Cassie gazed unseeing out of the window as the taxi took her to the suburbs. She was trying to keep a lid on her nervous excitement, and she wondered to herself if she was being wise, running the arrangements through her head for the tenth time. And running the erotic possibilities through her head, too.
She had been thinking all day, from the moment she boarded the express that took her the three hours from the capital, across the flat north European countryside, to this small town. After checking in at the modest hotel, she fidgeted for an hour and threw away her coffee -- she was hyped enough without caffeine -- and then it was time to get ready.
Thankfully, the September horizon was pregnant with rain, despite the bright sunshine, and thus her short raincoat was justified. It had been one of her biggest worries, how to get to where she was going without attracting both unwanted attention and completely justified assumptions. All things considered, other things may have warranted greater concern, but her caution was understandable. Though God knows what the taxi driver thought.
The taxi turned off a main road, and Cassie guessed she was getting closer to her destination. What to expect? She knew the couple she was seeing were somewhere in their forties -- provided the photos on their profile weren't a lie. She didn't mind having fun with older people, and now she was nearly thirty, forty didn't feel quite so old anymore. And what they expected? Well, she was complacent enough to believe they'd definitely be satisfied with what they got.
The suburb was delightful, when they reached it, with smallish wooden houses and picket fences around pretty gardens. Cassie began noting the street names as they approached each side-street, and finally, with her stomach performing another loop, she saw the street.
"Just here's fine," she said to the driver as he turned.
"Are you sure? It's a little way down here..."
"No, it's fine. I fancy the walk."
The taxi driver shrugged and stopped, and happily accepted the tip when she offered it. He gave her his card in return.
"Give me a call when you need to go back to your hotel," he said, and she tried to divine some hidden understanding on his part. Did he know why she was there? Surely, he could tell just by looking. He must think she was on the game. Was he offering as a means of giving her some security? Or did he just think she'd have a pile of cash in a couple of hours...
She was overthinking, she knew, and she mentally slapped herself. Take a deep breath, put your comfort bag over your shoulder, and walk to your perfectly guilt-free assignation.
The road itself was lovely, with a couple of children on bikes in the distance, and an old man with a lawnmower, and in another garden a woman clipping her rose bushes. It was the picture of suburbia and Cassie was out of place, her raincoat covering nothing but a harness nobody could see, and the top of her fishnet tights. At least nobody had the bad taste to notice her.
And on the reverse side, what she was going to do was surely the very picture of suburbia, too. Just suburbia behind closed doors, the suburbia hinted at through bad jokes over the barbecue, and the gossip of mothers on the school run. The suburbia populated by people with a decent standard of living, still relatively young physically (and more so mentally), but whose world has suddenly been limited by responsibility: where before, they could seduce or be seduced in Friday night bars across the city, they were now restricted to their neighbours. But the desire hadn't left them, yet.
She counted the numbers as she walked along the pavement, looking ahead to estimate which house was her destination, and then she saw it. She paused, then put her best foot forward and walked the last thirty yards to a house just like all the others.
She opened the gate to the front garden and walked past chrysanthemums, and dahlias, and hydrangeas, laid out in artful chaos around a postage stamp lawn. The door was to the side of the building, and she felt a little grateful for that as she took the path around to the tiny porch, a fence opposite the house making for a narrow corridor and hiding her from any prying eyes.
If she was going to stop, that was the time, and she felt a little reluctance -- perhaps ten percent telling her this was madness, to back out and never come back. The ninety percent, though, felt a surge and suddenly she was wet enough to lean against the wall of the house and fuck herself ragged with her hairbrush. She knocked on the door.
It was a moment before she saw a shadow through the glass and then the door opened. Standing in front of her, half-a-head shorter and with a lot more curves to her, was a blonde woman she recognised from her profile picture.
"Melanie?" said the woman Cassie knew as Maya, who seemed a little taken aback at the sight of the pretty woman on her doorstep, with her shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes: her photo hadn't lied. It took Cassie a moment to catch up to the fake name she had provided, but then she nodded.
"Come in," said Maya, standing to one side. Now Cassie looked she could see the woman was wearing a black dress that finished just above the knee and elbow, and she had black tights (or perhaps stockings) with heeled calf-boots. Most noticeable, however, was the riding crop which she revealed from behind her back. What she would have done with it had Cassie actually been the gas man come to read the meter, Cassie didn't speculate: given him an unexpectedly pleasant afternoon, perhaps.
"You can hang your coat up here, and put your bag there," said Maya, pointing out a coat hook and a space by the stairs in the cramped, dark hallway.
"I just need to send a message first," said Cassie, pulling her phone from her bag.
"A security message?"
"To my boyfriend," said Cassie, nodding.
"Wise," said Maya, "did he drop you off?"
"At the corner," Cassie lied -- in fact he was back home in the capital, but Maya didn't need to know that.
"When does he need the next message?"
"Before ninety minutes are up."
"I'll remember," said Maya, and she gave Cassie a brief smile.
They paused for a moment and then Maya took charge, beginning the game.
"Coat there," she reminded Cassie, who undid the belt and buttons on her raincoat and then, with a slight show of reluctance, slipped it off under Maya's fixed gaze.
Cassie, or 'Melanie', hung up her coat and stood to something approximating attention, while Maya took her in. And there was much to take in, for Cassie, 'dressed' in only a black harness around her chest that made her breasts more prominent, and a pair of fishnet tights without a gusset, was slender without being thin, with legs, in particular, to die for. On her feet she was wearing a pair of cute patent leather heeled ankle boots.
