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  Meanwhile, the Ham had frantically crammed the envelope back in his mouth. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor now, body quivering. His cock was even harder.

  ‘Bring me that tribute. This charade has already gone on too long. And where are my leather leggings?’

  He sneaked a hand up to the envelope, temporarily removed it from his mouth. ‘They’re waiting for you in the bathroom, Mistress. I thought you would want to change in private.’

  Sapphire stared right through him, then turned to me. ‘Mistress Jade – before I slap this man’s face until it matches the colour of his balls, would you be so kind as to fetch the leggings for me?’

  I nodded and got up out of my throne awkwardly, taking care to give the Ham a wide berth as I squeezed past him to retrieve the leggings. When I came back into the room he had crawled to rest by Sapphire’s feet and she held the envelope in her elegant fingers. She patted him on the head. ‘Good piggy. Ah, Mistress Jade, thank you,’ she said as I passed her the leggings.

  She held them up to the light and scrutinised them.

  ‘Do you like them, Goddess?’ the Ham asked overenthusiastically.

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘They’re awful. Terribly unflattering.’

  ‘But you have a wonderful figure, Goddess,’ came the Ham’s reply.

  ‘Shut up. When I want your opinion on my figure, I’ll ask for it. Did I ask for it?’

  The Ham said nothing. She slapped him across the face with the back of her hand. He whimpered with arousal.

  ‘I asked you if I’d asked for it, you impudent slug.’

  I let out a half-gasp, half-laugh. Impudent slug. That was a good one.

  ‘No, Mistress, no, Madam, no, Goddess, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn.’

  He buried his face into the carpet at her feet.

  ‘Well, anyway, I’m going to put these disgusting things on. Back away.’

  He shuffled back along the carpet towards the door. I caught him sneak a glance at me. Sapphire had bent down to undo the zips of her high-heeled boots and didn’t see it this time. Should I report him for it? Maybe not. I didn’t want to get too involved. I already felt far more involved than I’d anticipated I would do. So sitting and staring wasn’t actually entirely passive. But it was certainly more psychologically intriguing than I had bet on it being.

  Sapphire placed her boots to one side and sat up.

  ‘Right, now, are you going to watch me while I put these on? Since you’ve paid so much money for the privilege?’

  Wow. She’d actually just mentioned the money outright. Wasn’t that a little crass?

  He crawled hurriedly towards her.

  ‘Yes, Goddess, oh, please, Goddess, it’s such an honour to bring you your tribute.’

  She picked up the leatherette leggings and held them up to examine them once more then placed them on the arm of the chair. Then she began to unbutton her jeans, fingers inching down along the fly teasingly. The Ham was mesmerised. She snapped her fingers at him.

  ‘Look at my face, you fool. Don’t stare at my snatch.’

  ‘No, Madam, of course not, Madam.’ He looked up adoringly into her eyes.

  ‘That’s better.’

  Sapphire arched up out of the chair and inched the fabric of her jeans down around her bottom, stopping them halfway around her hips to reveal a hint of black lace. Her skin was even whiter than mine. Hang on a minute, what should I be doing? Was I allowed to look? I decided to flit my eyes between the two of them, as if watching a game of tennis. I guess I’d learn this way just exactly what actions turned the clients on.

  Sapphire sat there for a moment, stroked the edge of her knickers, then said to the Ham, ‘Don’t even think about what you can never have. You’re not, are you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he whispered thickly. ‘But Mistress,’ he asked her, ‘may I, can I . . . can I touch myself?’

  Sapphire sighed. ‘What do you think, Mistress Jade? Do you think Robert should be allowed to touch himself?’

  I looked at the floor. It was too much. She was asking me? I had no idea what the right answer was. I forced myself to meet her gaze. Thankfully she could see that I was uncomfortable. ‘Robert, I think you might make Mistress Jade uncomfortable if you do that.’

  His face fell.

  ‘And besides,’ she said, smiling wickedly, ‘I think it’s good for you to go home frustrated sometimes – don’t you?’

  Robert clearly didn’t but he knew what the correct answer was. ‘Of course, Mistress Sapphire, whatever you and Mistress Jade wish.’

