Sarah's Education (16 page)

11

SARAH WAS SITTING
in the food court at the mall with a serving of General Po chicken, conducting ‘The Anvil Chorus’ with her plastic fork. Veronica sat down in the space opposite, somehow managing to look elegant and sophisticated but warm and motherly at the same time, like a wealthy socialite might look while bandaging the grazed knee of a future president.

Sarah’s boss mouthed something. Sarah took an ear bud out.

‘I was asking if you were alone here?’

‘All alone, thanks, Veronica.’

‘If anyone you know shows up, I’m just a stranger with whom you struck up a casual conversation.’

‘Oh, right. Thanks.’

‘Discretion, my dear.’ Veronica took a sip from a polystyrene cup, made a face and set it aside. ‘Dreadful.’ She leant closer. ‘I’m so glad I ran into you, Sarah. I wanted to talk to you about a potential date.’

‘Oh?’

‘You know you’re always free to refuse a date, right?’

‘You explained that at the beginning, Veronica. I never have, have I?’

‘I’ve always been able to advise you what the client might expect. This time, I’m not sure.’

‘Oh?’

‘On the plus side, it’s a corporate gig and it pays extra. It’s from next Saturday at two in the afternoon – “precisely two” for some reason – until ten Sunday evening, so it counts as two and a half dates. Two-thousand five hundred for you, plus whatever the tip will be. It’d be at your favourite hotel, the Royal Avenue.’

What if she bumped into Jack there? Stupid. He didn’t live there, for goodness sake! Sarah said, That sounds good.’

‘And your looks would suit this client perfectly. I was asked to provide a “naughty schoolgirl”.’

‘My page’s uniform?’

‘Not this time. This time it’ll be more of a fantasy schoolgirl outfit, like those in wardrobe.’

‘I can do that.’

‘I don’t know what the rest of the requirements might be, but often, when they ask for a naughty schoolgirl, it means they want …’ Veronica raised an elegant eyebrow.

‘Want what?’

‘Spanking.’

‘For me to spank him … Oh? He might want to spank me?’

‘Possibly. Not for sure. How’d you be with that, Sarah? Have you ever played that game?’

‘No, never. I never even got spanked as a kid.’

‘Do you ever have any spanking fantasies?’

‘No – yes – I mean, not actual fantasies, but I’ve wondered about what it might be like, once in a while.’

‘A lot of women do fantasise about it. Come to that, a lot of women enjoy the real thing.’

‘We’re talking about by hand, right? Slaps on the bum? Not canes or whips or anything?’

Veronica shrugged. ‘Maybe he won’t want to whack your bum at all, but he might, and, if so, I don’t know what he’d want to do it with.’ Veronica’s eyes narrowed. ‘We make it very clear to our clients that they mustn’t damage their dates and that if they want something the girl isn’t ready for, she can refuse. If this one seems like he’s going too far, you may simply walk away and you’ll still get paid in full. I don’t want that to happen, though. This is a new corporate account – one I’d like to keep.’

‘Why me?’ Sarah asked. ‘Don’t you have any girls who you know are into being spanked?’

‘Three, but none of them looks young enough. Apart from
you
, there’s only Nancy who can play a halfway convincing schoolgirl, and she hates to be spanked.’

‘Two and a half thousand bucks?’

‘Plus tip.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘Wonderful!’

‘But please remember after that I’ll be gone for Christmas. Though I’d be happy to take a New Year’s gig if something suitable comes up.’

‘Understood. If this works for you, it could mean a lot of extra business for both of us.’ Veronica stood up. Let’s celebrate. You are going to need a ta-da! coat. My treat.’

‘A “ta-da!” coat?’ Sarah asked.

‘Winter is here and you certainly can’t walk around in public wearing a fantasy schoolgirl costume. You’ll need something that’s both warm and dramatic to go over it, so that when you meet your client, you can …’ Veronica mimed parting a coat with a theatrical flourish. ‘Ta-da!’

After dragging Sarah through a dozen or so boutiques, Veronica settled on an ankle-length scarlet-silk-lined black leather duster, at just over $1,800. Sarah modelled it, throwing it wide with a loud ‘Ta-da!’ She and Veronica doubled over with laughter. If their behaviour confused the saleswoman she didn’t show it. It was a nice sale for her and she was likely on commission.

