Susie Learns the Hard Way (16 page)

‘Okay honey, let's move,' he said, and set off towards a corner of the room without waiting. Settled with some difficulty into a low-slung leather chair, and certain that the barman was using the wall mirror behind the bar to stare up her skirt, Susie smiled as brightly as she could at her client, wondering why he wasn't staring between her legs too.

‘Okay, here's the deal,' he said. ‘I represent a major international corporation and I'm here to finalise a major tie-up with a Japanese electronics firm. That deal,' he said, looking briefly at his watch, ‘has been signed off in LA and is due to be inked in Tokyo some time in the next four hours. If the J's don't go off the boil between now and then, that is.'

He took a small sip of his drink, swirling the chinking ice-cubes around in the glass.

‘The only way that can happen is if their company President, Mr Yoshimura, changes his mind. Right now he's upstairs in his room with nothing to do but wait, and think. And thinking could be dangerous, if he does too much of it. I want you,' and for the first time he looked her up and down, ‘I want you to make sure he doesn't think about anything at all until ten o'clock London time. That's four-and-a-half hours from now.'

He looked her in the eye, waiting for something, and there was a question that Susie very much wanted an answer to. ‘How—?'

‘How much?' he interrupted.

‘How nice?' she corrected, wondering how this could possibly work. She needed to be talking direct to the agency's client. She needed to be face to face with him, and see him take the pill – if there was one. Negotiating with a third party like this was no good for her purposes.

‘However nice he wants you to be.' He smiled, a brief Californian smile that moved his mouth enough to demonstrate his dentistry but didn't permit access to any emotion.

‘What does he want?' she asked, still trying to think and decide what her best course of action would be. At least the answer might tell her a little more.

He shrugged. ‘How do I know, honey? The man's as straight as the Ventura Freeway. All I know is he wants a pretty blonde to be nice to him. You're a pretty blonde, and it's your job to be nice to people. What I'm asking now is simple; how much is it to be nice?'

Susie could see he was getting impatient, and she knew that prevaricating meant she was stepping out of her assumed character. She'd also realised that this man had already given the agency a credit card payment for the standard fee and was quite openly asking her how much
extra
she was going to charge for entertaining his client; how much, in other words, for her body. Realising this with a thrill of excitement, she was able to answer in the style he was expecting. ‘Five hundred,' she said coolly. She would never know what made her say such a huge sum of money, except that she thought he'd want to talk her down to two hundred and that would give her a little more time. ‘Pounds, not dollars,' she added. She thought that was a masterstroke. Harry would have been proud of her.

‘Done. But you better be good. This guy's top dollar. He expects the best.'

With a shock she realised she had just concluded an arrangement to have sex with someone she'd never met, and the man in front of her was willing to give her five hundred pounds for it. The little thrill of excitement that had been rippling through her body suddenly magnified, making her conscious of the way she was sitting, the way her head was at a becoming angle. She could feel her blonde hair on her cheek, the tiny pressure of the silky dress on her breasts and jutting nipples, and the firm pressure of her knickers between her buttocks and clasping firmly around her moist sex. She felt the pressure of the cotton on the soft pink lips as they swelled open, oozing warmth as they did. She wasn't sure if it was selling herself or talking about it, or both. But whatever it was, the effect was pronounced.

He pulled out an envelope. ‘There's five hundred in there. I'll call him, ask him to come down for a drink.'

Susie watched him walk across to the house phone, and looked casually around the bar. Harry sat in the far corner, hidden behind a newspaper, no help to anyone. Carefully she tucked the envelope in her shiny black handbag, the very act of accepting it making her feel as if she'd already committed some rude sexual act. But she reminded herself that she was working as a reporter. The client was coming down to meet her on neutral territory and she'd have a good chance to find out more, give him back his cash, make her excuses and leave.

‘He wants us to go up.'

‘What?' Susie knew it sounded stupid, but she was so surprised that the word was out of her mouth before she realised she was speaking.

‘Up.' He said it slowly and laboriously. ‘To his room.' He jabbed his finger in the appropriate direction. Obviously he thought he was dealing with a stupid tart and therefore wasn't greatly surprised by her apparent lack of initiative. In truth, she was floundering a bit. She didn't want to leave the safety of the bar, but then she didn't really see that she had very much choice. And she supposed it wasn't all that different to being in the bar, though it felt like a big step. She was scared, that was all. She could handle scared, she told herself.

Brave as she made herself feel with a bit of effort, she still hoped that as they walked past Harry, stuck in the corner behind his newspaper, he would think of something and save her from having to get in the lift. But the paper hardly rustled.

Then they were in the lobby, and the bell pinged softly as the lift arrived.

The air was perfumed and heated and soothing music trilled quietly in the background, all designed to calm the nerves of the claustrophobic, but it didn't help Susie Wills. As the American pressed the button for the penthouse suite and the lift surged upwards, she watched the numbers counting off the floors, feeling more and more scared as they rose to the fifteenth.

The doors opened into a sumptuous lobby. All was luxurious silence, deep carpets, large paintings and vases full of fresh flowers. There was a set of double doors in front of them and he ushered her through into a large and equally luxurious sitting room. On the deep leather settee at its centre the little man was almost invisible, so overpowering were the surroundings. Susie looked at him with interest; after all, she'd just accepted five hundred pounds, in exchange for which this man expected her to allow him complete freedom to do whatever he wanted with her body. Not that it would be much, she concluded swiftly, since he was at least seventy, judging by the wrinkles and white hair.

