him. Maintaining the massage with his right hand, Jack took some of the lotion in the fingers of his left then held it in the palm of his hand for a few moments so as to take the chill out of it before he applied it to Sapphire’s foot. He really was one of life’s pleasers.

‘Jack, are you single?’ Sapphire queried.

‘Yes, Mistress,’ he replied in his low Canadian lilt.

‘Why?’ I exclaimed. Then felt slightly embarrassed. That had been a little over eager.

Jack had the grace to blush, and let out a short laugh.

‘Oh, same story with all the guys my age in my line of employment. We work too much! A pathetic excuse, I know, but there we are.’

‘Well, I would say not having a girlfriend was a waste of a good foot fetishist, but I know that’s not true,’ purred Sapphire. ‘I never want you to stop coming here.’ The foot massage was having a restorative effect on Sapphire, returning her to her more usual flirty self. ‘And that’s an order!’ she added. We all started laughing.