When the day came Sarah dressed in the fantasy schoolgirl costume that Veronica had picked out for her: a blue and gold striped tie, knotted loosely around her throat, a gauzy white shirt-blouse that fastened by tying its tails just beneath her breasts, a parody of a tartan kilt that started four inches below her navel and finished at the very tops of her thighs, over-the-knee thin white socks and Mary Jane shoes. Under it, Sarah wore a white net thong because, to men, a thong on a woman is like black – it goes with anything. She carried a boxy pink purse.

Her hair was in ribbon-tied bunches that she wore very
high
, like a Harajuku Girl. Sarah’s only fragrance was pink bubblegum-scented lipstick.

She went up to the penthouse level of the Royal again but it was the other suite, not the one where Jack’s party had been, thank goodness. Having sex with another man in the same room and bed as she’d shared with Jack would have felt too weird.

Before she knocked, she undid all the buttons of her duster. A tall man opened the door. He had silver streaks in his black hair and a face that looked slightly rumpled and studious, in a nice way. His irises were as dark as his pupils. Sarah had never seen eyes quite like them. She found his gaze pleasantly intimidating. Her client’s grey tie was woollen, worn with a grey check shirt, under a hairy tweed jacket that had leather elbow patches. His pants were grey flannel. He was shod in gleaming black Florsheim loafers with tassels.

Sarah stepped inside. ‘Ta-da!’

He laughed.

She said, ‘I’m sorry …’

In an English accent he said, ‘No, I’m the one who should apologise. You look absolutely stunning, adorable, irresistible and so on. I laughed because whoever had you dress in that cute outfit – well, it’s an inside joke that I won’t explain.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘That same someone is being very crafty, as well.’

‘Crafty?’ Sarah asked.

‘I have to go out, right now, for a meeting where some people are going to try to get me to agree to something. Their idea is, if I know that you, looking like this, are here waiting for me, I’ll agree quickly so that I can rush right back.’

Sarah smiled. ‘And will you – rush back?’

‘What they don’t know is that I’ve already decided to agree to what they want. For me, the meeting will be just about whatever extra concessions I can squeeze out of them. I’m relieved that they’ve set me up to be in a hurry. That means I won’t have to waste time pretending to be reluctant but they’ll think they’ve won what they want because of you.’

‘It sounds complicated.’

‘Business politics, my dear. Plot and counterplot. It’s all very tiresome really, except for you being used as bait to catch a man who wants to be caught. I really regret leaving you all alone for a while, but I promise I’ll be very attentive when I get back.’ He took her coat and hung it in the closet. Help yourself to whatever you want from the minibar. There’s a TV with two hundred channels, plus pay-per-view. Don’t worry about the bill. Everything is on “them”, you included.’

He left. He hadn’t so much as touched her. She didn’t even have a name to call him by.

The suite was similar to the one she’d been in with Jack, but in this one the closet to the left of the king-sized ornate brass bed had mirror doors. Sarah tried a couple of schoolgirl poses, sucking her thumb with a knee turned in; pigeon-toed and pouting. Very cute. If she was a man, she’d do her.

She renewed her pale-pink bubblegum lipstick and smoothed her over-the-knee hose and took a look around. The minibar was interesting. She wasn’t hungry but she loved smoked almonds and it’d been ages since she’d nibbled on a Twinkie. There had to be three-dozen miniatures of booze. She’d made it a rule not to get tipsy on a paid date, but she’d never tried Cointreau. Sarah settled down on the end of the king-sized bed and thumbed the TV’s remote.
The Mikado
was listed as a ‘free-on-demand’ movie. She knew it was an opera of some sort so she tried it. She’d thought that all opera was Italian or German but, strangely, it was in English. Even so, though the tunes were nice, she couldn’t understand all the words. The singers had accents and they sang too fast a lot of the time.

After a while she got herself a Coke to wash the Cointreau down, and a Benedictine, just to further her education. She was eating, so the booze, drunk slowly, wouldn’t affect her.
The Mikado
ended. The pay-per-view menu offered ‘adult’ movies. Sarah picked one at random.

