Bought and Paid For

“We can have a sleepover!” Evelyn’s cheery smile as she threw a cloud-like pillow to him was both relaxing and unnerving. So it was a companionship thing. The safe closeness of a gay male friend despite the odd twinges of attraction he thought he’d felt a couple of times. But then, there was a flash of Davey again. No. Evelyn was not going to interrogate him or beat him… he looked over to the bouncing, excited woman who was holding the slit in the back of her skirt together and swearing to herself as she leaned into a cupboard and had to laugh. He was starting to feel a little relaxed for the first time in a long, long while.

“What?” She was laughing too, covering her ass with her hands in case it was that making him giggle.

“No, nothing. It’s just… Davey used to initiate some very scary sleepovers, and I was just thinking that I doubt you’d do the same.” She laughed again, a high, happy sound and Jade almost sighed with relief. He’d remembered, belatedly, how close the two were and he had no idea how he’d have skirted the issue of Davey’s treatment of him if she’d taken it badly.

“Aww, Davey can’t help it. It’s the way he was trained.” A knock on the open door and a tray of Greek-inspired finger foods was presented politely on a folding stand, then the door closed, leaving Evelyn to carry on. “He doesn’t know any different. He’ll always be aggressive.” Jade heard all the words between the ones she said. All the ones that said the opposite about him, and he slumped on the bed, defeated. Letting himself relax had been too risky, and now the comfort had overwhelmed him he couldn’t stop the tears that leapt on him. He put his head in his hands but didn’t attempt to shut himself up.

Evelyn stopped picking through the food in surprise. “Oh shhh now, what’s the matter?” She trotted the short distance to stand in front of Jade’s knees, resting her hands on his crumpled shoulders. He let out a quiet wail and then kicked himself for it. Pathetic. He at least owed her a decent explanation.

“You’re just so right,” he gasped between sniffing and praying fervently that he didn’t look as wretched as he felt, “I’m just a Bios boy. I’m nothing except what someone else has said they wanted me to be.” The silence was weighted, full of understanding as she took both of his hands and looked properly into Jade’s eyes.

“There is no shame in that.” The words were low and serious, and Jade began to understand before she started explaining. “I’m no different, but I’ve learned to be proud of it.” Jade couldn’t stop himself looking again at her wrists for a bracelet, but she laughed warmly and shook her head. “Not like that…”

“Then it’s not the same.” he snapped. Evelyn look shocked and he immediately regretted the sharp reply, but his emotions had taken over his mouth. He understood what she meant, really: he could see how she’d been moulded to fit the perfect wifely ideal and it must have been hard for her, but it was nothing like what he’d been through. “They… changed me. You have no idea what it’s like.”

“Try me.”

“Fine.” Jade tossed his hair out of his face and steeled himself for a rant: he was becoming irrationally annoyed by her relentless cheer, and now he was going to have to dig through his past. He decided it’d be logical to start from the top. “Right. This hair, obviously, is not natural. It should be auburn.”

Evelyn held out a perfectly curled lock of glossy black. “Strawberry blonde and straight as a poker.”

Jade covered a blink of surprise. Obviously her hair was dyed, but he hadn’t figured blonde. Recovering, he gestured to his eyebrows, the sharp line of his sideburns and began to wave hands elsewhere when she stopped him. “Waxing, plucking, electrolysis? Snap. And let’s not even go down there.” She stalked to the tray of food. “Then we’ve got this. Did they restrict your diet?” Jade nodded and stuffed an unidentified canapé into his mouth, raising an eyebrow in invitation for Evelyn to share her story. “Not restricted as such, but I have to keep the expected figure, a constant diet, personal trainer four days a week, blah blah blah…

Jade bent his head to accept her point. “I had five years of cramming and training in business, economics, politics, sociology, history, geography and any number of other things that Hunter demanded I was proficient in. While I was flat on my back in pain from the surgery they drilled it into me. All that education and now all he expects me to do is lie there for him and scream.”

She smiled. “Fifteen years of school, three years of university, two years of finishing school learning how to plan dinner parties, charm guests, make contacts, speak confidently and eloquently on all manner of subjects from nail polish to hostile takeovers. And do I use any of it? Barely. I run my little hobby-business, and smile sweetly at wave after wave of men in suits and their petty little wives. All the rest was pointless. Wasted.”