  ‘Well, since I’m so benevolent, how about a compromise. You can touch yourself. But no cumming. And let’s shift around so Mistress Jade doesn’t have to see this.’

  She got up out of her chair, jeans still slung down around her hips and swiveled her chair. Then she directed him so that he had his back to me. The strip resumed.

  Sapphire continued to ease her jeans down around her small, pert bottom. Then she stood up and rapidly pulled them down to her ankles, her slim white legs gleaming as she stepped out of them.

  ‘Now, where are the leggings?’

  ‘There, Madam!’ He pointed to the edge of the chair. She kicked his hand out of the way.

  ‘I know where they are, you moron, I put them there! It was a rhetorical question!’

  She snatched up the leggings, smiled at him, then sat back down. Draping herself seductively over the chair, she pointed the toes of one manicured foot and directed it into the leg hole, inching the fabric up past her heel and around her calf, until her toes thrust forward and out of the bottom. The Ham moaned. She slid the leatherette all the way up her leg, then repeated the motion on the other side. I couldn’t see what the Ham was doing, but his movements were becoming increasingly jerky. Sapphire smiled one last wide smile and arched up and eased the leggings up over her bottom. The Ham groaned so loudly I jumped in my throne.

  ‘Oh Mistress, oh Goddess, there is no one who can put on leather like you, Mistress. Oh God, oh God, how I work just to serve you, just to earn money to pay to see you do this. Please may I kiss your feet, Goddess? Just one kiss on each foot, please. I beg you.’

  Sapphire held up her left foot and danced it about in front of him. Then she rested her toes on the floor, the rest of her foot held up in an impossible arch. ‘Kiss it then!’ He did her bidding. His whole body was shaking, shaking so much that I wondered if he wasn’t about to break the conditions of the leather show. Then Sapphire held out the other foot in front of his face. This time she didn’t bring it to rest on the floor. ‘Go on!’ she barked, but just before he could go to kiss her hovering foot she playfully kicked him in the face.

  ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘You’re greedy. And greedy little pigs don’t always get what they want. Now off with you! Get up, take your clothes into that bathroom, get dressed and disappear!’

  After he had gone, Sapphire explained to me.

  ‘They’re not usually like that, you know. He’s such a creep. Slobbering and sliming himself over the floor and wanting to be treated like an animal. He’s the kind of client everyone thinks you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. But I figured he could be your baptism of fire.’

  If that’s as creepy as they got, I could handle a few more of them a week, I thought.

  Sapphire continued. ‘It’s usually much more obviously erotic than that. And I’m generally much nicer to the ones I like. Even when they are middle-aged and balding,’ she grinned.

  I quite liked the very unappealing PR exec crawling about the floor like a, what had she called him, again? Impudent slug, that was it. At least I didn’t have to feign any kind of sexy act. It was easy like this. And hardly sex work. I wasn’t sure how I felt about ‘more erotic’.

  As Sapphire rearranged her Titian locks into their chignon, her BlackBerry vibrated. ‘Oh, look at that! That’s Charles asking if he could see us both on Monday morning. And while we were sessioning, another of my clients got back to me and as
ked for Wednesday. So much interest in you already, Nichi! And honestly, I can’t tell you how pleased I am with you. It’s easy just sitting and staring, isn’t it?’

  I couldn’t deny it. It was. A bit too easy. And God, I needed the money.

  On the train home I fingered the brushed nylon hem of my dress and wondered if I looked different. I scanned the faces of my fellow passengers. Implacable as lizards. They had no idea what I’d been up to. And why should they? What does a sex worker look like anyway?

  Jade. I tried the name out again. What was a jade? A worn-out horse. A wanton woman. An emerald substitute.

  It’s just because you’ve got green eyes, I told myself. Don’t read so much in to it.

  CHAPTER 10

  Over the next few weeks Sapphire and I saw an array of male submissives, thankfully none of them like the Ham. The vanilla-girl ploy was proving irresistible to the clients. Mainly because it wasn’t a ploy at all. Each session Sapphire would push the boundaries of my knowledge of BDSM, otherwise known as bondage, domination, sadism and masochism, a little bit further. But I was still frequently visibly startled by what I saw.

