Warning: This longish story contains strong cuckold, prostitution and interracial elements.
Note: A surprising number of females pay their rent with sex in lieu of cash at some point in their lives; I've spoken to several who admitted having done so. In fact my brother was such a landlord for a period of time, specialising in letting one room bed-sits to female students and unmarried mothers. Unfortunately for him, he sacrificed too much income for pleasure and when the inevitable cash flow crisis came along his small empire rapidly crumbled.
*****
Joni had just turned nineteen when I first met her, a five foot nothing bundle of fun with big tits, a pert bum and masses of curly blonde hair. I am only 5' 6" tall and of slim build but considered quite good looking - so it was my good fortune that she preferred me to the many more macho types that were always hitting on her. Joni shared with two flat-mates, one of which was easy going but the other a downright prude. So it was only on those occasions that Miss Straight-laced was missing that I was able to spend the night with my girl. Apart from those occasions we had to make out behind bushes in the park or a deserted band-stand if it was wet. Understandably, after six months of this unsatisfactory situation, we pooled our resources and got a flat together.
The place we found is on the second floor of a house in the middle of an imposing row of terrace houses with a small park directly opposite. A hundred years ago the occupants must have been quite well to do people but time had caused the city to envelope the area until it is now technically inner city. More pertinent is the fact that it is now at the heart of the city's red light district. We paid £200 per month for our flat when similar decent furnished accommodation in almost any other part of the city would have cost far more. At that time we could have afforded more but that meant always renting and we calculated that three years of saving would get us the deposit on a place of our own. It was pleasant living there with the only drawback being the need to pass the working girls spaced along the street when entering or leaving our home. This was not a real hardship except that kerb crawlers often propositioned Joni when she was out alone and a few of the whores took pleasure in teasing me whenever they spotted me walking on my own.
Joni loved sex and that was the root of our problems. We fucked like rabbits for six months with more abandon than prudence and, possibly inevitably, she ended up pregnant. We treated this as a welcome development and got married on the strength of it, anticipated parenthood somehow blinding us to reality. The truth of the situation became apparent after six months when my young wife had to give up work and I had difficulty meeting the rent just on my salary. During the last three months of the pregnancy the street girls got far bolder saying things like, "You can't be getting much now - come on, I like giving freebies to pretty boys like you" and more succinctly, "Do you want a quickie on the house?" I certainly wasn't getting much but I was never seriously tempted - I loved Joni far too much.
We had a lovely little boy who we called Tom but from that point our troubles really started. I had absolutely no idea of the expense that would be involved - pram, cot, baby clothes, nappies and formula milk. Joni was estranged from her single parent mother and my folks were dead, so we had no outside help whatsoever and this all took a hefty chunk of our very meagre savings. Now I am basically a very honest person but in this position of dire need, I was presented with temptation. I worked in the purchase department of a large firm and a large part of my job was sitting at a VDU processing payments to suppliers.
It is a two-phase system. I had a pile of payment authorisations and with each one I found the relevant item, typed in the code provided and it set the 'Payment authorised' flag on the record. Then I start with a pile of invoices, again find the transaction, either filled in the bank details from the invoice or pull it electronically from a look-up file. This action set an 'Invoice received' flag. On each record there was also a 'days elapsed' counter which kept track of how long the transaction had been in the system. In overnight off-line processing the file was scanned and payment made on those records where both Authorisation and Invoiced received flags were set but only if the days elapsed exceeds 90 (unless the supplier in question gave discount on prompt payment).
One rare slack day, with no specific records to work on, I began to idly browse through the file and found myself staring at an item for £4000 where the days elapsed was pushing 2000. The authorisation flag was set but after more than four years the supplier had still not presented an invoice for payment. After a bit of careful investigation, I discovered the answer - the supplier had gone into liquidation within days of despatching the goods for which this was the payment. So there was £4000 looking for a home and the true recipient was no longer in a position to want it. I did not act immediately but twenty-four hours later, I nervously entered my own bank account number onto the record.