He rose, made certain his pale gown was securely fastened, bowed deeply, and motioned her to a seat beside him. And she sat as decorously as she could, which meant showing her knickers beneath the tiny dress Harry had chosen for her. The old man pretended not to notice, but Susie caught his keen eye peering between her thighs at the slash of white, making the soft flesh encased within the flimsy fabric quiver gently, as if his gaze had actually touched her there.

Then he was speaking to the American, a rapid burst of guttural noises, and to her surprise he responded in kind, before bowing several times and turning to Susie. ‘He says you're very pretty, just what he wanted. He thanked me for bringing you and asked if you want a drink.'

‘Vodka tonic, please,' she replied, hoping a second would settle her nerves.

The pair exchanged some more of the grunting noises that were clearly Japanese, and the American poured drinks for all three of them. There was a brief silence while the elderly man sat beside her, patting her thighs and shoulders appreciatively and looking her over as he might inspect a horse he'd just bought. But Susie was considering another, more serious problem; how could she get him to tell her anything? How was she going to find out anything about the drug before she excused herself and ran away if she couldn't talk to him?

There was only one way; the American would have to be involved. But even as she reached the conclusion he was rising and making ready to leave – and she didn't want to be left alone with this Mr Yoshimura until she'd managed to find out what she needed to know, or the whole job was over.

‘Ask him what he wants,' she said, as coyly as she knew how.

‘I think we all know what he wants,' the American returned patiently.

But not specifically, she thought, and then had an idea. ‘You said to make him happy.' She felt silly and transparently false, but he didn't seem to notice. ‘But if he can't tell me what he wants I won't be able to oblige him, will I?'

‘Good point,' said the American thoughtfully, turning to Yoshimura and rattling off a string of grunts. There was a pause, and then Yoshimura made similar noises. ‘He says he wants to drink rice wine from your navel and eat fruit from between your very impressive breasts.'

‘Pretty mild, but unusual – good job I asked, really,' Susie said, thinking this was all a big waste of time and now was the time to give back the five hundred pounds and leave. Or perhaps she should keep it? Maybe it was evidence?

‘I think that's Japanese courtesy,' he explained, ‘and not the real point.'

‘Well, maybe you should ask him the point, then?' soothed Susie, at her most syrupy.

There was more jabbering between the two men, and he turned back to her. ‘What he'd really like to do is blindfold you with a silk scarf and tease you with feathers on your nipples and ice-cubes in your cunt.' He faltered slightly over the last few words, his businesslike manner somewhat unsettled by the explicit and basic nature of his explanation. But he wasn't as unsettled as Susie; the shock of the remark was so great that she felt as if he'd just feathered her nipples and slid an ice-cube into her body, but it was liquid fire she could feel dribbling into her underwear.

There was more now, as Yoshimura got into his stride and started talking very quickly, gesturing round the room at the furniture, the floor, and the bedroom door.

‘He says the ice-cubes will set your nipples alight and start a fire that will blaze between your legs until it's quenched by the outpourings of his test – erm, his balls.' He was faltering again, but the words had already lived up to the promise. Susie looked at Yoshimura, who was watching her carefully. He began speaking again, lower and softer tones now, addressed to the American while his eyes never left Susie, roaming freely over her body, up her legs, dipping between her thighs and caressing her tipped breasts. And when the American translated, Yoshimura gazed deep into her eyes. She felt he was inside her clothes already, feeling the response of her body as his translated words trailed lightly through the sensitive valley high up between her thighs, gently spreading her lips with their touch and delving inside, releasing more and more of the honeyed moisture that was gathering there.

‘He says he'd like to bend you over this chair,' continued the American, pointing at a cane seat in the corner of the room, his careful and correct delivery contrasting so strongly with the nature of his words, ‘and tie your hands and feet to its legs with silk scarves. Then he's going to tease your pussy with feathers until you're, uh, begging him to, uh, screw you. When you're so desperate that you can't stand it any more, he's going to take you from behind and fill you—'

Yoshimura interrupted, and the American paused to listen, before continuing. ‘Take you very slowly from behind, so that your agony continues until he fills you with a fresh outpouring from – well, you know the rest.'

She did. Oh, she did. Squirming in her seat, Susie was almost begging him already, and from the way he was looking at her, Yoshimura knew. He spoke to the American again, still watching Susie.

‘And then he's going to sit you in the chair, tie your hands and feet, and kneel in front of you. Then he's going to use the feather and his tongue to lick your pussy so gently and for so long that you won't be able to feel anything except the area of your flesh where the tip of his tongue is touching you. When you're so sensitive that you can feel his breath on your, ah, clitoris, he's going to put his penis in so slowly that you'll feel it go all the way up inside.'

Yoshimura was smiling broadly now, perhaps because Susie's dilated eyes and shallow breathing told him all he wanted to know about the condition she was in. He spoke briefly once more. ‘He says he's going to stay inside you until you can't take any more pleasure. He says he'll make you come umpteen times. Let's face it, kid, the guy wants to screw your brains out.'

With a growing sense of triumph Susie realised she must be on to something; this little old bloke could hardly keep it up for the performances and duration he described if he wasn't taking a drug of some sort.

‘And then he wants...' she hadn't noticed him speaking quietly to the American, but now she realised he was peering intently at her once again, ‘...to put it in your mouth so you can suck him until he comes in your throat while he uses a dildo in your cunt and watches you swallow every drop.'

Susie felt a physical impact between her legs, as if he'd thrust something inside her and she almost moaned aloud as she felt the pink lips pulsing inside her soaking knickers, just moments away from an orgasm. They were jabbering away again and she thought this would be it and whatever was said next would make her have a screaming climax on the spot, and she didn't care if they saw her. But then Yoshimura stood up, disappearing through a pair of double doors.