The Back Room
It’s rare that I actually entertain a client myself. Normally, my role is strictly front-of-house. I am the mother hen, the soother of qualms, and the face of professional courtesy and discretion. I am the figure of shrouded desire, too, the one thing not on offer. The ring master to the theater which surrounds me, and it doesn’t do to fracture that illusion. Taking part in Mr. Harcourt’s little drama, however, reminded me of how much I miss.
Perhaps it was that, so fresh in my mind, that inclined me more favorably towards James Brooker.
A tall man—neither especially broad nor overtly muscular, but pleasing to the eye—he loitered in the reception room like he was afraid of his height, that he wished he could shrink somehow to be invisible. Lena, my front desk girl, took pity and showed him right into my office, then sent in tea, coffee, and biscuits. Little human comforts help put nervous clients at ease.
His looks, once I saw past the shyness, caught my attention. Sun-scarred cheeks, lean and ruddy, with twinkling blue eyes beneath a sweep of floppy, pale brown hair, bleached in streaks of summer blond. His thin nose had a slightly crooked tip, and his lips a pronounced Cupid’s bow, giving him an air of elfin mystery. His long fingers played incessantly around the handle and rim of his coffee cup while we talked, a blush rising frequently to his face.
“I just…I’ve really never, um, done this before,” he said apologetically.
For once, I actually believed those words.
I excused myself for a moment, popped out to tell Lena she should hold any calls for me and, over the next forty-five minutes, slowly extracted a full picture from Mr. Brooker.
He was twenty-four, he told me. A trust fund baby grown up under the aegis of his family’s money and reputation, he found himself now stuck somewhere in the limbo between adolescence and adulthood; too young for his father to consider letting him on the company board, yet too old to enjoy the feckless pleasures of youth. And he had enjoyed them. Unfortunately, years spent out of Mommy and Daddy’s sight had honed tastes he knew he couldn’t continue to indulge.
“It’s not a problem,” he assured me, his voice hollow and his gaze fixed on the table. “I mean, I like women…romantically, as well as men. I-I suppose I’m attracted to the person , not their, uh….”
“Quite.” I poured myself another cup of chamomile tea. Confidante and therapist, just another two of my functions. “So, you’d be looking for an introduction to a gentleman friend of mine?”
“No.”
I stopped, already poised to stand and retrieve the binder I kept on the shelf by the door, a tasteful portfolio of my staff and their expertise. No? Mr. Brooker raised his azure gaze to mine and blinked a couple of times, cherubic mouth trembling to a smile.
“I mean, I’d like…. Gosh, I don’t know if you can do it. Um.” He reached into his pocket, drawing out a crumpled piece of paper. “I saw this online and I wondered….”
I stared at the print-out. The machine resembled a low, backless couch of sorts, upholstered in red leatherette, but the seven inch jelly dildo rising from its centre was not the sort of thing usually associated with most furniture retailers.
“What I’d really like,” Mr. Brooker said, as if he was timidly asking for his favorite but costly flavor of ice cream, “is if a woman would…make me.”
The pattern of his desires fell into place, and a smile curved my lips.
“I see.”
What he wanted was the physical satisfaction of a cock up his ass, a little gentle humiliation for craving it, and the overwhelming imprint on his mind of a forceful, dominant woman who both accepted his needs and would see them fulfilled. My mind turned immediately to Serena. Surely, she’d be the ideal candidate for this request and—the sight of her, with Gina, indulging Mr. Harcourt’s three-way play still fresh in my memory—I couldn’t