All except for one. Charlotte’s workplace was a little different from the others. Unconventional. Extreme. Just like the woman herself. The woman I wanted to become. Charlotte was my favorite client. She was a smart, glamorous woman in her forties. From the outside, her office looked like any other respectable small business: frosted-glass doors, sleek blond-wood reception desk with laptop and telephone, and comfortable sofas for clients to sink into. But inside, on the lower floor, it was a different story. Descend the spiral staircase to the basement, walk through a steel security door, and you entered another world. It was a vast cell divided into two rooms. One featured exposed brickwork and a concrete floor painted black, its only light coming from candles in wall sconces. There were hooks for handcuffs, a stretching rack, and a huge mirror. Masks, whips, costumes, and sex toys were displayed on custom-made racks and shelves, and there was a vast iron bed frame with a PVC-covered mattress in one corner. The other room was a small, dark chamber covered in black tiles and dominated by an industrial hose and a huge glass bathtub.
Although Charlotte arrived and left work wearing a suit, carried a briefcase, and drove away in a Porsche, she was not your average career girl. She was a talented, experienced, and very expensive dominatrix.
I learned about this particular cleaning job at one of the other big city offices I serviced where I’d struck up a friendship with a rich and powerful financier named Howie who worked until nine p.m. most nights. One day Howie said that I seemed pretty open-minded and asked if I’d be interested in earning some extra money working for his “business contact” Charlotte?
My first interview with Charlotte took place in her upstairs office. I gave her a list of references and started to tell her all about my skills and experience, but she seemed more interested in finding out what sort of person I was. She kept asking me if I was discreet. I told her that I often had to tidy up top-secret company documents and contracts worth tons of money, but she smiled a funny little smile and said that wasn’t quite what she had in mind. Then she beckoned me toward her with the sharp red talon of one finger, and I followed her down the spiral staircase, through the steel door, and into the dungeon.
“This is where I work,” she said, studying my face for a reaction. “This is what I do. Men, and some women, pay me to humiliate and abuse them. It can get quite dark and quite loud, and it’s often pretty messy.”
I wasn’t shocked. In fact I was thrilled as I pictured the scene: rich businessmen cowering naked on the floor as Charlotte shouted and spat on them. I imagined her in a leather outfit, brandishing her whip, and felt a rush of exhilaration and envy. Far from being shocked, I felt good. Better than ever, in fact. Like I had come home.
“I clean up right after the clients, but every night we need to disinfect the whole place, floor to ceiling, just to be safe,” said Charlotte, as casually as though she were telling me where the tea and coffee were kept. “And you need to keep my sex toys clean, polish the leather and the PVC, make sure all the whips and other bits of paraphernalia are just where I need them. Things can get a little crazy down here, and I need to know the precise location of everything.”
I nodded, confident that I could do all this. I would take great pleasure in keeping the tools of Charlotte’s trade in their current, beautiful condition. It would be a point of pride. I said this to my prospective employer, and her crimson lips parted into a smile, revealing dazzling white teeth.
“I like you,” she said, beaming. “Very much. Will you take the job?”
“I’d love to!” I replied.
“Fabulous,” she said. “When can you start?”
The very next evening,
I found myself in the cool, dark cellar cleaning and tidying. I was slightly disappointed not to see any of Charlotte’s clients, curious to know what sort of person paid for her services. My blood ran hot as I thought of an uptight Mr. Money-bags type—someone rather like Howie—and of how he would look, quivering and naked, on the floor, whimpering under the whip of the dominatrix—and of how outrageously sexy it would feel to be the woman wielding it. I shivered and tried to concentrate on the job at hand.
The next evening I found a handwritten note from Charlotte, thanking me for doing such a great job. I felt a surge of pride and happiness. It felt strangely natural for me to come from cleaning offices to scrubbing down whips and chains in a dungeon. Over the next few weeks I settled into a routine: While I worked, I’d let my imagination drift off, picturing myself in the clothes that I washed, imagining that I was the one playing Charlotte’s role. I saw her once or twice a week, and we’d sit down to enjoy a cup of coffee together. She always wanted to know what I’d been up to, and we’d talk about books I’d read, dates I’d been on, that kind of thing. But I never saw any of her clients.