The next morning, the moment that I stepped into work I was hustled straight into the managers office where I was soon to find that my attempted fraud had shown up on an overnight 'Errors and Exceptions' report that I knew nothing about. The manager showed me a print-out of my bank account number asking, "So you recognise that - we can check." I admitted that it was mine at which he nodded and said, "I thought so. We are not calling the police but you are no longer employed by this organisation. You will not get a reference and we are also going to ensure that you are not given a position of trust with any of the firms that we deal with." I was then escorted to collect pay due, clear my desk and then shown off the premises. I was up a famous creek and seriously devoid of a paddle.
Joni was upset but sympathetic and tried to make the best of things by saying, "Never mind - things will work out somehow."
I was not eligible for Unemployment pay but while able to claim for a wife and child from the Social Security, was unable to get Housing Benefit due to where we lived - something about not paying the rent for prostitutes. As you can imagine, our remaining savings melted away like summer snow. We managed to pay the rent the first month after my dismissal but the following month we were completely broke. When the rent man called I explained that there had been a cock-up with my salary check, promising to pay double the next month and he accepted the story. The month's grace did us no good because there were no jobs to be had and when he called again we were in the same situation. This time I varied my story by saying that I had been made redundant and was expecting a big redundancy cheque at any moment. One again he bought it and went away.
The next month the rent man called on the Wednesday instead of the Friday. "There is no redundancy cheque is there?" he asked seeing the dismay on our faces. Joni and I both shook our heads. "I thought not," he nodded. "You have got to be out of the flat by Monday - that's why I've called early to give you a bit more time to find somewhere else."
There was more conversation but nothing that affected the ultimatum. When the collector left, Joni said, "That was nice of him." The rent collector was aged about fifty, of average height but heavily built with a moustache came down the sides of his mouth to envelope the chin making an abbreviated pretentious sort of beard. The man was always very smartly dressed with a lot of showy jewellery including gold tie pin and heavy wrist bracelet. I had always envied his conspicuous wealth and confidence, so consumed with despair at our desperate situation, I resorted to unjustified anger and snarled back, "There was nothing nice about it - it was fucking patronising and I wished to hell I had smacked the bastard's fat face."
We embraced for a long time until Joni had calmed me down and then sat for the remainder of the evening discussing our severely limited options. In bed we screwed for solace without the usual exuberant abandon. Despite my ingratitude about the extra two days warning, I set out early next morning to take full advantage of it. Although the area where we lived was not very salubrious the flat itself was extremely pleasant and despite a long futile day of tramping round, I could find nothing that came even remotely close. I was sickened by the squalor of the places that I visited and those even slightly better required a deposit that we did not have. I returned home in a very dispirited frame of mind to find my wife looking more cheerful than I felt. Joni made me a mug of tea then sat down facing. She waited until I had taken a few grateful gulps from the mug and then before I could give my negative report on the day, said in a funny kind of voice, "The rent man called again and despite what you think he's quite a nice man. He said that he hated the thought of us being thrown out on the street and wanted to help if he could. I didn't know want to say and after a moment he told me that if I gave him a little something on account then we could stay in the flat for at least another month."
My hopes had risen slightly at the start of her speech but now they plunged again. "Then it's no help at all - we have nothing to give him."
Joni nodded. "I know and that is exactly what I told him but he didn't answer and after a bit I realised that he was staring at my tits - if fact he was staring at all of me and it made me feel completely naked."
"I hope you slapped his face and threw him out."
"That wouldn't have helped at all and I thought there was no harm in finding out exactly what he wanted so I asked what 'little something on account' he had in mind. He smiled, patted my behind and said 'You know the score - if you are nice to me then I can be very nice to you' I moved out of his way but smiled back and asked just how nice would he be."
I was fuming but determined to hear the end of this proposition before exploding. "That put him on the spot," Joni went on with a little grin. "Well he stood there looking me up and down and in the end he said, 'I don't usually pay this much for a bit of tail but you are rather special and I really do feel sorry for you - so what say I forget this last months rent.' This was a lot more than I thought he would offer but I didn't let on. Instead I said, 'So you get what you want and then throw us out because we would still owe two months.' To cover that he said that we could pay off the arrears a bit at a time - he will start calling every week and collect £75 instead of £50."
My rage suddenly died as I gazed at her in horror, "You didn't agree did you?"
"I said that I would have to speak to you first - he's coming back at 4 p.m. tomorrow for my answer."
"You sound as if you are seriously considering it," I said with disbelief.
