"I'll give you twenty for a blowjob." The insincerity of this tasteless joke was advertised by a huge grin that aimed for cheeky but fell short of the mark.
"I'm not that cheap," I returned, my intended scowl turning distractedly wistful. I was a poor student in dire straits, my next maintenance payment being days away and my cupboards increasingly bare. Hunger erodes inhibitions like nothing else. I may not have been willing to sell my body - even my mouth - for a twenty, but for the first time in my life I was giving it sincere consideration.
Richard peered curiously at me, as if sensing my irresolution, and I could feel my cheeks burning with shame. I looked away, trying to banish the thought that was in both our minds: me, on my knees, sucking.
Not that I hadn't done it before. "Wait till you're married, Anahita," my mother had told me often enough. "Don't bring shame on your family." More recently it had been, "Why do you want to leave home, Anahita? Who will look after you?" By which she meant not who would cook for me and do my laundry (although there was that too) but who would protect me from English men and other undesirables.
My mother was the daughter of Persian immigrants, and while she claimed to be proudly British, nevertheless she had her heart set on me marrying some rich doctor, perhaps even a plastic surgeon with a practice in Iran. The thought I might end up with someone who was neither a doctor nor Muslim nor rich nor - Allah forbid - male was enough to keep her awake at night.
It was as much to get away from my mother's matchmaking as the desire for independence that compelled me to abandon the nest. Even then, it was only the reassurance that I would be in all-girl shared accommodation that persuaded her. Not once did she suspect that I spent most of my nights that first year in the arms of a Lancashire lass who played rugby at the weekends.
My first sexual experience, however, had been at a nightclub during my first month at uni. Being an adult and unsupervised and decidedly rebellious, and more than a little intoxicated, not to mention profoundly curious about all that sex stuff I'd read about and heard about, I'd allowed an attractive young man to take advantage of me and teach me all about being a 'bad girl'.
It had been a whirlwind romance that had lasted all of six days, but did progress rapidly from kissing to sex via plenty of foreplay and oral sex - with me the one giving. Ultimately, he lacked the imagination to overcome his literal shortcomings. I tired of him quickly and nearly swore off men for good.
Richard, two years later, wasn't my boyfriend. I wasn't attracted to him at all. We were reluctant study partners, two science nerds without social lives. The main difference between us, apart from the obvious, was that Richard had a decent allowance and his own apartment.
Which is how I came to be alone with him, ostensibly studying but in reality whining about the impossibility of finding a part-time job to supplement my own too meagre income. My parents were not so wealthy they could afford both London accommodation costs and a comfortable allowance for me, and I had preferred the former.
There were times I regretted that choice, times when I was tempted to return home and admit to my parents that I couldn't make it on my own. I had a bedroom there, and my mother would make bademjan the way only she could, and she would find a rich doctor who would take me back to Iran with him...
Stubbornly, I endured. Until that very moment, I hadn't allowed myself to even think of doing what so many desperate students seem to end up doing: sex work. (I was a good girl. Good girls don't do sex work. Good girls spread their legs for rich doctors.)
But perhaps that was as much because I'd never really considered myself as sexy enough for sex work. I was skinny and awkward and got stage fright at the slightest hint of exposure. I lived in dread of lecturers singling me out with a question. "You there, in the back row, girl in the blue top. What is a complex conjugate?"
"Uh..." (Sex with an imaginary spouse?)
Not unattractive, but, well, unexceptional. Dark brown hair that resisted styling, brown eyes (behind glasses), on the short side, breasts at best petite. I was, certainly, good at going unnoticed, and by and large that suited me.
Richard was a posh boy from the south, somewhere near London, and could have been attractive if he hadn't been so intimidated by anything in a skirt, or indeed anyone at all. He was definitely happier with computers than people. For some reason (and I was never sure whether to take offence or not) he got on well with me.
Despite the occasional ill-judged joke or inappropriate remark, such as that fateful, "I'll give you twenty for a blowjob."
"I'm not that cheap," I said.
"How about forty?" he asked quietly, maybe a minute later.
My reply was even quieter. "Okay." My shame was so deep it was a wonder I didn't spontaneously combust.
After barely a moment's hesitation, Richard stood and shoved his trousers and Y-fronts down - pausing briefly mid-act to tug his wallet from his pocket. As I gaped in astonishment at a moderately sized cock that was already at eager attention, he fished out two twenties and held them out to me. "But you have to swallow, okay?"
It was almost the straw that broke the camel's back. Wrapping my lips about his shaft was a weird enough thought - I had been about to insist on a condom - but suddenly we were talking fluids and the absurdity of it all hit me like a hammer.
He thrust the twenties impatiently at me. I took them almost defensively - and once they were in my hand...