  I watched my first over-the-knee spanking and my first cropping (basically a beating across the backside with a horse crop.) I watched Sapphire tie them to chairs, the horse, or the X-cross, (an upright wooden rack for tying a slave to) and tease them mercilessly with her hands, feet and other implements. The balls on leather straps, I learned, were gags, and I winced the first time I saw Sapphire thrust the ball between a submissive’s teeth. ‘Don’t worry, Nichi, it’s all in the control of the hand movement. Right before I hit his teeth I slow it down so that he has time to bite around it.’

  Safety, both ours and the clients’, was of paramount importance to Sapphire. She was a trained first aider and at the start of each session, if she hadn’t already done it by email, she would ask the submissive to confirm the intensity required, listening intently to his answer. ‘Like I said when we first met, Nichi, I’m not actually a sadist!’

  Initially I looked to the clients’ erections as proof they were enjoying themselves but I soon learned that this could be misleading. Some of them never got hard at all. ‘It’s all in their heads,’ Sapphire would explain. ‘They’ll go home and wank over it later.’ That, to me, seemed like a complete waste of money. If they didn’t even get hard at the sight of us, wouldn’t it have been easier and cheaper to sit at home and watch BDSM porn?

  ‘Of course not!’ Sapphire had explained. ‘You can’t put a price on a natural reaction. Or on real women subjecting you to your fantasy humiliation scenario.’

  The stereotype of the geriatric former public schoolboy longing for a nostalgic caning only held true occasionally; there were bankers, lawyers, financiers, marketing managers and social workers, all longing to feel the wrath of Sapphire’s tongue and the back of her hand while I sat and observed. Their fantasies were as unique as they were – and yet each wanted the same basic thing: they wanted to be subjected to female sexual power. From the moment the submissives handed over that white envelope, Sapphire was in complete control. She was the directrice of their sexual fantasies, and they didn’t have to do a thing but let her guide them. I was beginning to understand how that could be intoxicating.

  About a month after that first session, we were booked by a man with a penchant for verbal humiliation. Sapphire read me his email as we drank tea and did our make-up prior to his arrival. ‘Dear Mistress. I hope this missive finds you well. I am a forty-something entrepreneur looking for an intelligent domination session. I have three degrees and several published academic papers to my name. As such, along with a good hand spank and some tie and tease delivered by your strict self, I would love to experience a nasty verbal dressing-down, or perhaps a commentary on my humiliation by a scathing friend of yours?’

  ‘So.’ Sapphire elongated the o, as she applied mascara in the mirror. ‘How do you feel about playing my assistant today, rather than my vanilla girl?’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘It’s more money,’ she offered immediately. ‘I just think with your literary inclinations, you’ll be great at this verbal stuff.’

  It was true that it was hard for me, with my love of acting and my university radio experience, to keep my mouth shut. I loved hearing the combinations of insulting adjectives Sapphire would string together, and would often sit there with my own composition scorching the tip of my tongue. And while I was still hunting for a paid journalism job, this was arguably a better use of my creative skills than temping.

  ‘Well, sure, why not. He sounds interesting.’

  ‘Oh, such an interesting one. The last time he came here we enacted a fantasy whereby he was a male model, and I was a female artist drawing him in an art class. He wanted me to walk around him and critique his appearance. Basically, to objectify him the way women are objectified. He said he wanted to know what it felt like to be at the mercy of my scrutinising gaze.’

  So he wasn’t just thinking with his cock. That was actually rather reflective for a male sexual fantasy. I liked the sound of this guy.

  ‘That’s very cerebral. Sounds a bit too good to be true! Will he really get off on just being objectified?’

  ‘I think the trick is to make him feel as though you are dissecting him, weighing him up as a sexual possibility, but ultimately rejecting any kind of physical experience with him – which obviously you are because you won’t come into any bodily contact with him. You’re just trying to take him down a peg or two.’

