A Stranger's Touch (2 page)

"Isn't that bad?"

"No. Not really. It's as if the thing he took away made room for something else. I felt as if something deeper inside me had room to stretch, fill the space."

My pimp was silent for a moment, and I opened my eyes and looked at him.

He was smiling that particular smile he had.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, "but I know just what it is I'd like to stretch right now."

Afterwards, while Robbie showered, I tried to make sense of what had just happened. If I'd known what the phrase meant at all, I'd have said it felt as if Robbie and I had made love. Not screwed, not fucked, not got each other off, but made love. I'd wanted him inside me, of course--I always did, at every hour of the day and night, no matter who else I was seeing to--but the incredible lust and need that always swept over me, driving out every other thought before it, driving me to orgasm, hadn't been there.

Instead, I'd had time to delight in the feel of his warmth and hardness inside my arse, to take pleasure in touching him and being touched, kissing him, murmuring his name. When my orgasm came, it had been after his--a rare event, with him--and I'd felt every wave of pleasure, every delicious shake of my body, as if I was being handed a gift, rather than rushing to satisfy my hunger before I fainted.

I didn't know what to make of it. And neither, I think, did Robbie.

He walked back in the room, towelling his hair dry. "That was different."

"Yes, it was."

He raised one eyebrow at me as he reached for his jeans, but made no further comment. He simply waited whilst I showered and dressed. Then together the two of us went through my appointments for the week. Most of it was the usual clients, with a couple of newbies in the mix. Robbie knew I liked that. He had other hookers--male and female--to run, even a posh escort business he didn't allow me anywhere near, and he aimed to swop things around where he could. He said it kept us sharp. Can't say I thought he was wrong either. And it suited me just fine. On the space in the book for the following Saturday, however, only a question mark was scrawled.

"What's this?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Hair Guy said he might want you again then, so I left the slot free. Just in case."

"But Saturday's my biggest earner day. I get how you might try out a weirdo once for a whole evening, if nobody gets hurt. But twice? With all that loss of cash?"

A stinging pain slashed across my cheek and the next thing I knew I was flat out on the floor, with Robbie on top of me, holding me down. "You questioning my decisions?"

He was half-joking, half not, the balance of it as changeable and as dangerous as the tide.

"No," I whispered, my heart beating fast. "I always do exactly what you tell me to do, in every way. You know that."

"And why do you do that, Red?"

"Because it's the only way I can survive."

He squeezed my wrists tight, digging in with his nails until I gasped. "Good. Then try not to forget it."

He let me go, swinging his body off me, but staying close. At my side. Slowly, I raised my hand and brushed one finger down his face. I wondered, not for the first time, which of his other whores he slept with, and whether he enjoyed them more than me. I'd never dared ask. Not because I didn't want to know, but because I didn't know how the answer might make me feel.

Before I could stop myself, the other question, the one I'd been pondering on all night and most of today, slipped out of my mouth. "Why did you tell him about us, Robbie?"

He took my finger in his teeth, not hurting me, but holding me there. He ran his tongue across my nail before letting me go.

"Because he asked me when he rang," he said, "and I found I wanted to answer him. Something tells me he's not a man who understands the meaning of a refusal."

That much was certainly true.

All that week, something continued to feel different. It was as if I was seeing people more clearly and being able to communicate with them, physically, at a deeper level. My tips had never been so good. Robbie made no comment, though, as usual. He simply accepted the cash I handed over to him and gave me my usual percentage.

With all this, by the time I found myself sitting in that darkened room on Saturday night, I didn't know whether I was excited or apprehensive. Maybe both.

This time I didn't fidget, though. It never occurred to me that the mysterious stranger wouldn't be here. I sat on the chair, closed my eyes and waited. Somehow, time slipped away from me, and when he finally spoke into the silence, I didn't know how long it had been since I arrived.

"How have things been for you, Red?"

I smiled and stretched my arms upwards. It almost sounded like he was my boyfriend returning from holiday and asking how my week had gone. "Good. You?"