Jade stared at her for a long moment. He took a deep breath, preparing his next point. “My family… I left them all behind, my parent, my brothers, all my friends. We… we needed the money. My brother needs it. That’s how I got into this. My parents didn’t want me to but he would have… would have died. So I left, in the middle of the night. My paycheck goes straight to their account but the last I heard from them was a brief note at Christmas saying Smith was through the worst. He’s getting better. That’s all that matters. I was sold, and my parents won’t acknowledge me, but he’s getting better.”

Evelyn was silent for a moment, letting him dwell in his thoughts. She touched his wrist softly. “I’m originally Swiss. My family are all European. Adam came along to a do that my father was throwing and I was an unofficial part of the business merger. Oh they deny it, but I don’t think my father would have sold if his daughter hadn’t married the man taking over the company. I haven’t seen any of my family for three years, my father died last year, but Adam was starting a merger and needed me to host dinner parties. I missed the funeral.” She shut her eyes; this was obviously a sore point.

Jade took a deep breath and moved on to more physical matters, holding his hands and feet out. “All stretched. A year of physio to remember how to walk. Six months before I could write my own name again.”

Evelyn did a slow twirl, and Jade finally recognised the significance of her appealing wiggle in five-inch heels. He traced the extended lines of her calves and thighs up to where her skirt covered them and then the smooth round of her pert ass. She turned to face him and slipped one foot out of its stiletto shoe without a wobble, revealing unnaturally high arches and tiny, curved toes, which she wriggled at him.

“Twelve years of pointe ballet.” She stepped gently out of the shoes, picked them up and turned to open a door Jade hadn’t noticed behind her. “…And there’s plenty more where these came from.” She padded into the walk in wardrobe and motioned for Jade to join her. The shoes were returned to an empty cubby-hole amongst literally hundreds of others, all towering, from neat black courts to cheap looking red stripper platforms and even a pair reminiscent of the notorious ballet pointes, obscenely curved and held up by a black spike heel that ran as long as the shoe was. A good eight inches or so. Evelyn followed Jade’s intrigued stare. “Oh yeah. I’d like to see you try balancing in those when Adam’s…” she trailed off with a dreamy smirk, before returning to reality with a giggle. “Actually, I really would like to see that. But, onwards, onwards.”

With a grand wave of her hand Evelyn strutted back into the bedroom and returned to the main room. Jade frowned. “Okay, so you’ve had your feet changed. I had my legs, arms and fingers broken and stretched over months of pain, permanently changing the entire shape of my body.”

She nodded acceptance of his point and ran her hands down her sides, emphasizing her acute hourglass figure. “Since I was sixteen, fourteen hours a day tightlaced, tightened twice throughout the day to take up any slack. My ribcage has been permanently squeezed, my organs have had to shift, it’s almost certainly taken a year or so off my life. My natural waist is probably twenty six inches – now I can get down to sixteen if I choose to. And on that note, you can get me out of this.”

With one gesture to her corset style top, she flopped forwards, leaving Jade with a muddle of laces to tie himself up in before he worked them out. He’d always been intimidated by her tiny, perfect waist, and it was nice to know it didn’t come without some effort.

It hadn’t occurred to Jade that she’d be nearly naked underneath, or that, shockingly, half of her ribcage was covered with graceful, feminine tattoo work.

“I…they tattooed me, too.” Jade was beginning to accept that the game was more even than he thought, and he touched a hand to where the design crossed her stomach muscles. “Did yours hurt?”

Voices were quiet now, because they were so close, and Evelyn poked a hand under Jade’s shirt to touch the ink on his stomach. “You know they did. But it was worth it, if he likes it.” They knelt opposite each other on the bed, and Jade let her partial nudity encourage him to share deeper secrets. Things he wasn’t as comfortable with.

“They changed the way I look, so much.” Tears were welling up again, but Jade fought them. He took Evelyn’s tiny little hand and brought it to the tip of his nose, the curve of his cheeks, to let her feel the slightly different texture under the skin. “Other places, too. None of it’s me.” When she laughed it made him jump, and she turned her hand to catch his and boldly held it to the underneath of her right breast.

“Did you actually think these were real?” Realistically Jade couldn’t have explained why he was starting to blush, but sure enough as she pressed his fingers against the soft flesh and moved them, he felt a bump and the odd swell of implanted silicone. She let go and touched his face again, leaving his hand where it rested and both touches lingered as they felt for the likeness in each other. Jade was hypnotised by the intimacy of the moment, the comfort of truth and the long-forgotten softness of female flesh, so he really wasn’t sure if he moved or not. Just, one minute they was touching, staring, understanding each other on a level most people never reached – and then they were kissing, warm and gentle and without any pressure.