“I take care to book time with my clients when you’re not around,” she said. “They like the anonymity that I give them, and, besides, it can sound quite extreme when you’re not used to it. You’re the best cleaner I’ve ever had. I’d hate to scare you away.”
I didn’t tell her that far from scaring me away, it would probably be all she could do to stop me from joining in.
I’d been working for Charlotte for about a month when I came to work one evening to find her dressed in a black-and-red leather bodysuit, looking beautiful, powerful, and sexy but also rather flustered.
“I’m sorry, Tina,” she said. “I’ve had to rearrange a booking. There’s so much work coming my way these days that I can’t really turn it down. I’ll be working in the water-torture room while you clean out the dungeon. I can’t avoid it. I hope it doesn’t disturb you, and do be discreet.”
I nodded and assured her that of course I would. I went about my usual cleaning routine, and for a while I heard nothing but the trickle of running water from the wet room and two low, murmuring voices. After a few minutes, curiosity got the better of me, and I stopped my cleaning routine, sidled over to the door that divided the two rooms, and peered through the keyhole.
I was astonished to find that what I saw turned me on, and quickly, too. I went, in the split second it took for my eyes to adapt to the murky light in the wet room, from a normal state of being to one of desperate, ravenous sexual hunger. I saw Charlotte from the back, sexy and strong in her leather costume, but instead of a whip, she was brandishing a hose on full power. She was directing a forceful jet of water at a beautiful young woman who was strung up against the wall with her hands in handcuffs and her legs forced apart by a pair of leg irons. Charlotte was taking turns blasting the girl’s tits and then her clit with water. When she trained the hose on her breasts, the flesh dented as though poked by an invisible finger, and the woman’s nipples, flushed dark brown and highly erect, moved in a series of jiggled, jerky movements. Just when I thought she couldn’t take any more, Charlotte would direct the gushing jet against the girl’s clit. I watched, crazy with arousal, as the water pummeled the girl’s pussy and thighs.
“Oh, mistress, this hurts so good,” she begged. “Please let me come! Please let me come!”
Charlotte immediately turned off the jet of water.
“What have I told you about begging me like that?” she said in a stern voice I had never heard her use before.
“I’m sorry,” said the girl, her wet hair slapping at her pink breasts as she hung her head in shame. “I just need to come so bad.”
“You’ll come when I say so, you little bitch,” said Charlotte, and turned the hose back on, aiming it right back at the girl’s clit. Even from where I crouched I could see her pinky-brown pussy convulse a couple of times and her body, constrained by the iron shackles, stiffen and then grow limp as she surrendered to her orgasm. I squeezed my thighs together and rocked back and forth once. That tiny movement was all it took for me to come, too, harder and faster than anything I’d ever experienced. The whole thing from first sight to arousal to orgasm had taken about twenty seconds. I hadn’t even had time to get wet, although my postor gasmic juices were now filling my jeans with a warm dampness. I pressed my sizzling cheek against the cool of the dungeon wall for a few seconds, and then backed away from the door.
Somehow I managed to compose myself and to complete cleaning the dungeon in record time so that when Charlotte and her client emerged from the wet room, I was upstairs, polishing a desk in the office. I watched as the client, now fresh-faced in a pink tracksuit and with her wet hair piled on top of her head, handed Charlotte one thousand dollars in cash. She kissed her on the cheek, thanked her, and said she was looking forward to seeing her at the same time next week.
“Well,” said Charlotte, counting the money into the safe-deposit box, “you’ve seen what I do now. Are you shocked? Can you handle it?”
So she’d noticed! I feared I’d broken protocol somehow, but she seemed more amused than angry. I nodded my head and then went downstairs to clean up the wet room. Not only could I handle it, but I also loved it. And I couldn’t wait until I saw it happen again.
In the next few weeks
there was a marked upturn in business for Charlotte, and I’d often find that she had clients in one room while I was cleaning the other. I became an expert at tucking myself away so that the clients wouldn’t see me. If they did, they’d see me in the reception area for the briefest second, and I wouldn’t make eye contact. But I’d seen it all. My work at Charlotte’s had become the highlight of my day, my addiction. I needed my fix. Whenever I knew she had a client in the basement I’d sneak downstairs, crouch by the door, sometimes using my fingers but more often just pressing my thighs together and rocking until I came. I learned to control my orgasm so that I could come in absolute silence. My bottom lip had a permanent scar on it from where I’d bitten down hard to keep the moans from escaping.