"Ah, it doesn't matter about me. The important person here is you. It's always you. Remember that."

Actually, I thought my job meant that the focus was always on the client, but I knew better than to argue the point. Even as he spoke, his voice moved around me so he delivered his final words from a position right in front of the chair. I felt my heart beat faster again at his closeness. Without a second thought, I opened my legs like before, and he stepped between them. The scent of him swept once more over my skin. My cock quivered, acknowledging his presence, but the urge for him to fuck me wasn't overwhelming.

"Good, that's good. You're doing very well, my friend. You're beginning to trust me. Thank you."

A moment later, his hands were massaging my hair, caressing my scalp and drawing out a low appreciative moan that started deep in my throat. He chuckled. "Your capacity for physical enjoyment continues to surprise. You are indeed blessed."

For a while, he was silent. When he spoke again, the question at first puzzled me. "Tell me, what did you find that was best for you in the week you have lived?"

"The sex," I murmured after a few moments, entranced by the soft movement of his fingers. "I mean it's always good, but this week it's been...liberating."

"In what way?"

I thought for a while, regulating my breathing to the rhythm of his hands. He didn't seem to mind that I didn't answer immediately. "It felt like I was giving them something. Something good. Not just getting what I needed. I felt connected. To their bodies. To them."

"And they felt it also," he whispered, as he moved his focus towards the back of my head. "Red, you have given more pleasure to your clients this week than you have ever given in a lifetime of offering your body. And in giving, you have also received. These good things have been pressed down and are running through your mind, through your blood and through your skin. I can feel it where you and I touch. But there are still shadows that lie beneath, here in this second area of your skull. So many and so deep. These, too, you must understand."

The next moment, his hand gripped me, sending bright barbs of pain through my flesh. I cried out, tried to struggle, but he was too strong for me.

"No. You must not fight me. Trust me. Trust yourself. This part of your mind is the seat of your history. We need to see it all if you are ever to be whole."

His voice, the madness of it, penetrated the wild keening of my thoughts. I was panting, hot tears threatening to spill over. I felt as if a knife were slicing into my head, over and over again, and through the gaps, memories and a haunting darkness flowed.

"Please, please," I begged him, unable even to form the words that would make him stop.

He paid no heed, and the shafts of pain continued to punch into me. "Accept it. Let it come, Red. Let it come."

One more wild moment of struggling, the impossible terror of it, and then I felt my mind and body yield. I gave myself to the pain he was visiting on me, let it plunge deep inside my bones and gut, my skin and blood. I stretched out my arms, as far sideways as they could go and opened my mouth as wide as I could get it, drawing in great gulps of air as the sweat poured down my face.

Then I was floating in a vast room where nothing dwelt. All was silence and the aloneness tore my limbs apart. The pain sang upwards, and I rocked in emptiness, not even sure who I was or if I'd ever existed. Then his hands rested upon my head, and the sum of all the things I had ever been--every act, every thought, every crime, every joy--lifted me upwards so I was no longer alone.

The strange fact was that it didn't frighten me. The past and all its secret roots usually lay in wait to make me stumble, and always when I least expected it. My mistakes, the times I'd been hurt, the times I'd hurt someone else and meant it. Acts, memories and people fused together in my mind and were now too hard to separate. I saw them all clearly and I found I was no longer afraid.

After a long time--or it seemed long to me--the stranger spoke.

"You see," he said, "all that has gone before, the place of your history in your skull, is simply a foundation for what is happening now. It is neither good nor bad, but only what you allow it to be."

As he spoke, a wave of exhaustion powered through me, and it was all I could do simply to nod. Unable to help myself, I slipped from the chair and onto the floor. My companion's arms held me, saving me from further injury and rocking me as I drifted away.

Just before I succumbed to sleep, his final words echoed inside me.

"You are accepted, Red, deeply accepted. Remember that."