Jade was abstractly puzzled to realise that the fact he was pawing at another man’s wife wasn’t bothering him. Yes, the kiss was heated, supplemented by tongue and hands and the driving instinct Jade didn’t realise he still had, but it didn’t escalate. It peaked and ebbed and they lay cuddling, giggling to themselves and reaching over for titbits of food. Jade allowed himself to accept the closeness so that he could struggle past the shame to brace the issue that really bothered him. He didn’t stop staring at the ceiling.

“I’m just a whore, though.”

Evelyn rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. “I prefer to think of us as Geisha. Trained to be beautiful, and to please.”

“Maybe you are. I am a barely-glorified prostitute.”

“Then so am I.” Jade sighed and went to cut her off, but Evelyn carried on. “No: I got here because someone wanted to fuck me. So did you. It’s why we live where we do, dress how we do, eat what we do… it’s a self perpetuating way of life – and it suits me.”

She flipped abruptly onto her side, reached for Jade’s wrist and fingered the Bios bracelet permanently wrapped round his wrist. She twisted her own wedding ring off her finger, held it up and clinked the metal of their jewellery together, emphasising the weight behind each symbolic trinket. “We’re real people, Jade. You, me, Adam, Hunter, Davey…all of us. Well, maybe not so much Davey…” She chuckled and pressed her body against him, snuggling into his neck. It felt odd to be the upper hand, the one expected to control and provide rather than take, but Jade knew enough to slip an arm around her, hold her gently, and they lay still until Jade couldn’t stand the uncertainty anymore. He wasn’t sure if Evelyn was asleep, but he had to ask.

“Why do you want me here?” She might have been offended by the question if she didn’t know the feeling well enough herself: Jade thrived on being wanted, in any capacity, and once he had a purpose he’d be happy. She shuffled to sitting and started to take the rest of her clothes off, ready for bed. Jade was surprised to find he wasn’t blushing, it seemed such a natural thing to do.

“I love Adam dearly, he loves me. But I am not naïve enough to believe that I can be everything he wants: I’ve seen where his eyes go. He’d never hurt me, he’d never even suggest having his own way; but together, you and me?” With Jade enthralled, she coaxed him out of his shirt and ran her hand down to take off his smart black jeans, leaning even closer. “Between the two of us, I think we can be everything he’s ever dreamed of.”

Jade let her finish undressing him in silence, thinking about this proposition. Most immediately, it meant he no longer had to hide his attraction to Adam. It was a relief to know he was allowed to laugh in agreement when his query about sleep clothes was met with: “Darling, look at Adam. With a body like that, would you wear anything to bed?” Even lying naked next to the man’s wife seemed logical when put into the context of them joining forces to please him… The thought sent a shock through Jade’s half aroused body, but there was one more issue he had to face before he could relax.

“Evelyn? There’s something else. Promise you won’t think less of me?” It was amazing how at home he felt with her now, and the comforting squeeze to his hand in the darkness was enough to make him carry on. “At Bios, they train you up… like… sexually. And then I practiced…” his voice wavered, barely brave enough to say it, “…on other guys. I couldn’t tell you how many–”

“Ha! Is that the big secret?” Her sharp, genuine laugh shocked him and made him blush, but he nodded enough for her to feel it through the pillow. “Oh honey. I went to all-girls schools for fifteen years. You think we sat around painting our nails?” There was a long pause as that sank in. “And then! Once we were out of the girls’ school and allowed to mingle with men! I’ll tell you the stories some day… no doubt Adam will want to hear them. Again.”

She laughed, softly at first and then more as Jade continued to lay still in stunned silence, processing what she’d implied. Eventually Jade shook the image of corrupted schoolgirls out of his head and fished for what Evelyn was expecting of him, asking hesitant questions. When his hand touched her thigh she pulled him towards her, she whispered to him of Adam, of ways they’d seduce him, touch him, and she felt Jade harden against her hand. He crept his fingers down her body, gradually getting used to the feel of her.

“Do you remember, Jade?” She breathed gently against his lips and he moaned into her mouth. It had been years, but he did remember how to touch a woman, despite his recent obligatory homosexuality. He had six days to show her what he could do and to learn the ways Adam liked it in the only ways she knew how to teach. He could do that. It was his job, after all. Trained to please.