  That made more sense. I thought about all those untouchable beauties that populated Renaissance love poetry. Basically, I had to play with that will-she-won’t-she power. And be a bitch with it.

  ‘But don’t I need to sex up my outfit a little bit if I’m to get involved in the tease?’

  I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing a long embroidered prom skirt and a tight black scoop-neck sweater, tights and flat leather riding boots. December daywear.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. Like I said, he’s cerebral. Not that what you look like doesn’t matter at all, but you can still see your shape. That sweater is tight as, Nichi! Maybe just pull your skirt up around the tops of your boots. And anyway, don’t worry about anything; I’m the one who’s going to test for a “response”.’ She winked at me as she readjusted her stocking tops and fished around in her make-up bag for her signature dark-red lipstick.

  I still felt a little unsure. At that moment, I realised something about myself: I wasn’t a natural tease. Despite my feminism, if somebody expressed interest in me in a bar and I was interested too, I would angle myself to best emphasise my curves. Could domming teach me a different kind of seduction? Could I really turn on a man dressed, not in a figure-flaunting outfit and heels, but in my everyday clothes, and with just the power of my words and the odd hard stare? And if so, why did Sapphire wear the outfits she did?

  The doorbell rang. ‘Would you answer it, Mistress Jade?’ Sapphire said, with a smile, reeling us both into character. ‘He’s called James. Well, that’s the name he’s given, anyway.’

  I got up and went to let him in. The man on the doorstep was handsome with tousled blond-grey hair, ice-blue eyes and a very slightly hooked nose. He gave me a funny little bow, his forehead setting into concentrated creases. ‘Hello, James. I’m Jade.’ I offered him my hand then remembered what Sapphire had said about not talking in the hallway. I ushered him into the office.

  ‘Well, hello, James dear, how are you?’ Sapphire gushed. She was like a business-class air hostess, especially with that suit and stockings combo, and her red hair hoisted up into its trademark chignon. ‘Would you like a drink? You know we only have water, but still!’ she tinkled.

  James smiled gravely. ‘Some water would be wonderful, thank you. Oh, but first may I give you this.’

  He brought out the requisite white envelope.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Sapphire replied, as if she were a professional fundraiser and he had just
donated to her campaign. She tucked the envelope in a jewelled tea caddie kept on a desk in the corner of the room. Always get the money first, was the sex worker mantra. But sometimes, slightly alarmingly, Sapphire forgot with the regulars. I guessed it was because she was so comfortable with them that she trusted them to pay up, regardless. So far, they always had.

  ‘Mistress Jade, some water for James, would you oblige?’ I went off to fetch a glass of water. When I returned, Sapphire and James were already in an in-depth conversation about microloans to women in sub-Saharan Africa.

  ‘So that’s where I make my business “give back”, as it were,’ James was explaining to her. ‘Ending female poverty is, after all, crucial to enabling female emancipation.’

  ‘Oh, we’re all for ending female poverty, aren’t we, Mistress Jade!’

  ‘Are you a student?’ James asked me.

  I nodded.

  ‘Mistress Jade loves literature, James. That’s why I invited her along today. I think she has the requisite skills to be able to . . .’ she paused ‘. . . disassemble you.’ Sapphire was winding us both into the role play now. An hour did go fast, that I knew, and there was a lot to fit in if this guy was to be spanked and teased to the soundtrack of my cutting observations. I settled into the throne.

  ‘Anyway, James, that’s enough of your small talk. I don’t want to hear your voice again for a while. Instead, I want to see some humility, please. And you’re wearing too many clothes. Lose some. But keep your pants on.’

  ‘You’re wearing too many clothes.’ It was a line I would come to hear many more times, but its accusatory tone always appealed to the clients. James began to undress obediently, placing his clothes in an exacting pile on the floor. Sometimes, if they were going back to work, the clients would ask for a hanger on which to place their suit jackets. I supposed it was in a bid to avoid the crumpling that they presumed, in their paranoia, would out them as punters.

  Sapphire circled James for a moment, trailing her white hands over his body. He was in extremely good shape for a forty-something, with a well-defined chest and burgeoning six-pack.