A skinny blonde with unreal breasts, which were each bigger than her head, was sucking on the gigantic cock of a muscular
man
who was covered to the top of his bald head with tattoos. After a while, another man joined them, then a third. Maybe some people would have found it sexy, watching a woman sucking one man, being fucked by another and taking a third up her bum, but Sarah found it boring. There was no plot. There was no reason to care about any of the characters. It wasn’t even as if anyone got seduced or had any feelings about what they were doing. OK, she herself had sex for pay, but she’d always found it fun. She got the impression that any of the characters she was watching could have simply walked away at any time, without regrets and without being missed. Except the woman, of course. Sarah giggled at her mental picture of the three men, still thrusting away, with the woman missing.

Was this all that porn was about? She switched to another adult movie.

This time, in a restaurant, a hot-looking but sophisticated woman, who was either a spy or a thief – Sarah wasn’t sure about the plot – was trying to seduce a rather handsome business man. That was better! He was trying to resist her wiles but she was too much for him. There was a scene in a cab with some really sexy kissing. Sarah liked that part. Instead of them getting naked the moment they got to a hotel room, there was extended fondling that led to well-simulated passion. That was more like it. They ended up in bed, making love in a variety of positions, though none that Sarah hadn’t tried. After the man came all over the woman’s breasts, he turned out to be another thief or spy, a rival one. He tied her up on the bed, still naked but for her stockings, spreadeagled, and started to fondle her as he questioned her.

Now that was sexy! Sarah could imagine herself as the woman, totally helpless, at the mercy of a man who was torturing her, sexually. If she were that woman, she’d hold out for a long, long time.

Sarah’s hand found its own way up under her tiny kilt. She was already damp.

The man on the screen was using a vibrator on the woman. He was driving her to the edge, making her beg, then
switching
off. He wasn’t going to let her climax again until she told him where the thing they were both after – whatever it was – was.

Sarah’s fingernails scratched the net of her thong, right over her clit. When the man took the vibrator away, Sarah made herself stop scratching. When he put it back, she started again. It was like the movie was interactive. It would have been even better if she’d had a vibrator of her own – and better again if she was tied up like the woman and a lover was mimicking what happened on the screen.

A stern voice demanded, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The man in the tweed jacket had come quietly back to the room.

She stammered, ‘Y-you said I could watch movies.’

‘Did I tell you that you could masturbate?’

‘N-no.’

‘What a naughty little schoolgirl you are!’

Ah! He wasn’t really angry. He was playing a game with her. This could be fun. Sarah stood up and looked at the floor, her hands behind her back. ‘Sorry, sir.’ She dared peep up at him from under her lashes. ‘Did your meeting go well, sir?’

‘Don’t try to change the subject.’ His voice softened, as did his expression. ‘As it happens, it went extremely well, thank you.’ He became stern again. ‘Now, explain yourself, miss.’

‘I was – I was watching a movie, like you said I could, and I sort of got carried away. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.’

‘You’re here to serve me, not to get off without me.’

‘Sorry.’

He looked at the TV screen, where the woman, still tied to the bed, was now giving the man an enthusiastic blow job.

‘Kinky,’ Sarah’s client drawled. ‘Is that what you like?’ He tossed his jacket onto a chair and loosened his tie.

‘I’ve never tried that sort of thing.’

He grinned sardonically. ‘Of course not, you being just a schoolgirl, even if you are a naughty one.’

Obviously, he thought she was lying about never having tried being tied up and that her protests were part of the role she was playing. She asked, ‘What should I call you, sir?’

‘Call me John and lose the “sir”. Now, about your punishment. What do you think would be appropriate?’

Before her mind could process his question, Sarah blurted, A spanking?’

‘I agree. How many slaps do you think you deserve?’

She’d thought about it, and she’d been warned he might want to do it to her, but now that it seemed inevitable and so close, her knees trembled and her throat dried up.

‘I asked you how many,’ he insisted.

Sarah swigged the last of her Coke and managed to say, ‘That’d be up to you, John, wouldn’t it?’

He nodded in an approving way. ‘I see that they chose you well.’ John sat on the side of the bed, facing the mirror doors of the closet. He patted his left knee and turned his right leg out sideways. ‘Come here then.’

A thousand hummingbirds fluttered their tiny cold wings inside Sarah’s tummy. Dragging her feet, and having no problem looking scared, she rounded the bed and bent over his left knee. His right knee clamped hers. He’d done this before. His hand pushed down between her shoulder blades.