When I woke, I was alone and it was morning; somehow I could sense the freshness in the air that spoke of a new day beginning. Underneath my body, I found blankets and a pillow. I buried my face in the cotton folds and breathed in the scent of spices. He'd touched me somewhere other than my hair, I thought. He'd touched me.

I didn't do anything else all the day that followed. Once at home, I simply lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling and out the window. There was nothing in the flat Robbie had allocated to me that reminded me of my past. No mementoes, no tokens. I'd put all that aside when I moved here. Robbie had helped me. He'd said the past meant what it said and it should stay there. I'd thought he was right, but now I wasn't so sure. Because yesterday, the past had risen to meet me and had not overwhelmed me with the secrets it held after all.

It was part of me. Both in rebelling against it and carrying it with me when I'd finally walked away, it was responsible for who I had become. However, I could not grasp what that might mean now.

I heard Robbie come in. It was raining outside and I heard the sounds of him shaking out his coat and a muttered curse. Usually, I would go and greet him, assess his mood whenever he came to me, but today, now, I didn't. Too much of my history was lapping like the sea around me. Maybe between us, too, though I couldn't tell. Whatever the reason was, I couldn't find the will to act in my customary fashion. Something had changed.

My bedroom door was open--I never shut it as I was happy for people to watch me sleeping or fucking or whatever. Not that Robbie had invited anyone to watch us recently or even join in--maybe not in the last year or so--though when we first met, he'd been keen. It struck me then that perhaps something had changed for him, too, and I'd never noticed it.

The sound of his footsteps thumped on the stairs and then I saw the shape of him in the doorway.

"You okay?"

He sounded concerned, enough for me to turn my head and look at him. His expression seemed less hard, something around the lines of the mouth and eyes, but I couldn't really pinpoint it.

"Yes," I said. "Tired, that's all. Yesterday was difficult."

"Did he hurt you?"

"No. Well, yes, but nothing I couldn't handle, not in the end. It was strange. Like before, but more overwhelming. We didn't have sex or anything. I didn't get off either. There was pain, and I was frightened, then somehow my history, the past I've tried to run from, was all around me, and it was all right. I don't know how, but it was all right."

None of that made sense, of course. Even I could see that. I had no hope at all that Robbie would understand anything of what I'd tried so badly to say. I braced myself for his laughter or his questions, but instead he was silent.

Slowly, and keeping that green-eyed beautiful gaze all the while on me, he removed his shoes and socks and took off his shirt. Then he sat down on the bed and touched my arm.

"I'm sorry for the times I've hurt you," he said. "Lashed out when I shouldn't have. You're a good whore and a good man. I didn't need to do that."

I swallowed, felt the heaviness of his words in my throat, brushed my fingers over his in return. When I moved across on the bed to make room, he sighed and lay down beside me.

For a long, long while, we stayed in that position, hands lightly touching, saying nothing. And it was okay. It was all okay.

The third Saturday I met the stranger, I knew it would be the last time. My heart told me this. Not a part of myself I'd thought much about before, but it was the only way I could describe it. I longed to be with him, but then this fantastical series of meetings would be over, and I didn't want to think about that.

Funny how the week that followed lying next to Robbie on my bed, doing nothing but meaning everything, had been so full of--what was the word the stranger had spoken about?--acceptance. Yes, acceptance. Of myself, of Robbie and of those who came to me for physical pleasure and release. It felt as if when I touched them, I could touch the vibrations of their past as well, align that knowledge to the knowledge of my own history, then feel the links between us strengthen and grow.

I smiled to remember that.

And now, in the darkness and velvet promise of the old house, I opened my legs without even hearing his voice, trusting he was already here, waiting for me. At once, the air moved and he stepped inside the space I had created.

"I'm a prostitute," I said, my throat tight with the meaning of it and the words falling over themselves as I spoke them. "I'll always be a prostitute for as long as men want me. Please, I don't know whether you're some kind of missionary trying to save me, but I love what I do. I don't want to do anything else."