One evening I took my position at the door and saw Howie, naked but for a dog leash around his neck, kissing and licking Charlotte’s boots. I had always suspected he was a client rather than a “business contact”—yeah, right. The sight of this guy (whose body was surprisingly buff now that he was out of that starchy suit) who made deals worth millions on a daily basis, naked and totally broken like this was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life. I bit down so hard on my lip that I broke the skin, tasting my own blood as I pressed my legs together and squeezed, allowing the seam of my jeans to rub against my clit and bring me to orgasm.
After Charlotte went home that night and I was wiping down the clothes she’d worn that day, I decided to play a little dress-up. I slipped off my jeans and T-shirt and put on a red bustier and a pair of the Perspex stilettos that Charlotte often wore to walk up and down her clients’ spines. I stood before the mirror, loving the woman I became in this outfit. I took a cat-o’-nine-tails down from the wall and wielded it at my reflection. One day, I thought, I will flaunt this whip for real. I will find someone who takes one look at me and turns into a quivering lump of submissive desire, and I will torture that person and make him or her come harder than he or she ever had before, and when it’s all over, I’m gonna come, too, and it will be the most intense, amazing thing I’ll ever do in my life. I took the whip between my legs, rubbed the length of the handle along my gusset, let it caress my pounding pussy, and watched my face remain utterly expressionless as I had my second orgasm of the night. Only my cheeks, flushed a deep red, gave any clue to the state of arousal I’d just experienced.
After that night I would sneak into Charlotte’s wardrobe and dress up in her clothes whenever I got the chance. I grew bolder and more imaginative and soon began to bark orders at imaginary slaves.
“Kneel before me, you pathetic little prick,” I’d snarl at some fantasy man, picturing a grown male, helpless before me, his erect cock twitching and growing even as I belittled him. I taught myself how to control the whip perfectly and practiced locking and unlocking the handcuffs so that I could do them in double-quick time. When I was cleaning up the wet room, I imagined that the high-powered pressure hose I wielded was pointed at bodies, not simply washing detergent off the wall. I got so addicted that I would start to arrive early for my shifts to steal five minutes when I knew that Charlotte wasn’t going to be there. I was careful to put everything back exactly where it belonged.
I was proud of my professionalism; my system was so foolproof that Charlotte would never see anything out of place, never guess what I was up to when her back was turned. It had to end, of course. I was taking more and more chances, frequently spending more and more time in Charlotte’s clothes. Looking back now, of course, I think that perhaps on a subconscious level I was making my own behavior more extreme because I wanted to force the situation to a head. But even in my wildest fantasies—and God, I’d had a few—I would never have predicted the circumstances of my exposure.
The day it happened, I was working late. Charlotte had seen her last clients—a husband and wife who were celebrating his promotion by paying Charlotte to chain them together upside down while she turned the hose on them—at nine p.m. At ten p.m. she said good-bye, and then I heard the front door close and Charlotte’s expensive car purr away down the street. I went to work cleaning the wet room, scrubbing extra fast because I was in more of a hurry than usual to fool around and fantasize. I was trembling with excitement at the thought of that night’s session. The previous day, a new outfit that Charlotte had mail-ordered had been delivered and even she hadn’t had a chance to wear it yet. I’d seen it hanging up in the wardrobe and knew that I had to put it on at the first opportunity.
I held it up. It was a transparent plastic catsuit with matching stilettos. The whole outfit left nothing to the imagination: Its only concession to modesty was a sprinkling of crystals around the nipples and groin area, but they did more to draw attention to these erogenous zones than cover them up. Fingers fumbling in excitement, I took off my own clothes and then slipped into the garment, enjoying the way the tacky plastic tugged against my skin as I pulled it over my hips and yanked the straps over my shoulders. Oh, yeah. It fit me perfectly. It was sticky but smooth on the inside, but the crystals that encrusted the outside were sharp and scratchy. Don’t touch me, the suit seemed to say, or you’ll get hurt, very hurt. I felt like Cinderella in a head-to-toe, deliciously kinky glass slipper.