Hunger is a great motivator. There's also a limit to how many nights in a row you can eat pasta in tomato sauce. Suddenly there was cash in my hand, a hard cock zeroing in on me - and it would only be a blowjob. We weren't talking sex or anything.
I just sort-of let it happen. At first. I opened my mouth to accept that unfamiliar and unexpected intruder, my senses abruptly full of the unmistakable taste and texture of cock, that heady aroma of raw desire (sex; sweat). I would be lying if I said I felt no thrill of the forbidden, if I said I was not aroused despite my profound shame (or because of it), if I said I was a passive participant.
However shyly I began, I soon surrendered to a desire to perform, to give pleasure and not merely satisfaction. I knew what to do, but never before had I done it with such inexplicable passion, working him with teasing tongue and firm lips. Though Richard had not specified that I take him deep, this too I attempted (his length was no great challenge) and when in due course I felt his end approach, I encouraged it with murmured entreaties until cream pulsed into my mouth from his wildly jerking cock.
I swallowed what I could, but cum spilled down my chin, some dripping onto my T-shirt before I could catch it. I continued sucking on his softening shaft, licking it clean of cum, until it slipped out of reach as Richard pulled away, breathing heavily, eyes wide with mingled gratitude and astonishment...
... that gave way to an awkwardness on both our parts. Nothing in our relationship, such as it was, had prepared us for the aftermath of this transacted intimacy.
"We made a mistake," I said, my thoughts in a whirr.
"Um, yeah," Richard agreed.
"No." I shook my head at his dim-wittedness. "When we took the reciprocal, we forgot to change the inequality." He stared at me blankly.
It was so strange. On the one hand, I was appalled by what I had just done, performing a sexual favour for money. On the other, I was experiencing something of an epiphany, weeks of mathematical theorems and computational methods restructuring into a beautiful coherence.
I grabbed the sheets of paper we'd been scribbling on, crossed out whole sections and quickly corrected the solution we'd been working towards. "See?"
"I-I think so..." He frowned down at the equations that now seemed so obvious to me, following the logic with his fingers while darting oddly fearful looks towards me.
That distraction over, the memory of what we had just done reasserted itself. The memory of hot, hard flesh between my lips. The taste and smell of his cum, lingering still. My shirt wet where the drips, still visible, had fallen. My breasts, swollen, straining painfully against my bra, so much so that I popped the clasp at the back to relieve the pressure.
I stared down, baffled, at the magnified curves of my chest, and the sharp points of my nipples that betrayed my arousal, unsated from before. I couldn't process what I was seeing, or what I was feeling. The forty quid was still clutched in my left hand, crumpled within a tightly clenched fist, and almost seemed to burn against my skin.
My money. I had earned it. Abruptly I was sure that if Richard offered me more, I would willingly earn that too. "I have to go," I whispered, half in a panic.
Richard nodded mutely, and made no attempt to stop me.
*
My mind was hyperactive, restlessly analysing the houses and streets. For once, the shadows didn't seem so dark, or the night so silent, and the people I passed were not menacing unknowns but fragrant tapestries of food and alcohol and sex - the latter stirring the prowling hunger in my flesh.
Forty quid - forty fucking quid! - was all it had taken to turn me into a whore. That was how cheap I was.
I hesitated outside the shop that seemed so bright and alien, blazing with cold light. Spending the money would make it real - as if it wasn't already. But the thought of having food - real food - in my cupboards again was too much of a lure. I had a sudden craving for fish, and fresh vegetables, and forest fruit, and wine, and almost before I knew it my earnings were spent and my arms laden with heavy bags.
The cashier had hardly been able to keep his eyes from my breasts, straining as they were so unnaturally against the fabric of my shirt. My nipples were achingly sensitive, demanding of attention, unmissable, and I wondered if he had noticed too the just discernible streak of drying cum. Normally I would have died at the thought of being so visible, especially at the thought of being so visibly sluttish, but it was nothing compared to the shame of my earlier act.
Besides, being an object of desire was a new and not unwelcome experience. Maybe the inexplicable enlargement of my breasts was a positive outcome and not some perverse divine punishment that labelled me as a whore for all to see.
It wasn't just my breasts, either. At home at last, in the privacy of my room, I saw my new self properly for the first time. The other changes were more subtle - a change in posture, a wildness to my hair, more muscle - but the woman looking back at me from the mirror was a sharp-eyed predator and undeniably sexy.
Stripped of my jeans and soiled shirt - and my white lace panties that were soaked - I confronted my naked reflection in awe. I had the body of a goddess, lithe and seductive. I ran my hands over flawless skin, shivered ecstatically as I caressed my nipples, and moaned with urgent hunger as my fingers slipped between my thighs, into the wetness of my pussy, seeking out my engorged and aching clit.
